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"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 258
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 13, 2004

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

1. ORDEAL HARDENED YUSHCHENKO'S RESOLVE
By Chrystia Freeland, Tom Warner and Stefan Wagstyl
The Financial Times, London, UK, Sun, December 12, 2004

2. A STORY OF POWER AND POISON IS NOW ETCHED
ON THE FACE OF UKRAINE'S HERO
Askold Krushelnycky in Kiev
The Independent, London, United Kingdom; Sun, Dec 13, 2004

3. LINKS: FATEFUL DINNER PARTY THAT BROUGHT
DISFIGUREMENT IN ITS WAKE
Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow, Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Monday, Dec 13, 2004

4. KGB LEGACY OF POISON POLITICS
Doctors confirmed that dioxin poisoned Ukraine's Yushchenko.
By Scott Peterson and Fred Weir, The Christian Science Monitor
Boston, MA, Monday, December 13, 2004

5. UKRAINE'S YUSHCHENKO CALLS FOR DELAY IN
INVESTIGATION OF HIS POISONING
Natasha Lisova, Kiev, Ukraine, AP Worldstream; Dec 13, 2004

6. UKRAINE MUST SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO DRAIN
THE POISON FROM ITS POLITICS
The Independent, London, United Kingdom, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

7. UKRAINE: POISONED RELATIONS
The Guardian, London, United Kingdom, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

8. VITALI KLITSCHKO CELEBRATES BIG BOXING WIN
RETURNS TO UKRAINE FOR ANOTHER FIGHT
By Tim Dahlberg, AP Worldstream, Las Vegas, NV, Sat, Dec 12, 2004

9. 'THE REVOLUTION HAS LOST STREAM RECENTLY BUT
KLITSCHKO'S WIN HAS LIFTED OUR SPIRITS'
Roman Olearchyk in Lvov, The Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Monday, Dec 13, 2004

10. OBSERVER: UKRAINE NOTEBOOK
By Tom Warner in Kiev, Financial Times
London, UK, Sunday, December 12 2004

11. HARTFORD RALLY DRAWS SEVERAL HUNDRED
IN SUPPORT OF ORANGE REVOLUTION IN UKRAINE
Hartford, Connecticut, Sunday, December 12, 2004

12. UKRAINE MIGHT YET TASTE JUSTICE
GUEST VIEWPOINT: By Svitlana Kravchenko and John Bonine
The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, December 10, 2004

13. UKRAINE SPLIT BETWEEN EAST AND WEST BY
HISTORY AND CULTURE
By Matthew Schofield, Knight Ridder, Sun, Dec 12, 2004

14. POLAND PLAYS STRATEGIC ROLE IN UKRAINE'S
"ORANGE REVOLUTION"
By Taras Kuzio, Eurasia Daily Monitor
Volume 1, Issue 144, The Jamestown Foundation
Washington, D.C, Friday, December 10, 2004

15. 'THE COUNTRY CALLED ME'
Ukraine's newly sovereign society is throwing off the governing mob
Timothy Garton Ash in Kiev, The Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Thu, Dec 09, 2004
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
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1. ORDEAL HARDENED YUSHCHENKO'S RESOLVE

By Chrystia Freeland, Tom Warner and Stefan Wagstyl
The Financial Times, London, UK, Sun, December 12, 2004

People close to Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader and
favourite to win the December 26 re-run of the contested presidential
elections, say that, as a person, he is embarrassed and self-conscious about
the disfigurement caused by what his Viennese doctors said over the weekend
was dioxin poisoning. But as a politician, the ordeal seems to have hardened
Mr Yushchenko's resolve and brought him closer to his people.

"I have changed, of course," he said in an interview with the Financial
Times. "I think in the past year the nation has paid a high price to be able
to say that this is a European country, a democratic country." For Mr
Yushchenko's cheering supporters, their once handsome hero's disfigured
visage has become a very personal symbol of that price.

"What happened to me was a political act to destroy the leader of the
opposition," Mr Yushchenko said. Though his opponents still contest the
charge of poisoning, the illness did force Mr Yushchenko into hospital and
off the hustings for several crucial weeks during the campaign, an absence
Oleksandr Zinchenko, his campaign manager, says was a real blow. But Mr
Zinchenko said the opposition leader's visible suffering had acted to his
advantage. "It had a big impact on the voters," Mr Zinchenko said in an
interview. "Viktor suffered from the regime things a normal person could
not survive. If he could survive this, he could survive anything."

