This time around, Moscow may find the combined interests of Washington, the American oil companies in Kazakhstan, and the transit and consumer countries along this route, too strong to withstand. Success of this project would finally begin to arrest Europe"s worrisome slide into overdependence on Russia for its energy supplies.

A drama of considerable importance to Western interests is playing out between Russia and the former republics of the Soviet Union that may determine whether these newly-independent countries survive as sovereign states oriented toward democracy and freedom or are pressured into renewed Russian suzerainty.

When Victor Yushchenko won the Ukrainian presidency, many Russians declared that Russia had "lost" Ukraine thanks to western meddling. Yet in Moldova, Russia is proving quite capable of losing an ally without western help.

If, as expected, the pro-Western Ukrainian presidenital candidate ultimately wins the election, he will need to pay careful attention to the Russian-leaning millions.

Background on the telegraph company that controlled wires betweenTehran and London via Russia and Germany in the nineteenth century.

This year's NATO summit, which rebuffed Ukrainian hopes as well as continued the European Union"s deafness to Ukrainian aspirations, might one day look short-sighted.

Review of Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary, by Dmitri Volkogonov.

By standing up for their rights and making a claim to become a normal Western nation, the Ukrainian democrats have given hope to other peoples of the former USSR.