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"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT"
An International Newsletter
In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary

"The Art of Ukrainian History, Culture, Arts, Business, Religion,
Sports, Government, and Politics, in Ukraine and Around the World"

UKRAINIAN GROUPS AGREE ON VOTE REFORMS

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 249
The Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC), Washington, D.C.
Ukrainian Federation of America (UFA), Huntingdon Valley, PA
morganw@patriot.net, ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net (ARTUIS)
Washington, D.C., Kyiv, Ukraine, MONDAY, December 6, 2004

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-----INDEX OF ARTICLES-----
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"

1. UKRAINIAN GROUPS AGREE ON VOTE REFORMS
By Aleksandar Vasovicm, Associated Press Writer
Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, December 6, 2004

2. UKRAINE PARLIAMENTARY LEADERS AGREE TO VOTE
ON ELECTION CHANGES TO AVERT FRAUD
Bloomberg, New York, NY, Monday, Dec. 6, 2004

3. PUTIN WARNS AGAINST MEDDLING IN UKRAINE
By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Ankara, Turkey, Monday, December 6, 2004

4. WALKER'S WORLD: HAS PUTIN 'LOST' UKRAINE?
By Martin Walker, United Press International Editor
Washington, D.C., Monday, December 6, 2004

5. "PUTIN'S PRATFALL"
By Michael Hirsh and Frank Brown, Newsweek, USA, Dec 13, 2004

6. PUTIN'S 'CHICKEN KIEV'
By William Safire, OP-ED Columnist, The New York Times
New York, New York, Monday, December 6, 2004

7. "RUSSIA'S UNCHECKED AMBITIONS"
By Jackson Diehl, Columnist, The Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Monday, December 6, 2004; Page A21

8. ECHOES OF COLD WAR AS BUSH AND PUTIN
DIFFER OVER UKRAINE POLLS
By James Harding in Washington and Arkady Ostrovsky in Moscow
Financial Times, London, UK, Monday, December 6 2004

9. "UKRAINE AND THE LESSONS OF HISTORY"
By Alexei Bayer To Our Readers, The Moscow Times
Moscow, Russia, Monday, December 6, 2004. Page 8.

10. "EMBRACEABLE E.U."
By Robert Kagan, Columnist, The Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page B07

11. Q & A: DANIEK BILAK ON KUCHMA'S CALCULUS
Interview with Daniek Bilak, Toronto International Lawyer
By Peter Lavelle, Analyst, United Press International
Moscow, Russia, Monday, December 6, 2004
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 249: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
========================================================
1. UKRAINIAN GROUPS AGREE ON VOTE REFORMS

By Aleksandar Vasovic, Associated Press Writer
Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, December 6, 2004

KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine's opposition and pro-government factions
reached a compromise Monday on changes in the election law and
constitutional amendments, enabling the new Dec. 26 presidential
rematch to go forth.

As part of the agreement, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma may
also fire his Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, whose victory in the
disputed Nov. 21 runoff was canceled last week by the Supreme
Court, Stepan Havrysh, a senior pro-government lawmaker, told
The Associated Press.

Opposition lawmakers had been pushing for changes to the election
law that they say will ensure a fair vote. Pro-government lawmakers
wanted to link the legislation with constitutional changes that
would weaken the power of the presidency, but the opposition had
initially been reluctant to vote on the whole package at the same
time. The parliament's coordination committee reached a deal Monday
to vote on both aspects on Tuesday, Havrysh said.

Lawmakers had failed on Saturday to pass the package. The deal
fell through when supporters of Western-leaning opposition
leader Viktor Yushchenko refused to back constitutional changes.
Yushchenko told his supporters that Kuchma fears he would win the
rematch against Yanukovych and wants to weaken his presidency
and cling to power using his allies in parliament.

Yushchenko demanded that Kuchma stop blocking changes in the
electoral law, reshuffle the Central Election Commission and fire
Yanukovych. The parliament has already approved a nonbinding, no-
confidence motion in Yanukovych's Cabinet.

Havrysh said that Kuchma may come to parliament Tuesday to sign
the package of legal changes, dismiss prime minister and appoint a
successor.

The court's decision invalidated the result of the Nov. 21
presidential runoff election and ordered a repeat vote on Dec. 26.
Yanukovych, who had the backing of Kuchma and the Kremlin, had
been declared the official winner. But Yushchenko complained that fraud
robbed him of victory and many Western nations refused to recognize
the results, which provoked mass protests by Yushchenko supporters.

Earlier Monday, Yanukovych said Monday he was confident of winning
the Dec. 26 rerun. In his first public comment since the court's ruling
Friday,
Yanukovych told his supporters that he had picked up a new campaign
chief and would reshuffle his regional campaign headquarters. "We are
confident of our victory," he said.

"This is not a revolution, but political technologies with
involvement of special services," Yanukovych said. "The organizers
of street actions have committed a great sin, and they will still
answer before God."

Kuchma told a meeting of key economic ministers that he will honor
the new vote, allaying fears he would prevent a new vote in the face
of a possible victory by Yushchenko.

"I am ready for further steps to ease the absolutely baseless
tension in society," Kuchma said in televised comments. He proposed
parliament consider introducing changes in the electoral law and the
constitution, saying "I am ready to sign them both in the session
hall." Kuchma also was quoted by The New York Times as saying
that if he were Yanukovych, he would not run in the upcoming vote.

"Though Yanukovych said he would run, I don't know," Kuchma told the
newspaper in an interview published Monday. "If I were he, I would
not, from any point of view. I do not exclude that we shall have a
plebiscite instead of elections, with one candidate." "I do not want to
say it is final, but this is how the situation is
developing," he added.

Since then the court decision, Yanukovych had remained out of the
public eye, leaving some of his allies to suggest that he may
withdraw from the race.

On Monday, Yanukovych accused Yushchenko of being manipulated
from abroad. "This is not a revolution, but political technologies with
involvement of special services," he said. He didn't name any countries,
but his backers have accused the West of helping Yushchenko.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who backed Yanukovych, strongly
warned against foreign interference in Ukraine and other former
Soviet republics in comments during a state visit to Turkey Monday.

"Only the people of any country - and this includes Ukraine in the
full sense - can decide their fate," Putin told reporters. "One can
play the role of a mediator but one must not meddle and apply
pressure."

Moscow, which considers this nation of 48 million people part of its
sphere of influence and a buffer between it and NATO's eastern
flank, fears Ukraine will tilt further to the West under Yushchenko.

"I don't want, as in Germany, for us to divide Europe into
westerners and easterners, into first-class and second-class people,
where the first-class people have the opportunity to live by stable,
democratic laws and the second category of people are those with, to
speak metaphorically, dark political skin," Putin said.

He said the second-class people would be subjected to "a nice but
stern man in a helmet who will show them under what political
understanding they must live. And if, God forbid, the ungrateful
foreigner resists, he will be punished with bombs and missiles."

In Brussels, EU spokeswoman Emma Udwin said the 25-nation EU
was not seeking to create new divisions over Ukraine, and hit back at
accusations made by Moscow that the EU was unduly interfering there.
Election observers, she noted, were invited into the country by
Ukrainian authorities.

