SAMPLE1:

                                          RUSLANA WINS!
         UKRAINE WINS AT EUROVISION SONG CONTEST!
                     100 Million Watch Song Contest in Europe
               Biggest Pop Music Pageant of its Kind in the World

RUSLANA: "All of us are making a positive image of Ukraine. I want
my country to open up before you with friendship and hospitality," an
ecstatic Ruslana told a news conference after the show. [article two]

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 81
Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC), Washington, D.C.
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C.; Kyiv, Ukraine, SUNDAY, May 16, 2004
"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 81
Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC), Washington, D.C.
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net
Washington, D.C.; Kyiv, Ukraine, SUNDAY, May 16, 2004

                                      INDEX OF ARTICLES
                  "Major International News Headlines and Articles"

1.                       RUSLANA WINS! UKRAINE WINS!
COMMENTARY: E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT
Washington, D.C., Sunday, May 16, 2004

2.              UKRAINE WINS EUROVISION SONG CONTEST
                             Ruslana's Ukrainian Song "Wild Dances"
By Daren Butler, Reuters, Istanbul, Turkey, Saturday, May 15, 2004

3.                          UKRAINE WINS EUROVISION
Ruslana hands Ukraine its first victory at the celebrated European event.
Agence France-Presse (AFP), Correspondents in Istanbul
Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, May 16, 2003

4.              RUSLANA OF UKRAINE WINS EUROVISION
                             WITH SONG "WILD DANCES"
                Inspired by the folk music and dances of highlanders
                                    in the Carpathian Mountains
      Associated Press, Istanbul, Turkey, Sunday, May 16, 2004

5.        POPULAR UKRAINIAN SINGER, COMPOSER, PRODUCER
                          Ruslana is "wild" energy, her song "Wild Dances"
EUROVISON.TV, May, 2004

6.          SONG "WILD DANCE [S]" PERFORMED BY RUSLANA
     Unique character of the picturesque land of the Hutsuls permeates the
     song through the sounds of ethnical music instruments, elements of the
    Hutsul traditional dance, Kolomyika, vivid exclamations 'Hey! Hey!' and
                                              'dana-dana'.
EUROVISION.TV, May, 2004

7.                            RUSLANA'S DIKI TANTSY VIDEO
EUROVISION.TV, Ukrainian Song "Wild Dances" May, 2004

  1.                            RUSLANA WINS! UKRAINE WINS!

COMMENTARY: E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT
Washington, D. C., Sunday, May 16, 2004

WASHINGTON - Ruslana Lyzichko led Ukraine to victory Saturday night
at the Eurovision Song Contest held in Istanbul, Turkey, with an
electrifying performance of her Ukrainian song "Wild Dances"

This was Ukraine's first victory in the Eurovision Song Contest and only
the second time Ukraine has participated. The Eurovision Song Contest is
the biggest music pageant of its kind in the world. 100 million people were
expected to watch the finals held Saturday night.  Ukraine will now host
this major European event in May of 2005, of course for the first time.

This was a huge win for Ruslana and a major victory for Ukraine. Ruslana
is from western Ukraine and is obviously very proud of her heritage, her
country and sings in Ukrainian.  Ruslana speaks out often about the
beauty, culture and arts of the Carpathian region of Ukraine and presents a
very visible, positive image of Ukraine whenever she speaks with the media
and performs her music and dance.

I had the great fortune to hear Ruslana perform at the 2003 Hutsul Festival
on Saturday evening, August 30, held in Vyshnytsya, Ukraine.  It was amazing
to see the entire soccer stadium, where the performance was held, filled to
capacity with young people who were full of excitement and energy to hear
one of their own perform modern Ukrainian music at such a world-class level.

One could only feel good about the future of Ukraine that night in
Vyshnytsya hoping those young people would take that same energy and
excitement with them in the future as they work to build a strong,
independent, prosperous, post-genocidal and post-Soviet Ukraine, operating
under the rule-of-law with a large, private, market-driven economy,
totally integrated into Europe.

According to a Reuters article from Istanbul an ecstatic Ruslana said at a
news conference after the show, ""All of us are making a positive image of
Ukraine. I want my country to open up before you with friendship and
hospitality." "I would like you to forget about Chernobyl," she said,
referring to the 1986 nuclear accident which has long marred Ukraine's
image."

Reuters reported that when asked what would be the first thing she did after
returning to Kiev, Ruslana said: "I will do as Russell Crowe in (the
Hollywood blockbuster) 'Gladiator'. I will kneel in my homeland, take a
piece of Ukrainian earth and kiss it."

Ruslana will obviously, after this major victory, have many more
opportunities to speak out positively about Ukraine around Europe and the
world. She will also have a much larger audience, one in the millions,
before which to perform her exciting, new Ukrainian music and dance.

Ruslana will be an outstanding goodwill ambassador for her beloved Ukraine.
We all wish her much more success in the future and look forward to Ukraine
finally having an international goodwill ambassador, of the class as
Ruslana, on the international stage. An ambassador, of which, we all can be
very proud.

