Spending the oil windfall

8 November 2007 By Martin Hutchinson

Georgia and Ukraine are both feeling pressure from their big neighbour. Oil wealth gives President Putin the confidence to intervene. Joining up with the Russian economy might look like the easy way out now. But when oil prices fall, it will be a different matter.

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Georgia's president Mikhail Saakashvili has brought forward the Presidential election to January 5 from its scheduled autumn 2008, after six days of rioting in Tbilisi and the imposition of a 15day period of emergency special measures, including a ban on public rallies and curbs on the media.

In Ukraine, although the coalition between the Tymoshenko Bloc of Julia Tymoshenko and Our UkrainePeople's Self Defense of president Viktor Yushchenko was formed on October 15, and has a parliamentary majority, no new Ukrainian government has been formed. Tymoshenko forces have accused the proRussian Party of Regions, still in power on an interim basis, of destabilising the work of parliament.

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