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Action Ukraine Report

"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"

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 236
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, November 29, 2004

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

1. SUPREME COURT STARTS HEARING INTO COMPLAINT
OF YUSHCHENKO HQ AGAINST CEC DECISION TO DECLARE
YANUKOVYCH PRESIDENT IN UKRAINE
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Nov 29, 2004 (11:34)

2. NATIONAL CONGRESS OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
ORGANS DECIDES TO HOLD REFERENDUM ON CREATION OF
SOUTHEASTERN REPUBLIC ON DECEMBER 12 IF
YANUKOVYCH IS NOT RECOGNIZED AS PRESIDENT
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, November 28, 2004 (20:13)

3. SERHIY TYHYPKO RESIGNS AS HEAD OF UKRAINE'S CENTRAL
BANK AND AS HEAD OF YANUKOVYCH'S CAMPAIGN
Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1012 gmt 29 Nov 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Monday, Nov 29, 2004

4. SBU RULES OUT USE OF FORCE AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, November 29, 2004 (10:17)

5. TEXT OF UKRAINIAN OPPOSITION ULTIMATUM TO PRESIDENT
TV 5 Kanal, Kiev, in Ukrainian 2000 gmt 28 Nov 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, In English, November 28, 2004 (20:00)

6.KIVALOV DENIES YUSHCHENKO CAMPAIGN'S ALLEGATION
THAT HE COLLUDED WITH YANUKOVYCH'S CAMPAIGN
TO RIG PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Nov 28, 2004 (20:05)

7. VLADIMIR PUTIN LETTER TO UKRAINE 'PRESIDENT'
LEAVES RUSSIA CORNERED
Agence France Presse (AFP)
Moscow, Russia, Monday, 02:05 GMT, Nov 29, 2004

8. IN A SIGN OF THE TIMES, UKRAINIAN TV INTERPRETER
MAKES BOLD ON-AIR MOVE
Ms. Dmytruk, Refusing to Stand Mute On Election, Calls Coverage 'a Lie'
By Yaroslav Trofimov, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal, Monday, November 29, 2004, PAGE ONE

9. "THE COMMUNIST CURSE"
COMMENTARY by David Satter
The Wall Street Journal, NY, NY, Mon, Nov 29, 2004

10. "THE OTHER NEIGHBOR"
REVIEW & OUTLOOK, The Wall Street Journal
New York, New York, Monday, November 29, 2004

11. KREMLIN-BACKED OLIGARCHS FUELING
UKRAINIAN SEPARATISM
Our Ukraine Update, Issue 63, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Nov 29, 2004

12. RUSSIAN SPIN DOCTOR BEMOANS WEAKNESS OF
PRO-MOSCOW CANDIDATE IN UKRAINE
NTV, Moscow, Russia, in Russian 0720 gmt 28 Nov 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, In English, Monday, Nov 29, 2004

13. ACROSS EUROPE, UKRAINIANS PULL TOGETHER TO
DEMAND DEMOCRACY IN THEIR HOMELAND
By William J. Kole, AP Worldstream, Vienna, Austria, Sun, Nov 28, 2004

14. YANUKOVICH'S FANS DREAM OF SECESSIONIST
UKRAINE REPUBLIC
By Tom Warner in Donetsk
Financial Times, London, UK, Mon, November 29 2004 02:00

15. "UKRAINE'S RIFTS EXTEND TO THE ECONOMY"
By Erin E. Arvedlund, The New York Times
New York, NY, Monday, November 29, 2004
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
========================================================
1. SUPREME COURT STARTS HEARING INTO COMPLAINT
OF YUSHCHENKO HQ AGAINST CEC DECISION TO DECLARE
YANUKOVYCH PRESIDENT IN UKRAINE

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Nov 29, 2004 (11:34)

KYIV - The Supreme Court has started consideration of the complaint of
Central HQ of Our Ukraine Coalition leader Viktor Yuschenko against the
decision of the Central Election Commission with which it declared Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych the president-elect.

Judges, authorized representatives of Yuschenko, parliamentary deputies
Mykola Katerynchuk, Yurii Kliuchkovskyi and Roman Zvarych, lawyer
Mykola Poludennyi, Yanukovych's representative Stepan Havrysh, CEC's
representatives Valerii Bondyk and Mykhailo Okhyndovskyi, and journalists
are present in the court room. The Chamber of Appeals on Civil Cases
consists of 20 judges and is chaired by Anatolii Didkivskyi. As Ukrainian
News earlier reported, Yuschenko's HQ lodged a complaint on November 25.

Eponymous coalition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who is also a member of
National Salvation Committee (NSC), called on demonstrators who gathered
on Independence Square in Kyiv on November 28, to come to the court building
on November 29 and rally outside until the sitting is over.

With 100% of the votes counted, the CEC announced that Yanukovych won
49.46% to Yuschenko's 46.61% in the November 21 run-off voting and on
November 24 declared Yanukovych the president-elect.

The Supreme Court prohibited publishing these voting results until it
decides on the complaint of Yuschenko, which is slated for 11:00 on November
29. On November 27, parliament acknowledged that the run-off voting was
rigged and passed a vote of no confidence in the CEC.

Beginning from November 21, thousands of people are rallying in the streets
in Kyiv and regional centers to support Yuschenko and condemn the stolen
election.

The National Salvation Committee, which was founded by the pro-Yuschenko
parties, declared a nationwide political strike on November 24. Supporters
of Yanukovych have been amassed to Kyiv and regional centers to demand
that Yanukovych be declared the president. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
========================================================
2. NATIONAL CONGRESS OF LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
ORGANS DECIDES TO HOLD REFERENDUM ON CREATION OF
SOUTHEASTERN REPUBLIC ON DECEMBER 12 IF
YANUKOVYCH IS NOT RECOGNIZED AS PRESIDENT

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, November 28, 2004 (20:13)

KYIV - The all-Ukrainian congress of local self-government organs that
took place in Siverskodonetsk (Luhansk region) on Sunday decided to hold
a referendum on creation of a southeastern republic on December 12 if Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych is not recognized as the president of Ukraine.
Ukrainian News obtained a text of the congress' decision.

"On the basis of Article 5 of the Ukrainian Constitution as well as taking
into consideration the fact that the normative acts of the Ukrainian
parliament that grossly violated the Basic Law of Ukraine are essentially
pushing us out of the legal field, we reserve the right to hold on December
12 a referendum on the issue of the status of the territories," the decision
states.

According to Raisa Bohatyriova, the head of the Regions of Ukraine
parliamentary faction, the referendum will be held if the election results
approved by the Central Electoral Commission are cancelled.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Donetsk region's Governor Anatolii
Blyzniuk has called for the decision of the Supreme Court to be ignored if
it changes the results of the November 21 presidential elections.