On Saturday night, May 22, 2004, in Istanbul, Turkey, Ruslana won and
Ukraine won, big time!    (END)

SAMPLE2:

MIKULINTSI, Ukraine -- Teodozii Onyskiv was standing outside his house, looking out over the open fields of roosters, cows and hogs, when an ancient Soviet-made car chugged by.

He nodded toward the driver. "His wife is abroad, and the daughter is going to go somewhere to make money," Onyskiv said.

His eyes followed the car as it passed a house down the road. "In that house," he said, "both the husband and the wife left." Onyskiv pointed to another neighbor. "In that house, the wife left today for Poland."

Mikulintsi is not a ghost town, but there are days it feels like one. Here in western Ukraine, where job opportunities are sparse and salaries meager, the only recourse for many people is to find work abroad, particularly elsewhere in Europe. So the expansion of the European Union this week right up to the Ukrainian border, less than 100 miles away, has only deepened anxiety about the future here.

Tighter borders will make it harder for Ukrainians to travel abroad for work. And with three of its neighbors, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, joining the EU on Saturday, many Ukrainians feel left out, once again on the wrong side of what they commonly call a new Iron Curtain falling across Europe.

"We're not expecting anything positive from this," said Tetiana Dovbush, a schoolteacher whose classroom was filled with children whose parents are off working elsewhere in Europe. "Nobody expects any doors to be opened for Ukraine. Nobody expects anything to be better. The EU isn't thinking of us. Their main concern is how to close the doors permanently."

Coming just weeks after the expansion of NATO, the accession of 10 new EU members, mostly from the ranks of former Soviet-bloc countries, will create what officials and diplomats call a "gray zone" of 65 million people from Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, three former Soviet republics trapped between Europe on one side and Russia on the other.

The three countries left out of both entities often seem unsure which way to turn, veering in different directions by the day. Snubbed by the EU, Ukraine's parliament last week ratified an agreement creating a still-undefined union with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan called the United Economic Space. Yet at the same time, Ukraine this month approved a new memorandum of understanding with NATO outlining mutual cooperation, and last week banned the Russian language on Ukrainian television.

Without the more developed economies of the rest of Europe or the oil resources of Russia, the countries of the gray zone struggle to get by. When it comes to average wage earnings, a report by the Federation of European Employers, published last month, found that Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova ranked 44th, 45th and 46th out of 46 countries surveyed.

The Ukrainian economy has been growing, yet 86 percent of Ukrainians surveyed last year by the International Foundation for Election Systems, a Washington-based group that receives U.S. government grants, still deemed the country's economic situation bad or somewhat bad.

The feeling of resentment about being left out of the EU expansion is particularly acute among Ukrainians in the western part of the country, a picturesque expanse of charming old towns and pastoral landscapes that was part of Poland until the Soviet-Nazi pact in 1939. "We're the buffer," Dovbush lamented. "As it's always been. This is the most dangerous place."

Hryhoriy Burbeza, a city council member in the regional center of Ternopil, takes it personally. "Why don't they want to receive well-prepared European people from Ukraine?" he asked. After a moment, he came up with his answer. "It's the selfishness of Europe."

Western Ukraine has been feeding labor into Europe for years. A government survey of 994 villages in the Ternopil region in 2001 found that 50,000 people, out of a population of 1.1 million, were leaving each year to find work abroad. Nearly a third of those living abroad were in Poland, now just days away from joining the EU, which requires member states to follow stricter rules on border controls and migrant workers. All told, the expatriate Ukrainians reported sending back about $100 million a year to their families in Ternopil, a figure some experts said represented only a fraction of the real amount.

Oleksandr Levchenko, co-author of the survey of Ternopil villages, said those Ukrainians may be forced out by the expanded EU and sent back to Ternopil, where the average monthly wage of $66 ranks it lowest in all of Ukraine.

"They'll come back and they'll demand work and the government can't provide them with this work," he said, sitting in a Ternopil restaurant named Cafe Europe. Pondering the message from the West, he added: "This doesn't make any sense. On the one hand they say, 'Turn your back on Russia, turn to Europe.' But the road to Europe has been blocked."

Ukrainians have been traveling down that road for more than a decade, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union opened up borders and closed down factories. At first, mostly men went. But in recent years, local officials and residents say, women increasingly have been the ones seeking work abroad, often leaving behind children and warping social structures in villages unaccustomed to life without sisters, mothers and wives.

Burbeza's wife has been working elsewhere in Europe for the last two years, sending money and parcels home to the children. "They miss her," he said. "But somehow we cope with it."

Teodozii Onyskiv counts 18 households with someone working abroad among the 36 in his neighborhood. His wife, Olena, went to Italy, where she and her sister took care of elderly people and cleaned houses. Olena made $600 a month, far more than her husband's monthly pension of $46. "People who work abroad send a lot of money back," said Onyskiv, 50, a burly, balding retired police officer. "If you use it in a proper way, it makes a lot of sense."

