Thanks to our new co-worker, Brian Enns, I'm now more current on what news is happening in this part of the world. It takes some time to track down the articles, and Brian does it monthly and sends us links. Anyway, for those of you who are interested in the political relationship between Ukraine and Russia, I just read an interesting article about the "salt crisis" in Russia. It describes the recent panic buying and increase by 20 percent of salt prices in Russia, because a Russian official said that Ukraine will cut off its salt exports to Russia. According to the article, Russia currently receives more than 40 percent of its salt from Ukraine. Read it here: Energy war drives Russians into a panic over their salt
It shows that the tensions between Russia and Ukraine are pretty high after the Christmastime gas crisis, in which Russia doubled the price of gas to Ukraine, then shut off the supply when Ukraine refused to pay. Ukraine's relationship to Russia is pretty sacred in this part of eastern Ukraine, where so many people are Russian citizens. Concern about the tense relationship will probably play out in the coming election at the end of March - currently the party leading in the polls is Viktor Yanukovych's "Party of Regions," which supports close ties with Russia. It's also the party that claimed victory in the fradulent presidental election in Oct. 2004. They eventually lost to the current president's party during the "orange revolution" after a fair election.
Laura