At 11:00 on November 29, the Supreme Court consider the complaints that the
election campaign headquarters of the Our Ukraine coalition's leader Viktor
Yuschenko filed against the CEC's November 24 decision that declared
Yanukovych as the winner of the second round of the presidential elections.

The all-Ukrainian congress of local self-government organs decided on
November 28 to create an inter-regional union of local self-government
organs of Ukraine and declare the presidential election results announced by
the CEC as legitimate. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
========================================================
3. SERHIY TYHYPKO RESIGNS AS HEAD OF UKRAINE'S CENTRAL
BANK AND AS HEAD OF YANUKOVYCH'S CAMPAIGN

Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kiev, in Russian 1012 gmt 29 Nov 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, in English, Monday, Nov 29, 2004

KIEV - Serhiy Tyhypko, who headed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's
election HQ, has resigned as chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine.
He said this at a news conference at Interfax-Ukraine in Kiev today.

"I will be involved in politics full-time," Tyhypko said. He recalled that
until recently he was National Bank chairman and Working Ukraine party
leader at the same time. Tyhypko was appointed head of the National Bank
of Ukraine on 17 December 2002. He went on leave on 14 June this year.

[Tyhypko also said he would not be Yanukovych's campaign chief any longer,
UNIAN said at 1021 gmt on 29 November. Yesterday President Leonid
Kuchma asked Tyhypko to resume his duties at the bank, citing "dangerous
signs" in banking, UNIAN reported yesterday at 1104 gmt.] -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
========================================================
4. SBU RULES OUT USE OF FORCE AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, November 29, 2004 (10:17)

KYIV - The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has ruled out the use
of force against demonstrators. The SBU's chairman Ihor Smeshko
announced this to journalists.

"I rule out any use of force against [our] own people. The SBU states
once again that it will not interfere in political processes," Smeshko said.

At the same time, the SBU warns that it will strictly fulfill its
obligations regarding protection of the constitutional structure and
territorial integrity of Ukraine.

According to Smeshko, the SBU is convinced that any use of force to
resolve the current political crisis poses a direct threat to the national
security and territorial integrity of Ukraine. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
========================================================
5. TEXT OF UKRAINIAN OPPOSITION ULTIMATUM TO PRESIDENT

TV 5 Kanal, Kiev, in Ukrainian 2000 gmt 28 Nov 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, In English, November 28, 2004 (20:00)

KYIV - The Ukrainian opposition National Salvation Committee has issued
an ultimatum to President Leonid Kuchma, demanding that he should sack
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych for alleged vote rigging within 24 hours,
opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko's ally Yuliya Tymoshenko said in her
speech at a huge rally in central Kiev.

The ultimatum demands that Kuchma should submit to parliament a new
membership of the Central Electoral Commission and dismiss the governors
of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv regions for alleged separatist statements.

Tymoshenko accused Kuchma of orchestrating a possible secession of
Ukraine's eastern regions. The following is an excerpt from Yuliya
Tymoshenko's speech at the rally broadcast live by Ukrainian television
TV 5 Kanal on 28 November:

[Yuliya Tymoshenko] A split in Ukraine and the creation of a southeastern
autonomous region is a project by President Kuchma. It was developed in
detail and in terms of legal advice by his son-in-law [businessman and MP]
Viktor Pinchuk. This information is absolutely true. Kuchma decided to do
this so that if he was overthrown from his current position he would have a
private territory in Ukraine, where the Kryvorizhstal steel plant and other
plants privatized by them are located. He wants to have private property in
the form of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Luhansk Regions.
[Passage omitted: Tymoshenko says Kuchma still playing an "evil" role in
Ukraine.]

The National Salvation Committee today approved an ultimatum to Ukraine's
outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma. I would like you to listen attentively.
It includes only four points. I would like you to approve this ultimatum to
Kuchma.
ULTIMATUM
[Yuliya Tymoshenko] The political crisis in Ukraine is deteriorating. There
have been attempts to split Ukraine. Actions by the authorities are
worsening the crisis every day. We have countless proofs that a planned
crisis is escalating with the direct participation and under the personal
direction of Leonid Kuchma. We are announcing an ultimatum demanding
that he should use his authority and do the following immediately:

FIRST, dismiss Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych for promoting vote-rigging
and participation in separatist actions.

SECOND, following the demand of the parliamentary resolution of 27 November
to immediately submit to parliament proposals to change the membership of
the Central Electoral Commission, virtually a new membership of the Central
Electoral Commission.

THIRD, immediately dismiss the heads of regional administrations who
initiated a split in Ukraine - the governors of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv
regions.

FOURTH, give an order to the Ukrainian prosecutor-general and the head of
the Security Service of Ukraine to immediately launch criminal proceedings
against the separatists that are splitting Ukraine.

We, together with you, are giving Kuchma 24 hours to meet these demands.
Otherwise we will consider Kuchma's inaction a crime against the Ukrainian
people with consequences envisaged by the Ukrainian Criminal Code. [The
rally chanting "Down with Kuchma"] Down with Kuchma! Down with Kuchma!

Down with Kuchma! If he does not meet the demands of the ultimatum in 24
hours we will begin blocking any movements by Kuchma around Ukraine
using some of those who are present here and on other squares around
Ukraine. [Passage omitted: Tymoshenko calls on the protesters not to
disperse.] -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
6. KIVALOV DENIES YUSHCHENKO CAMPAIGN'S ALLEGATION
THAT HE COLLUDED WITH YANUKOVYCH'S CAMPAIGN
TO RIG PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, November 28, 2004 (20:05)

KYIV - The Central Electoral Commission's chairman Serhii Kivalov has
denied the allegation by Parliamentary Deputy Oleh Rybachuk, the head
of the Our Ukraine coalition's leader Viktor Yuschenko, that he colluded
with Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's election campaign headquarters
to rig this year's Ukrainian presidential elections.

Kivalov issued the denial while addressing a press conference on Saturday.
Kivalov dismissed as fictitious the transcripts of audiotapes of telephone
conversations released by Rybachuk and is presently being circulated.
"Regarding the printouts that you are talking about, then ... people are
inventing what they want," he said.

Kivalov also described as speculation Rybachuk's statement that the CEC's
transit computer server was hacked as a way of falsifying the results of the
presidential elections. "I think that this is mere speculation in relations
to the server," he said.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Rybachuk accused the election
headquarters of Yanukovych, the leadership of the Central Electoral
Commission, and the Presidential Administration of colluding to falsify the
presidential elections.

He said that Yuschenko's campaign headquarters has proofs of the
collusion to rig the elections in the form of audio recordings and telephone
conversations confirmed by documents and witnesses.

He said that the audio recordings shown to journalists prove falsification
of the first-round ballot results and the fact that faked ballot papers and
absentee ballots were imported from Russia and that they demonstrate
how the CEC's transit server was hacked.