But Olena grew ill in Italy and eventually came home, where she died of cancer at 48. In front of his house, Onyskiv built a small one-room chapel in her memory.

At least some of the exodus from Ukraine can be traced to human trafficking and sex slavery. Last month, a married couple, both of whom worked as schoolteachers, were convicted in Ternopil of selling young Ukrainian women to brothels in Turkey. The husband received a 61/2-year sentence; the wife was given three years' probation. "They tried to solicit girls from villages, young good-looking girls, from 19 to 25," said Sergei Shvornikov, an official at the regional interior ministry.

Such stories are increasingly common. Criminal cases against human traffickers have doubled in Ukraine each year since 1998, with 289 cases prosecuted last year. "There's no work," said Marina Pasechnik, coordinator of a program that fights human trafficking in Ternopil. "They have nothing to feed the children with. So human traders move in."

Even women who depart voluntarily often leave children behind. Dovbush, the teacher, estimated that one-third of the students in her school have no mother at home. She notices more drinking and smoking among her students, more trouble at earlier ages. Some have more money because of the funds sent home from abroad and seem less attentive to authority.

"A lot of families have fallen apart in the last few years," Dovbush said. "As a rule, our men can't handle loneliness very well. They start drinking and going downhill. . . . There are families where they have complete tragedy."

No one is quite certain how the new EU iron curtain will change all that. Some worry that it will mean only more misery and less opportunity. Others assume that Ukrainians will find new ways to scale the wall.

"Unless big factories start working in Ukraine again or Ukrainians start getting good salaries, people will still be going overseas, even illegally," Pasechnik said. "The money they get abroad as illegal immigrants is still better than the legal money they can earn here."

DOROHUSK, Poland - The message here at this gleaming new border post overlooking the thickly forested banks of the Bug River is that Poland is ready.

Inside a spotless weapons room is a rack of snub-nosed Glauberyt automatic pistols, a Polish version of the famous Uzi. There are 9-millimeter pistols, boxes of bullets, two submachine guns and night vision goggles inside green canvas kits.

Outside is a Land Rover, motorcycles and two dogs trained to follow tracks in the woods. Not seen, but also available to protect this stretch of the 327-mile border between Poland and Ukraine, are snowmobiles, a helicopter and a patrol plane.

Just about all of it is provided by the European Union, which Poland will join on May 1 with nine other countries.

"Of course, we understand that this will be the border of Western Europe," said Lt. Col. Andrej Wojcik, commander of the newly strengthened Polish Border Guards in this area. He has 1,500 men and women under his command.

Given its way, Poland would probably not be fortifying its eastern borders quite to this extent. Poles and others are concerned about creating what some people here call a new Iron Curtain, or a new Rio Grande, between it and its former allies in the Soviet bloc, namely Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, exacerbating tensions around who is on the inside and who is left out of the new Europe.

But fearful of the smuggling of people and contraband, current European Union states in Western Europe made a tightly controlled border one of many conditions that Poles had to fulfill for membership. The looming question now is whether it will become an economic and ideological divide as well.

"There was a belief that hordes of illegal migrants are waiting outside our borders and that our controls were inefficient," said Jan Trusczynski, Poland's chief European Union negotiator.

"We had to confront this type of thinking, that Poland's borders were more dangerous than other European borders," Mr. Trusczynski said, "which means that we had to beef up resources and investment along our Eastern frontier."

Europe's own eastern frontier has shifted throughout its history, and it is shifting once again. This time, the new border of Europe - defined by the soon-to-be-25-member European Union - will be several hundred miles farther east.

"It's a historic moment," Germany's foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, said. "It will be the first time in modern history that Germany will be the center of Europe, without direct threats to our border and without us threatening anybody."

The change is equally historic for Poland. "Poland will no longer be between two big nations, Germany and Russia, which was always a dangerous situation, but in a union with many other nations who will be partners," said Jerzy Holzer, director of the Institute for Politics of the Polish Academy of Science.

In many ways the new border arrangements, not just for Poland but for all the new members, promise to be more complicated than before.

There will be a transition period of probably several years during which the old borders of the Europe Union and the new ones will remain, streamlined but not eliminated.

For the foreseeable future, Poles will be able to cross into Germany without a visa. But there will still be a border post, and Poles will be allowed to stay for only a limited period, probably about three months.

Worried about low-cost labor flooding in, several countries, including Germany, have announced restrictions on job seekers from the new states for several years.

In other words, there will remain what one German writer, Roland Freudenstein, has called "a frontier of poverty," though it is a frontier, he has written, with a good chance of disappearing.

This will be the new border between Europe and non-Europe, defined in many ways by religion and shared political and cultural values. (Poland is mostly Catholic, for instance, while the Orthodox church begins to dominate to the east.)

Along this border, controls and surveillance will not be loosened but, at least for now, intensified. The line here in Dorohusk on the Bug River is visible already - a red strip painted across a green trestle bridge where vehicles waited.

An electrician from the Ukrainian town of Lutsk (pronounced Woosk) said he was waiting to get building materials in Poland and was untroubled by the new visa requirements. "There's a Polish Consulate in Lutsk," he said, "and it only took me a day to get a visa."

