Playing Russian Roulette In Kiev.(World View)(Viktor Yushchenko vows to link with West against Russia)

The unpopular Yushchenko is promising to link Ukraine with the West, against Russia.

Four years ago, in the wake of the orange revolution, Ukraine captured the world's attention. The jubilation has long died down, to be replaced by frustration with the country's lively but exceedingly chaotic politics. Late last month Kiev's political theater struck a new low when the president's office formally accused Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko--the former orange princess and still nominally an ally of the head of state--of high treason, and asked the national-security service to investigate allegations that she is an agent of the Kremlin. Result: havoc in Parliament, collapse of the ruling coalition and the likelihood of a new parliamentary election, barely a year after the last one.

The most recent round of chaos reflects the vast schism that has long existed in Ukraine, but has been thrust onto center stage by Russia's incursion into Georgia. At the time of the Georgia crisis, according to the Segodnya newspaper, 51 per-cent of the population of Ukraine's western regions sided with Tbilisi, while 56 percent in the east backed Moscow. On the parliamentary floor this month, while one faction proudly sat against the backdrop of the Georgian flag, another faction's leader moved to recognize Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's in-dependence. Though such fault lines are nothing new in a diverse and fractious nation that counts no fewer than three Orthodox churches, plus a Greek Orthodox community that recognized the pope's authority, the trouble in the Caucasus may this time create a political earthquake with enormous consequences.

More than two thirds of the electorate--east, west or center, whatever their international preferences--want to be in the European Union and at the same time maintain good and close relations with Russia. Membership in NATO would destroy any chance at the latter. Tymoshenko senses this, and basically shares the position. Although she once authored a piece in the U.S. journal Foreign Affairs calling for Russia's containment, and later signed a petition promoting Ukraine's membership in NATO, she is, if anything, a pragmatist who recognizes the complexities of her own country and its international environment. But while her parliamentary coalition has collapsed, the deeply unpopular incumbent president, Viktor Yushchenko, has vowed to press on with his bid for re-election in the early 2010 presidential elections, building his campaign around a promise to link Ukraine with the West, against Russia.

On Ukrainian Independence Day, Aug. 24, he presided over a rare and controversial display of military hardware on Kiev's main avenue, and said that neutrality was no option for his country. He has taken a tough line in Crimea as well, where the Russian Navy shares its ...