According to Rybachuk, the recordings carry the voices of Regions of
Ukraine faction member Oleh Tsarev, Yanukovych's adviser Eduard
Prutnik, presidential aide Serhii Liovochkin, and others.

Rybachuk played a fragment of the audio recording, which he said
demonstrated that the Yanukovych campaign headquarters and the heads
of the Presidential Administration used the CEC's transit server to rig the
election.

In particularly, he said that the recordings demonstrated how nervous the
Yanukovych team was when it turned out to that the electronic vote count
software had changed and that the old access codes did not work. -30-
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
7. VLADIMIR PUTIN LETTER TO UKRAINE 'PRESIDENT'
LEAVES RUSSIA CORNERED

Agence France Presse (AFP)
Moscow, Russia, Monday, 02:05 GMT, Nov 29, 2004

MOSCOW - It has been a bad week for Russian President Vladimir Putin
and things threatened to get worse Monday as the supreme court of Ukraine
considers stripping the Kremlin-backed candidate in the former Soviet
republic of his election victory. Putin took the risk of being the first
world leader to congratulate Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich on his victory
in the November 21 presidential vote which is now under dispute amid fraud
allegations from the opposition, the European Union and Washington.

Analysts say it may have been a case of wishful thinking on the part of the
Russian leader, who put his reputation on the line by making two public
campaign trips to Ukraine backing his man against a challenge from the
Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko -- who is it trying to pull Ukraine out of
Moscow's orbit. Russia now finds itself in the company oddly of China and
the
authoritarian republics of Belarus and the Central Asian states. All other
countries have either kept silent or charged fraud.

Now Moscow is locked in a Cold War-like showdown over Ukraine with
the West at a time when Putin's home policies -- including his decision to
eliminate direct national elections -- are coming under stern international
review. "The president got caught in a trap," said Irina Kobrynskaya, of the
Carnegie Moscow Center, of Putin's letter of congratulations. "He is moving
in two different direction by trying to modernize the (Russian) state... and
at the same time fighting off the European Union."

The Kremlin's initial attempt at damage limitation was sloppy. Putin said he
never congratulated Yanukovich for his victory but was simply happy that the
Moscow ally was leading in exit polls -- which he was not. Only a day
earlier Putin's personal spokesman gloated "that the victory was decisive."
Russia then changed tack and went on a rhetorical offensive that grew ever
more heated by the day.

"We have no moral right to push a major European state into mass mayhem,"
Putin said at a Russia-EU summit Thursday, while accusing the West of
fomenting dangerous opposition rallies in Kiev. His Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said the following day that "certain governments" have decided "that
Ukraine has to be with the West."

And things reached boiling point when Putin's aide on European relations
Sergei Yastrzhembsky said Saturday: "We get the feeling that certain forces
in the West have decided that the strength of post-Soviet territory can be
tested by using these means of street anarchy."

Liberal politicians in Russia immediately criticized Putin for going out on
a limb in an election the outcome of which was far from clear and thus
backing Moscow's foreign policy options into a corner. Putin -- like the
pro-Moscow leadership in Ukraine -- would in effect have to beat a
humiliating retreat and admit that the election was fraudulent should the
supreme court side with the opposition.

Analysts here fault Putin for drawing a line in the sand over Ukraine -- a
country which Russia sees as a buffer state against an expanding European
Union that Moscow views with increasing distrust. The standoff in effect
underscores the stark difference in global outlook between Russia and
Western Europe more than a decade after the Soviet Union's collapse.
"Russia with its idiotic world views has isolated itself completely," fumed
independent political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky. "No one needs this now.
Moscow cannot understand that it is not wanted when it has these imperialist
delusions. Ukraine is a part of Europe."

Others said there was no clear way for Putin to get out of a jam that was of
his own doing. They note that Putin did try to ease his plight at the
Russia-EU summit by saying the standoff had to be resolved through Ukraine's
judicial system -- a comment that waters down unflinching support for
Yanukovich.

But they also point out that more recent comments from Moscow accused the
West of trying to muscle its way into Russia's "near abroad." "The only way
out of this situation is an internal modernization of the country," said
Kremlin-linked political analyst Sergei Markov. -30-
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
=========================================================
8. IN A SIGN OF THE TIMES, UKRAINIAN TV INTERPRETER
MAKES BOLD ON-AIR MOVE
Ms. Dmytruk, Refusing to Stand Mute On Election, Calls Coverage 'a Lie'

By Yaroslav Trofimov, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal, Monday, November 29, 2004, PAGE ONE

KIEV, Ukraine -- Natalia Dmytruk, the sign-language interpreter at Ukraine's
state TV channel, came to work Thursday morning fired up for action.
The channel's reporters, like their colleagues on the other two major
national networks, were on strike. They were protesting government pressure
to slant news coverage in favor of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-backed
candidate in this country's disputed presidential election.

State TV wasn't broadcasting demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of
supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western candidate who believes that
the presidency was stolen from him through government-sponsored fraud. Mr.
Yanukovych, the current prime minister, was presented on the news as the
election's undisputed winner, receiving congratulations from Russian
President Vladimir Putin. )

So Ms. Dmytruk, 47 years old, adopted guerrilla tactics to break the
information blockade. Conspiring with her makeup artist, Ms. Dmytruk tied
an orange ribbon inside her sleeve. Orange is the color of Mr. Yushchenko's
campaign, and of the spreading protest movement that many Ukrainians now
call the Orange Revolution. Then after interpreting the news broadcast for
the deaf on Nov. 25, Ms. Dmytruk bared her wrist. "Everything you have
heard so far on the news was a total lie," she says she told viewers in sign
language. "Yushchenko is our true president. Goodbye, you will probably
never see me here again."

In the last week, such small acts of courage by people previously uninvolved
in politics have given the Ukrainian protests an unexpected momentum. The
protests placed large parts of the country -- including the capital, Kiev --
under Mr. Yushchenko's control, and put Ukraine's government into disarray.
Just like Ms. Dmytruk's outburst, many of these actions stretched or broke
regulations and laws -- in the name of securing democracy for Ukraine's 48
million people.

As she walked out of the studio after her broadcast, Ms. Dmytruk, who has
been at the station for three years, was greeted with hugs from her shocked
colleagues. Word quickly spread around the building, already in turmoil.
Even the station's technicians and the staffs of the daily children's show
and other nonpolitical programs decided to join the strike over the
coverage, some of them inspired by Ms. Dmytruk's broadcast.

By late afternoon, the TV network's president, Oleksandr Savenko, had to
face an angry assembly of employees at the station. Government interference
at state TV, and at the two other major national channels, employees say,
had become so prevalent in recent years that the entire script of news
programs was often written by the presidential administration, and not by
the journalists themselves. The two other channels are privately owned, but
until recently have been reluctant to challenge the government.

