[ Ukraine ]

Last autumn, Ukraine imprinted itself on the political consciousness of the world for the first time in its history. In what was christened the "orange revolution," vast crowds wearing orange scarves gathered in subzero temperatures in Kyiv's Independence Square to demand a fair election for president. They won. Under its new president, Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine can move toward what he and his allies hope will be a working democracy and market economy under the rule of law, and toward membership in the European Union.
Observers have placed Ukraine's "orange revolution" in a sequence of peaceful democratic revolutions stretching from the "velvet revolutions" of 1989 in Central Europe, through the "rose revolution" in Georgia in 2003, to what some are already calling the "cedar revolution" in Lebanon. Many Ukrainians are understandably delighted by this attractive labeling, so different from the largely negative or nonexistent image they have had in the past. Yet we must look beyond the news headlines to discover how and why this change has come about, and what its consequences may be.

So die ersten beiden Absätze, die einen durchaus lesenwerten Text einleiten.

UPDATE: ich hätte es wissen müssen: Natürlich hat auch
Neeka's Backlog auf den Aufsatz von Ash/Snyder repliziert, Veronica Khokhlova dürfte diesen auch ganz gut finden:

"A wonderful feature on Ukraine and the Orange Revolution in the New York Review of Books"