Leonid Kozhara - Foreign Policy Advisor to the Ukrainian President

Published: Nov. 9, 2012, 1:01 a.m.

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Ukraine's just held parliamentary elections. A cause for celebration, and the flowering of democracy in a former Soviet republic? Not if you read the reports of international election monitors or hear the comments of the world's top diplomats.

So eight years after the Orange Revolution, with some of the government's leading critics serving long sentences in jail, has Ukraine made its choice? Is it in effect turning its back on the offer of membership of the EU, the club of Europe?

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