Eighteen months ago, everyone in the world in reach of a TV knew the story of Ukraine's orange revolution: people power defied a corrupt regime and triumphed. Though the heroic saga did achieve its goal of forcing fair elections, more recent developments in Ukraine's Rada, or legislature, have become a soap opera of convoluted twists and

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) backstabbing. According to Kiev-based independent political analyst Viktor Nebozhenko, "Treachery has reached the state of national art in this country, and gets appreciated as such."

Last Thursday morning, Yuliya Tymoshenko, head of the orange-affiliated byut party, was confident of storming back to power as Prime Minister. Her longtime enemy (and current ally of convenience) Petro Poroshenko of the Our Ukraine (OU) party was equally sure that he would become Speaker of the Rada. That would have meant a new lease of life for the orange coalition, which collapsed last fall amid mutual charges of corruption and incompetence between Tymoshenko and Poroshenko.

It was pasted back together late last month, after 10 weeks of hard bargaining and deal making with the Socialists, in order to stop the Party of the Regions (PR) — who led last March's election with 32% of the vote — emerging as the Rada's majority force.

But the old guard remains canny and powerful. The PR, run by Viktor Yanukovych, the thuggish former Prime Minister whose rigged election as President set off the orange revolution, orchestrated a virtual shutdown of the Rada to protest the orange-orchestrated stitch-up that was supposed to see Tymoshenko and Poroshenko get their promotions together through a single vote. Meanwhile he was forging a secret coalition with the Socialists, who reneged on their earlier deal with the orange coalition. Their Rada leader Oleksander Moroz now becomes Speaker, and orange-affiliated politicians must lick their wounds in opposition.

The new PR-Socialist-Communist majority will nominate Yanukovych for Prime Minister this week. Should he get the job, his government will likely introduce new taxes, ease pressure on companies that were previously sold off to his cronies for sweetheart prices, and ask Russia to drop natural gas prices in exchange for promises of loyalty that it may occasionally deliver.

The orange coalition lies in tatters — and the new governing majority will likely pick up quite a few orange-leaning OU and byut deputies too. "That will heal the current rift between east and west Ukraine, and stabilize society," hopes Konstantin Bondarenko, chair of the National Strategy Institute and prominent Ukraine analyst. But it's evident that within the halls of the Rada itself a lot of healing and stabilizing is needed, too.

• YURI ZARAKHOVICH
• Disputes among Ukraine's postrevolution coalition parties are regalvanizing the old guard