My expectations were half-satisfied: Socialists didn’t make it into the parliament! Great lesson for them, and a new example of political death in Ukraine. (Though I do think that Socialists have resources to return in 5 years, when new elections are due.)

On the other hand, Lytvyn’s block did jump the 3% barrier. By the way, if we take the absolute number of votes Lytvyn had in 2006 elections (619 905 votes), and the number he had at the 2007 snap elections (924 538), the difference is only 304633 votes. When multiplied by 20$, it gives 6 million USD – which isn’t too high a price for getting into the parliament, isn’t it?

Overall, I’m satisfied with these elections. Politicians this time were wise enough to avoid prolonged court trials over the miserable, non-differentiating numbers of votes in distinct voting districts. It saved both time and money. It’s also good to hear that immediately after the official results announcement, the Our Ukraine – Self Defence block and the Block of Yulia Tymoshenko agreed upon the coalition treaty. It’s not yet evident if the treaty will hold, or if it won’t be beaten by the PR – Lytvyn – Communists probable political block – but that is still a good sign of political agility, unseen since the end of 2004 between the two political forces.

I’m also glad that society intelligently handled these elections, which were unfavoured by many. Everything went overall smooth and with no troubles.

The only thing, which is not directly elections-related, is the fighting over the status and interpretation of the OUN-URA (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – Ukrainian Rebel Army) during the World War II. But I hope that in part with the help and actions by the President, this issue will be settled and finally resolved as soon as possible (I expect this to happen within 10 years from now).

Today my blog’s domain bogdan.org.ua isn’t resolving to IP address from several worldwide locations. The trouble seems to be with XName, as running nslookup using ns?.xname.org gives me this:

DNS server handling your query: ns1.xname.org
DNS server’s address: 87.98.164.164#53

** server can’t find bogdan.org.ua: SERVFAIL

It’s rather strange that all the other domains I have on XName are functioning properly.

I can’t figure out the reason behind the problem; will keep trying to resolve as soon as possible.

Update: this is in fact XName-related problem: they are again under DDoS attack.

The other domains I have at XName might have stayed unaffected thanks to the secondary nameservers; it might have been just the question of the difference in sync times, that caused bogdan.org.ua to expire earlier than other domains.

It’s a great pity that DDoS attack organizers cannot (yet) be reliably tracked and then punished. Attacking a free web service cannot be explained other than by mental sickness or noticeable loss of profit by some entities…