On the eve of the official July 3 launch of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential elections, front-runner Viktor Yushchenko announced three important steps in his campaign strategy. The three-pronged approach will help Yushchenko consolidate a wide-embracing election campaign against his main opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych,... MORE

Tension has again re-surfaced surrounding the autumn 2000 murder and beheading of Ukrainian opposition journalist Heorhiy Gongadze. On June 17, Hryhoriy Omelchenko, head of the parliamentary committee investigating the murder, announced that his commission had reached a unanimous verdict. The commission concluded that Ukrainian President... MORE

A delegation of 27 Vienna-based ambassadors to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from member countries visited Moldova on June 9-12. This unprecedented, mass descent was followed by the visit of OSCE's Chairman-in-Office for 2004, Bulgarian Foreign Affairs Minister Solomon Passy, in... MORE

In the best traditions of investigative journalism, the opposition Ukrayinska Pravda (June 3 and 11) newspaper has uncovered, for the first time, how Ukrainian oligarchs and their Russian advisers censor the Ukrainian media. Censorship operates through the use of secret instructions (temnyky) sent to television... MORE

On June 14, Ukraine's two largest oligarchic clans undertook what are likely to be one of the first of many insider privatizations before this year's elections in October. Ninety-three percent of shares in Ukraine's largest steel producer Kryvorizhstal were purchased for a staggeringly low sum... MORE

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko was charged with laundering US$114 million on June 4, after a five-year investigation. Lazarenko was only the second foreign leader to be put on trial in the U.S., following Panamanian President Manuel Noriega in 1990. Lazarenko was prime minister... MORE

On June 13, Poland, like the other seven post-Communist states who joined the European Union (EU) in May, will participate for the first time in European Parliament elections. In preparation for the elections, on June 5, the well-known Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper published a list of... MORE

Meeting on June 5 in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus agreed that the pace of formalizing the two states unification is "not to be rushed artificially," and that Moscow and Minsk should in the meantime focus on bilateral economic... MORE

On June 1, Ukrainian Parliament Deputy Speaker Oleksandr Zinchenko complained of collusion between "law enforcement structures and the criminal world" in the April 18 Mukachevo mayoral elections (www.rada.kiev.ua, June 1). Zinchenko specifically targeted "skinheads," who had been reportedly organized as paramilitary groups by the presidential... MORE

On June 1, Moldova's Communist President Vladimir Voronin handed over to foreign ambassadors in Chisinau the draft of a "Stability and Security Pact for the Republic of Moldova." The pact would, in effect, place the country under vaguely defined external guarantees. The proposed arrangement would... MORE