But in another car, a man and a woman who gave their names as Sergei and Larissa from Luboml, Ukraine, were bitter. "There's no work in the Ukraine," Larissa said, "so for us it's going to be very hard."

COME May Day, the edge of the edge of Europe will be a red-and-white, diagonally painted concrete column, with a white eagle and the word Polska on it; dug into the pine and birch woodland skirting the Bug river, it divides Poland from Ukraine, new West from new East.

The river rounds a bend at the little village of Horodlo, where the faithful flock to church for Monday evening Mass, and peasants bring carts of firewood home through the gray of late afternoon.

Here is the easternmost point of a new 2,400-mile (3,860km) frontier of the European Union, which on 1 May admits 10 new members, seven of them countries that lived under Stalin's repressive regime. The process that began with the rise of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement in 1981 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 comes to fruition here.

Springtime is stirring in the little park in Horodlo and in the Sparrow pub, to which Darek and Monika have returned from Warsaw, hoping the frontier will mean new business. 'They're bringing in 40 extra policemen just for our little village,' says Monika, 'to add to the two we have at the moment. And that's in addition to the border guards.'

'They've been chasing out the Ukrainians,' says Janusz, who keeps the mini-market, 'because the Ukrainians bring in smuggled cigarettes to sell for two zlotys (28p), while we have to sell them for five. Now people will have to come to us for a smoke.'

The border of the new EU is both porous and harsh. Upriver, what they call the new 'Velvet Curtain' is being drawn, on Brussels' insistence - a necklace of new guard posts manned by thousands of newly recruited armed men. But this is a border across which tens of thousands journey each day, and a smugglers' terrain for anything from alcohol to people. Monika's pub is a rarity in rural Poland, boasting an array of tequilas, malt whisky and cocktails.

This is land where peasants farm fertile black soil, of storks' nests atop telegraph poles and trees hung with clumps of mistletoe. It is also soaked in history, much of it epic and bloody. Armies have marched across these plains for centuries, to subjugate the Poles - Nazi and Soviet, Prussian and Russian.

Indeed, the demographic engineering of Horodlo puts it at some bitter kernel of twentieth-century history, between Holocaust and Cold War: in 1939 the village was one-third Jewish, one-third Polish and one-third Ukrainian. By 1945 the Jews had all been exterminated at the nearby Majdanek camp; the Ukrainians shipped across the border to the USSR; and the parents or grandparents of 60 per cent of the present population - Poles living in Ukraine - deported 'home' in the opposite direction. 'So you see what politics can do,' says the village priest, Krzystof Krukowski.

It was in Horodlo, in 1413, that a great power was forged by treaty, not war, binding Poland and Lithuania to create the biggest country in medieval Europe. And it is peace that now brings this corner of Europe into a union. Or, as the mayor of the nearby county seat of Chelm puts it: 'We do not see ourselves as the edge of something, but more as its gateway - to the East and its markets.'

Indeed, the quiet of evening in Horodlo belies the scene on the riverbank a little to the north, at Dorohusk: a hinge on a burgeoning trade corridor connecting Berlin to Moscow via Warsaw and Kiev. It is the busiest border crossing between Poland and Ukraine, a confusion of cafes, currency exchange booths, tatty old Ladas driven by leather-faced peasants and grinding lorries lined up for five kilometres, waiting to cross in either direction. Heading from Warsaw to Odessa, Stefan has been here nearly 48 hours and expects a similar wait on the other side, where 'you have to get 10 stamps on bits of paper, and each one needs a bribe'.

Every day 12,000 people cross here - where none did in Soviet times - one of 15 crossing points along Poland's (and the EU's longest) external border with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. They do so under the watchful eyes, weaponry and cameras of Lieutenant-Colonel Andrzej Wojcik's border guardsmen.

Since he joined the guard in 1981, then under communist military authority, Wojcik's life has been the border. But now that this border is Europe's front line - against what Brussels and politicians fear will be a flow of people and goods seeking to cross into the EU - the colonel plays 'a game of cat and mouse, or chess', against what he calls 'the other side', in which 'you have to anticipate its next move, and plan your own'.

But Wojcik insists: 'We are not putting up another Berlin Wall, we are creating an opening for legal activity while stepping up security to stop illegal activity.'

The traffic in people has become Wojcik's biggest challenge, with some 20,000 either caught or turned back each year. 'Either something is wrong with their papers, or we find them concealed or working illegally,' he says.

He shows a video of groups of Indians and Kurds marshalled by their criminal couriers across bogland on the other side of the Bug, unaware they have been picked up on film by the guards' thermo-sensitive equipment that responds to human body heat.

'Unfortunately these people are not insured, and do not get their money back, he says. 'They would probably have paid between $ 7,000 and $ 8,000 each.' More successful migrants are usually passed on from Ukrainian to Polish mafia syndicates, moved across country to the German border, then handed over to the Germans and shipped elsewhere in the West. 'We can fight this problem,' says the colonel, 'but we can never solve it. So long as there are economic disparities, these people will come, just as smuggling will continue while there are price disparities. We can fight the problem but we're not here to save the world.'

