Winter 2004:

Ukraine: Never Be the Same Again, Vitaly Pedchenko, The New Federalist magazine.

Result of rerun of the runoff Ukrainian Presidential Elections 2004: opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko wins.

More than 12’000 international observers were supervising this event and said that it was the most democratic election to have ever took place. After 13 years of independence Ukrainian people started and won their fight for democracy. Hundreds of thousands of people went to the streets to protect truth, freedom and their rights! This gives hope that the wind of change has finally arrived to Ukraine and it will bring a new democratic society.

One of the very important development consists in the fact that Ukraine was supported by all democratic countries and has seen real support from Europe. Also, this is an important factor for Ukraine because when the Russian Federation of the Putin administration tried to interfere into the internal affairs of Ukraine, the international community said "Russia no more". Ukraine proved that it's democratic, independent and a really European country and can solve its domestic affairs itself. But this of course will bring colder
relations between Russia and Ukraine. The good news is that president Putin said that he would accept the result of the Ukrainian elections whatever it will be. Another good news is that the Communists have received very little support in the presidential election,
which highlights the big changes taking place in Ukraine.

Now that the revolution has successfully terminated, Yushchenko and his team face an array of challenges: To unite Ukraine, to raise the informational blockade on the East and South of Ukraine, to organise and strengthen a team to establish new relations with
Russia, Europe and the US and to accelerate the process of integration into the European Union. As it was pointed out by the Viktor Yushchenko team the main course of Ukraine will be "European integration and new quality of life". The Orange Revolution can bring big changes and bring Ukraine back to Europe.