"Can we now, finally, tell the truth?" asked Maksym Drabok, one of the main
strike organizers and the channel's political correspondent who was barred
from appearing on air after criticizing censorship last month. "Yes, tell
the truth," Mr. Savenko replied at the meeting. "No more lies, no more
lies," hundreds of staffers chanted in response.

A few hours later, the evening newscast was opened with footage of this
meeting with employees, and a pledge to resist censorship in the future. Ms.
Dmytruk was also back on the air the next morning. Management at the two
other main networks caved in the same day and allowed balanced reporting.
"We now try to cover all the current events in as balanced a way as
possible," Mr. Savenko says in an interview; he insists, however, that his
channel wasn't biased before.

The break of the government's stranglehold over mass media proved a turning
point in Mr. Yushchenko's campaign to annul the official results of the Nov.
21 election where, according to the Ukraine's Central Election Commission,
Mr. Yanukovych won by three percentage points. A day before Ms. Dmytruk's
broadcast, the current president and Mr. Yanukovych's sponsor, Leonid
Kuchma, had called for the closure of the only pro-Yushchenko TV network,
Channel 5, for "fomenting a coup." Pro-Yanukovych regional administrations
promptly shut down its broadcasts.

But, as state TV introduced coverage of Mr. Yushchenko's protests, public
sentiment was transformed. The same night of Ms. Dmytruk's broadcast,
senior police and security service officers started coming on stage at the
Kiev
protests, pledging allegiance to "the people's side." Government officials
and lawmakers from Mr. Yanukovych's own party began abandoning their boss.

Mr. Yushchenko Sunday declared that "tens of thousands" of law-enforcement
and military personnel had joined his side. The Ukrainian Parliament voted
on Saturday to declare the Nov. 21 election "falsified." Ukraine's Supreme
Court is scheduled to consider the issue today.

"Many people, especially out East and South, were like zombies -- they had
no idea about what's going on in Ukraine , they didn't know about the
protests in Kiev, about how peaceful it all is, about how not a single shop
window was broken here in these days," says Mr. Drabok.

Ms. Dmytruk -- the first person to break informal censorship in a state TV
newscast since the election -- has kept her job. After spending hours among
pro-Yushchenko protesters in Kiev's main square and sick with the flu, she
watched the latest developments in Ukraine's revolution on TV this weekend.
In her high-rise on the city's edge, she wore an orange scarf and even her
dog was festooned with orange; the phone kept ringing with expressions of
gratitude and support.

"I was in such pain -- I just couldn't keep watching TV anymore, the gap
between what I saw on screen and on the street," she recounted. "So --
without telling anyone in advance -- I just went in and did what my
conscience had told me to do."

Ms. Dmytruk glanced at the latest protest footage on screen, awed by how
hundreds of thousands of ordinary people like her kept braving subzero
temperatures. "You can't lie to people forever," she said. "They felt
insulted and cheated, and they're showing it." -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.236: ARTICLE NUMBER NINE
Suggested articles for publication in the Report are always welcome
=========================================================
9. "THE COMMUNIST CURSE"

COMMENTARY by David Satter
The Wall Street Journal, NY, NY, Mon, Nov 29, 2004

The confrontation over the Ukrainian presidential election results will
determine the future not only of Ukraine but also of Russia. In this sense,
the decision that will be made by Ukraine -- whether it will be ruled by
laws or by men -- is the most important that has faced a former Soviet
republic since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian election campaign bore absolutely no resemblance to a fair
contest. Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate, was denied media
coverage and was almost certainly poisoned. Viktor Yanukovich, the prime
minister, won because, according to an independent watchdog group, 2.8
million ballots were falsified in his favor. There were impossibly high
turnouts recorded in Yanukovich strongholds, for example, 96.3% in the
Donetsk district and 88.4% in Lugansk, and all but nine opposition poll
watchers were barred from 2,000 polling stations in these regions.

Despite this, Vladimir Putin congratulated Yanukovich on a "convincing
victory" and the elections were described as "transparent, legitimate and
free" by observers from the Commonwealth of Independent States. The
support by Russia for obviously tainted elections has been attributed to
Russia's desire to prevent Ukraine from slipping out of Russia's
"gravitational
field." Mr. Yushchenko, who is pro-Western, supports Ukrainian membership
in the European Union and NATO whereas Mr. Yanukovich is against
Ukraine's early adherence to either organization and supports instead its
participation in a "single economic space" including Russia, Belarus and
Kazakhstan.

More important than the blow that a Yushchenko victory would give to
Russia's desire to dominate the former Soviet space, however, is the blow it
would deliver to the emerging authoritarian regime in Russia. The last three
presidential elections in Russia were no fairer than the one in Ukraine ,
and if the Ukrainians are successful in assuring a peaceful transfer of
power, it will give new hope to those who want to see democracy triumph
in Russia as well.

Mr. Yanukovich is the candidate of the government of President Leonid
Kuchma, a regime that is corrupt and criminalized even by the unsavory
standards of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Mr. Kuchma, the
former director of a Ukrainian rocket factory, handed the Ukrainian economy
over to a group of communist bureaucrats-turned-businessmen who
proceeded, as in Russia, to use their corrupt connections to officials to
pillage the country's resources at the expense of its hapless population.

The root of the oligarchs' wealth was Russian gas bought at low prices and
sold in Ukraine at a huge markup. The oligarchs enjoyed
government-sanctioned monopolies, so their profits were enormous and they
often did not even pay for the gas because the government guaranteed their
credit. The oligarchic clans expanded into regional conglomerates, taking
over steel, energy and chemical production, and insulated themselves against
competition with the help of tax exemptions and government subsidies.

The oligarchic system did little good for Ukraine , once, by some measures,
the most productive of the Soviet republics. GDP fell by 10% a year in the
'90s and Ukraine attracted less foreign investment than even Romania and
Moldova. In 1997, the World Economic Forum ranked Ukraine 52nd out of
53 European countries in terms of competitiveness. The system remained in
place, however, because the regime controlled parliament, suppressed the
media, and, when all else failed, resorted to terror.

Each of Ukraine's three dominant oligarchic clans has its own parliamentary
party. The Kiev-based clan of Hryhory Surkis and Viktor Medvedchuk, which
has a stake in the gas industry and power utilities, controls the Social
Democratic Party, which has 39 seats. The Dnepropetrovsk group, headed by
Viktor Pinchuk, who is married to Mr. Kuchma's daughter, controls four big
steelworks and directs the Labor Ukraine faction, which has 42 seats. The
Donetsk group, a regional conglomerate that became rich on coal subsidies
and is headed by Rinat Akhmetov, is represented by the "Regions" faction,
with 40 seats. After the March 2002 elections, the grip of the nine
oligarchic factions in parliament was weakened but they still controlled a
majority of the 450 deputies.