In Wojcik's Lublin district, 16 new box-style brick installations with detention facilities have been built along the 'green border' (where there are no crossings) kitted out with a playground of snowmobiles, motorbikes, vehicles for fording rivers and racks of pristine PM98 machine guns. There are kennels inhabited by intimidating dogs, for searching 'and for protection'. 'But not a shot has been aimed at anyone,' says Wojcik, 'only into the air in case anyone thinks they are dealing with Boy Scouts.'

In addition to people, the 1,500 guards look for stolen icons, alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. 'Come 1 May,' he says, 'we can say that we will be safeguarding the border of the European Union. But this is not something that has happened overnight - we have been working on this for years, and they (the EU) have watched us work.' Indeed 'they' have, as Michal Czyz recounts back in Warsaw, heaving a sigh.

Czyz heads a special European Union section at the Foreign Ministry of Poland's centre-left government, which - on the eve of enlargement - faces widespread and politically perilous public disillusionment over what he bluntly calls 'broken promises' by current member states, markedly Britain, over freedom of movement and access to work and services.

'We have been under the microscope, and met every demand, on every level. On the technical level, over securing the border, there has been no mercy on us. Economically, we have been trying to do in a decade what your countries did in centuries. But meanwhile, from current member states, the political willingness to unite Europe is in trouble. With regard to the social dimension, there are problems with freedom of movement; and psychologically, we new countries are still outsiders, and not yet part of your "we".'

Poland's efforts are not reciprocated, says Czyz, by the scramble among current member states to restrict the movement and rights of workers from eastern Europe. 'We feel that we are being punished for being too optimistic,' he says. 'There was a conviction that we were strong enough, enthusiastic enough. But things are much less optimistic now.'

This is not party political banter. Czyz's views are held by his opposition, the Civic Platform, whose secretary-general is a former mayor of Warsaw, Pawel Piskorski. 'It has all turned out much worse for Poland than expected,' he says. 'The problem for us who are very pro-EU is that, come 1 May, all the obligations and requirements - even the disadvantages of membership - will be visible to the people, while the advantages will be hidden or deferred.'

Another conservative, former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, asks, in the light of Britain's clampdown on rights for east European workers: 'Are we joining what you already are, or are we joining you in helping to plan what this great adventure - the new Europe - will be. There's a lesson here that neither we nor you have learnt: what does "Europe" mean. Does it mean we are joining you, or we are all coming together?'

Jerzy Holzer, until recently director of political studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences, says carving a harsh border between Poland and Ukraine or Belarus, as was done by the Soviet Union, would be 'unsettling' to many cultural, personal and family ties binding people on either side. 'What we want is a border that does what we do not at present - that is, keep out organised crime - but which does not upset the cultural weave of the region.'

As his congregation emerges from Mass into the dusk in Horodlo, Krukowski says: 'This is a dying village, whatever the EU may bring. People cannot sell their produce; they have no money and prices are rising. The population declines each year as young people leave. This year we have had 13 marriages, 37 baptisms and 80 funerals. I'm not nostalgic for communism, but people had a better standard of living then, and the Church is blamed for backing the transformation. With Europe, a decline here is an opportunity somewhere else. I understand why they go.'

Krukowski offers a hearty meal of golabki - buckwheat wrapped in cabbage. But he doesn't eat, deep in thought beneath his crucifix and Our Lady of Sorrows. 'Even the fact that the earth here is the richest in Poland is not enough. I am not an economist, and do not understand why. My only hope is that in lifting the borders within Europe we do not create a border here that is harder to cross than it was before.'

MOSCOW, April 22 (UPI) -- Ukraine's foreign policy is a menagerie of mixed signals and conflicting interests. Attempting to appease an expanding European Union and a resurgent Russia under President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine often disappoints both.

Ukraine's policy of looking to the East as well as the West has divided Ukrainians into roughly three groups: those who would like to see Ukraine eventually accepted into Western economic, political and even military structures, ethnic Russian Ukrainians who still identify closely with Russia, and a significant minority who appear not to care.

Ukraine's foreign policy has been very active recently. On Wednesday, Russia's parliament reacted angrily to what it believes to be Ukraine's rapprochement with NATO and Ukrainian law that went into effect this week mandating that television and radio stations will broadcast only in Ukrainian.

In a 333 to 34 vote and two abstentions, the Russian Duma favored sending strongly worded message to the Ukrainian parliament condemning Ukraine's ratification of a memorandum of understanding with NATO, claiming that it was a "de facto agreement to NATO's plans to expand eastward." The memorandum signed last month allows NATO troops the right of quick entry and passage into and through Ukraine's territory.

The Duma is just as outraged concerning Ukraine's new attitude toward the use of the Russian language found on the country's airwaves. Russia claims the new laws banning Russian on Ukrainian radio and television "ignored the traditional Ukrainian-Russian bilingualism" and violated Ukrainians' civil rights. It is estimated that half of Ukraine's population of 48 million are Russian speakers, with ethnic Russians constituting 25 percent of all Ukrainian citizens.

