Chronicle 2004: The unreported year - East Europe and ex-Soviet Union

January
Georgia US-educated lawyer Mikhail Saakashvili wins 85 per cent of the votes in presidential election.
Russia The Ministry of Justice orders Médecins Sans Frontières to withdraw its tuberculosis missions in Siberia – despite prisons being at the centre of an antibiotic-resistant epidemic.

FEBRUARY
Chechnya Separatist leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, his 13-year- old son and two body guards are killed in a bomb attack on his car in Doha, Qatar. Chechen rebels accuse Russian special services.

MARCH
Russia Vladimir Putin wins a second term as President. The opposition claims the election has been marred by corruption and abuse of government power.
Kosovo The worst ethnic clashes since 1999 leave 31 people dead.
Bulgaria & ROMANIA join NATO. So too do Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia, who will join the EU in May.
Turkmenistan Two radio journalists are arrested.
Uzbekistan 19 people are killed in the first known suicide bombings in a country closely allied with the US in the ‘war on terror’.
Georgia Civil war looms over the autonomous region of Ajara. President Saakashvili and Ajara's leader, Aslan Abashidze, reach an uneasy truce.

APRIL
Poland Prime Minister Leszek Miller resigns five weeks before his country joins the European Union. Rising unemployment and spending cuts have lead to dwindling support.
Armenia The first gay and lesbian rights organization is formed. Although no longer illegal, homosexuality is still taboo and gays face widespread prejudice.
Lithuania President Paksas is impeached over his links to a Mafia-connected Russian entrepreneur.
Slovakia Moderate Ivan Gasparovic gains 60 per cent of the vote in presidential elections, preventing a comeback by hardline nationalist Vladimir Meciar.

MAY
Russia reports an ‘epidemic’ of 700,000 ‘social orphans’ – children whose parents cannot provide a home.
Chechnya Pro-Moscow Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a bomb attack in Grozny.
Macedonia Officials admit that seven Pakistani migrants killed in 2002 were not terrorists but were shot as part of an attempt to demonstrate anti-terrorist vigilance.

JUNE
Romania Legislation bans adoption by families abroad except in special circumstances, in a move intended to stop the lucrative trade in children.
Serbia Pro-Western reformist Boris Tadic is elected President, defeating Tomislav Nikolic, an ultra-nationalist.

JULY
Bosnia-HERZEGOVINA International High Representative Paddy Ashdown purges the Bosnian Serb leadership, sacking 60 officials, freezing bank accounts and issuing travel bans because of their sheltering of Radovan Karadzic.
Russia President Putin fires three top generals in a move designed to increase the Kremlin’s hold over the armed forces.

AUGUST
Russia/Georgia Moscow warns it will protect Russian tourists in Abkhazia after Georgian President Saakashvili threatens to sink any ships approaching the region from the Black Sea.

SEPTEMBER
Russia 335 people, including more than 150 children, are killed at the end of a three-day siege of a school in Beslan.
Chechnya Pro-Russia candidate, Alu Alkhanov, wins an enormous majority in what is widely regarded as a rigged election.
SERBIA Education Minister Ljiljana Colic resigns following criticism of her ban on teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in schools.

OCTOBER
Kosovo General election gives President Ibrahim Rugova’s party the largest share of seats in the Assembly. Minority Serbs boycott the elections.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko wins a vote allowing him to run for a third term. Observers say the poll fell ‘significantly short’ of international standards.
UKRAINE Voting in presidential election gives Viktor Yushchenko a lead of just 0.5 per cent against Victor Yanukovych and triggers a second-round ballot.

NOVEMBER
Russia The Duma ratifies the Kyoto Protocol on climate change which President Putin signed in September. This brings the Protocol into force internationally.
Ukraine Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych is declared the winner of presidential elections. but supporters of his opponent Viktor Yushchenko gather in Kiev amid claims of vote rigging. Despite sub-zero temperatures, the protests build into an ‘Orange Revolution’.

DECEMBER
Romania Negotiations to join the European Union are completed, with a target date of 2007 for entry. Traian Basescu is declared President after defeating his leftist rival in a close-fought election.
Russia The Government auctions off a key production unit of the country’s second largest oil company, Yukos, to pay off an alleged $27.5 billion tax bill. The mysterious successful bidder is thought to be a front for the Kremlin.
Ukraine The Supreme Court annuls the results of the second round of the presidential elections, paving the way for fresh elections. Viktor Yuschenko emerges as the clear winner by around two million votes.

Adolf Hitler lives on into the 21st century, at least in the iconography of protest (accompanying photo not available for on-line publishing). This young member of the Yabloko Democratic Party in Russia was part of a demonstration outside the Prosecutor General’s office in central Moscow on 16 September. The protest was at President Vladimir Putin’s high-handed introduction of changes to the country’s electoral system that would allow him to appoint regional governors – who have hitherto been elected – thereby concentrating more power in his own hands. Putin was taking advantage of the worldwide shock and outrage over the Beslan massacre in early September: 335 people, including more than 150 children, held hostage in a primary school by Chechen-sympathizing terrorists, died as the Russian military intervened to end a three-day siege. The Putin move should be seen in the context of the worldwide clampdown on civil liberties resulting from the ‘war on terror’ (to be examined in depth in the March 2005 issue of the NI).

New generation in waiting (below). In 1988 Armenia hit the international headlines when a major earthquake killed 25,000 people. Families made homeless in the town of Stepanavan were temporarily housed in oil tanks, with a promise of new houses to come. Since then the Soviet Union has crumbled, Armenia has become independent and fought a war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh: the world has changed irrevocably. But the families are still waiting in their oil tanks. In June the European Union froze aid to Armenia when the Government reneged on a deal to close the country's only nuclear power station, which lies – you guessed it – in an earthquake-prone zone.

Photo: Tim Dirven / Panos

Bridging the divide (below). During the Bosnian war, the medieval town of Mostar was split along the Neretva River, with the Muslim community on one side and mainly Christian Croats on the other. The magnificent 16th-century Ottoman bridge was destroyed in fierce fighting in November 1993, but has been rebuilt and opened this year. Bosnia-Herzegovina is still bitterly divided along ethnic and religious lines – few refugees have as yet returned to homes from which they fled during the terrible period of ‘ethnic cleansing’. But the reopened bridge is at the very least an important symbol in a country struggling to rebuild mutual trust.

Photo: Andrew Testa / Panos