The only break in this situation came with the appointment of Mr. Yushchenko
as prime minister in late 1999, after the Russian financial crash in August
1998 threatened to push Ukraine into default. In his brief tenure, Mr.
Yushchenko cut state funding, reducing corruption and creating equal
conditions that increased competition and production. He also made serious
efforts to crack down on bribe-taking and reform the gas sector. He was
removed in a no-confidence vote organized by the oligarchic parties and the
communists in April 2001.

Besides controlling parliament, the regime manipulates the press. Hostile
newspapers were shut down and independent journalists threatened. Channel
5, the only independent TV station, has been disconnected in one region
after another, its managers subject to arrest. At the same time, the non-
resisting media has been controlled by secret instructions from the
presidential
administration. So the four state-controlled national TV stations ignored
Mr. Yushchenko during the election campaign while giving saturation coverage
to Mr. Yanukovich.

Finally, oligarchic control is enforced with contract killings. In the '90s,
Ukraine was the scene of hundreds of such killings, the victims including
journalists and politicians. Suspicions that the authorities were themselves
behind a large number of these killings were always widespread. The event
that, for many, removed all doubt, was the murder of Georgy Gongadze, editor
of Ukrainskaya Pravda, an Internet publication that specialized in exposing
corruption among oligarchs. In November 2000, his headless body was
discovered in the woods outside Kiev. A month later, a leader of the
socialist party played a tape in parliament in which Mr. Kuchma is heard
suggesting to aides that Gongadze be got rid of: "Deport him. Let the
Chechens kidnap him." The tape was provided by a guard who secretly
taped Mr. Kuchma's office.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the republics that emerged as 15
independent states shared an unenviable inheritance. Presented as an
economic system, communism, in fact, was an attempt to absolutize political
goals for the purpose of destroying morality. This unprecedented attempt to
substitute the man-made for the God-given could not but destroy the sense
of individual responsibility for millions of people who lived in the former
Soviet space.

A result of the absolutization of power in the former Soviet Union is that
democracy has taken root only in the Baltic republics. In the other
republics -- with the possible exceptions of Moldova and Georgia --
elections exist to confirm a decision that the authorities have already
made. Until a few days ago, it appeared that Ukraine was about to strengthen
this tradition. It was symbolic of the cynicism of the present Ukrainian
leadership that the deputy head of Mr. Kuchma's administration reacted to
the apparent poisoning of Mr. Yushchenko that has left his face pockmarked
and partially paralyzed by suggesting that he should hire a food taster.

The popular revolt against the falsified election results in Ukraine has now
spread from Yushchenko partisans to members of parliament, journalists
working for state TV, and even members of the security forces. It could, if
successful, reverse the relationship between rulers and ruled in Ukraine in
a way that is dramatic enough to change the entire political psychology of
the former Soviet space. It is for this reason that Mr. Putin has been so
adamant in congratulating Mr. Yanukovich on his "victory." The example of a
free Ukraine will morally isolate the Russian leadership, making clear that
Russia can either join the civilized world or preserve authoritarian rule,
but not do both. In this, Ukraine may repay a country that brought it
communist enslavement with an example of freedom, and with the pre-
conditions for a new start. -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring Service]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Satter, affiliated with the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute,
and Johns Hopkins, is the author of "Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the
Russian Criminal State" (Yale, 2003).
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER TEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
10. "THE OTHER NEIGHBOR"

REVIEW & OUTLOOK, The Wall Street Journal
New York, New York, Monday, November 29, 2004

In the weeklong struggle in Ukraine , the Kremlin without hesitation sided
with the thugs there who stole the presidential election. But another large,
Slavic neighbor with strong historical and cultural ties to this nation of
48 million has quietly emerged to steel Ukraine's democrats and muster
European support.

We're talking about Poland, which is now better placed than Russia to help
lead Ukraine out of this crisis. On Friday, Polish President Aleksander
Kwasniewski held talks in Kiev with opposition and government leaders.
Departing President Leonid Kuchma invited him, along with the EU's foreign
policy czar, to mediate. Lech Walesa, along with other Solidarity leaders,
came to town, too, standing alongside opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko
and urging hundreds of thousands to stay united to win their freedom from
corrupt rulers. After Ukraine's parliament this weekend declared last
Sunday's poll invalid (a symbolic not legal act), the supreme court today
takes up the opposition's case.

The Poles aren't the only interested and far from the strongest nation with
a stake in the outcome. As Russia rushed to anoint Kremlin-friendly
candidate Viktor Yanukovych president, the U.S., which spent billions to
shore up a wobbly Ukraine , deemed the election illegitimate. But Warsaw
plays a unique role in its old "borderlands," or kresy, that dates back to
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its longstanding engagement has helped
ease the often unrelenting pressure on Kiev from Russia. But as important,
Poland was active when the EU, as a whole, pursued a policy of benign
neglect toward Ukraine .

In office since 1995, Mr. Kwasniewski knows Kiev and Leonid Kuchma well. In
the mid-1990s, with American support, the Polish government tried to be the
bridge between the West and Ukraine -- with some notable success. The Poles
lobbied for Ukraine's membership in the Council of Europe. They pushed Kiev
closer to NATO, which has a special deal with Ukraine , and, since joining
themselves in May, the EU. Forgotten now, but Mr. Kuchma back in June 1996
declared in Lancut, Poland that Kiev wants to join the EU. Brussels mostly
ignored him.

In contrast to Russia, the other former imperial power in Ukraine , Poland
renounced any pretensions to its former territories. Warsaw was the first
country to recognize Ukrainian independence, a day after Kiev made it
official Dec. 1, 1991. A year later, Ukraine , whose western region of
Galicia was part of Poland before Stalin annexed it, settled its western
borders with Warsaw -- just as Russia started to haggle over Ukraine's
Crimea.

The recent Polish-Ukrainian friendship, after centuries of conflict and
distrust, shows that wounds can heal under the right strategic
circumstances. At last, the lessons of the 17th century have sunk in with
both countries. In 1648, the Ukrainian Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnitsky led
a successful uprising against the Polish aristocracy then dominating most of
today's Ukraine -- only to form an alliance with a rising Russia six years
later at Pereiaslav. That paved the way for Russia's rise to a great power,
and for Ukraine's and Poland's demise.

Relatively poor itself, Poland could never offer Ukraine much in terms of
economic aid. But trade and business ties flourished. The political ties
have stayed consistently strong, assuring leaders in Kiev that Ukraine had a
friend in the West even when relations with Washington or Brussels were
frosty. That was appreciated nationwide, as much in "nationalist" (as the
media clichés go) western Ukraine as in the "pro-Russian" east. In reality,
nearly all of Ukraine is committed to independence, though this crisis has
aggravated regional tensions.

