Thousands take to the streets of the Ukraine in protest of election rigging

The protests – which have been ongoing for over a week but have gone largely unreported in the Maldivian state press – look set to bring the current government, which is charged with corruption, to its knees.

Top-level international mediators have arrived in the capital, Kiev, to seek a peaceful solution to the crisis. These include representatives from the European Union and Russia.

The opposition – seen by many to represent the democratic future of the Ukraine – have accused the incumbent president of engineering an electoral fraud and opposition leader Mr Yushchenko said that, as a result, the country was now “on the brink of civil conflict”.