Foreign ministers from member states of Europe's leading election
monitoring agency, the 55-nation Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, met Monday and agreed to send election
observers for the Dec. 26 rematch.

Passions also appeared to cool on Kiev's streets Monday, with dozens
of government employees walking past Yushchenko's supporters to
return to work - the largest number of bureaucrats allowed into the
building since protesters blockaded the entrance late last month to
demand a repeat runoff vote.

Protesters in orange hard hats and ponchos stood shoulder to
shoulder to create a corridor for about 60 low-ranking employees to
pass through. Self-appointed security personnel among the
demonstrators checked identification badges and other documents
before allowing the group to enter the building.

The country's defense minister also reaffirmed his promise that the
military will remain neutral in the political crisis. "The army does not
serve an individual but the entire people," Defense Minister Oleksandr
Kuzmuk said. "I do not believe that anyone will order the use of force
against people ... if that happens we will follow the constitution." -30-
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
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2. UKRAINE PARLIAMENTARY LEADERS AGREE TO VOTE
ON ELECTION CHANGES TO AVERT FRAUD

Bloomberg, New York, NY, Monday, Dec. 6, 2004

KIEV -- Ukrainian parliamentary leaders agreed after a week of talks to
vote on a package of electoral changes to avert fraud that led to a
political standoff, opposition lawmaker Victor Kapustin said late today.

Ukrainians will go to the polls Dec. 26 for a rerun of the disputed
election, declared invalid Dec. 3 by the Supreme Court. Hundreds of
thousands of supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, who maintains the election was
stolen from him, said they would blockade government buildings until the law
is approved.

"If the changes take effect in 2006, it could be acceptable, because then we
talk about a new parliament'' that will be elected in a March 2006 vote,
said Kapustin, a member of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine, the biggest group in
the parliament. "Our group is meeting tomorrow to look into the package
before the vote. I know that lawmakers at Our Ukraine have some concerns
over the plan.''

Lawmakers in the Kiev-based parliament will try to approve an election law
that bans most vote fraud mechanisms, which is now a part of the package of
laws that transfer most powers from president to parliament, Kapustin said
in a telephone interview.

Outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, who vetoed a law that bans vote fraud
mechanisms after the parliament approved it in October, said today he would
sign the measure into effect if the law is approved as a part of
power-sharing plan. Kuchma's Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and
Yushchenko, the opposition leader, both claimed victory in the Nov. 21 vote.
PRIORITY CITED
"The priority is to approve changes to the election law,'' Yushchenko said
late last night in Kiev's Independence Square, the focal point of nationwide
demonstrations that brought the capital and other cities in western Ukraine
to a near standstill. "We don't have much time.''

The stalemate over the Nov. 21 runoff pitted the U.S. and European Union,
which Yushchenko wants to join, against Russia, which supported Yanukovych.
Ukraine is the conduit for 85 percent of Russia's natural-gas exports, and
shares borders with both Russia and the EU. The nation also will be one of
the world's biggest grain exporters this year.

If approved, the new election law would end the possibility of a voter
casting ballots several times using absentee certificates. It would also
impose more strict rules for completing lists of voters, to ensure that dead
people and those who are younger than 18 are not included, said lawmakers
including Viktor Pinzenyk.
Regional Support

Yanukovych, 53, gets most of his support from Ukraine's Russian-speaking
industrial east. Yushchenko's strongest backing is in the Ukrainian-speaking

west. Eastern regions of the former Soviet republic of 47 million people
started seeking more autonomy, and some mentioned secession, when
Yushchenko, 50, challenged the vote.

A third round of EU-led mediation was to resume today under EU foreign
policy envoy Javier Solana, the presidents of Lithuania and Poland and the
speaker of the Russian parliament, Oleh Koshelev, a spokesman for Kuchma,
said in a telephone interview. The mediation is taking place amid a
deadlock over a Dec. 1 parliamentary vote that ordered the Central Election
Committee and Yanukovych and his government to step down. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
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3. PUTIN WARNS AGAINST MEDDLING IN UKRAINE

By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Ankara, Turkey, Monday, December 6, 2004

ANKARA, Turkey - Russian President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) on
Monday strongly warned against foreign interference in Ukraine and other
former Soviet republics, accusing the West of trying to force its conception
of democracy on countries in the region. "Only the people of any country -
and this includes Ukraine in the full sense - can decide their fate," Putin

told reporters after meeting with Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.

It was Putin's first public comment since Ukraine's Supreme Court ruled that
the second-round presidential election was fraudulent and should be
repeated. On the eve of the decision, he had ridiculed Ukrainian opposition
leader Viktor Yushchenko's call for a repeat of the bitterly disputed
runoff - again staking his position very clearly on the side of Yushchenko's
rival for office, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

"One can play the role of a mediator but one must not meddle and apply
pressure," Putin said in a tacit reference to Western countries, which have
been taking part in negotiations to defuse the Ukraine crisis and which
Moscow has accused of interference. "If in the post-Soviet space we allow -
every time, for any reason - existing law to be bent to fit the situation or
this or that political force, this will not bring stability, but on the
contrary will destabilize this large and very important region of the
world," Putin said.

Putin rejected Western accusations that he was meddling in Ukraine's
election, saying Russia acted "absolutely correctly" in disputes throughout
the former Soviet Union, but he suggested that forces in the West were
seeking to create new divisions in Europe for their political purposes. "I
don't want, as in Germany, for us to divide Europe into westerners and
easterners, into first-class and second-class people, where the first-class
people have the opportunity to live by democratic laws and the second
category of people are those with, to speak metaphorically, dark political
skin," Putin said.

He said the second-class people would be subjected to "a nice but stern man
in a helmet who will show them under what political understanding they must
live. And if, God forbid, the ungrateful foreigner resists, he will be
punished with a club of bombs and missiles, as it was in Belgrade." "This I
consider completely unacceptable."

He suggested voters in Ukraine were under pressure to support the Yushchenko
camp, which has put hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets and
has won the support of many Western countries and organizations. "Of course,
it is completely unacceptable for threats to be addressed to people that
leave them with no choice, when one of the political leaders says that
'whatever happens, whatever the result of elections, we will take power -
including by force,'" Putin said. "This is not just pressure, it is scaring
people. "We in Russia cannot support such a development of events, even if
somebody wants to call it democracy."

The Ukrainian opposition had warned repeatedly before the Supreme Court
ruling that it was prepared to take "immediate adequate actions" - an
apparent hint at more radical measures - if the government tried to drag out
the political crisis. Since the ruling, Yushchenko has primarily called on
his supporters not to leave their demonstration in Kiev's Independence
Square. But in an interview with Britain's Sunday Telegraph, he spoke more
forcefully.

"If the old regime tries to interfere in any way and tries to defy the will
of the people and of parliament, we will simply storm our way into the
Cabinet office. This is what the people expect," Yushchenko was quoted as
saying. Putin defended Russia's involvement in Yanukovych's campaign,
saying it was natural for his government to have closer contacts with the
authorities in neighboring countries than with the opposition. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 249: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
========================================================
4. WALKER'S WORLD: HAS PUTIN 'LOST' UKRAINE?

