Subscribers to hidden europe's e-newsletter were among the first to hear the news on the morning of 1 April that Ukraine is relaxing its visa requirement for citizens of all twenty-five EU nations and Switzerland. And this was no April Fools Day joke. In the press release issued the previous evening, the Ukrainian news agency announced that President Viktor Yushchenko had just signed a decree allowing visitors from these twenty-six countries to visit Ukraine from 1 May to 31 August 2005 without a visa.