This demonstration of strength was perhaps particularly important for Mr
Yushchenko, who has sometimes been portrayed by his political opponents
as being too westernised and too soft to prevail in the hurly-burly of
Ukraine's rough post-Soviet politics.

But there has been nothing soft about the leader who rose from his hospital
bed to return to a campaign trail booby-trapped by state-created obstacles
and who then called his nation out on to the streets when the results of the
voting were falsified.

For Mr Yushchenko the peaceful protests represented a transformation for
the nation and a return to Ukraine's deep national traditions. Now, he said,
Ukrainians could remind both themselves and the rest of Europe of the
'democratic' chapters in their history for example, the Cossack tradition of
elected leaders. "These were unique rights which were passed down through
families, from grandfather to father."

They were a particularly important part of his own world-view, Mr Yushchenko
said, because his own native village in north-eastern Ukraine was the winter
resting place of Cossacks, and knowledge of these lapsed civic rights had
been part of his family's oral history during his childhood in the Soviet
Union.

As Mr Yushchenko starts on the final two weeks of Ukraine's election
marathon, telling voters about family experiences like these, redolent as
they are of the particular customs and history of Ukraine's eastern regions,
will be his most urgent task.

With his support in central and western Ukraine even stronger after the wave
of public protest, Mr Yushchenko and his team now hope to reach out to the
east and south, from which his opponent, Viktor Yanukovich, prime minister,
draws most of his support.

Mr Yushchenko's success in these parts of the country in previous rounds of
voting was impeded in part by iron-fisted local authorities. But it is also
true that in these areas the Yanukovich campaign's portrayal of Mr
Yushchenko as a rabid pro-American hostile to Russian speakers fell on more
fertile ground. But he remains confident of victory, predicting support from
at least 60 per cent of voters and a majority in at least 19 of Ukraine's 27
regions.

One big advantage will be the continuing erosion of support for Mr
Yanukovich from the state machine. Vasyl Baziv, deputy chief of President
Leonid Kuchma's administration, told the FT over the weekend that he,
together with most members of the presidential administration, supported
Mr Yushchenko. Mr Yanukovich has admitted to the widening rift between
himself and Mr Kuchma's central government in Kiev.

He sees himself as betrayed by the central authorities and is restyling
himself for the final leg of the election battle as the representative of
thwarted voters: "I am very disappointed with those to whom I gave my
trust, with whom I worked for two years [as prime minister]. They are
cowards and betrayers." -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring Service]
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
========================================================
2. A STORY OF POWER AND POISON IS NOW ETCHED
ON THE FACE OF UKRAINE'S HERO

Askold Krushelnycky in Kiev
The Independent, London, United Kingdom, Sun, Dec 13, 2004

KIEV - IT IS difficult to believe that poison is an ingredient of modern
politics in a country that aspires to join the European Union. Yet the grey
and ravaged face of the Ukrainian opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko,
provided ghastly testimony yesterday that such sinister methods are still
part of the 21st century political arsenal.

Seated in a Vienna clinic where he underwent blood tests, Mr Yushchenko
thanked his doctors, who confirmed over the weekend that he had been
poisoned by massive amounts of the industrial toxin dioxin.

The swollen blisters that have disfigured his face were caused by 1,000
times the normal level of dioxin in his body, said Dr Michael Zimpfer, the
director of the Rudolfiner clinic that treated him. "If this dose had been
higher, it may have caused death," he said.

Some of Mr Yushchenko's closest associates have privately blamed the
poisoning on the Kremlin which fears that he will remove Ukraine from
Moscow's influence.

Yet as prosecutors in Ukraine reopened a criminal investigation into his
illness, which struck after he dined with a senior member of the Ukrainian
intelligence service, Mr Yushchenko refused to renew those accusations. "I
don't want this factor to influence the election in some way - either as a
plus or a minus," he said. "This question will require a great deal of time
and serious investigation. Let us do it after the election."

With Ukraine about to rerun a vote expected to propel him into the
presidency, Mr Yushchenko prefers to look to the future as he returns to
the campaign trail.

The controversial run-off vote, which has now been annulled by the country's
supreme court amid allegations of ballot-rigging, led to his rival, Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych, being briefly declared president of Ukraine.

But the confirmation of the poisoning is likely to lead to further
speculation that the Kremlin was involved. It also gives credence to rumours
that Russian special forces had been sent to the capital, Kiev, and then
hastily withdrawn.