By Martin Walker, United Press International Editor
Washington, D.C., Monday, December 6, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Before the celebrations of the peoples' victory in Ukraine
get too heated, and before too many toasts are drunk to the Supreme Court of

Ukraine, which ruled that a new runoff election must take place by Dec. 25,
consider the really important news that came out of the region last week.

It came in the annual report of the U.N.'s International Energy Agency,
which warned that Europe's growing dependence on Russian natural gas, along
with the way that Russia's energy policies are being manipulated by the
Kremlin to increase the its own state power, have combined to jeopardize
Europe's energy security. For its own good, Europe should try to diversify
its gas supplies, the IEA warned.

And note that Russia's natural gas flows to the West through pipelines
that cross Ukraine. The formerly Soviet Republic of Ukraine is itself
dependent
on Russian oil and gas. Most of its own energy reserves are in the form of
oil, and most of them are in the Don basin. This is the eastern region of
Ukraine that is ethnically, culturally and geographically closest to Russia
and accounts for most of the recent growth in Ukraine's economy. It is also
the region and the people that voted predominantly for the incumbent Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

This is the group presented in the Western media as the bad guys, the
corrupt pawns of the Kremlin who tried to steal the election in order to
rebuild the Slavic heartland of the old Soviet superpower and thus to crawl
back under the old Kremlin yoke.

There is something in this theory, but not much. The idea that some 20
million citizens of Ukraine's eastern half are longing to get back to the
days of Soviet discipline and bring back the collective farm and the gulag
is not just mistaken; it is pitiful.

There is even less to the interpretation that logically follows from the
first: that the people of the Western Ukraine, who voted for the challenger
(and former prime minister) Viktor Yushchenko are freedom-loving democrats
yearning to join the West, and convinced that Yushchenko's party is the
honest and transparent party that will take them there.

It is all rather more complex than that. First, full membership of the West
is not yet on offer. The prospect of joining either NATO or the European
Union is a very long way off for Ukraine. The EU is already having trouble
digesting the 10 new member states of central and Eastern Europe. It is
currently blanching at the prospect of absorbing some 70 million Turks. The
idea of also embracing some 50 million even poorer Ukrainians is nightmarish
for Brussels.

Second, some of the brave challenger's supporters are also somewhat
tarnished with allegations of corruption. And the reason why the Supreme
Court plumped for Yushchenko in their ruling Friday was because some of the
powerful oligarchs, sensing the way the wind was blowing, are slipping from
the side of the incumbent prime minister Yanukovich and the pro-Moscow
President Leonid Kuchma and deciding their fortunes will be safer if they
back the challengers in good time. Building and keeping great fortunes has
usually been essentially a matter of timing, political and well as
commercial.

Third, the idea that the West is can now congratulate itself on winning a
belated round of the Cold War and absorbing Ukraine while weakening Russia
is close to laughable. Ukraine will remain economically dependent on Moscow
because that is where its markets are. The Ukraine economy these days
produces food, aircraft, coal and weapons, and the EU is not really in the
market for any of them, and with unemployment nudging 11 percent in Germany
again last week, the EU would rather protect its own markets from a new
low-wage competitor.

Fourth, the essential geopolitical fact is that Russia is a weak and
vulnerable state, frightened of Chinese ambitions on its Siberian mineral
and energy resources and also nervous about the Islamic world to the south.
Its protection will come from nuclear weapons, which are not much good
against the steady infiltration of Chinese "merchants" across the border, or
from the West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose task is to play a weak hand with
great cunning, tries to make the most of his few assets and is not doing
well. His attempt to maximize his leverage from Russia's energy supplies is
backfiring; Western shareholders would rather deal with businessmen than
with a capricious, law-bending Kremlin. His courtship of the Europeans,
France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder, may eventually
make sense, but right now it is jeopardizing his big asset -- his personal
relationship with President George Bush.

Putin's big policy speech in new Delhi Friday, the high point of his
official visit to India, irritated the White House by sounding as if it had
been written in Paris.

"Attempts to rebuild the multifaceted and diverse modern civilization,
created by God, in line with the barrack room principles of a unipolar world
appear to be extremely dangerous," Putin said. "The more persistently and
effectively the authors and followers of this idea act, the more often
mankind will come up against dangerous disproportions in economic and social
development and against global threats of international terrorism, organized
crime, and drug traffic."

In international shorthand these days, a unipolar world is one dominated by
the United States, and the French and Chinese don't like it. They want a
multi-polar world where there is sufficient strength in numbers that the
Europeans and Chinese can act as "a counterweight" to American power. For
Putin to start echoing the anti-American sniping of Paris and Beijing is
risky business, and points to his own dismay at the way the Ukraine crisis
threatens him. Because of the way the Western media are portraying things,
Putin fears that he might go down in Russian history as the man who "lost"
Ukraine.

It is all nonsense. Ukraine is not Putin's to lose. And whether Yushchenko
or Yanukovich or the Blessed Virgin Mary are in power in Kiev, the reality
is that Ukraine's economic future will depend much more on Russia than it
will on Europe. And if the International Energy Agency is right about
Europe's dependence on Russian gas, the Europeans are not going to go out
of their way to humiliate Putin, nor to help the cause of anti-Russian
freedom in Ukraine.

The smart course of action, for European and the U.S. alike, is to stress
that Ukraine's election is a win-win situation for everybody; that Russia
and Europe and American alike will all benefit from a stable and prosperous
and democratic Ukraine that enjoys good relations with Kremlin and NATO
alike. This is not just smart; it also has the benefit of being true. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
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========================================================
5. "PUTIN'S PRATFALL"

By Michael Hirsh and Frank Brown, Newsweek, USA, Dec 13, 2004

Russia's leader thought Ukraine was in his pocket- until Ukrainians showed
how badly he had miscalculated. But the former KGB colonel still isn't
about to abandon his dream of bringing back the Kremlin's glory days of
worldwide influence

To Vladimir Putin, the cheers ringing through Kiev's aptly named
Independence Square must have sounded like catcalls from hell. Only three
weeks before, in a ham-handed display of Kremlin bullying, Putin had
championed his own dubious candidate for Ukraine's presidency, ex-convict
Viktor Yanukovych. A fraud-tainted election followed, and the Russian
leader haughtily dismissed calls for a recount, warning against Western
"interference." But after a long, tense standoff in which tens of thousands
of Ukrainians thronged the streets in protest- and only a day after Putin
again rejected the idea of a runoff. -Ukraine's Supreme Court last Friday
ordered a new election for Dec. 26. When the news was broadcast live on the
giant television screens in central Kiev, more than 30,000 supporters of
opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko went wild, kissing, hugging and
blowing noisemakers. Then the pro-Western Yushchenko appeared, declaring:
"Today Ukraine is a democratic country."

Why is that bad for Vladimir Putin? Because he's got grand plans that don't
necessarily square with a free-thinking democracy next door. The last
thing Putin wants to see is another chunk of the old U.S.S.R. disappear
down the maw of the ever encroaching West. (Yushchenko has indicated he
might try to bring Ukraine into the European Union, and possibly follow the
Baltic states into NATO.) Ever since Putin rose to the presidency in 2000
pledging to crush Chechnya's separatists, he's sought to halt further
disintegration of the former Soviet superpower and its sphere of influence.

