Blue-Pink Coalition Wants EU Membership.

The Regions, Socialist and Communist parties published a coalition program today which includes a pledge to work towards full membership in the European Union. It also pledges to complete the Common Economic Area with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. However, talks with Our Ukraine and the presidential administration remain frozen and Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov said the budget could afford new elections. Tom Warner: One of the silver linings in the cloudy political situation is that the eastern Ukrainian elites are adopting more pro-reform, pro-western positions in an effort to make themselves more palatable to the center and west of the country (and particularly to President Yushchenko, in hopes that he won’t dissolve parliament). Ukraine’s still a long way from the solid consensus on European integration that drove Central European reforms, but things are inching in that direction.