Efforts to unite Ukraine around the ideology of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism have proven futile. The complete fiasco of the ideas of Rukh was quite obvious way back in the 1990s. The phenomenon of Victor Yushchenko, who tried to give nationalism a new lease of life, rests on support gained from external forces, first and foremost, and also on support given to Yulia Tymoshenko’s populist movement that harvested votes in the cities and districts where an overt ethnic nationalism would not have had any chances otherwise.
Efforts to unite Ukraine around the ideology of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism have proven futile. The complete fiasco of the ideas of Rukh was quite obvious way back in the 1990s. The phenomenon of Victor Yushchenko, who tried to give nationalism a new lease of life, rests on support gained from external forces, first and foremost, and also on support given to Yulia Tymoshenko’s populist movement that harvested votes in the cities and districts where an overt ethnic nationalism would not have had any chances otherwise.
When the Baltic countries entered NATO and the European Union a couple of years ago, many thought it was the end of the centuries-old "red line." Euro-Atlantic organizations had crossed into the former Russian and Soviet empires.
In September 2004, the Russian city of Novgorod hosted an international conference entitled Russia at the Turn of the Century: Hopes and Reality. Its organizers were the RIA Novosti news agency, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Russia in Global Affairs, and The Moscow Times.