Poland naturally prefers to have an economically growing, friendly democracy
on its eastern border. No one wants to be a frontier state. With a strong
voice in the EU, Warsaw can now push the bloc to move beyond the vague
promises of its "neighborhood" policies and consider putting Ukraine on
track toward eventual membership.

After the events of this month, the EU no longer can tell Ukraine that
Europe stops at the Polish border, as EU President Romano Prodi once
did. It's immoral: Millions of Ukrainians are presenting their European
credentials by fighting for democracy and rule of law. It's also
self-defeating: An isolated Ukraine poses a threat to Europe's stability
while an open, prosperous one is a great asset. Whether the democrats win
or lose, Ukraine won't be the same anymore. Someone needs to tell the
eurocrats.

One of the most unusual Polish contributions to Ukraine's centuries-long
fight for freedom comes from Waclaw Lipinski, or Vyacheslav Lypynsky. A
Polish nobleman by birth, Lypynsky became a prominent Ukrainian nationalist
thinker. In a 1920 essay, "The Tragedy of the Ukrainian Sancho Panza," he
attacked the corrupt, unimaginative leaders who, lacking vision and courage,
failed (just as Khmelnitsky did) to seize the chance to make Ukraine free
and independent after World War I. Watching a new generation of committed
leaders lead energized masses in Ukraine , his words and hopes ring true
today. "When the Ukrainian Don Quixote finds the lost windmill in himself,"
Lypynsky wrote, "then he will be able to end his horrible, bloody, tragic
journey." -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
==========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER ELEVEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
==========================================================
11.KREMLIN-BACKED OLIGARCHS FUELING UKRAINIAN SEPARATISM

Our Ukraine Update, Issue 63, Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Nov 29, 2004

KYIV - "Regional Governors in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv raised the
specter of eastern Ukrainian separatism over the weekend as a means of
avoiding legal responsibility for their criminal roles in the falsification
of the November 21 run-off presidential election," Viktor Yushchenko told
250,000 supporters gathered in Kyiv's Independence Square on Sunday.

"The so-called conference of local self-government and executive authorities
in the south-eastern territories of Ukraine, held in Siverodonetsk, Luhansk
region, and their intentions of proclaiming autonomy, have nothing to do
with the will of the people," Yushchenko said.

News reports from the conference indicate the gathering voted to hold a
referendum on their "regional status" - a euphemism for autonomy from Kyiv.
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, backed by the Kremlin in the presidential
election, attended the conference and urged participants to "not take any
radical steps." Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov also spoke at the conference,
lending his support to the separatist effort. Former Defense Minister Yevhen
Marchuk said Luzhkov's presence should send warning bells to Ukraine's
national security officials.

The governors of these three regions were intimately involved in election
fraud. In Kharkiv, police whistleblowers reported that 500,000 ballots were
falsified for Prime Minister Yanukovych during the first round of voting. In
Luhansk, election monitors videotaped election commissioners switching
district polling station protocols in favor of Yanukovych. In Donetsk, polls
remained open for an additional two hours and numerous polling stations
reported turnout exceeding 100%.

"The authorities are playing the dangerous card of separatism," Yushchenko
said. "They will definitely receive severe punishment."

Calls for separatism were met with stern warnings from official Kyiv and
regional city councils. Rada Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn called on "feudal
regional leaders" to abide by the constitution and reign in their rhetoric
so as not to incite additional popular discontent. The Procurator of Kharkiv
launched a criminal case against the governors for stepping out of
constitutional boundaries. However, a national security council meeting
chaired by President Kuchma asked the separatists for calm, but took no
decisive actions.

Industry giants such as Zaporizhstal and Mariupol Metal Kombinat distanced
themselves from the regional leaders and urged them not to fan the flames of
separatism. Crimean leaders, as well as oblast governors in Odessa,
Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolayiv and Kherson, also distanced themselves from the
three regional governors.
KREMLIN ROLE
Kremlin advisors played an active role in Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's
presidential campaign. They authored "temnyky" - special instructions from
the presidential administration to the mass media on how to cover news and
other events. Coupled with state-controlled media and censorship, many
voters in the East remain in the dark about the real state of Ukrainian
affairs. Inciting ethnic strife, sorting regions, classifying voter groups,
and anti-Americanism were all themes used to drive a wedge between voters,
particularly in the eastern Ukrainian regions.

The Kremlin advisors consistently promoted strategies focused on regional,
religious, ethnic and language fault lines as campaign tools to isolate
pockets of voters. Now, these strategies have taken on new meaning and
significance in the post-election period, which is testing Ukraine's
national unity and territorial integrity. With the loosening of
state-controls over mass media, public divisiveness nationwide has lessened
somewhat with the exception in the East, where regional governments shut-off
opposition television channels and scrambled radio waves.

Regional government officials with close ties to local oligarchs easily
manipulate average citizens living in impoverished conditions. Law
enforcement officials have long been suspected of ties to organized crime
and involvement in harassing and murdering journalists and investigative
reporters who uncover illicit government activities. Counterfeiting and
contraband are major black-market activities in the regions bordering the
Russian Federation.

With the combination of widespread government fraud in the elections, an
outgoing lame-duck president, an illegitimate and discredited Prime
Minister, and a thus-far peaceful democratic resistance, Ukraine appears
close to the brink of instability. Rumors and circumstantial evidence of
Russian troops on Ukrainian soil continue to build. The Kremlin has
carefully and methodically put into play in Ukraine numerous political
scenarios, the combination of which is causing the outgoing regime to fold
and preventing the democratic opposition from taking power.

Last week's creation of a Committee for National Salvation by Yushchenko
supporters may have appeared odd to western observers accustomed to peaceful
transfers of power. However, the pledges of support to the Committee for
National Salvation by Ukraine's security, armed forces and law enforcement
bodies should be a clear indication that the people of Ukraine have placed
their trust in democratic opposition leaders and are prepared to support
them against threats to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity.

"We cannot publicize fully our plan of actions," Our Ukraine MP Roman
Zvarych told foreign journalists in Kyiv yesterday. "But be assured, we have
contingencies in place to counter each and every move." -30-
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER TWELVE
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
12. RUSSIAN SPIN DOCTOR BEMOANS WEAKNESS OF
PRO-MOSCOW CANDIDATE IN UKRAINE

NTV, Moscow, Russia, in Russian 0720 gmt 28 Nov 04
BBC Monitoring Service, UK, In English, Monday, Nov 28, 2004

MOSCOW - Russian NTV's programme "Orange Juice" at 0720 gmt 28
Nov 04, presented by Vladimir Solovyev, hosted president of the Effective
Policy Foundation Gleb Pavlovskiy.

