For a couple of days last week, it seemed as though German newspapers were running out of things to say about the election fraud in Ukraine and the ensuing mass demonstrations. Repeated calls for a European brokered solution and for Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep his autocratic finger out of the civil unrest pie were all they had to offer. On Monday though, having had a weekend to think about it, editorialists come back to Europe's biggest story with renewed vigor. Specifically, papers are looking ahead to what a possible solution to the crisis might look like. The crisis began when the public challegned official results showing government candidate Viktor Yanukovych had won one million votes more than his opponent Viktor Yushchenko. The public insists the election was rigged.

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung leads the way on Monday by pointing out the fine line challenger Yushchenko must walk as demonstrations enter their second week. Many, including current Ukraine president Leonid Kuchma, are calling for a compromise, but this is precisely "the Achilles heel of the opposition," the paper writes. "Yushchenko's strength comes from the demonstrating masses that see in him a man who wants to bring the kleptocracy of the oligarchs to an end. He cannot slow the momentum of the movement if he wants to win the power struggle.... He needs to set ultimatums because he can't extend the demonstrations indefinitely." At the same time, however, if he wants to be able to govern once achieving the presidency, he needs to work with the other side as well and "can't burn all of his bridges now."

The left-leaning Sueddeutsche Zeitung agrees and worriedly refers to a Sunday meeting between Yanukovych and delegates from southern and eastern Ukraine to discuss autonomy for the region and to call for a referendum. Yushchenko, the paper argues, must make compromises to bring the Russian-speaking regions of the country on board (the paper suggests making Russian a second official language), but at the same time, he "has to prevail against the group of west-Ukrainian nationalists among his own supporters -- a group that is mostly defined by its hate for all things Russian."

One of the disturbing reports from Ukraine over the weekend was the fact that Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzkkov, attended the Sunday meeting on autonomy for eastern and southern Ukraine. The conservative paper Die Welt lost no time in pouncing and lambasting Russia for its apparently imperial instincts in the region. It writes that it took Moscow some time after the collapse of the Soviet Union to realize what it had lost, and is now realizing that it has to have Ukraine on its side if it is to be a true player on the world stage. "Vladimir Putin has rediscovered Ukraine. For some time now, Putin has been attempting to regain the power that the Soviet Union once had -- both internally and externally. During the Ukrainian campaign it became clear: Putin wants to bring the country back into the empire for economic, political and also geo-strategic reasons."

The Frankfurter Allgemeine also prints a weekend interview with new European Union Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who was in Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. In speaking about the problems in Ukraine and the fact that Russia has openly supported government candidate Yanukovych against European convictions, Barroso said, "We are not interested in a weak Russia, but we are also not going to deny our soul and our key values."

A number of papers on Monday also look to the crowning of French Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy as head of President Jacques Chirac's governing party, Union for a Popular Movement (UPM). It is seen as a major coup for Sarkozy and also as an important step toward his stated goal of taking over the conservative leadership mantel from Chirac. Given the meteoric rise of Sarkozy -- and his pompous, ceremonial enthronement with 85.1 percent of the party vote -- Sueddeutsche Zeitung compares his victory to the enthronement of Napoleon as emperor 200 years ago this Thursday and opines that the leftist opposition now faces the difficult challenge of finding someone who might be able to prevent Sarkozy from seamlessly taking over the presidency from Chirac.