Ousted President in the Search for Ukraine’s Independence

The Paul Kleiman, News Editor

Monday: Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine’s acting interior minister made an official statement that recently ousted President, Viktor F. Yanukovych, allegedly took flight to Crimea in the Southern parts of the country. He was being tracked by security services with the intention that he will be indicted with the charges of mass murder in his previous actions designed to suppress antigovernment protestors and insurgents.

Responding quickly, the Ukrainian Parliament dedicated this recent Saturday to electing Arsen Avakov as the new minister: a man who dedicated some of his most recent Facebook posts to his personal search of Yanukovych—and the car which he is believed to have traveled in.

But is he looking for something bigger?

As Ukraine continues to sort this short-term business out, concluding months under one man’s legacy, another question presents itself. The international community, which has relentlessly pursued the crisis and internal dispute with the hopes that a newly freed nation from Russia can for once become fully free from Russia’s stronghold on the Eastern half of the nation, is now looking bigger. Their new focus—which will only continue to intensify—will fall on the debate over a territory that represents the greatest source of tension between the United States and much of Western Europe and Russia—control.

“It’s not about the personalities,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a large figure and contender for control in Ukraine. “This is about the responsibility. You know to be in this government is to commit political suicide, and we need to be very frank and open.”