And as Russia has grown richer on oil revenues, Putin has become bolder in
reclaiming Russia's old regional turf. He recently emphasized the point by
announcing he would modernize his nuclear arsenal. As departing CIA Deputy
Director John McLaughlin told NEWSWEEK: "Mikhail Gorbachev destroyed
the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin destroyed communism. Putin is reinventing
Russia." The ex-KGB colonel also thought he had a tacit deal with his pal
George W. Bush, some Moscow insiders believe: we'll cooperate in the terror
war, you leave our backyard alone. That means Ukraine, Russia's old
breadbasket and a bastion of its former power.

Putin was wrong: there was no such deal. While Bush was diplomatic in his
criticism, he and Europe's leaders publicly supported a new vote tally,
dealing Putin his worst humiliation in nearly five years as Russia's
president. Even U.S. officials admit they were taken aback by the dramatic
birth of democracy in Ukraine. "I don't think anybody predicted these
crowds," one senior Bush official told NEWSWEEK.

Putin may yet find another way to win- supporters of Yanukovych in
pro-Russian eastern Ukraine say they'll secede before they accept a
Yushchenko presidency. But last week's defeat will undoubtedly diminish
Putin's authority in the Commonwealth of Independent States (the old Soviet
states, minus the Baltics). It will also jeopardize the Common Economic
Space, the union of four former Soviet states (including Ukraine) that was
to have been Moscow's answer to the European Union. Worse, Putin now has
to wonder if the new wind from Ukraine will blow back at him. The cheers in
Kiev could give heart to Russia's own flagging democrats. "It is very
inspiring," says Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the liberal Yabloko Party. "The
main lesson from this is that there is a possibility of overcoming the
authorities, even when they control everything."

The Ukraine court decision looked like a big victory for Bush. "Putin is
now facing a united front of the U.S. and Europe on Russia for the first
time since Iraq," says Viktor Nebozhenko, a former adviser to Ukrainian
President Leonid Kuchma. But Putin's humiliation could also come back to
haunt Bush and the Russia specialist who will soon become his secretary of
State, Condoleezza Rice. If Putin blames his Ukraine comeuppance on U.S.
hostility, that could hurt the U.S. president on critical issues such as
Iran. Moscow has also tried to extend its sphere of influence there by
selling Tehran nuclear equipment and material. Last week, in some his
harshest comments yet aimed at the West, Putin suggested that Bush's
foreign policy was dictatorial and increased risks that WMD could fall into
the hands of terrorists.

Putin may also decide to ratchet up his economic warfare against the West.
By the end of the month, the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom, already the
world's largest natural-gas producer, is set to snap up the lion's share of
Yukos, Russia's biggest oil firm. The company will have the power to turn
the lights out in Europe and serve as a blunt instrument of Russian foreign
policy.

Bush will also face pressure at home to get tough with his old friend
Putin. "I'd like to see Russia excluded from the G-8," Sen. John McCain
told NEWSWEEK. Still, Putin and Bush are unlikely to take their new game
of brinkmanship too far; they need each other too much. Coit Blacker, Rice's
former Stanford colleague, believes the new secretary of State will try to
rebuild the Russia relationship. "Russia will get more rather than less
attention," he says. The question is whether Putin will welcome it- or
resent it. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
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With Eve Conant and John Barry in Washington
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
6. PUTIN'S 'CHICKEN KIEV'

By William Safire, OP-ED Columnist, The New York Times
New York, New York, Monday, December 6, 2004

The elder President Bush's most memorable foreign-policy blunder took place
in Kiev in 1991, then under Communist rule. With the Soviet Union coming
apart, the U.S. president - badly advised by the stability-obsessed
"realist" Brent Scowcroft - made a speech urging Ukrainians yearning for
independence to beware of "suicidal nationalism." His speech, which he now
insists meant only "not so fast," was widely taken as advice to remain loyal
to Moscow's empire.

I dubbed this the "Chicken Kiev" speech. That so infuriated Bush, who
mistakenly saw the phrase as imputing cowardice rather than charging
colossal misjudgment, that he has not spoken to me since.

Contrariwise, the reaction of President Vladimir Putin of Russia to the
latest manifestation of the desire of the majority of the Ukrainian people
for independence from Moscow is that of a dictator gripped by fear.

Putin's "Chicken Kiev" moment came when his plan to put in a Ukrainian
puppet backfired. He put the Putin system of a phony election, so successful
in Russia, in place: central control of major media, lavish government
spending on its candidate, harassment of the opposition and, most of all,
overt embrace by the powers that be in Moscow.

But Putin's Ukrainian puppets were sucked into the undercurrent called
"people power." This unexpected democratic force manifests itself when
dissenters are willing to defy authority in the streets and on the Internet;
when troops and police are unwilling to fire on demonstrating compatriots;
and when worldwide disapproval makes the costs of a crackdown prohibitive.

People power failed in Tiananmen Square because workers were not involved
and China's rulers called in troops from outlying areas. But in this
generation, peaceful uprisings have succeeded in Poland, Czechoslovakia,
South Korea and Indonesia - and Russia.

Putin remembers all too well how people power worked in Moscow for Boris
Yeltsin, overturning 70-year Communist rule; that is why he panicked this
month. The K.G.B. alumnus hailed the fraudulent victory of his puppet
prematurely; as protests rose, he summoned to Moscow the Ukrainian
president, ostentatiously to give him marching orders; and with all else
failing, he stooped to standard anti-Americanism.

The U.S. sought the "dictatorship of international affairs," Putin charged,
deriding Bush's "beautiful pseudo-democratic phraseology." His spin-niks
called attention to the opposition candidate's American wife, and hinted at
danger ahead in case the stolen election did not stay stolen: Putin's
fallback position is to encourage the division of Ukraine, absorbing the
pro-Russian east and rejecting the pro-European west - a breakup plan he
also has in mind for the "near abroad" people of independent Georgia.

This is the reaction of a man who fears the contagion of people power. Up to
now, conventional wisdom has been that - with some brave exceptions - most
Russians long for an authority figure like Putin, embrace his takeover of
parliament and provincial government, believe all they see and hear from
obedient state-controlled media and befog Russia's declining population with
vodka.

It could be, however, that Putin sees in his Ukrainian setback the
handwriting on the Berlin Wall. He knows how many Ukrainians welcomed
Hitler's army as a lesser evil than Stalin. He senses the danger to his rule
of a Ukraine that turns westward to join the European Union. He fears that
the outbreak of people power in his huge neighbor could abort his plan to
change the Russian constitution to make himself president for life.

As an unreconstructed idealist (and, as the global mushrooming of democracy
proves, idealists are the real realists), I believe people power will be
unstoppable. But new democracies will not be our clones, and newly liberated
peoples will irritate the superpower.

The pockmarked fresh face in Ukraine has already promised to withdraw
that nation's 1,600 troops from Iraq. The repressed youth of Iran, when they
overthrow the repressive theocracy, will still press for a nuclear bomb. The
free federalists of Iraq will cut shadowy deals with post-Chirac France and
post-Putin Russia. The young lion of a democratic Palestine will lie down
most grudgingly with the lamb of Israel.

