Ukraine’s newly appointed acting prime minister today planned to delve straight into talks with party leaders, aimed at putting together another broad-based Cabinet to replace the dismissed Orange Revolution team.

FORMER Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko shot himself yesterday, hours before prosecutors were to question him about the killing of an investigative journalist five years ago.

Ukraine’s former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko was found dead today, hours before prosecutors were to question him about the killing of an investigative journalist five years ago, officials said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, making his first public comments on the Ukrainian presidential election lost by the Kremlin-favoured candidate, said today he hoped the country would move from rhetoric to pragmatism.

Ukraine’s bitter rivals for the presidency faced off in a much-anticipated televised debate tonight, with opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko accusing his rival of trying to steal the November runoff election that was later annulled because of fraud.

Ukraine’s parliament adopted electoral and constitutional changes today in a compromise intended to defuse the nation’s political crisis – prompting opposition leaders to say they would lift a blockade of government buildings.

Rival factions in Ukraine’s parliament failed today to agree on passing electoral changes aimed at ensuring a fair vote in the nation’s December 26 presidential run-off.

European mediators are renewing efforts today to broker a solution to Ukraine’s disputed presidential election as the government and the opposition remained locked in a tense stand-off.

Ukraine’s two rivals for power failed in nearly three hours of talks to resolve the political stalemate over who will lead the bitterly-divided nation.

UKRAINE has not experienced the kind of intense political dramas seen in Russia and some of the other former Soviet states in the last 15 years, but now its turn may have come.