Word: yushchenko
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Fresh from their conflict over gas in January, Ukraine and Russia are again in the midst of a heated battle - this time, about the countries' shared Soviet past. As Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko this week lamented that Ukraine had become "a hostage in the fight between two totalitarian regimes - fascist and communist" and called for Soviet-era symbols around the country to be torn down, his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev ordered the creation of a presidential commission "to counter attempts to harm Russian interests by falsifying history...
...Yushchenko has been a thorn in the Kremlin's side ever since he came to power in 2005, after popular protests known as the Orange Revolution forced the rerun of a rigged election won by the Russia-backed candidate. Deeply unpopular in Russian political circles for his pro-West policies, Yushchenko has also attracted scorn for his honoring of Ukrainian national war heroes who fought against Russia and for drawing international attention to Holodomor, the man-made famine planned in Moscow that killed several million Ukrainians...
...Tymoshenko has claimed that the unpopular Yushchenko is trying to push the country toward default in order to declare an emergency situation so that he can remain president. For his part, Yushchenko has accused Tymoshenko of betraying national interests and agreeing "a secret Molotov-Ribbentrop protocol" with Moscow as part of attempts to secure a $5 billion loan to cover budget shortfalls. Russia's outspoken ambassador to Ukraine, former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, caused a diplomatic uproar in February when he said they were "at each other like dogs...
...things may not be as bad as they seem. Banking analysts suggest that talk of a sovereign default is overblown, and say not all banks are struggling to pay out. Even more promisingly, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko announced a truce at the end of last week and sent a revised anti-crisis plan to the IMF in the hope of securing further funds...
...this truce will last, however, is anyone's guess. In a sign that it could be over already, the headquarters of the state-owned energy company Naftogaz, which answers to Tymoshenko, were raided on Wednesday by armed agents from the state security service, the SBU, which is controlled by Yushchenko. The SBU says it is investigating Naftogaz for "misappropriating" gas that belongs to private energy company RosUkrEnergy; Tymoshenko says the SBU is being used by a "corrupt group" in a fight for gas she says belongs to Ukraine. "There's no such thing as a truce between cats and dogs...