UKRAINE….

UKRAINE….

At Yalta’s Livadia Palace, where in 1945 Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill mapped out post-war spheres of influence, President Leonid Kuchma was host to a remarkable but largely unremarked fourteen-nation summit of formerly communist countries (plus Finland) in Europe and the south Caucasus. Reading from north to south, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan joined Ukraine in a declaration on “an overarching common goal–the creation of a united and indivisible Europe.” For Kuchma, who stands for re-election just a month from now, the summit served both style and substance. It was a marvelous photo-op, of course, but it also clearly distinguished Kuchma from his several opponents on the left (Oleksandr Moroz, Petro Symonenko, Oleksandr Tkachenko and Natalya Vitrenko among them) who favor integration or union with Russia.