Imagine relatives of yours were killed by angry mobs. Your house set alight. Your livelihood wrecked overnight. Knowing that such atrocities took place in the city you called home, and possibly even committed by your neighbors, how could you ever expect to return to life as normal?It's a question that is surely being asked by thousands of displaced persons as they return home following the outbreak of bloody interethnic violence in southern Kyrgyzstan in June. As the government vows to rebuild the homes and communities of ethnic Uzbeks and ethnic Kyrgyz caught up in violence that left at least 275 dead and some 400,000 displaced, it must also find ways to reduce tensions and ensure they don't erupt again in the future.

One thing is clear from the testimony of witnesses of the ethnic violence that killed hundreds and possibly thousands of people in Kyrgyzstan last month: most of the victims were from the ethnic Uzbek minority. More than a thousand of their burned and looted houses stand ruined in the epicenter of the violence, the city of Osh, amid mostly unscathed Kyrgyz buildings. It was also mainly Uzbeks who fled -- hundreds of thousands of them, across the border to refugee camps in Uzbekistan -- after they were attacked by Kyrgyz mobs, and many say Kyrgyz police and military units.

It's a tall order, in a country that's been paralyzed by political crisis and economic instability for decades. But Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych says he'll establish stability and prosperity by reversing the policies of the pro-Western predecessors he swept out of power in February.In a state-of-the-nation speech on the eve of his 100th day as president on June 4, Yanukovych heaped scorn on the leaders of the Orange Revolution for leaving the country in what he said was a state of "ruin," and identified his administration's priorities.

Russia is keen to get the EU to recognize it as one of the bona fide poles in what it sees as a new multipolar world order -- and to leave behind the days when the EU lectured it on issues ranging from rights to reform.Russia’s EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov told a press briefing in Brussels that visa-free travel for its citizens throughout the EU is at the top of the Russian agenda for its May 31-June 1 summit with the bloc in Rostov-na-Donu. It’s a long-term goal that was first established in 2003.