The discussion focused on the situation in Ukraine. Pavlovskiy described it
as "revolution which has the colour of children's diarrhea", compared
Viktor Yushchenko to Hitler and called opposition leader Yuliya Tymoshenko
"an impudent woman". He argued that the elections in Ukraine were honest and
fair and Viktor Yanukovych was a legitimate president, but criticized him
for "lack of leadership" and going into talks with the opposition.

Pavlovskiy admitted that the Ukrainian people were tired of Leonid Kuchma's
rule but said that they had been "manipulated". He said that Yushchenko was
a sick man and that Tymoshenko would rule instead of him if he won.

Pavlovskiy claimed that all Ukraine's GDP is produced in the eastern
Russian-speaking regions that support the west of the country. He added that
eastern Ukraine could proclaim broad autonomy or even independence if
Yushchenko comes to power. Pavlovskiy described Western policy towards
Ukraine as "political invasion"

and advised that Russia should now review the whole complex of relations
with the West. He predicted that the Ukrainian pattern would be used for
"exporting revolution" to Russia and said that the Russian government should
prepare for "counter-revolution".

At the same time he said he believed that the repetition of the Ukrainian
upheaval in Russia is unlikely, because the economic situation here is
better and the "patriotic middle class" has already been formed. [Duration:
30 minutes. No further processing planned.] -30-
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER THIRTEEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
13. ACROSS EUROPE, UKRAINIANS PULL TOGETHER TO DEMAND
DEMOCRACY IN THEIR HOMELAND

By William J. Kole, AP Worldstream, Vienna, Austria, Sun, Nov 28, 2004

VIENNA - Swept up in a sea of orange, the color of Ukraine's embattled
opposition, Maryana Yarmolenko did on Sunday what thousands of people from
her homeland have been doing for days across Europe _ she marched to demand
democracy. "It's a historical moment for our country, and people want to be
a part of it,"

Yarmolenko, a 23-year-old law student, said as several hundred Ukrainians
waved flags and chanted anti-Kremlin slogans during a rally in downtown
Vienna, their fifth here in less than a week. "This is going on all over
Europe _ in Austria, in Italy, in England _ everywhere," she said.

>From Paris to Prague, Ukrainians living around Europe are pulling together
to stage small but spirited protests demanding a quick and peaceful
resolution to the former Soviet republic's political crisis. Rich and poor,
jobless and employed, they're united by the standoff and determined to do
whatever they can to help.

For Viktor Kryshevich, a Ukrainian-born computer expert, that meant helping
to raise cash for supporters of Western-leaning opposition leader Viktor
Yushchenko, who contends Russia-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych
stole the Nov. 21 presidential election.

Kryshevich and others in Vienna's modest 2,000-member Ukrainian community
said they scraped together A€2,500 (US$3,250) for the Yushchenko supporters
who have been camping out in tents on Kiev's Independence Square in protest.

"In Kiev, people are wet and cold, in snow up to their waists, because of
what they believe in. The least we can do is stand with them," he said.
"It's a matter of principle. People back in Ukraine will see, hear and feel
our support. We won't stop our actions abroad as long as our countrymen are
protesting at home."

In Rome on Sunday, Pope John Paul II _ a fellow Slav _ said during his
weekly address that his thoughts were with the Ukrainians present at St.
Peter's Square. "I assure them of my prayers for peace in their country,"
the pope said.

Ukrainians living in Poland, John Paul's homeland, have staged several
concerts and rallies in a show of solidarity for Yushchenko and those
supporting him. Braving cold and rainy weather, Polish rock and folk groups
played Saturday night at a gathering in the southern city of Krakow that
drew students from Poland and Ukraine as well as entire families waving
orange ribbons and flags to express the nation's struggle for democracy.

In Warsaw, local residents moved by how Ukrainian expatriates and
sympathetic Poles were stirred to action brought tea and tangerines to
students maintaining a round-the-clock vigil outside the Russian Embassy.

About 300 demonstrators, many wearing orange scarves or carrying orange
umbrellas and singing Ukraine's national anthem, rallied in London's Holland
Park on Sunday in support of Yushchenko. "I want a reelection for the people
_ not this false election," said Milla Smith, 49, a Ukrainian who lives in
Rayleigh, east of London.

In Madrid, about 300 Ukrainians _ members of Spain's estimated 5,000
immigrants from the Ukraine _ rallied at a downtown square Sunday, chanting
and waving flags and banners in support of Yushchenko.

In Prague, several hundred people protesting outside the Russian Embassy
chanted what has become something of a mantra for the Ukrainian expatriate
resistance movement: "We are many _ they cannot break us!"

Saturday's symbolic declaration by Ukraine's parliament denouncing the
election results as invalid raised the spirits of many Ukrainians, including
pop star Ruslana Lezhychko, who told Germany's Welt am Sonntag
newspaper it inspired her to end her pro-Yushchenko hunger strike.

But others, like Oleksiy Pyrtko, were skeptical and vowed to keep the
pressure on, albeit from afar. Pyrtko, 28, a self-described "economic
refugee" from Ukraine who has lived in Austria for the past three years,
pushed his infant son in a stroller Sunday as he marched from Vienna's famed
Opera to the downtown St. Stephen's Cathedral.

He and about 300 other Ukrainian immigrants wearing orange armbands and
scarves chanted "Yush-chen-ko! Yush-chen-ko!" Many carried banners that
read, "Putin _ Hands Off Ukraine," a reference to Russian President Vladimir
Putin's declared support for Yanukovych, Ukraine's pro-Kremlin premier.

"This is a make-or-break chance for democracy in Ukraine," Pyrtko said. "The
people need to keep up the pressure. We're everywhere _ all across Europe
and in America _ and we'll do whatever we can to help." -30-
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER FOURTEEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
14. YANUKOVICH'S FANS DREAM OF SECESSIONIST
UKRAINE REPUBLIC

By Tom Warner in Donetsk, Financial Times
London, UK, Monday, November 29 2004 02:00

DONETSK, Ukraine - In Donetsk, the centre of Ukraine's coal industry and
political base of Viktor Yanukovich, prime minister, the protesting crowds
are less massive than in Kiev, but no less vehement. After nearly a week of
outpouring in western Ukraine for Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader
who claims Mr Yanukovich fraudulently won the presidential election,
residents in the east this weekend rallied around their man, distrustful of
Mr Yushchenko's leanings toward the western world.

"I want to tell Europe and the world that if Yushchenko becomes president,
the [region] will join Russia," said Maxim Lipovetsky, a 20-year-old Donetsk
Polytechnic student who came with a group of friends to wave Yanukovich
flags in downtown Donetsk. "We have all the metallurgy, the coal, gas and
oil from Russia, everything we need. Western Ukraine has nothing but sugar
beets," he said. He rejected Mr Yushchenko's claims that Donetsk's vote was
falsified, arguing that vote fraud was a bigger problem in western regions.

