Peaceful protests continued in Kiev on Thursday, as opposition supporters demonstrated -- in the freezing cold, many with beer in hand -- against the declared victory of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. Former Polish President Lech Walesa has agreed to step in to mediate. And German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder picked up his hotline to Russian Prez Vladimir Putin to complain about election corruption and to remind him that Europe needs a "democratic, peaceful Ukraine." But in Germany, newspapers on Thursday direct some blame for the current fiasco on Berlin and Brussels.

"The EU in general and Germany, in particular, have made no effort to support democratic forces in Ukraine," the right-leaning Die Welt writes. "Whereas Schroeder calls Putin a 'democrat through and through', (Foreign Minister Joschka) Fischer has lost interest in the region, if he ever had any." For Fischer and most of the Foreign Ministry, the Middle East has become a greater priority -- and they also agree with Schroeder's assessment of Putin's democratic competency. Still, it reminds its readers, "Europe must not forget Ukraine and Belarus. There are many reasons for this -- not least of which the need for a cordon sanitaire," a buffer against potentially hostile states.

Noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin went to extraordinary lengths to see the election of Yanukovych, his crony in Kiev, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung says it is time for Europe to put its foot down on the disturbingly undemocratic path Russia and some of its neighbors are following. "Further developments in this large and clearly inwardly divided country are significant for the whole of Europe," the paper's foreign editor writes. He adds that Ukraine's fate could determine the future of the post-Soviet sphere. "Many Europeans have neglected Ukraine as a geo-politically key country. But perhaps this will teach Schroeder, Chirac, Berlusconi and Co. a few things about 'the real Putin'. It is high time that it is made quite clear to Putin what Europeans understand by democracy," it concludes. The Berliner Zeitung sketches a similar point in an editorial cartoon .

Writing in the cultural pages of the left-of-center Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Thomas Urban seeks to explain the motives behind the hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Kiev. These aren't just traditional anti-Soviets who are taking to the streets by the hundreds of thousands in Ukraine, he writes. "It's much more the burning desire to live in a just society with equal opportunities, in which the individual isn't just helplessly at the mercy of the state," he writes. "More than anything else, it is the violation of any sense of justice, the outrage from the bottom of the heart over the massive forgery of the election results that is nothing less than a corrupt leadership waging war on its own people." In the eastern part of Ukraine, Urban writes, intellectuals seem to be the only ones outraged -- "the masses of industry workers still haven't had a chance to overcome the Homo sovieticus they inherited," he concludes.

Noting the beginning of an EU-Russia summit in The Hague on Thursday, the Financial Times Deutschland says Brussels should push for new elections in Ukraine. "That's currently the most constructive idea and it should be supported at the summit. The mood in Ukraine has become alarmingly charged and the situation is in a total muddle. New elections are a possible way out of the mess ... and much would be gained if the representatives of the EU today convinced Putin to take that path."

Closer to home, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and opposition leader Angela Merkel both made lively speeches before the federal parliament, the Bundestag, on Thursday. Budget debates are generally about as thrilling as listening to an endless Fidel Castro speech, but somehow the pair has made a tradition of exploring the lighter side of a fiscal nightmare by pointing fingers at each other. This time the two exchanged barbs over what they alleged was the other's "lack of patriotism" and how it is running down the country. The two bantied about a few jokes drawing laughter from parliament.