Ukraine's strategic importance is such that Russian President Vladimir Putin
spoke in favour of Mr Yanukovych, who wooed the Russianised east of the
country with pledges to make Russian a second state language and to offer
dual citizenship.

A leading member of Mr Yushchenko's coalition, MP Yuriy Pavlenko, voiced
the suspicion, held by many of his colleagues, that Russian intelligence was
involved in the poisoning. "I was always convinced this was poisoning and
an attempt on Yushchenko's life," he said.

Ukrainian intelligence services have said that they have no chemical or
biological facilities and that during the Soviet era, when they were part of
the KGB, specialised products of that sort were provided by Moscow.

There are historical precedents. Soviet intelligence agents were responsible
for the shooting in a Paris church in 1924 of the leader of a short-lived
Ukrainian state, Symon Petlyura. Ukraine's most prominent post-war
nationalist leader, Stepan Bandera, was assassinated in Munich in 1959
by a pistol firing a poisonous mist which brought on a heart attack.

Mr Yushchenko, according to his friends, has coped well with the nightmarish
illness. Much of the time he has received painkillers from a semi-permanent
intravenous device while addressing his supporters.

Yesterday he was resolutely upbeat as he declared: "The government that
has been in power for the last 14 years is now in its final days. I think it
would be appropriate to compare this to the fall of the Soviet Union or
the fall of the Berlin Wall." -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring Service]
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
========================================================
3. LINKS: FATEFUL DINNER PARTY THAT BROUGHT
DISFIGUREMENT IN ITS WAKE

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow, Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Monday, Dec 13, 2004

MOSCOW - It was no routine dinner party, its guests as distinguished as
its agenda was questionable. On the night of September 5 the leader of the
Ukrainian opposition, Viktor Yushchenko, met Igor Smeshko, the head of
the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, and his deputy, Volodymyr Stasiuk,
reportedly a confidant of the outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma.

The opposition had asked for the meeting to discuss how the SBU, the
successor to the KGB, would act during the forthcoming electoral campaign.
Mr Yushchenko was ahead in most of the polls, and presumably sought
assurances that the SBU would stay neutral. At Mr Smeshko's luxurious dacha
outside Kiev, they ate and drank until the small hours. But it was not until
Mr Yushchenko returned home that the first traces came to light of the
poisoning that was to nearly take his life.

Kateryna, his wife, told ABC on Friday: "I thought there was something
different about my husband when he came home that night - because he has
never taken any medicine, he's a very healthy man. And I tasted some
medicine on his breath, on his lips. And I asked him about it, he brushed it
away, saying there is nothing."

It was a typical reaction from a man whose tanned, square-jawed face had
helped catapult him from being a former national bank chief to presidential
contender in four years. A healthy, vigorous man at 50, he listed skiing and
basketball among his hobbies.

So when that night the illness first struck, he shrugged it off as bad food
poisoning. Yet the abdominal pains grew in intensity, interrupting his heavy
campaigning. By September 10, local doctors had recommended he seek
expert treatment abroad. When he arrived at the private Rudolfinerhaus
clinic in Vienna, his body was in an almost total state of collapse. He was
groggy, and had the same chronic abdominal pain, and his organs appeared
close to collapse.

His blood tests showed severe abnormalities. His face and upper chest were
covered in unusual lesions. His digestive tract and stomach were speckled
with ulcers and bleeding abrasions. Eight days of intensive tests followed,
yet the doctors, led by the director of the clinic, Michael Zimpfer, could
not pin down the cause of his illness. They said at the time that he had
arrived too late after falling ill for any poison he had ingested to still
be in his bloodstream.

Without Mr Yushchenko, the opposition's campaign was faltering, so he
opted for a plan to allow him to get back on the election trail. Doctors
inserted a drip into his spine to deliver constant painkillers. Three days
after checking himself out of the Vienna clinic, he stood before parliament
and accused the government of trying to kill him.

"Look at my face," he said. "Note my articulation. This is one-hundredth of
the problems that I've had. I want to know the names of the assassins very
much. But even without any investigation the answer is simple - the killer
is the regime. I survived because my guardian angels were not asleep at the
time. Every one of you is next, however."

On September 28, he returned to Vienna for further tests. The doctors were
no nearer establishing the cause. They suspected foul play, but had no
evidence of poison, instead suggesting various rare diseases, such as the
condition rosacea, might be to blame for his facial disfigurement.