Thorns in tomorrow's rose garden? You bet. But it is America's calling, as
well as in our self-interest, to foster the flowering of freedom.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/06/opinion/06safire.html?oref=login
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
7. "RUSSIA'S UNCHECKED AMBITIONS"

By Jackson Diehl, Columnist, The Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Monday, December 6, 2004; Page A21

Steven Theede, chief executive of the Russian oil company Yukos, sadly
observed during a visit to Washington last week that most Western investors
had convinced themselves that the persecution and incipient takeover of his
company by the Russian government was an isolated incident -- rather than
an integral part of President Vladimir Putin's emerging authoritarianism.
"They don't want to believe it's a broader issue," he said. So they ignore
the obvious: "If it can happen to Yukos," Theede said, "it can happen
again."

A similarly flawed logic pervades the Bush administration's reaction to
Putin. Yes, officials will acknowledge, Russian behavior is cause for
concern, but that doesn't mean there should be a blanket U.S. response.
Instead, they say, the Bush team will manage Russia issue by issue. Where
there is advantage in cooperation with Putin, it will be taken; and when
there are objections to his policies, they will be raised -- but all under
the umbrella of the friendly partnership between Putin and President Bush.

In practice the administration has been pretty tough in denouncing the
fraudulent elections in Ukraine -- though nothing has been said about
Russia's blatant backing of the fraud. But the White House, like those
shortsighted investors, is treating the Ukrainian crisis as if it were an
isolated affair. Bush and his team refuse to make the obvious connections to
Putin's interventions in other former republics of the Soviet Union. So they
don't draw the obvious conclusion: that what is happening in Ukraine is part
of a larger push to establish a modernized Russian empire.

This willfully blinkered approach will be on display today and tomorrow at
the meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE). Ukraine will surely be discussed by the two dozen foreign ministers
gathering in Sofia, Bulgaria, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
What won't be talked about -- at the insistence of Russia, and with the
West's acquiescence -- are three other OSCE countries where Russian
imperial meddling is underway: Georgia, Moldova and Belarus.

The first two countries tell a clear story of how Russia has changed under
Putin, and how the West has failed to react. At the 1999 OSCE conference,
the last when Boris Yeltsin was president, Russia promised to withdraw its
remaining troop garrisons from Georgia and Moldova by 2002. In 2002, with
Putin in charge, no withdrawal had taken place, but a new promise was made
for 2003. This year, with the troops still there, Russian officials are
stating they will remain indefinitely -- and they are blocking any mention
of their earlier promises from being included in the agenda or conference
declaration. What's more, appeals by the Georgian and Moldovan govern-
ments to the Bush administration to insist on the issue have been rebuffed.

Behind this screen, Putin is up to much the same game as in Ukraine. Last
week his government declared a blockade on the Georgian province of
Abkhazia, a separatist region. Why this virtual act of war? Because Putin's
designated puppet lost the province's presidential elections in October, and
its parliament had the temerity to declare the actual winner as
president-elect. So, even as he denounces the idea of new elections in
Ukraine, Putin is cutting railways and freezing trade to force a new
election in Abkhazia -- which is, mind you, a province of another sovereign
country. He would insist on installing his stooge, so as to use the region
to undermine Georgia's new democratic government.

In Moldova, the Kremlin is backing the opposition to President Vladimir
Voronin in the general elections expected in February of next year. "After
Ukraine We Shall Tackle Moldova," said the headline in a pro-Moscow
newspaper two weeks ago. Beneath it was the picture of Moscow's new
favorite, Serafim Urecheanu, shaking hands with Putin. Voronin was elected
as a pro-Moscow Communist, but a year ago he rejected a demand by Putin
that he swallow a "federalization" plan between Moldova and the separatist
region where Russian troops are based, Trans-Dniester. As in Ukraine,
Georgia and Belarus -- where Moscow backed a fraudulent referendum in
October that made its client president-for-life -- Russia can be expected to
use slush funds, intimidation, fraud and, if necessary, force in an attempt
to install a more pliable Moldovan regime.

Connect these dots and Ukraine is not an isolated affair but the centerpiece
of a concerted and dangerous Russian imperial strategy, one disturbingly
reminiscent of that which installed puppet regimes in Central Europe in
1947-48, and created the Iron Curtain. As the West learned then, such a
strategy can be countered only by determined resistance at each point of
aggression and by a broad rejection of the imperialism behind it. But the
Bush administration has yet to acknowledge, in its public statements, that
Russia has played any role in Ukraine. And when European ministers meet
today to talk about security and human rights in Europe, Russia's actions to
undermine those principles -- in Georgia, Moldova and Belarus -- won't
even be on the agenda. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
=========================================================
8. ECHOES OF COLD WAR AS BUSH AND PUTIN
DIFFER OVER UKRAINE POLLS

By James Harding in Washington and Arkady Ostrovsky in Moscow
Financial Times, London, UK, Monday, December 6 2004

The Bush White House, once so proud of the uncommon bond forged between
a US president and his Russian counterpart, is having misgivings about
Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

The close personal rapport between George W. Bush and Mr Putin was one of
the achievements of the US president's first term, heralded as a breach with
the long cold war history of mutual hostility and suspicion. After the two
men met for the first time in Slovenia in June 2001, Mr Bush famously
reported that he had looked into Mr Putin's eyes and seen the soul of a man
he could trust.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks of 2001, Mr Putin further
earned Mr Bush's confidence by ensuring the former Soviet neighbours of
Afghanistan facilitated the US war to topple the Taliban and pursue
al-Qaeda.

Just a month ago, Mr Bush was reported to have had a warm telephone exchange
with Mr Putin, who called to congratulate him on his re-election. And both
Mr Bush and his closest foreign policy advisers made a point last month of
thanking Mr Putin for ensuring Russia's acceptance of the Iraqi debt
write-off.

But behind closed doors, senior White House officials, State Department
diplomats and senior figures on Capitol Hill have grown steadily
disenchanted with Mr Putin's leadership across a range of issues and
aggravated by the Ukraine crisis.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, US administration officials say the
concerns are not just about well publicised "political transgressions" -
Moscow's approach to Chechnya, human rights, treatment of the press and
concentration of powers into the Kremlin's hands - but also the creeping
economic and diplomatic efforts to maintain influence across Russia's former
empire.

The Ukraine crisis has crystallised Washington's concerns about Russian
efforts to maintain a sphere of influence across the old empire. A US
official said Washington and Moscow were "at right angles" on the disputed
Ukraine elections held on November 21.

The tension could come to the fore during a meeting today and tomorrow of
the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which Colin
Powell, US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart,
are expected to attend.

In addition to US discomfort at governmental level, it has been noted that
Russian companies, albeit private ones, have "made focused investments on
the periphery and particularly in the energy sector", says one US official.
"The strategy is to increase influence with countries in the near abroad."

At lunch with Mr Putin in Santiago last month, Mr Bush raised for the first
time face-to-face his growing concern about the deterioration of Russian
democracy and Mr Putin's apparent efforts to extend his powers. In reply,
the Russian leader was reported to have treated Mr Bush to a long
explanation of Russian political history, dating back to the era of Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin.

In public, the White House is declining to discuss the US-Russia
relationship, insisting it is not looking at Ukraine "through that prism".