For most bilateral state relationships, such bickering among neighbors would constitute a crisis in foreign policy. This is hardly the case for Ukraine and Russia. On Tuesday, many Ukrainians believed that Ukraine is in danger of losing its sovereignty in favor of Russia after ratifying three significant treaties with its large eastern neighbor.

Russian and Ukrainian parliaments simultaneously ratified important agreements concerning borders, including regulation of the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait -- both at the center of an explosive and what could have been a dangerous military dispute at the end of last year.

The Azov seabed is believed to be rich in oil reserves, while the Kerch Strait, which allows access to the Black Sea, is considered to be of strategic military importance for the Kremlin. The border agreement signed this week was what Russia has always wanted: joint governance and exploitation of the Sea of Azov, as well as mandating that the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait as inland waters of the two countries -- ensuring that third parties (read: NATO) will be denied access to these waterways.

A second agreement was ratified that recognized the state borders of each country, as well as normalizing regulations for border crossings by commercial entities, private individuals as well as the permanency of the border.

The third agreement, called the Single Economic Space, could have significant long-term meaning for Russian-Ukrainian relations. It encompasses a customs union, common tax code, joint financial policies, foreign trade policy, and hints of a common currency. The foreign trade policy element included a free-trade zone including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. The EU and the United States have concerns about Russia's growing ambitions in the former Soviet Union.

Ukraine just might have the most eclectic foreign policy in the world. It has often been noted that there are "two Ukraines." Geographically, half the country is westward leaning, with the other focused on its historic relationship with Russia. The power and influence of both "Ukraines" is reflected in the country's foreign policies toward an expanding EU and Russia. However, there is a "third Ukraine" that denies the "European westerners" or the "eastern Slavs" political hegemony.

Ukraine's eclectic foreign policy is a reflection of Ukrainian nation-building at a dead end. Ukrainians who comprise of the third groups reject both Ukrainian nationalism and Eurasian or neo-Soviet patriotism. These are many of the same people who have not benefited from Ukraine's transitions away from communism.

The political elite inherited from the Soviet period is most responsible for the existence for this group. Not adhering to any meaningful ideology beyond power itself, the current ruling elite promotes disrespect for the law, unchecked corruption, and widespread state surveillance of citizens.

This week, Ukraine tried to show itself to be a good neighbor to the EU and Russia. However, it actually showed that it might not be a reliable partner for either. Making too many promises to the EU and Russia only intensifies divisions among some Ukrainians, while increasing the alienation of others.

Ukraine can be a reliable partner only when the majority of Ukrainians come to understand what is best for Ukraine first, then its neighbors. Given Ukraine's current political elite, that prospect is a long way off.

KYIV - The impossibility of combining integration with the European Union and participation in the Common Economic Space (CES) [Single Economic Space]between Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan will become a challenge for Ukrainian foreign policy in the future, Deputy Foreign Minister Oleksandr Chaly has said.

The form of economic relations in the East, including Russia, will have "the most significant influence" on Ukraine's European integration policy, Chaly told the Business weekly on Monday.

Ukraine could continue its independent European integration policy provided the CES is restricted to being a free trade area, but cannot integrate with the EU on its own if its CES membership takes the form of a customs union, Chaly said.

"In this context the main challenge for our foreign policy in the future will be the impossibility of combining two mutually-exclusive goals - setting up a customs union with the EU by 2007 in light of the strategy announced in the presidential message, entitled a European choice, and on the other hand - setting up a customs union within the CES with Ukraine's participation by 2009, Chaly said.

However, "a clear answer to this key issue will be given soon," Chaly said.

WARSAW - Kiev and Brussels are disputing whether Ukraine has a free market economy, which heralds trouble for Poland. Why? Because Ukraine and the EU have until May 1 to strike a deal on the trade in steel products.

However, meeting this deadline seems highly improbable. Consequently, Ukraine could stop exporting steel to Poland and other EU countries.

"Kiev has set out new conditions, now it wants Brussels to acknowledge that Ukraine has a free market economy, a status granted to Russia some time ago," explains Mieczyslaw Nogaj, director of the trade policy department at the Ministry of Economy.

Ukrainian authorities are threatening to suspend deliveries to Poland if their conditions are not met. Under this year's agreement, EU countries may import 185,000 tones of steel from Ukraine, while Poland alone has been buying about 400,000 tones every year. If the EU and Ukraine fail to reach an agreement, Poland may be forced to buy a more expensive steel from Russia.

KIEV -Analyst Oleksandr Mikhelson has looked at the possible reasons for and implications of Ukraine's 20 April ratification of the treaty on the Single Economic Space (SES) with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. He argued the treaty would benefit Russia, but would do nothing good for Ukraine.

Russia would command some 80 per cent of the votes in the supranational body expected to be set up to coordinate the new union, he said. Now that Ukraine has acceded to the treaty, it should forget about its EU bid and its multi-track foreign policy, according to Mikhelson.