Mr Lipovetsky stood among nearly 10,000 supporters of Mr Yanukovich to
demand that their candidate be installed as president. The crowd had been
estimated at 50,000 on Saturday, still a fraction of the protest in Kiev,
but the rhetoric was as heated as in the capital.

Should Mr Yanukovich not become president, speakers in Donetsk threatened,
they would act to split the country in half by forming a new South-East
Ukrainian Republic, which they hoped Russia would support.

Earlier in the day, Mr Yanukovich presided over an "All-Ukrainian Congress
of People's Deputies" in the nearby town of Severodonetsk, where more than
3,500 members of local councils from eastern and southern regions voted
unanimously to hold a referendum on their regions' "regional autonomy".Yuri
Luzhkov, the Moscow mayor, promised the crowd Russian support.

However, only 30 or so members of Ukraine's 450-seat parliament attended
the last-minute congress, a sign that Mr Yanukovich did not have the support
he had once enjoyed before Mr Yushchenko mounted his challenge. As a
result, it appears the calls for regional autonomy may be coming from Mr
Yanukovich's hardcore supporters but not from ordinary citizens.

One woman at the Donetsk protest, who spoke in a low whisper and would
not give even her first name, said the calls for splitting the country would
die
down quickly "but our feelings of being separate will remain in our souls
forever".

There would be enormous practical and political obstacles to the proposed
South-East Ukrainian Republic, which would comprise the southern and eastern
half of Ukraine where Mr Yanukovich, according to official results, won
large majorities.

The separatist calls come mainly from the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk,
where Mr Yanukovich won more than 90 per cent of the vote in the official
results, and from Crimea, where ethnic Russians outnumber ethnic Ukrainians.

During the Stalinist era, the Soviet Union forcibly sent citizens to
Ukraine, and subsequent generations have become wary of the west. Other
parts of the proposed new state are close to evenly divided between
Yanukovich and Yushchenko supporters. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 236: ARTICLE NUMBER FIFTEEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
========================================================
15. "UKRAINE'S RIFTS EXTEND TO THE ECONOMY"

By Erin E. Arvedlund, The New York Times
New York, NY, Monday, November 29, 2004

The crisis in Ukraine is seen primarily as a political split between east
and west. But the worry is that an economic rift could emerge as well - with
the country's industry-heavy eastern half allied with Russia and the western
half left to rely on trade with Europe. But analysts and experts say
Ukraine's economy is more complicated - that both regions have economic
ties that can contrast sharply with its political ties and are dependent on
both trading partners.

Ukraine seemed to edge a little closer toward a breakup yesterday as leaders
in the eastern region supporting the Moscow-backed prime minister, Viktor F.
Yanukovich - the declared winner in the election - called for a referendum
on autonomy. Civil strife would threaten Ukraine's fragile economic recovery
and plunge the government into a fiscal crisis. Over the weekend, reports
surfaced that investors might shed Ukrainian bonds on fears that a split
government would be a risky credit.

Ukraine's first vice prime minister, Mykola Azarov, warned that the
political crisis threatened the country's economic development and urged
opposition leaders to talk. "Revenue losses make the capability of the
cabinet to stand by all its obligations questionable," he was quoted on
Interfax news agency. Much of Ukraine's conflict within its economy derives
from its trade ties. While it is heavily dependent on Russia for energy, the
European Union is one of its largest trade partners.

Analysts say that whoever wins, whether it be Mr. Yanukovich, who favors
closer links with Moscow, or the opposition candidate, Viktor A. Yushchenko,
who hopes to move Ukraine closer to Europe, neither trading partner can be
ignored. Peter Westin, economist with Aton Capital, an investment bank in
Moscow, said, "Whoever wins in Ukraine will have to work with both the E.U.
and Russia."

With the European Union's enlargement to 25 members in 2004, Europe also
become one of Ukraine's largest trading partners, like Russia, with about
$15 billion in trade in 2003. But Russia is wary of Europe reaching out
economically and politically to Moscow's "near abroad" - countries like
Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and the former Soviet republics in the Caucasus.

About the size of Texas, Ukraine has an economy that is one of the world's
fastest growing, mainly because of steel and fertilizer exports. Steel has
helped Ukraine's recovery, because of demand in developing nations like
China, and because steel and base metal prices have soared this year. Steel
and fertilizer account for 40 percent of Ukraine's exports - two commodities
that have left the country's budget flush with cash and allowed the
administration to raise pensions and pay debt.

At the same time, Russia's natural gas monopoly, Gazprom, supplies about
a quarter of Europe's gas, about 80 percent of it flowing through Ukraine.
Those transit fees are a crucial source of income for the government.

Allied with Mr. Yanukovich are many of the business elite. He is closely
tied to a business group known as the Donetsk clan. The city of Donetsk,
with Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk - the heart of the country's
military-industrial complex - are the main power bases under the departing
president, Leonid D. Kuchma. But Mr. Yanukovich's alliance with the Donetsk
clan could backfire, especially if he eventually loses the election.

Michael Heath, political strategist for Aton Capital, said, "Given the often
questionable ways through which their owners came into the assets, as well
as transfer pricing and other corporate governance abuses, the commodity
producers may find themselves at odds with the new authorities if Viktor A.
Yushchenko is elected."

The opposition candidate, Mr. Yushchenko, the central bank chief from 1993
to 1999, is credited with taming hyperinflation, introducing a new currency,
and steering the economy through the aftermath of Russia's default and
financial meltdown in 1998. Mr. Yushchenko also pioneered legislation that
allowed free trade in land for the first time, unleashing growth in
Ukraine's formerly moribund economy. -30-
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McConnell, President, Washington, D.C., Kyiv, Ukraine .
2. UKRAINE-U.S. BUSINESS COUNCIL, Kempton Jenkins,
President, Washington, D.C.
3. KIEV-ATLANTIC GROUP, David and Tamara Sweere, Daniel
Sweere, Kyiv and Myronivka, Ukraine, 380 44 295 7275 in Kyiv.
4. BAHRIANY FOUNDATION, INC. Dr. Anatol Lysyj, Chairman,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA,
5. ODUM- Association of American Youth of Ukrainian Descent,
Minnesota Chapter, Natalia Yarr, Chairperson
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PUBLISHER AND EDITOR
Mr. E. Morgan Williams, Executive Director, Ukrainian Federation of America
(UFA); Coordinator, The Action Ukraine Coalition (AUC);
Senior Advisor, Government Relations, U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF);
Advisor, Ukraine-U.S. Business Council, Washington, D.C.;
Publisher and Editor, www.ArtUkraine.com Information Service (ARTUIS),
P.O. Box 2607, Washington, D.C. 20013,
Tel: 202 437 4707, E-mail: morganw@patriot.net
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