World Policy Institute: Round two of the East Slav feud
In Round One, close to a million euphoric young Ukrainians occupied Kyiv's central square for two long months to protest mass fraud in the 2004 presidential election. Unbelievably, they forced a re-run. Their favored Orange Revolution candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, defeated the Russian-backed candidate from eastern Ukraine who had originally claimed victory. Yushchenko became president and appointed Yulia Tymoshenko, his co-hero in the peaceful revolution, as prime minister. That was her rise to power. Together—with the enthusiastic support of western Ukrainian nationalists—the pair turned Ukraine's 1991 de jure independence from Russia into de facto independence. Read the story here.