He pressed on with campaigning, but the disfigurement remained the
unanswered question behind his election campaign and the 16-day crisis that
followed.

Days after parliament passed constitutional changes, the proof that doctors
at the Rudolfinerhaus had sought for weeks finally emerged. "We could do a
diagnosis and check his symptoms," said Dr Zimpfer.

"But we had no experience in advanced chemical weapons or biological
weapons. We made an international call to several experts in Europe and the
US." He said they had been able to pinpoint that the poison was based on
dioxin. The doctors said on Saturday that he had arrived in Vienna with
levels of dioxin in his blood a thousand times above normal.

The Yushchenko campaign refuses to name any suspects for the poisoning.
"Mr Yushchenko does not want revenge," said his spokeswoman Irina
Gerashenko, who said the prosecutor general's renewed investigation
should make conclusions alone. She added: "Then the courts can decide."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
www.vru.gov.ua, Ukrainian high council of justice;
www.gulflink.osd.mil/bw-ii/bw-tabe.htm, US military: the T2 dioxin;
www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
========================================================
4. KGB LEGACY OF POISON POLITICS
Doctors confirmed that dioxin poisoned Ukraine's Yushchenko.

By Scott Peterson and Fred Weir, The Christian Science Monitor
Boston, MA, Monday, December 13, 2004

MOSCOW - The weekend confirmation that Ukrainian presidential candidate
Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned left some analysts of Russian politics
shrugging: What would an election be in Russia, or any former Soviet
republic, without some KGB-style episode against a key opponent? The
scandal-ridden Ukrainian election fits a historical - as well as
latter-day - pattern of ruthless tactics brought to bear against political
opponents. In 2002, for example, a warlord in Chechnya was killed by a
poisoned letter.

"This case of poisoning Yushchenko is not an isolated one at all," says
Andrei Piontkovsky, head of the Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow.
"This practice was routine for the KGB in Soviet times, and I don't think
their successors have higher moral standards." Mr. Yushchenko Sunday
checked out of a clinic in Vienna after doctors confirmed that dioxin
poisoning was responsible for severe facial scarring and skin discoloration.
Yushchenko has long claimed that the condition was the result of an
assassination attempt.

Ukrainian authorities on Saturday reopened a criminal investigation into the
poisoning, which had been closed by the former prosecutor Gennady Vasilyev
for lack of evidence. Although dioxins are a common industrial pollutant,
doctors said Yushchenko had 1,000 times the normal concentration in his
system, leading to conclusions of foul play. "We suspect involvement of an
external party, but we cannot answer as to who cooked what or who was with
him when he ate," Dr. Michael Zimpfer told reporters in Vienna Saturday.

Whether by coincidence or not, Mr. Yushchenko fell ill soon after dining on
Sept. 5 with the head of Ukraine's SBU secret service, Gen. Igor Smeshko.
Officials and Ukraine's state-run media had scoffed at Yushchenko's claims
of poisoning, pointing instead to his love of sushi and high living as the
probable cause.

Speculation Sunday centered on who may have been responsible - cronies of
outgoing President Leonid Kuchma, or even Russia's Federal Security Service
(FSB), successor to the KGB. Both were seen as eager to engineer victory for
Moscow's clear choice in the election, prime minister Viktor Yanukovich.
Sunday, Yushchenko said he was "very happy to be alive in this world today."

Dioxins are byproduct chemicals created by factories that use chlorine, such
as those that make pesticide and plastics. A stronger dose could have been
lethal to the large Ukrainian politician. Doctors say he may need two years
or more to fully recover.

It was not clear how the incident would affect the vote, which Yushchenko is
expected to win. But the West-leaning candidate said the political
transformation that he has helped engineer has had no parallel in Ukraine
for a century. "I think it would be appropriate to compare this to the fall
of the Soviet Union or the fall of the Berlin Wall," Yushchenko said.

Whoever wins the Dec. 26 Ukraine election will inherit an ossified political
system that is still locked in a Soviet-style political environment and has
often used violence to deal with opponents.

Among the most bizarre cases is the disappearance of muckraking online
editor Georgiy Gongadze in September 2000. A month later, a headless
body was found on the outskirts of Kiev. Audiotapes of conversation from
the president's office - taped secretly by Mr. Kuchma's bodyguard - later
surfaced and appeared to link Mr. Kuchma to the killing. The bodyguard
later was given asylum in the US.

