6th January 2012
In January 2011, I wrote a blog called “Is Ukraine free?” In it, I noted that for 2011, in the ranking produced by the US-based NGO Freedom House, Ukraine fell back into the “Partly Free” category, having been in the “Free” category every year since 2005. Being in the “Partly Free” category, with a score […]
24th October 2011
I was in London last week meeting ministers; experts dealing with Ukraine in a number of government departments; and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ukraine, made up of members of the House of Commons and House of Lords with a particular interest in this country. People in the UK are keen to know what is […]
13th October 2011
This week, for almost the first time since I arrived in Ukraine in June 2008, Ukraine has been the number one item on the BBC World News website and in other media around the world. Friends have been getting in touch to ask me what’s going on, and where Ukraine is going. It’s an important […]
27th September 2011
Negotiations at a summit later this week will revolve around the question of “how European is Ukraine”? It sounds a bit academic, since anyone looking at a map can see that Ukraine is a European country. But negotiations at the Eastern Partnership Summit on 29-30 September will revolve around the question not of geography but […]
24th January 2011
Which is the country which is most free in the CIS? Can we say confidently that it is Ukraine? Or how about a new pretender to that crown – Moldova? There are many ways to measure freedom, some more objective than others. As I noted in a recent blog on human rights, one can often […]