Mr Putin had not yet crossed any "red lines", one official said. Several
officials said they did not foresee any changes to the strategic
relationship the US needs to work with Russia in the war on terror, over
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea as well as on a broad range of
economic issues, notably oil. So there is no talk yet of disinviting Mr
Putin from the Group of Eight summit next year.

But the official acknowledged there could be "tactical changes" - diplomatic
jargon for maintaining the same broad goals for the relationship, but making
small adjustments to the way it is handled.

Russia also shows similar signs of disenchantment, combined with a pragmatic
impulse to maintain an effective working relationship.

Late last week, Mr Putin made an implicit but scathing attack on Bush
foreign policy. Without naming the US, Mr Putin warned that policies "based
on barrack-room principles of a unipolar world would appear to be extremely
dangerous".

Mr Putin, according to reports of his speech to a private audience,
continued: "Even if dictatorship is packaged in pseudo-democratic
phraseology, it will not be able to solve systemic problems. . . It may even
make them worse."

Mr Putin's comments underlined how the Ukrainian elections have amplified
anti-American and anti-European sentiments in Russia's domestic politics.
The official media, brought under control by Mr Putin, resurrected cold war
rhetoric and portrayed Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader,
as a marionette in the hands of Washington and Brussels.

Kremlin-sponsored political analysts have talked about Ukraine as a
battle-ground between Moscow and Washington. "If Yushchenko is elected
as the president, within a couple of years Ukraine will join Nato," said
Vyacheslav Nikonov, an analyst close to the Kremlin.

Independent analysts in Russia are convinced that Mr Putin's intemperate
rhetoric last week was designed for domestic consumption, and in reality he
does not want to sacrifice the relationship with Mr Bush, a pinnacle of his
foreign policy over the past few years.

"Putin is pursuing a dual-track policy. On the one hand he is fuelling
anti-American feelings domestically, on the other hand he does not want to
see the deterioration of the Russia-US relations," says Lilia Shevtsova, a
senior associate of the Moscow Carnegie Centre. But she says Mr Putin may
not be able to sit between the two chairs long: "Internationally Putin is
not ready for isolationism, but his domestic situation is pushing him
towards it." -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.249: ARTICLE NUMBER NINE
Suggested articles for publication in the Report are always welcome
=========================================================
9. "UKRAINE AND THE LESSONS OF HISTORY"

By Alexei Bayer To Our Readers, The Moscow Times
Moscow, Russia, Monday, December 6, 2004. Page 8.

The post-election standoff between the government of Ukraine and the
opposition may be decided not at the negotiating table or in the streets of
Kiev, but 800 kilometers to the northeast, in Moscow. This is because the
Ukrainian political crisis was engineered by Russia. As a result, whether it
ends with a compromise, degenerates into violence or triggers a breakup
of Ukraine may well depend on President Vladimir Putin's next move.

How far Putin is prepared to go, and how the West, especially Washington,
reacts if Russia intervenes directly, could reshape the global political map
for a long time to come. Perhaps in a less dramatic fashion, U.S. foreign
policy may be facing in Ukraine its greatest challenge since the Cuban
missile crisis four decades ago.

And yet, Moscow's direct intervention in Ukraine would merely mean
completing a full circle since the fall of communism and the breakup of the
Soviet Union into 15 new nations in 1991. The U.S.S.R. was soundly
defeated in the Cold War, but its defeat was eerily reminiscent of the
capitulation of the Central Powers at the end of World War I. Just like
Germany and Austria-Hungary, post-communist Russia lost its colonial
possessions and, in a much-reduced state, was bounced from the ranks
of great powers.

But in neither case did surrender come as a result of a decisive battle.
Neither the Central Powers nor the Soviet Union suffered serious military
destruction or endured occupation, nor did they see the full horrors of the
wars their leaders had helped to unleash. True, by 1918 Germany and Austria
were too exhausted to fight fresh U.S. forces pouring onto the Western front
and, moreover, they faced growing unrest at home. Nevertheless, although
surrender was inevitable, it eventually gave rise to the myth of "a stab in
the back," which facilitated the rise to power by the Nazis.

In Russia during the 1990s, the sellout myth was also remarkably prominent.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the great Soviet reformer, remains unpopular to this day,
and a surprisingly large number of Russians blame him for undermining the
Soviet Union on orders from Washington. Similar accusations against Boris
Yeltsin, Russia's first post-communist president, have been standard fare on
the Russian Internet for the past decade.

There were frightening similarities between Yeltsin's Russia and the
post-World War I Weimar Republic in Germany. Both suffered a bout of
hyperinflation when they were first established, which decimated private
savings and undermined popular support for democracy. Both regimes were
corrupt and inefficient, and characterized by poverty and hardship at one
end of the income spectrum and conspicuous consumption at the other. Both
ended up giving democracy a bad name: In Russia, it has received a derisive
moniker, dermokratiya, which can be rendered in English as "democrapcy."

As a consequence, when after an economic cataclysm -- the Great Depression
in one case and default and ruble devaluation in the other --
anti-democratic forces came to power in Germany in 1933 and in Russia in
2000, few supporters in either country were willing to defend democracy.
Worse, plenty of people welcomed "strong" regimes and their crackdown on
"capitalist bloodsuckers" -- Jewish department store owners in Germany and
(mainly Jewish) oligarchs in Russia.

Adolf Hitler had been a corporal during World War I, whereas Putin rose to
the rank of KGB colonel in the Cold War. Despite the obvious disparity in
military rank, they were both frontline soldiers who had fought in a lost
war. From their standpoint, their side had not been defeated. They had lost
because they were betrayed by corrupt politicians back home. Hitler harbored
a deep resentment of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which he considered mongrel
states carved out of German and Austrian territories at Versailles. He was
determined to wipe them off the map -- even if it meant unleashing World War
II. Putin, too, seems to have difficulty accepting the independence of
former Soviet republics. His administration was notoriously virulent about
the popular uprising in Georgia in November 2003, which brought to power
a young pro-American reformer, Mikheil Saakashvili. To undermine his
government, Russia has spent the past year fomenting separatist troubles in
Georgia.

Post-World War I borders left millions of ethnic Germans inside newly
created nation-states. Similarly, millions of ethnic Russians have been
trapped in former republics, providing a rallying cry for Russian
nationalists as well as a convenient pretext for the Kremlin to meddle in
the affairs of its neighbors. Actually, some 22 percent of Ukraine's 50
million people identify themselves as ethnic Russians. Former Soviet
territories are still commonly referred to in Russia as the "near abroad,"
implying a qualitative difference from genuinely foreign lands.

Historic parallels can be taken too far, of course. The current Russian
regime is certainly nowhere near as murderous as the Nazis were from the
start of their rule, and it also lacks a virulent racist creed. Moreover,
members of Putin's entourage, though mainly ex-members of Soviet security
forces and Cold War veterans, seem to be chiefly concerned with lining their
own pockets and appropriating juicy assets, such as Yukos. If Russia gets
tangled in Ukraine, the resultant conflict with the West may greatly hamper
such highly lucrative efforts.

