Post-New Year's hangovers, post-Soviet style

Political hangovers are constants, and in the post-coloured revolution spheres of the former Soviet Union, one can argue that they are especially searing and dizzying. With yet another gas crisis currently underway, and with EU-Russia relations at an all-time low following the summer's events in Georgia, this reality has now trickled into the question of eventual NATO and EU membership for these states.

Not that the question of membership has ever been dead-certain, of course. The fact that these countries are located in such proximity to Russia, and by their special post-Soviet legacies that could take many, many decades to resolve and/or reconcile, serious observers have been loathe to say something like this could happen anytime soon.

Ukraine, or so this report identifies, is a special disappointment, not only because of its close proximity -- and sometimes epicentre position -- to the current gas row now underway, but because the two titans of the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko and Tymoshenko (one called the "gas princess" by some of her critics), spend more time fighting amongst themselves rather than battling the ubiquity of red tape and corruption that remains a constant in Ukraine.

I have also read elsewhere that the EU is on the verge of launching a lawsuit against Russia and Ukraine over the halting of gas deliveries; it is the second time in the span of days that reassurances have been met with contrary conduct. Here in Montenegro, my current home, the effects are negligible, but just north-east of me, in Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and beyond, there is a cold snap underway, and people are actually questioning their ability to heat their homes and businesses in light of the shortages that could well ensue soon.

Not the ideal way to usher in the New Year, that's for sure; but, given the track records set in the events of recent years, perhaps it should have been expected. I hope that a future post of mine will not start to argue that all the optimism and hope of Georgia and Ukraine's coloured revolutions was in vain. Boze moj.