The standard of intrigue, however, has been set in nearby Russia - a
tradition that stretches back at least as far as Rasputin. His assassins in
1916 first tried unsuccessfully to poison the czar's court confidant with
cyanide-laced pastries and wine, before using bullets, knives, and finally
drowning.

When it comes to modern Russian politics, the presidential vote earlier this
year provided its own spectacle. Ivan Rybkin, a former speaker of the Duma
and top Kremlin official under Boris Yeltsin who ran against President
Vladimir Putin, disappeared for five days - about a month before the vote.

When Mr. Rybkin resurfaced, he first told a garbled tale about meeting
friends in Kiev; later in London, he claimed that he was abducted by the
FSB, drugged, and forced to make a compromising video.

More recently two different journalists covering the Beslan hostage crisis
in September say they were drugged - one on a plane, another during an FSB
interrogation - to prevent their coverage of the story. Medical tests later
confirmed one of the cases.

Friends and family of Yury Shchekochikin, a Duma deputy and deputy editor
of the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta in Moscow, believe that his death
after an unexplained skin rash in July 2003 - while he was investigating a
company owned by former KGB top brass - may have been due to dioxin
poisoning.

And in early 2002, the FSB celebrated its killing of a Saudi-born warlord in
Chechnya, called Khattab, who had once fought the Soviets in Afghanistan. In
the mid-1990s, Khattab became a key Chechen link to foreign funding and
Islamist militants. He received the letter from the FSB through
intermediaries.

"It is technically quite possible to be killed by poison put on paper," Oleg
Kalugin, a cold war defector who now lives in America, told the London
Sunday Times in 2002. "I recall in the old Soviet days the KGB planned to
assassinate some people by putting poisonous gel on the door handle of a
car." In 1978, a Bulgarian agent famously used a spring-loaded umbrella to
fire a deadly ricin pellet into Soviet defector Georgi Markov at a London
bus stop.

Further back in history, Stalin's secret police staged a car crash in 1948,
to kill Solomon Mikhoels, a Soviet Yiddish actor and theater director, and
head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. Another
famous case was that of the well-known pro-Bolshevik novelist Maxim Gorky,
who died in 1936. The secret police chief at the time confessed to poisoning
him at his trial two years later.

Even Boris Yeltsin, who later became president, once claimed in 1990 that he
had been grabbed while walking and thrown off a bridge into the Moscow
River. He showed up at a friend's place bruised, in tattered clothes, and
soaking wet. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
=======================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
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========================================================
5. UKRAINE'S YUSHCHENKO CALLS FOR DELAY IN
INVESTIGATION OF HIS POISONING

Natasha Lisova, Kiev, Ukraine, AP Worldstream; Dec 13, 2004

KIEV - Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko called for a serious
investigation to determine how he was poisoned by dioxin, but urged it be
conducted after the Dec. 26 presidential runoff election to avoid
influencing the results. Doctors at Vienna's Rudolfiner clinic said tests
run over the weekend proved beyond a doubt that it was dioxin poisoning
that caused a mystery illness in September that left Yushchenko disfigured
and in pain.

"I don't want this factor to influence the election in some way - either as
a plus or a minus," Yushchenko said as he left the Austrian clinic Sunday
and headed back to Kiev. "This question will require a great deal of time
and serious investigation. Let us do it after the election - today is not
the moment."

Following the revelation of the dioxin poisoning, Ukraine's prosecutor
general's office said it had reopened the criminal investigation that it
closed in November for lack of evidence at the time.

While high concentrations of dioxin remain in his blood, doctors said
Yushchenko's organs have not been damaged and he is fit for the campaign
trail. "He has almost made a complete recovery," hospital director Dr.
Michael Zimpfer told The Associated Press. "His liver is fine, his pancreas
is fine, but he still has residual pain."

Lawmakers from Yushchenko's party said the clinic's findings confirmed that
his opponents wanted to assassinate or disable him rather than take the risk
he would defeat Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential
election. Kremlin-backed Yanukovych won the initial presidential runoff, but
the Supreme Court voided the vote on fraud allegations.

Yanukovych campaigners rejected suggestions that the prime minister could
have been involved in the poisoning. There is "no logic in such an
accusation," said Taras Chornovyl, Yanukovych's campaign manager.

