The Moldovan Communists won 71 of 101 seats in the February 25 parliamentary elections, to the chagrin of expansionist-minded NATOcrats. With an absolute majority in the parliament—which elects the country’s president—pro-Russian elements in Moldova are likely to have one of their own as the country’s chief executive. Moldovan Communist leader Vladimir Voronin announced that he intends to follow through with two pro-Russian campaign pledges: to make Russian Moldova’s second “official language” (after years of antirussophone actions by the Moldovan authorities), and to seek Moldova’s admission to the Russia-Belarus Union, a loose political-economic alliance of the two Slavic states. The election also strengthened Moscow’s hand in the breakaway Moldovan Dniester republic, a largely Slavic region that had long sought Moscow’s protection from a pro-Rumanian government.

Meanwhile, Ukraine also appears to be moving closer to Russia—and away from NATO. Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, accused of ordering the murder last fall of journalist Georgy Gongadze, who had chronicled Kuchma’s cozy relations with the Ukrainian and Russian oligarch/mafia class, is now under pressure to resign. The Russians jumped at the opportunity to alter Kuchma’s increasingly pro-Western, pro-NATO stance: Vladimir Putin visited Ukraine in February, offering a deal that would ease the country’s energy crunch. (Ukraine depends on Russia for natural gas and is heavily indebted to Moscow for past energy shipments.) That and other economic morsels served up by Moscow—as well as the obvious show of support for the embattled Ukrainian president—proved to be an offer Kuchma could not refuse. Emboldened by Putin’s support. Kuchma subsequently ordered the arrest of his archenemy, former Deputy Premier Yuliya Tynioshenko, on corruption charges. (The wily and very photogenic Tymoshenko is widely viewed as the organizer and financier of the anti-Kuchma opposition.)

Most observers in Kiev, Moscow, and the Moldavan capital of Chisinau saw February’s developments as a major setback for NATO’s plans to include both a united Rumanian/Moldovan state and a pro-Western (and anti-Russian) Ukraine in the alliance. Meanwhile, Russian proponents of an eventual Slavic Union saw the events as a boost for their plans to include both Moldova and Ukraine in an expanded Russia-Belarus commonwealth, dashing NATO’s apparent plans to encircle and isolate a weakened Russia.

American and European opponents of the globalist/imperialist project can take heart: The world outside the Washington Beltway is proving to be quite a stubborn and frustrating place for the Masters of the Universe, who will have to wait a little longer for the “end of history.”