Ukraine: Europe’s Linchpin

Five years after independence, Ukraine watches the nationalist turn in neighboring Russia with unease bordering on alarm. Much of the Russian political spectrum, obsessed with reclaiming great power status and reuniting the former Soviet republics, recognizes that Ukraine is the key to its plans and openly espouses reabsorption. President Boris Yeltsin, instrumental in the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, has, in his quest for votes, adopted much of the nationalist agenda; he has dismissed his Western-oriented foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, cracked down on the rebellion in Chechnya, and pursued formal union with Belarus. Continued progress in Ukraine toward democracy and