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According to Stratfor sources in the Kremlin, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and his brother Piotr Yushchenko allegedly are devising a plan to split Ukraine’s Orthodox Church officially from the Moscow patriarch’s authority, tearing it from Russia. The move would be one of the more controversial Ukraine has taken against its former Soviet Union partner and could spark a much larger crisis within Ukraine and with Russia.
The word “Ukraine” translates from Old Eastern Slavonic as “borderland,” or “edge of the state,” and that description could not be truer. Ukraine is the cornerstone for the West and Russia’s platforms for expanding against each other and projecting their power internationally. But the country is caught between the West and Russia, with each trying to influence the current political situation. Still, much would need to be done to convert Ukraine’s heart and soul to one side or the other. In fact, that simply might not be possible, and the tug-of-war could end up splitting Ukraine down the middle along ethnic and linguistic lines.
Since Viktor Yushchenko was elected during the 2004 pro-Western Orange Revolution, he has had difficulty cutting the ties binding half of Ukraine with Russia. Nearly 10 million — 20 percent — of Ukraine’s population is ethnically Russian, and another 15 million are pro-Russian; thus, Ukraine has been at an impasse since the Orange Revolution, and that stalemate has kept the country in political, economic and social disarray. In short, the country is divided over the issue of whether Ukraine should stay faithful to Moscow or turn toward the West. There is no doubt that Ukraine’s ruling coalition — led by Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko — wants to move the country toward the West with EU and NATO membership; however intimidation by Russia has kept every Ukrainian leader since the breakup of the Soviet Union from fully breaking away from Moscow.
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