Free Republic

KIEV, Ukraine — The crisis over Ukraine's disputed presidential election intensified Sunday, as a key eastern province called a referendum on autonomy andthe opposition demanded the current president fire his prime minister, the official winner of last week's votethat has bitterly divided this former Soviet republic. The opposition warned President Leonid Kuchma it would block his movementsunless he fired PrimeMinister ViktorYanukovych and fulfilled other demands within 24 hours. Earlier, Kuchma called on the opposition to end its four-day blockade of government buildings, saying compromise was the only solution to the crisis that has developed into a tense political tug-of-war between...

Ukraine’s future is again bound up in the political ambitions of Yulia Tymoshenko. The fate of the two-time prime minister and her country are once more tightly woven together — like the blonde halo braid that made her an international icon. Only this time, Ukraine is at war, and that means Tymoshenko’s third run for president could have implications far beyond her country’s borders, potentially rewriting relations between Russia and the West and unbalancing the geopolitical order.

A comedian whose political experience is limited to playing the president on TV vowed to tackle Ukraine's corruption, as he voted Sunday in the first stage of a presidential election he is tipped to win. Actor Volodymyr Zelensky's bid began as a long shot but he has leapfrogged establishment politicians amid public anger over graft and stagnating living standards. "A new life is beginning, a good life, without corruption, without bribes," the 41-year-old told journalists as he voted with his wife at a Kiev polling station. If elected, the entertainer will take the reins of a country fighting Russia-backed separatists...

A Hunter Biden email about Ukraine from 2014 looks ‘suspiciously’ like it could have come from classified information, a leading GOP senator has claimed. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said the April 12, 2014 message to one of the first son’s business partners resembles documents that the State Department gives members of the Senate when they travel overseas. “It reads like one of those scene-setters — highly detailed information in terms of Ukraine,” Johnson told Fox News Tuesday. The email from Hunter to Devon Archer includes a granular 22-point memo the Biden scion described as “thoughts after doing some research.” Those “thoughts”...

One of Washington's most powerful lobbying firms did not disclose the wide extent of its lucrative political work for a Ukrainian group tied to both onetime Trump adviser Paul Manafort and to pro-Russian politicians, new records show. The firm, the Podesta Group, said nothing in a 2012 lobbying report to Congress about at least 32 meetings, emails and other communications it had with the State Department, at a time when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was scrutinizing Ukraine's upcoming election, records show. The new disclosures shed light on the web of contacts between Russian-leaning Ukrainians, Washington lobbyists and U.S. policymakers...

Kiev, January 28, Interfax - Orthodox Choice, an organization formed by the Society of Orthodox Brotherhoods, will support the Communist Party in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections in March 2006, Society head Valentin Lukiyanyk said on Friday. Orthodox Choice was set up in 2005, with taking part in the elections one of the reasons for its existence, Lukiyanyk told a news conference in Kiev. "To date we are becoming actively involved in campaigning for the Ukrainian Communist Party," Lukiyanyk said. The party's principles are close to Orthodoxy in spirit, he said. He called the Our Ukraine party, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc,...