KIEV, UKRAINE — They are at each other's throats again, this country's political lions: the president whose face is pocked from the poison that didn't quite kill him four years ago, and the prime minister with the golden braid who once fought alongside him in the name of democracy.
The president's office now calls Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko a traitor who refuses to speak out against Moscow. She shoots back that President Viktor Yushchenko is a loose cannon who has antagonized Russia to the point of endangering Ukraine.
The war in Georgia is over. But the war over the war in Georgia rages unabated in Ukraine, the former Soviet state that, like Georgia, has drawn the wrath of Moscow by building ties with the West. The collapse of this country's ruling coalition is widely expected to become official this week, the final gasp of a threadbare alliance that has barely hung together in recent months.
The delicate balance was upended by a widening dispute over how to respond to a newly aggressive Russia. The political turmoil is, in part, early jockeying for the 2010 presidential election, but it is also a clash over the existential angst that bedevils this country, where identity is stretched awkwardly between Russia and the West.
The war between Russia and Georgia has brought a sense of crisis and anxiety to the region. Fattened on oil and gas riches, Moscow has made it plain that it intends to exert power on neighbors formerly part of the Soviet Union, that it feels justified in demanding "privileged interests," as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev explained last month.
More than anyplace else, that means Ukraine, bonded to Moscow by deep, ancient imperial and cultural ties. To the fury of Moscow, Ukraine has emerged as a close ally of the United States, its leaders berating Russia as they lobby for membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But many Ukrainians continue to feel a strong affection and loyalty toward Russia.
Today, instead of pulling together and steeling for geopolitical maneuvers, the leaders of Ukraine are mired in internecine squabbles over what kind of country it should be and which loyalties it should foster. Like nothing else since the fall of the Soviet Union, the war in Georgia has laid bare Ukraine's weaknesses.
