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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Ukraine: Not good enough, not bad enough
At the end of 2004 thousands of predominantly young Ukrainians demanded and succeeded in their demands of producing free and fair presidential election. Their favorite was a former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, a person that was politically far from the revolutionary circles, but was convinced to join the masses after an attempt to poison him during the election campaign. Eventually Yushchenko was elected president, promising his countrymen to bring Ukraine into EU and NATO. His choice of Prime Minister had to reiterate his pro-western political preferences. In the mid-2005 Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and their government are stuck in problems that seem beyond their ability to solve. Ukraine is still too much economically dependent on Russian energy supplies. The ruling economic oligarchy in Ukraine doesn't seem vanishing at all, although some personal changes are possible. The investors, both domestic and foreign, feel vulnerable. As a result the economy growth rates have gone down. New natural gas war with the Russian giant Gazprom may be only a matter of time. The only effective leverage Ukraine has in this war is to cut the gas supplies to its European neighbors that are supposed to help its EU aspirations. To complicate the situation even further, the EU isn't so welcoming as it was six months ago. France has already officially called to stop the EU enlargement after Romania and Bulgaria join the club in 2007 or 2008, leaving outside Turkey and everyone else on the waiting list. NATO, on the other hand, is still interested to have Ukraine on board. But can the key NATO player, the United States, without European help overcome the structural dependency of Ukraine upon Russia? Ukraine may fall victim of the "buffer zone syndrome". Buffer zone stands for lack of determination to choose clearly between Russia and the West. Countries that have already made their minds going either east or west show better economic performances than those that are still stuck in between. With political leadership not willing to go east and economy not welcomed by the West Ukraine may again reproduce economic oligarchy masked as democratic political system, exactly the same phenomenon that the young Ukrainians were demanding in late 2004 to get rid of.
Ukraine country profile: --------------------
See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Ukraine.
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