Ksenia Vasylenko

Last Thursday Ukraine’s parliamentarians sprinkled President Yushchenko’s path to the parliamentary rostrum with blood. The blood came from the nose of Our Ukraine faction leader Mykola Martynenko, who was injured by fellow parliamentarian Oleksandr Bondarchuk of the Communist Party in a skirmish...

The ninth parliamentary session, the last for this convocation, opened in a surprisingly quiet manner. There were no huge rallies in front of the Verkhovna Rada last Wednesday morning, and no sensational speeches were heard from the rostrum. Even Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn’s welcoming speech,...

The roster of Volodymyr Lytvyn’s Bloc, one of the largest in the current parliamentary campaign, popularly known under the code name “My” [We], has finally been approved — most likely a last- minute decision made “off the cuff,” as Lytvyn put it. How else can one explain the fact that the...

Today Ne tak is not simply a formula of negation but also a proper name. To be more precise, it is the name of an opposition election bloc formed last Sunday by four political forces: the Social Democratic Party (United) of Ukraine, “Women for the Future,” the Republican Party of Ukraine, and the...

The election campaign has kicked off. Communist Party candidates have been registered, and the Party of Regions has already submitted its election roster. But it is still quiet in the CEC corridors. Unlike last year, there are no police guarding the approaches to the building, and no one is...

Last Thursday Ukrainians got a new Prosecutor General in record time, in less than half an hour into parliament’s morning plenary session. Oleksandr Medvedko, the nominee, obtained 303 votes. (On July 5, 2002, parliament endorsed Sviatoslav Piskun as Prosecutor General with 350 votes). Such...

In early October the fall session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will verify how Ukraine has been honoring its commitments to the Council of Europe, including the conclusion of the Gongadze case. Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Sviatoslav Piskun is scheduled to deliver a...

The main lobbyists for Ukraine’s entry into the European community of nations are not state agencies in Eastern European countries but the average citizen. This was the principal message of the 10th international forum “From Europe to Europe: Common Denominators of Euro-Atlantic Integration,” which...