On Monday night, current Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma for the first time stated that new elections might be the only way out of the crisis in Kiev. For more than a week now, the peaceful demonstrations in Ukraine to oppose fraudulent elections have dominated European and German media coverage. Some papers on Tuesday complain, however that Berlin and Brussels were too slow to act in the election drama -- and in Germany, at least, apathy seems to be the order of the day. People had greater affinity for the messages of films like "Super Size Me" and "Fahrenheit 9/11" than to the possible death of democracy in a country that shares its border with three EU members.

"The unexpected, unmistakable call for freedom is being heard with interest," writes the mass-circulation Bild newspaper, "but not with enthusiasm in Germany, and the outrageous actions of the powers that be do not arouse one-thousandth of the indignation that Michael Moore was able to awaken in us." Ukraine, the paper notes, is a mere geopolitical after-thought for many. "It's as if people don't live there, as if it is just a strategic 'corridor," it says. After all, "it is Yanukovich's representatives who talk in terms of geopolitics and say the West should not intervene," the paper concludes.

The left-of-center Sueddeutsche Zeitung in Munich writes that Yanukovich "thought he held all the trump cards. But now he is a largely abandoned man without any prospect of winning the power struggle over the presidency." It notes that his threat to divide the country "sounded like a wavering man's defiant attempt to demonstrate his power one last time." Riffing off U.S. President George W. Bush's 2000 campaign motto, the paper concludes: "Yanukovich has shown in the last days and weeks that he is a divider. But the country needs someone who can unite."

The conservative Die Welt newspaper criticizes Germany and the European Union for not doing more for Ukraine earlier."Ukraine is a neighbor of the new enlarged Union, it has borders with three EU member states," it notes. "The EU must accept the accusation that it let a vacuum emerge by engaging only half-heartedly, if at all, with its new neighbor." Still, the paper stops short of endorsing membership for the country. "Whatever one might think of a possible Ukrainian accession, it would be an offer for the wrong reasons in this crisis situation."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung believes Kuchma will ultimately drop his support for Yanukovich. On Monday, Kuchma suggested a new election as the best way out of the current crisis. "If we really want to preserve peace ... let us have new elections," he said. And where does this leave Yanukovich? "Isolated, his camp is breaking up," the paper's editors write.

Not so fast, warns the Financial Times Deutschland. "Of course this isn't a refined democrat and prince of peace fighting for the welfare of his people," it reminds readers, "but rather a loser who is playing statesman for the last time just before his departure." The paper says it is unlikely the government will call for a run-off vote. Instead it will demand completely new elections -- possibly with a different candidate. If that happens, the paper warns, the "opposition needs an equal and fair basis for its campaign. Nowhere can you get a better reading of the dirty and brutal tactics used in the first election than the disfigured face of Yushchenko, who was poisoned  under mysterious circumstances." If a second full-scale election is called, then the election observers from the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe need to be "more strongly" involved, the paper warns.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Germany's Defense Ministry confirmed that a fourth case of abuse of soldiers had emerged in the Bundeswehr, which is currently embroiled over a scandal involving the kidnapping and hostage-taking of troops as part of their training. The issue has drawn comparisons to Abu Ghraib and has led Germans to do a little soul searching about the nature of military training and where the borders should be drawn.

Die Welt, predictably, warns that if there's no pain in training, there's no gain: "If you want to send soldiers to Afghanistan, you can't bank on soldiers who confuse their job with that of a civil servant in the local city council." Increasingly, the paper writes, the Bundeswehr is becoming an Army like in the US or Britain. "The training of German soldiers," therefore, it writes, "must be realistic and tough." The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, meanwhile, dismisses this whole episode as much ado about nothing. "Reports of the 'mistreatment' of Bundeswehr soldiers are now appearing from all sides." Recruits, it notes, had their hands tied in one exercise, and in another 'case' solders were locked into a damp, cold cellar blindfolded. It concludes, dismissively, "you'd need a lively moral imagination to describe these incidents -- if things really didn't go further than this -- as torture."