Ukraine

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- President Clinton, hailing "a hopeful and historic breakthrough," announced yesterday an agreement that would finally remove all nuclear weapons from Ukraine -- the world's third largest nuclear arsenal.The bulk of that arsenal is pointed at the United States from the time when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, but it is fear of Moscow that has lately made Ukrainians anxious about giving up the weapons as agreed to under earlier treaties.The agreement announced yesterday contains guarantees that neither Russia or the United States would launch a nuclear attack against Ukraine.

MOSCOW -- After months of delay, the Ukrainian Parliament succumbed to international pressure and ratified the START-1 nuclear disarmament pact yesterday.The vote, while overwhelming at 254 to 9, reflected a growing reluctance among Ukrainian politicians to give up the powerful bargaining chip nuclear weapons bestow upon them.In an attempt to wrest every advantage from nuclear status, the Parliament attached heavy demands to ratification, agreeing to give up only 36 percent of Ukraine's missiles and 42 percent of its nuclear warheads.

NATO ENLARGEMENT is succeeding faster than its designers dared hope. A week after resigning itself to NATO expansion and 5 1/2 long years after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has finally acknowledged that Ukraine is an independent country.Westerners regard the continued existence of Ukraine -- which with temporary exceptions was ruled from Moscow for the three centuries before 1991 -- as the best single guarantee against any return of Russian imperialism. The latest Russian accommodation to post-Cold War realities is just the sort of stabilization of new and wannabe democracies that NATO has hoped to promote in central and eastern Europe.

WASHINGTON -- Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk, signaling a new willingness to give up his country's nuclear arsenal, said last night that Ukraine and the United States now agree on ways to implement an arms treaty signed by the former Soviet empire and Washington."

MOSCOW -- In another blow to the shaky Commonwealth of Independent States, Ukraine and two other republics rejected the idea of a unified commonwealth military force during a summit meeting yesterday.Eight of the 11 republics represented at the meeting agreed to create a unified military command for a transitional period of two years. Ukraine, Moldova and Azerbaijan rejected the idea altogether. The three republics are pushing ahead with creation of their own armed forces and have claimed the weapons and equipment on their territory.

KIEV, Ukraine -- Viktor F. Yanukovych, the humiliated loser two years ago when Orange Revolution protests forced a presidential runoff election to be repeated, completed a remarkable political comeback yesterday by becoming Ukraine's prime minister. Yanukovych swiftly declared that he intended to govern as a partner with President Viktor A. Yushchenko, his 2004 rival. Yushchenko ended months of political uncertainty Thursday by agreeing to nominate Yanukovych as prime minister rather than dissolve parliament and call new elections.

KIEV, U.S.S.R. -- Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev expressed concern yesterday over reports that President Bush is prepared to recognize the Ukraine if it votes for independence Sunday."

DONETSK, U.S.S.R. -- They haven't gotten around to tearing down the Lenin monument yet, but the father of Soviet communism has always been overshadowed here anyway -- by a huge black statue of a muscular coal miner, striding forward with a lump of anthracite in his outstretched hand, determined, energetic, uncomplicated.Donetsk is the capital of coal, and it looks it and smells it.It is also the capital of trouble for the Ukrainian politicians in distant Kiev eagerly pushing their republic toward independence, because most of the people of Donetsk and the surrounding Donbass coalfields are Russians, through and through.

MOSCOW -- Yulia V. Tymoshenko, who is poised to return as Ukraine's prime minister, vowed yesterday to review a disputed deal with Russia on natural gas imports, setting the stage for a new confrontation that could disrupt her country's economy and threaten supplies of Russian gas to Europe. She spoke as three political parties once closely allied with President Viktor A. Yushchenko - and then deeply divided -signed an agreement to create a parliamentary coalition and, eventually, a new government that would follow the pro-Western course he has set. The agreement ended nearly three months of political paralysis, but it left unsolved many of the issues that divided Yushchenko's supporters after he took office in January 2005.

KIEV, Ukraine -- The route was Artyomov Street. The car carried President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the center of the city along Artyomov, the same street along which for several terrible months in 1941 the Nazis herded 100,000 or more people -- no one knows for sure how many -- until they reached the quiet green woodland known as Babi Yar.The Clintons rode all the way down Artyomov, stopping at last at a memorial in Babi Yar erected in...