You'd think their choice would be easy, but as Ukraine shows, it hasn't turned out that way. Since last fall, President Leonid Kuchma, a former missile factory manager, has faced mounting criminal allegations, including tape recordings linking him to the murder of a journalist whose body was found beheaded. As an opposition coalition has mounted unprecedented street demonstrations in the capital, Kiev, both sides have dispatched emissaries to Washington to plead for support from the Bush administration. Should America make the wrong choice, Ukrainian officials are quick to point out, an alternative is readily available. Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Ukraine last month and literally embraced Kuchma before offering a series of deals to tighten the economic and military bonds between Ukraine and Russia.
Similar dilemmas are to be found across the region.
Despite Zlenko's overtures to the Bush administration, Kuchma complied with a Russian demand last fall that he fire his foreign minister, Boris Tarasyuk, the most prominent pro-Western politician in Ukraine. That it does is vividly demonstrated by the fact that Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has distanced himself from peace talks between the Arabs and Israelis, is hosting a summit meeting in Key West, Fla., this week for the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, who hope to strike a peace deal. Azerbaijan's beleaguered democrats don't get very far with either party in Washington. Putin, after all, is also working Aliyev hard. Ukraine offers a harder test.