Ukraine’s Officials, Opposition Flock to Luxury Ski Resort

Lib€rt€, €galit€, frat€rnit€!



Bienvenue à Courchevel! €4K champagne, €10K skis, €25M chalets. Step aside Eurotrash! Here come the guys with cash!
 
Klitschko, Berezhna, Kilchytska, Firtash... Some of these guys might be "opposing" each other back home. But here? Here it’s nothing but e pluribus unum! And they keep coming back for more. It’s just like Davos. Except you can save all the lofty rhetoric for your kids.
 
Now how about the ultimate down-to-earth opposition skiing experience?


 
Sources:
http://censor.net.ua/video_news/229527/40_otdyhayuschih_vipov_v_kurshevele_ukraintsy_berejnaya_i_kilchitskaya_sbegayuschie_ot_jurnalistov_i
http://tsn.ua

Mock Rally: Free First Lady Yanukovych!

He doesn’t just ground Tymoshenko these days.

Lyudmyla Yanukovych, his estranged and old-fashioned wife, fares no better.

Long ridiculed online for her comic 2004 anti-Orange rant, she now has become the target of what looks like a mock protest.



“Ukraine is no Iran! Yanukovych is no tyrant!” “Respect First Lady!” “Freedom for First Lady” “Vitya, show Lyuda to the world!” “Lyudmyla deserves tea with Obama!” “Lyudmyla deserves coffee with Bruni!”

Seriously, what’s wrong with Lyudmyla Yanukovych joining Michelle Obama for a tea party? Now that we have no enriched uranium left, our first lady no longer poses a radiation risk to the White House, does she? The two could discuss other ways to help Ukraine out of its resources.

Carla Bruni could grab a cup of coffee with our first lady on board one of those Mistral helicopter carriers. It’s a real treasure to have a friend like Sarkozy who helps Ukraine stay out of NATO and under Russia's wing.

Any other bon voyage ideas?

Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2011/01/27/5844365/
http://tvi.ua

Obama Reaffirms NATO's Open Door Policy

On the eve of NATO’s 60th anniversary, U.S. President Barack Obama made an overture to countries squeezed hard by the reset button.

A quote from REMARKS BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND NATO SECRETARY GENERAL JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER AFTER MEETING:

We've also discussed the role that NATO plays with respect to Russia and how this administration, my administration, is seeking a reset of the relationship with Russia, but in a way that's consistent with NATO membership and consistent with the need to send a clear signal throughout Europe that we are going to continue to abide by the central belief that countries who seek and aspire to join NATO are able to join NATO.

President Obama, however, did not mention any specific steps, such as his presidential campaign view of Ukraine as being ready for a Membership Action Plan (MAP).

Meanwhile, Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko, in Japan, promoted the idea of European collective security, attributing it to Sarkozy and Merkel.

Gee, I thought this whole European collective security counter-concept to NATO was the pet project of Chirac and Schröder.

Granted, neither France nor Germany has been a supporter of NATO expansion. But hasn’t France decided to reunite with the NATO military structure?

Looks like the guys who write talking points/articles for Tymoshenko have been drinking too much French wine.

Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/3/26/92019.htm
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/3/26/92021.htm
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-President-Obama-and-NATO-Secretary-General-Jaap-de-Hoop-Scheffer-After-Meeting/

From Hawk to Dove, or Tymoshenko’s Ghostwritten Adventures

After meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko “wrote” an article in the The Guardian:

Europe must pull together in this crisis
It is in no country's interest that eastern Europe feels cast adrift. As in the past, we should look to France for leadership.

As if France couldn’t make it on its own, the article promotes the role of Paris in the Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis, with Ukraine trailing somewhere behind, at the back of beyond.

The Prime Minister of Ukraine “mentions” Germany 14 times; France, 11 times; Russia, 10 times; and Ukraine, 3 times.

Moreover, this new article flies in the face of Containing Russia, her May/June 2007 article in Foreign Affairs.

If you compare these two articles, you will see Tymoshenko arguing with herself:

Encouraging economic and political reform -- the West's preferred means of engaging Russia since communism's end -- is of course an important foreign policy tool. But it cannot substitute for a serious effort to counter Russia's long-standing expansionism and its present desire to recapture its great-power status at the expense of its neighbors.

Containing Russia

But keeping Russia at arm's length from Europe has only strengthened the sense of isolation that many Russians feel, tempting them to define the country's interests in ways that are irreconcilable with those of Europe. It has also heightened Russia's desire to construct a special, bilateral Russo-German relationship, heedless of the context of the EU.

Europe must pull together in this crisis

I wonder who paid for these flip-flopping placements and what foreign policy credentials they hoped to achieve.

I also found two videos that I think put Tymoshenko’s multivector foreign policy in motion.







Sources:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/3/10/91024.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/03/credit-crunch-globalrecession/print
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070501faessay86307/yuliya-tymoshenko/containing-russia.html
Videos embedded from:
http://nevsedoma.com.ua/index.php?newsid=49329
http://nevsedoma.com.ua/index.php?newsid=49330