The following is the text of the article, posted on the Ukrainian web site Glavred on 21 April under the title "Quo vadis, SES?"; the original subheadings have been retained:

The immortal phrase of the no less immortal bankrupt [film character] Golokhvastov - "It is, of course, very, very... But why?" - could come to be the key question inside the Supreme Council [parliament], which has approved Ukraine's latest strategic choice - this time in favour of the SES [Single Economic Space].

TANGO FOR FOUR

So where do we go now? In fact, there is very little specific information. Yes, the main features of the Single Economic Space of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan are well known. But they are interpreted in very different ways.

The first step is a free trade zone [FTZ]. Ukraine insisted that there should be no exclusions and no restrictions. Russia officially declared, through the previous prime minister [Mikhail Kasyanov] and the present Russian ambassador to Ukraine [Viktor Chernomyrdin]: don't even think about domestic prices for sources of energy [between the SES countries].

President Kuchma heeded the wailing of the poor Russians and started to talk about "temporary restrictions" on "certain groups of goods", although, as the experience of Russian-Ukrainian "trade wars" shows, there is nothing more permanent than the temporary and nothing more all-embracing than certain groups of goods. But none of that is of any interest. The State Duma [the Russian parliament] has not - for how many years now? - thought of ratifying the long-drafted FTZ treaty. In other words, the Russians do not need the FTZ now either.

The reason is that Russia's demonstrable objective is to take further steps within the SES. What are wanted specifically are a customs union and, ultimately, a currency union, as well as joint efforts regarding external trading partners and with a view to integration with Europe and entry to the WTO [World Trade Organization]. We shall come back to the particular importance of the latter points...........

"------------------------------------------------------------"

What is Ukraine's role in the European cultural and spiritual theater? What should modern Ukrainian society do to play a truly fitting role? How strong are the historical traditions and the social ties that link us with Western European civilization? These are undoubtedly fundamental, basic, and fateful questions. They are still more important in the light of the unending debate on which civilization Ukraine should choose - East or West, Russia or Europe.

One of those who study these problems is the authoritative philosopher Serhiy KRYMSKY, one of The Day's most respected regular contributors, a leading research associate at the Academy of Sciences Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy, a person of literally inexhaustible encyclopedic erudition.

In his interview with The Day he dwells precisely on the European component in Ukraine's historical development.

Dr. Krymsky, it is common knowledge that the Ukrainian leadership has been declaring its European choice for years on end. But is it not true that, to honestly make this choice, one must have a clear idea of what such thing as Europe is - in the intellectual, social, political, and geographic senses? After all, what is Europe for us?

It is undoubtedly a multifaceted notion. If Europe is to be treated in purely geographical terms (say, from England to the Urals), then its hub lies, incidentally, on our territory, in Transcarpathia. If, conversely, Europe is to be viewed as a geopolitical entity, then let us recall Friedrich Engels's interesting idea that Europe was limited by the borders of nineteenth-century Poland and Hungary. Further east was Eurasia. But since a considerable part of Ukraine was at the time part of the Polish state, our lands also belong to the European space according his criterion.

As to Eurasia, it was historically regarded as a territory under Byzantine influence, which included the Balkans, Turkey, and, of course, Russia.

If viewed from the sociocultural perspective, the notion of Europe rests on three fundamental pillars: Antiquity, Christianity, and the Enlightenment.

"--------------------------------------------------------"

Also today, Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn met Pifer to discuss cooperation between the Ukrainian parliament and US Congress. Lytvyn gave Pifer a letter inviting congressmen to visit Ukraine. [Audio and video available. Please send queries to  kiev.bbcm@mon.bbc.co.uk ]

Lines of cars queue at the Polish-Ukrainian border. Most of them, like ours, have Polish numberplates. We've been here an hour. Poles, unlike Western Europeans, don't need visas to get into Ukraine, which explains the delay: the border guards are asking the questions normally reserved to the consulate.

We offer a guard $40 and he moves us into a faster line. An hour later we're still there, but closer to the top. We joke that it's like the Mexican border, but admittedly none of us has ever been to Mexico. In another hour we're through.

This will be Europe's Eastern border from May 1st. We drive the 70 km to L'viv, formerly Lvov, Lwow or Lemburg. In Poland you hear a lot about Lwow, at least from the older generation, who wax nostalgic over its beauty and cultural vibrancy.

L'viv has been tossed around by emperors since its foundation, but for over half of its 800 year history it was Polish, and was, with Krakow, the pride of Poland, a university town whose buildings run from 13th century to Renaissance, to Polish Roccoco, to neo-classicism. The Austrians took it after the partition of Poland in 1772 and ran it in their haphazard Hapsburg fashion until Poland regained it after the first World War.

L'viv is in Galicia, one of the centres of Ukrainian nationalism, so ownership of the city was always going to be in dispute, but the question wasn't decided by Poles or Ukrainians, but by Stalin. In 1939 he moved in and in 1945 refused to move out again.

