President Viktor Yushchenko reached across the Orange Revolution's barricades Thursday and nominated his arch rival to lead Ukraine's government out of nearly five months of political paralysis. The deal, reached as a constitutional deadline that expired Wednesday night, creates a "grand coalition" between the pro-Western Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine movement and Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, which favors closer ties with Russia. Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Rada, is expected to elect Mr. Yanukovych as prime minister on Friday. | “We are putting up our tents in the streets again, and we are going to take this to the people...” |
But some experts say the bargain may be the best way for deeply divided Ukraine to muddle through without an open political split between its nationalistic, Ukrainian-speaking west and the industrialized, heavily Russified east. "This was not a victory of one side over the other, but a set of workable compromises," says Oleksander Shushko, an expert with the independent Institute for Euro-Atlantic Integration in Kiev. "Some in Ukraine don't want to see any cooperation with Yanukovych at all, but that would deepen the divisions in the country."