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"KIEV, Ukraine - History books will record the past week as the Ukraine's most significant, and tragic, since the end of Soviet rule. Nearly 100 protesters were killed, many by government snipers; the nation's president, Viktor Yanukovych, was deposed and his opulent lifestyle exposed to the public; and the president's political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, was released from prison and made a triumphant return to Kiev, where she delivered a forceful and emotional speech while seated in a wheelchair.\nOn Sunday, Ukraine's Parliament took steps to form a new government, appointing Speaker Oleksandr Turchinov as the nation's acting president, pending the outcome of newly scheduled elections on May 25. Lawmakers also unanimously reversed a sweeping array of anti-speech and anti-protest laws that Parliament itself enacted in mid-January and it voted to return Yanukovych's lavish estate to the people.\nSee also: Latest Photos: Protesters Control Kiev, Seize President's Residence\nBut much uncertainty surrounds Ukraine's future. Here are some essential questions facing the nation and its people:\nWhat role will Yulia Tymoshenko play in future government?\nAfter spending more than two years in jail, the former Prime Minister gave a passionate and rousing speech from the main stage of the EuroMaidan protest movement Saturday night, signaling that she was back in the political game. But she failed to say what many wanted to hear: that she would run for president of Ukraine. \n\nTymosehnko: \"I am coming back to work. I won't waste a minute as to make sure you are happy on your own land. Glory to Ukraine!\"\n\u2014 Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 22, 2014\n\nPerhaps that was for the best. Much like the notoriously corrupt recently ousted president Viktor Yanukovych \u2013 her political nemesis \u2013 Tymoshenko is a highly polarizing figure unpopular to many. \nLong before the golden braid, before her loyalists likened her to Joan of Arc, she was the \u201CGas Princess,\u201D who in the raucous post-Soviet 1990s was a tough businesswoman who amassed a fortune in the natural gas industry, which in this part of the world has always been dubious business.\nShe used her money to catapult her into politics, obtaining the prime minister seat under former president Viktor Yushchenko following Ukraine\u2019s Orange Revolution in 2004. It was during that time that she cut a gas deal with Russia that many Ukrainians say benefited her but strapped the country financially. To this day, under the deal she signed, in 2009, Ukraine pays more to Russia for natural gas than western Europe.\nMustafa Nayyem, a well-known journalist here, captured the ambivalence many people feel toward her, in a post on Facebook: \nMany of us cheered that Yulia Tymoshenko is not in prison anymore. But let us say it frankly: few people are left that would welcome her return to politics. She can be a symbol of repression of Yanukovych time, honorary leader of her party, whoever she wants, but no active politician. Yulia Tymoshenko has to stay in the past, the same past that we are bidding so long and tortuous farewell. We all paid too high price for that we could accept falling once more into the same trap. With all due respect.\nBut despite her past, Tymoshenko is a savvy politician who knows how to address a crowd, an asset other political leaders here lack. That is one reason Taras Berezovets, a director of Berta Communications and a former political consultant for Tymoshenko, said there is no doubt in his mind that she will run for office.\n\u201CShe will definitely run (for president),\u201D he told Mashable. \u201CShe is the best candidate for this job.\u201D\nWhere is Yanukovych and what is likely to happen to him?\nThis is the million dollar question. There has been speculation that the now ex-president is somewhere in the United Arab Emirates, where his private jet had reportedly flown and landed on Feb. 22, or in eastern Ukraine, his stronghold. The latter is most likely. His advisor, Hanna Herman, said on Feb. 21 that he was in fact there, but not to attend a meeting with loyalists and a Russian envoys as some media local reported to discuss the eastern region separating from the central and western parts of the country. \nAt least one newspaper reported he was at a country home in the area on Sunday, after he failed to escape Ukraine on Saturday. His plane was reportedly grounded because the crew did not have proper documents to leave Ukrainian airspace. \n\nJournalists, investigators pore through trove of Mezhyhirya documents Yanukovych left behind http://t.co/GlQfBOCOmh pic.twitter.com/vOnUNpGIbU\n\u2014 Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 23, 2014\n\nThere have been reports that a warrant has been issued for his arrest, which would please many protesters who sustained the EuroMaidan movement. Protesters have expressed their desire for the former president to be put behind bars for draining government coffers dry and giving orders to police over the course of the past three months that led to scores of deaths during clashes in Kiev and elsewhere in the country.\nHow will Russia react to the political convulsion in Ukraine?\nRussia has long tried to reel in Ukraine to its political orbit. As its former Soviet ruler did, Russia still views Ukraine as a satellite state to which it can dictate orders. In fact, seeds of the crisis of the past several months were sewn when Yanukovych rejected a trade deal with the West in favor or closer economic ties with Russia.\nOn Sunday, it seemed unclear exactly how Moscow would react to the political turmoil. Officials said Russia would halt a second tranche of cash as part of the $15 billion bailout Russian President Vladimir Putin inked with Yanukovych in December until it was clear who would be leading Urkaine\u2019s new government. But Moscow also said that it supported Tymoshenko as a candidate for a top position in office. Tymoshenko has had a fairly cozy relationship with Moscow in the past.\nWill the former heavyweight boxer, Vitali Klitschko, be the next president? Or does he have a new rival in Tymoshenko? \nSpeaking to Mashable on Sunday, Klitschko admitted that the release of the former prime minister Tymoshenko had changed the political landscape. \nHe skirted the question of whether he still planned to run for president, as he had announced in 2013, saying that the most important task for him right now is to get Ukraine back on track politically and economically. \n\u201CIf necessary, I can do this as president,\u201D he said, in a tone that sounded less like a man ready to stump for the office and more like one who had be resigned to the back seat of the bus. \u201CBut there must be an honest competition between the politicians. It is good that Yulia is back, so more people can be involved. It is good for the political map.\u201D\nBoth politicians have done well in recent polls, but those were hypotheticals against Yanukovych. Should they run against each other, they risk splitting a united opposition that worked together to oust the president on Saturday. \n\nI asked Klitschko this morning where Yanukovych is hiding. \"We have tried for three days to find him. Yesterday he escaped, disappeared.\"\n\u2014 Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 23, 2014\n\nWill top government officials be prosecuted for the deaths of protesters?\nIf protesters in Independence Square have their way, those government officials they blame for the deadly clashes over the past three months will be arrested and prosecuted. But doing so is much easily said than done.\nYanukovych has fled, as well as much of his former cabinet, and their whereabouts are unknown. However, they are believed to still be in Ukraine, after the State Border Service grounded the private jets. According to Klitschko, political leaders \u201Cwill consider this issue and we will compile a list of people responsible for giving these orders (to police troops and snipers to fire live ammunition at protesters), and we will decide then,\u201D he said.\nKlitschko place the blame for the the bloodshed on the former president. \u201CYanukovych is responsible for everything that has happened in Ukraine (since he came to power in 2010.). He is fully responsible for the people who have died,\u201D he said.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/02/23/questions-ukraine-future/>