Head Over Heels In Love :: Charter'97 :: News

With the NATO and the EU extension to the East former communist Eastern Europe is becoming considerably closer to the West. However, two former Soviet republics remain behind and drift farther and farther away from democratic European states.

It happens primarily because of their presidents. Belarusian Alyaksandar Lukashenka and his Ukrainian counterpart Leonid Kuchma are so in love with their power that they evidently cannot live without it anymore. Through amendments to the Constitution the two have secured unlimited authority as presidents and solitary rulers. They bully opposition, close independent newspapers and arrest disobedient reporters. They plunder state funds and throw their peoples into even worse misery.

However the last dictators of Europe should not worry about their future. Russian president Putin, who does not always respect human rights himself, holds in his fist the both neighbours again. In this year he is set to create a common economic zone. And the EU would have to spent immense sums for reinforcement of its new external borders. Lukashenka, dissatisfied with criticism, for a long time has been threatening that he couldstop to control the Western border so that “thousands of illegal immigrants and drug dealers flood the EU”.