In a recent poll carried out by the International Institute of Democracies, more than one third of Ukrainians named Viktor Yushchenko as the best President of Ukraine in all its years of independence. According to the report, some 35% of those polled named Yushchenko as the best president, around 16% cast their vote for Leonid Kuchma and 17% for Leonid Kravchuk. Around 32% of those polled did not give an answer. The result of the poll was good news for all Orange supporters, but then the same poll asked who respondents thought had been the best Prime Minister so far, and the results swung in the favour of the blue camp with Viktor Yanukovich coming out on top with 32%, followed by Yulia Tymoshenko on 27% and, strangely enough, Viktor Yushchenko getting only 14% of the vote this time round.

While the spin doctors and PR men have been working overtime with the country’s politicians in the lead up to the 30 September elections, President Viktor Yushchenko has come out and said that the country itself needs to improve its image abroad. During a TV questions and answer session with students, Yushchenko said his aides were formulating a strategy and cooperating with three international agencies that could help Ukraine improve its international image. “It is Ukraine’s top priority to restore its good name, popularity, international and regional status and so I am working single−mindedly to make sure Ukraine participates in all regional projects,” he said, going on to explain that such projects benefit the nation.

Having been pipped at the post by Balkan group voting in the Eurovision Song Contest, Ukraine did very well in the finals of the brand new Eurovision Dance Contest which took place last weekend. Following on from Verka Serduchka’s near miss that had music fans all over Europe calling ‘foul’ back in May, the Ukraine couple Ilyia Sydorenko and Julia Okropiridze came second with 121 points, just 11 points behind the winning team from Finland, Jussi Vnnen and Katja Koukkula. Mick Donegan and Nicola Byrne from Ireland came in third, but the British did as poorly in this competition as they did in the Eurovision Song Contest getting only 18 points leaving them languishing in fifteenth place. Having said that, they didn’t do as badly as Switzerland who came in last with nil pwoi!

A team of international scientists recently devel­oped a test to establish intellectual capabilities of various nationalities throughout the world. Candidates from selected countries were placed in a sealed isolation booth consisting of nothing more than a chair and a table with three perfectly spherical metal balls on it.

"We are ready to repeal parliamentary immunity today. I call on the President to support our ini­tiative and amend the Ukrainian Constitution at a special plenary session," said leader of the Party of Regions in Verkhovna Rada, Raisa Bo-hatyryova in a very clever move that pulls the rug out from under the election campaign of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People's Self De­fense Bloc (OU-PSD) who until this statement was made on 22 August had been using the is­sue of lawmakers' immunity as their main election platform. In a muddying-of-the-water reversal typical of Yanukovych's Party of Regions, the statement is likely to be nothing more than politi­cal pontificating, but could well severely damage the election campaign of OU-PSD who will have to come up with another platform on which to stand. Going one step further, Bohatyryova even suggested that the cancellation of immunity was the initiative of her party. "If the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc and OU-PSD sabotage our initiative, we will adopt the relevant law on repeal of unlimited par­liamentary immunity," she stated.

The political parties may well be right in promising cash handouts in the run up to the 30 September elections, as What's On has received statistics from the Ministry of Education and Science which prove that the population of Ukraine is in serious decline.

The main political parties are using highly unusu­al tactics in their attempts to woo voters in the upcoming parliamentary elections. With the Party of Regions standing on a stability platform after their alleged purchasing of lawmakers launched the country into its current political turmoil, Yulia Tymoshenko appealing to the masses on her pa­triotic soapbox and Our Ukraine-People's Self Defence standing on the single issue of immunity (which was cleverly pulled out from under their feet when Yanukovych said it was no big deal and he would lead a vote to cancel members immunity), it was clear that everyone involved had been to the Western school of politicking and new exactly what they were doing.

Organisers of a nationwide poll to find Ukraine’s top tourist destination had to suspend the promotion last week after a massive vote falsification that would have made the pre−Orange Revolution Central Election Commission proud. ‘Seven Wonders of Ukraine’, a state sponsored tourism promotion, was launched 21 July with great fanfare inviting Ukrainians to cast their vote for their favourite place to visit in the country.

As election campaigning moved out of first gear last week, gaff prone Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych spoke out in an annals−of−history statement that ex−British Prime Minister Tony Blair would have been proud of, entering himself and his Cabinet of Ministers into the history books even before they have been written. “That day(when his second cabinet was approved) will be remembered as the day when a new constitutional order was established – the parliamentary−presidential model of power,” he said, going on to say that it was this model that put an end to the country’s authoritarian regime.

Russia’s President Putin embarked on yet more empire−building last week when he dispatched a high tech team to the Artic to claim a huge chunk of the northern wastes for the motherland. According to international law the five esignated Arctic countries of America, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Russia each have 200 mile economic zones, but with the polar ice cap melting and huge potential mineral and energy deposits up for grabs the time seemed right for yet more populist empire building from the Kremlin.
Top Russian explorer Artur Chilingarov, led the crusade, which saw a polar ice breaker lead a research fleet up to the polar ice cap where they planted a titanium Russian flag and collected samples of earth in a bid to demonstrate that the north pole is in fact just a mere extension of the Russian mainland.