Nevertheless, history suggests that Russia is likely to assert its dominance
in the post-Soviet space, which it regards as its own backyard -- and it may
do so with force of arms. In this case, the West needs to be prepared to
stand up to Putin and his regime. This is what learning a 60-year-old
European history lesson really means. -30-
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Alexei Bayer, a New York-based economist, writes the Globalist column
in Vedomosti on alternate weeks. He contributed this comment to The
Moscow Times.
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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/12/06/006.html
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 249: ARTICLE NUMBER TEN
Names for the distribution list always welcome
=========================================================
10. "EMBRACEABLE E.U."

By Robert Kagan, Columnist, The Washington Post
Washington, D.C., Sunday, December 5, 2004; Page B07

In the unfolding drama of Ukraine, the Bush administration and the European
Union have committed a flagrant act of transatlantic cooperation. If
Ukrainians eventually vote in a free and fair election and thereby thwart
the reemergence of an authoritarian Russian empire along the borders of
democratic Europe, it will be one of those rare hinges of history where
looming disaster was turned into glittering opportunity. And it would not
have happened without the joint efforts of the United States and the
European Union using -- dare one say it? -- "soft power" to compel Vladimir
Putin and his would-be quislings to retreat from their botched coup d'etat.

Maybe this is the real future for transatlantic cooperation. In recent years
thinkers and diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic have earnestly tried to
restore the old Cold War strategic partnership, albeit aimed at a different
set of enemies. We have squeezed European troops into Afghanistan, where
they are growing weary, and tried to squeeze them into Iraq, where they do
not want to go. "Out of area or out of business" was the Clinton
administration's mantra for NATO in the 1990s. But consider the possibility
that this old formula won't work for the new "postmodern" entity Europe has
become.

Except in matters of trade, Europe is not a global player in the traditional
geopolitical sense of projecting power and influence far beyond its borders.
Few Europeans even aspire to such a role. This means Americans should bury
once and for all absurd worries about the rise of a hostile E.U.
superpower -- Europe will be neither hostile nor a superpower in the
traditional sense. It also means Americans should stop looking to Europe to
shoulder much of the global strategic burden beyond its environs.

But the crisis in Ukraine shows what an enormous and vital role Europe can
play, and is playing, in shaping the politics and economies of nations and
peoples along its ever-expanding border. This is no small matter. On the
contrary, it is a task of monumental strategic importance for the United
States as well as for Europeans. By accident of history and geography, the
European paradise is surrounded on three sides by an unruly tangle of
potentially catastrophic problems, from North Africa to Turkey and the
Balkans to the increasingly contested borders of the former Soviet Union.
This is an arc of crisis if ever there was one, and especially now with
Putin's play for a restoration of the old Russian empire.

In confronting these dangers, Europe brings a unique kind of power, not
coercive military power but the power of attraction. The European Union has
become a gigantic political and economic magnet whose greatest strength is
the attractive pull it exerts on its neighbors. Europe's foreign policy
today is enlargement; its most potent foreign policy tool is what the E.U.'s
Robert Cooper calls "the lure of membership."

Cooper describes the E.U. as a liberal, democratic, voluntary empire
expanding continuously outward as others seek to join it. This expanding
Europe absorbs problems and conflicts rather than directly confronting them
in the American style. The lure of membership, he notes, has helped
stabilize the Balkans and influenced the political course of Turkey. The
Turkish people's desire to join the European Union has led them to modify
Turkey's legal code and expand rights to conform to European standards. The
expansive and attractive force of the European Union has also played its
part in the Ukraine crisis. Had Europe not expanded to include Poland and
other Eastern European countries, it would have neither the interest nor the
influence in Ukraine's domestic affairs that it does.

Cooper, unlike many Europeans, acknowledges the vital role of U.S. power in
providing the strategic environment within which Europe's soft expansionism
can proceed. Employing America's "military muscle" to "clear the way for a
political solution involving a kind of imperial penumbra around the European
Union," he suggests, may be the way to deal with "the area of the greatest
threat in the Middle East." In the Balkans, Europe's magnetic attraction
would have been feeble had Slobodan Milosevic not been defeated militarily.
And undoubtedly American power provides a useful backdrop in the current
diplomatic confrontation over Ukraine.

Cooper is not alone in his expansive European vision. Among leading European
policymakers, Germany's Joschka Fischer seems the most dedicated to using
enlargement and the E.U.'s attractive power for strategic purposes. Before
Sept. 11, 2001, Fischer was suspicious of bringing Turkey into the European
Union and inheriting such nightmarish neighbors as Iraq and Syria. But now
he regards Turkey's membership as a strategic necessity. "To modernize an
Islamic country based on the shared values of Europe would be almost a D-Day
for Europe in the war against terror," he argues, because it "would provide
real proof that Islam and modernity, Islam and the rule of law . . . [and]
this great cultural tradition and human rights are after all compatible."
This "would be the greatest positive challenge for these totalitarian and
terrorist ideas."

Americans could hardly disagree. Unfortunately, Cooper's and Fischer's
vision of an expanding E.U. empire is not shared across Europe. It finds
most support in Tony Blair's Britain, as well as in Poland and other Eastern
European countries, and among the current German leadership (though not
among the German population). It has least support in France, where even the
recent inclusion of Poland and other nations to the east is regarded as
something of a disaster for French foreign policy and where the admission of
Turkey is considered anathema. Modern, secular, forward-looking France still
insists that Europe must remain, in the words of Valery Giscard d'Estaing, a
Christian civilization. In this and other respects, France is part of what
one might call "red-state Europe," a pre-modern bastion on a postmodern
continent.

Americans are generally skeptical of or indifferent to the European Union.
They shouldn't be. The United States has an important interest in the
direction the E.U. takes in coming years. It may actually matter, for
instance, whether Britain votes to support the E.U. constitution, as Blair
wants. A Britain with real influence inside the E.U. is more likely to steer
it in the liberal imperial direction that the E.U.'s Cooper, a former Blair
adviser, proposes. That could prove a far more important strategic boon to
the United States than a few thousand European troops in Iraq. -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace (CEIP), Washington, D.C., writes a monthly
column for The Washington Post.
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 249: ARTICLE NUMBER ELEVEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
11. Q & A: DANIEK BILAK ON KUCHMA'S CALCULUS

Interview with Daniek Bilak, Toronto International Lawyer
By Peter Lavelle, Analyst, United Press International
Moscow, Russia, Monday, December 6, 2004

MOSCOW, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- UPI's Russia analyst Peter Lavelle interviews
Daniel Bilak, a Toronto-based international lawyer and a former senior
advisor to the Ukrainian government (1995- 2002) and an official
observer at the recent presidential election, on the next stage of
Ukraine's "Orange Revolution."

UPI: Friday's Supreme Court decision not only invalidated the Nov. 21
presidential runoff, but also the called for another ballot on Dec. 26
was more than the opposition hoped for. On Saturday, the opposition
got less than it expected - parliament did not pass legislation
concerning political reform. Will the Dec. 26 vote still occur?

Bilak: The Central Electoral Commission moved quickly on Saturday to
implement the Supreme Court's landmark decision and announced formally
that the election would take place Dec. 26. Therefore, one way or
another, there will be an election on that date.