At Yalta, Roosevelt pleaded for L'viv's return to Poland but he was in no position to refuse the Russians. Stalin solved any future ethnic problems by ruthless population exchanges across the border. L'viv was incorporated into Ukraine which was incorporated into the USSR until, in 1991, it gained independence.

This is the city we're approaching - cut off from Poland by 60 years, 70km, one hour time difference, three hours border wait, $40 in bribes and, soon, by Schengen. At night, by the very dim lights strung from wires over the roads, it looks like another Eastern European glory, like Budapest, Krakow, or Prague.

By daylight it looks more like an illustration for "poverty in grandeur". All of Eastern Europe is poorer than the West, but L'viv isn't Eastern European poor, it's Russian poor. Crowds of babushkas (grandmothers) line the lovely cobbled streets, patiently selling bags of apples or bunches of flowers. Every second building houses an exchange office, all offering identical rates.

The magnificent buildings are crumbling where they stand. Open drains release waste water onto the streets. Legs and noses have crumbled off statues. Columns have fallen off buildings. A coat of dirt covers everything.

In one sense, however, it's miraculously well-preserved. Nothing has been torn down, no Soviet blocks put up. The only sign of the USSR is a few statues in the brute realist style. Moscow ignored L'viv. If the Party had held onto it much longer neglect would have finished it off. As it is, there's nothing a massive injection of cash couldn't resolve.

Cash, however, is the problem. I walk the streets with Andrey Salynk, head of an NGO for the preservation of L'viv's heritage. He is gallant as a cavalier in the face of imminent ruin and given to sudden paroxysms of mirth. "There are 1,000 concerned citizens in L'viv" (pause) "out of 800,000" (explosive laughter). "I have $6,200 for Boims chapel." (pause) "I need half a million dollars" (explosive laughter).

The Ukrainian government has earmarked $5 million for L'viv in this year's budget, which is enough to restore three buildings. Salynk estimates $3 billion would halt the process of decay. That figure doesn't include renovation.

The EU is the Ukraine's biggest donor and has given ¬1.2 billion in aid over the past 10 years but this money is for technical assistance, administrative reform and nuclear safety. Ukraine has poverty and Chernobyl. There isn't money for buildings.

L'viv has the surreal, glazed look of a city which has changed hands too often. Outside our hotel is a 19th century statue to the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. To the Poles, Mickiewicz is a kind of Moore, Yeats and Joyce rolled into one but in L'viv the people I ask have only the vaguest idea of him. In the adjacent square is a massive recent black statue to the Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko.

Today, unsurprisingly, L'viv is putting out Ukrainian colours. Of the seven main museums, three are devoted to Ukrainian peasant art and ethnography. I look for the Scottish café, where in the inter-war Polish years, L'viv's mathematicians, including Stanislaw Ulam, who later helped invent the atom bomb, hung out and drew equations on the marble-topped table. I can't find it. The tourist office says it's a bank; the internet says it's a bar.

Jewish L'viv was obliterated by the Nazis. The city used to have the third largest Jewish community in Poland. Now only stones of the 16th century synagogue remain. There was a concentration camp here, called Janowska.

In Poland I'm told the camp is now a prison, but the tourist office disputes this. They say it's been "absorbed" into other buildings. In any case it can't be visited, but there is a plaque.

Austrian L'viv survives in the buildings. The authorities are resisting erecting a statue to Leopold Sacher-Masoch, L'vivian author of Venus in Furs and inventor of masochism. Maybe his just isn't an image they want for their city.

Polish-Austrian-Jewish-Ukrainian. What everyone agrees is that it's a European city. Ukraine, despite having cities, whose names - Odessa, Yalta - are familiar to Western readers through Chekhov and whose inhabitants only speak Russian, has distanced itself from Russia and applied for EU membership.

The EU is being coy about this application. Agnes Schubert of the EU delegation in Kiev says "we support Ukraine's strategy for entry" but "integration isn't on the agenda yet". The Ukrainian press has noted bitterly that the EU always uses words like "rapprochement" for the Ukraine, never "integration". The latest EU word is "Neighbourhood Policy".

Says Schubert: "The Neighbourhood policy means Ukraine, and other countries, like Belarus and Moldova, could have access to the internal market but not yet to the EU institutions".

Ukraine isn't joining any time soon. In the meantime, its borders are being regulated. On May 1st it will border three EU countries, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Hungary. All three are currently implementing the necessary visa restrictions.

Ukraine's Polish minority are indignantly flooding their consulate but they're insignificant in numbers - about 5,000 in L'viv.

Ukraine's ex-foreign minister, Anatolii Zlenko has called the borders a "Schengen Wall" but says Schubert: "The EU doesn't want dividing lines between Ukraine and its neighbours." It's financing lots of cross-border initiatives to smooth things over. These include a bridge into Poland.

In Auden's 1930s line, "where Poland draws its Eastern bow" was where Europe began. This is still the case. Its bowis just being drawn further west. L'viv is Ukraine's window onto Europe.