Q. What is happening within the opposition movement? The opposition
is united in demanding that Viktor Yushchenko be legally elected
president. However, there appears to be difficult views how that
should happen. Elements of the opposition have been in negotiations
with the regime, with the help of European mediators, while others
support the uncompromising position of demanding "all or nothing." Are
these competing views playing into the hands of the regime?

A. I do not believe that they are playing directly into Kuchma's
hands, since Yushchenko is playing from a position of strength. The
Supreme Court's ruling has changed the political calculus of all
parties to this crisis and affected their relative bargaining
positions. Everyone knows the formula for resolving the present
crisis: President Leonid Kuchma approves the necessary changes to the
election law to ensure a fair election giving Yushchenko the
legitimacy he needs to govern in exchange for Viktor Yushchenko
agreeing to enact Kuchma's political reform agenda. Kuchma and,
interestingly, Oleksandr Moroz of the Socialists, maintain that
Yushchenko agreed to vote these two legislative proposals as a package
in exchange for a next round of voting. This fact earlier divided
Nasha Ukraina ("Our Ukraine" political bloc) along the lines you
suggest, as some deputies, correctly, argued that Kuchma, as
president, does not sign laws as a package. He could sign into law the
constitutional changes he wants, but return to parliament or veto the
law on improving the election process (which he did the other day with
respect to the law passed to this effect prior to the second round).

In this context, I am less troubled by Nasha Ukraina's well-known
internal squabbles - Yushchenko has the people on his side - than I am
with Moroz' current posture. His aggressive denunciation in parliament
of Yushchenko's "betrayal" in not passing both laws as a package is
odd, since Yushchenko's deal with Moroz was to pass political reform
some time after the election. Although portrayed in the Western press
as the leader of a social democratic opposition to Kuchma, Moroz
briefly entertained at the start of the campaign an alliance of the
so-called "left" with the architect of the regime's election program
and head of Kuchma's presidential administration, Viktor Medvedchuk.
His bargaining position (is) significantly weakened by the Supreme
Court's decision and knowing that he will have problems achieving
political reform through negotiation, Kuchma may be relying on Moroz
to push through their mutual interests internally within the
opposition. The problem for Kuchma is that Yushchenko will likely win
a run-off with or without Moroz' support and perhaps without the
changes to the election process.

Q. Viktor Yanukovych, the regime candidate, has signaled that he will
run in any third election held. Isn't Yanukovych more of political
spoiler for Kuchma now? There is no doubt many within the regime still
support Yanukovych, while others see him as a spent political force.
Does Yanukovych represent what divides Kuchma's regime when facing
the opposition?

A. Yanukovych is now problematic for Kuchma, and both he and Putin
would now like to dump the regime's candidate. Kuchma came out in an
interview published today and recommended that Yanukovych quit the
race. This is crucial for Kuchma to have any chance of undermining
Yushchenko in the elections. He has refused to fire the prime minister
as required by the parliament's non-confidence vote, and he has not
reconstituted the Central Electoral Commission, both key Yushchenko
demands. So long as Yushchenko holds political reform hostage, these
are the few cards Kuchma has left. If he can get Yanukovych to drop
out within 10 days of the election taking place, then Yushchenko has
to run in what is effectively a referendum on his candidacy - to win
he has to receive 50 percent plus one of the votes cast. If he still
controls the election apparatus and the commissions at all levels,
Kuchma can possibly deny Yushchenko his victory and force an entire
new election in three months.

But Kuchma is losing control of his troops. The pro-regime forces are
cracking under the weight of defections in parliament to the
opposition and many of Ukraine's business elites are hedging their
bets, if not supporting Yushchenko outright. Although probably
initially supported by Kuchma as a pressure tactic against Yushchenko,
the eastern Ukraine autonomy bid spun out of control as Yanukovych
turned it into a warning shot across Kuchma's bow not to ignore him.
Indeed, Yanukovych's statement that he intends to run again could
derail Kuchma's plans to assert his political primacy in the current
crisis.

Q. Many observers claim this election has divided Ukrainians. However,
is what we are seeing merely an expression of differences that have
been long present in Ukraine's politics?

A. The Western media has consistently mislead the public in portraying
the situation in the country as a Cold War-style stand-off that pits a
Ukrainian speaking, anti-Russian, pro-West, Catholic western Ukraine
lead by Yushchenko against a Russian speaking, anti-west, pro-Russia,
Orthodox eastern Ukraine enamored of Yanukovych. This is a gross
oversimplification of the nuances comprising the Ukrainian body
politic. Although regional differences clearly exist in the country,
Ukrainians have lived in relative linguistic and geographic harmony
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, devoid of divisive radical
social and political dislocations. In addition to the three most
nationalistic far western oblasts (provinces), Yushchenko garnered
significant support from basically Russian speaking, Orthodox, and
traditionally conservative center, southern, as well as eastern parts
of the country. Crucially, over 75 percent of largely Russian speaking
Kyiv backed Yushchenko.

The division revealed by the election was of a different character. A
huge chasm exists between the authoritarianism of Kuchma's regime
and the aspirations of the Ukrainian people. They did not vote for or
against Russia or the West. Instead, Ukrainians voted to reject the 10
years of corruption, cynicism, cronyism, intimidation, harassment, and
"banditizm" of a regime that most Ukrainians have come to loathe.
Instead, they came out to vote for something much more basic - the
hope of prosperity, stability, and security; as one voter eloquently
stated, "to live like they do in civilized countries." Ukrainians,
wherever they may reside, are united in wanting to be proud of and
respected by their leaders. Even with without his two criminal
convictions for robbery and assault as a young man, Yanukovych
was tainted as Kuchma's candidate.

Indeed, the notion of a regional and linguistic rupture in the country
was likely manufactured to help Kuchma cling to power. Kuchma has
survived by playing off and balancing the ambitions of the various
economic and regional elites, or clans. Wary of the surging power of
Yanukovych's Donetsk clan, Kuchma's support for his prime minister's
presidential ambitions was always tepid at best. Therefore, dividing
the country by assiduously stoking and exacerbating latent regional,
linguistic and ethnic tensions became an essential component of
Kuchma's election strategy for Yanukovych, designed to allow Kuchma
to continue to remain the ultimate arbitrator of Ukrainian politics
beyond the end of his term in office. If Yanukovych keeps his hat in
the ring, he may well receive about 35-40 percent of the vote,
establishing his credentials as a leading opposition politician.
Otherwise, there will not be any room for him even back in Donetsk.

Q. Predicting the future is always a hazardous endeavor. That said -
how do you see Ukraine's political turmoil playing out?

A. Tough to say. Kuchma will never give up willingly. His Soviet-honed
stubbornness aside, Putin will not let him. We are now perhaps in the
most dangerous period, as Putin and Kuchma's options narrow. I think
that Kuchma will continue to do everything in his power to either deny
Yushchenko the presidency, either by trying to rig the next round, or
by engineering . . . a radical devolution of powers from the
presidency to the post of prime ministers, or both.

The only thing that can stop these scenarios is what derailed the
plans in the first place - a massive turnout by people voting for
Yushchenko. Kuchma seems to have become something of a despot,
completely impervious to the transformation in society taking place
around him. Ukraine has changed - Mr. Kuchma, unfortunately, has not.
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