Yushchenko fell ill Sept. 5 and has been treated at the Vienna clinic twice
before. A lab in Amsterdam, using a newly developed test, found his blood
contained more than 1,000 times the normal amount of dioxin, Zimpfer said.
Tests showed the toxin was taken orally, and was likely slipped into
something that Yushchenko ate or drank, Zimpfer said, suggesting that
whoever was responsible may have thought it untraceable.

Dioxin is a byproduct of industrial processes such as waste incineration and
chemical and pesticide manufacturing. The massive quantities of it found in
Yushchenko's system caused chloracne, a type of adult acne caused by
exposure to toxic chemicals. The condition is treatable, but can take two to
three years to heal. Zimpfer said Yushchenko's treatment will now be "very
difficult and long."

Among other things, dioxins are known to cause cancer, and Dr. Nikolai
Korpan, the physician who has been treating Yushchenko, said it was too
early to tell what other problems might develop. For now, he said, "we can
confirm that his health is very good at this moment and he can do his job,"
Korpan said.

Also Sunday, Yanukovych's spokesman, Oleh Ternovsky, said that the prime
minister wants Ukraine's parliament to form a commission to investigate
whether the United States helped finance Yushchenko's campaign. Washington
has spent more than US$65 million (Euro 49.1 million) in the past two years
to aid political organizations in Ukraine, but U.S. officials say no
American funds were sent directly to political parties. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
6. LEADING ARTICLE: UKRAINE MUST SEIZE THIS OPPORTUNITY
TO DRAIN THE POISON FROM ITS POLITICS

The Independent, London, United Kingdom, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

THE CONCLUSION of Austrian doctors that the Ukrainian Presidential
candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, was poisoned with dioxins, is the sort of
chilling twist that one might expect to find in the plot of a John Le Carre
thriller. But, as so often in the former lands of the Soviet Union, truth
can be just as sinister as fiction. And the implications of this piece of
information promise to be just as dramatic.

Mr Yushchenko's supporters have long argued, of course, that poisoning
was the cause of the illness that almost killed him during the Ukrainian
presidential campaign earlier this year. Although Mr Yushchenko did not
die, his face has been hideously deformed, to the extent that it is now
barely recognisable. The fact that this illness struck after a dinner with
the
head of Ukraine's secret services left his supporters in no doubt that foul
play
was involved. But the statement by the experts of the Viennese clinic on
Saturday is the first independent confirmation of the poisoning theory, and
the likelihood that dioxins were slipped into Mr Yushchenko's food. It now
seems clear that an attempt was made, if not to murder Mr Yushchenko, to
eliminate him from the political race. Such a cowardly and barbaric attack
on a democratic leader is deplorable.

The other Presidential candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, had most to gain from
the removal of Mr Yushchencko. Without Mr Yushchenko, there would have
been no focal point for the massive protests against a poll corrupted by
widespread intimidation and fraud .

It is important to note that Mr Yanukovych, as the Prime Minister (and the
preferred candidate of the tyrannical outgoing President, Leonid Kuchma)
had the powers of the state at his disposal, including the secret services.
The Ukrainian state under Mr Kuchma's leadership is no stranger to
accusations of murder. Several political journalists have died in mysterious
circumstances in recent years, including Georgiy Gongadze, whose headless
corpse was discovered in 2000.

But Mr Yanukovych's links with the Russian Government also raise disturbing
questions. The Russian secret services, of which President Vladimir Putin
was once chief, have long been suspected of finding ruthless ways to silence
opponents of the regime, including the alleged poisoning of a Russian
journalist on her way to cover the Beslan hostage crisis earlier this year.
In this context, Mr Yushchenko's suspicions that his political enemies,
which include the Putin government, tried to kill him seem eminently
reasonable.

It is to be hoped that Ukrainian prosecutors, who are to re- open their
investigation into this affair, will now make a serious attempt to establish
the identity of the culprits. But many Ukrainians are already making up
their minds about what they believe, and this will no doubt be reflected in
the result of the repeated run-off election that will take place on 26
December. The decision by the supreme court to declare the former
election invalid and to order a new poll was a triumph for Ukrainian
democracy. And despite the enduring support for his opponent among
Ukraine's Russian-speaking population in the East, the latest opinion
polls suggest that Mr Yushchenko will be victorious.

Ensuring that the democratic will of the people of Ukraine is heard is not
just in the interests of the country. It is also in the interests of her
western neighbours. The European Union has a duty to do what it can to
stabilise the states neighbouring its easternmost border. As in Turkey, the
prospect of closer ties including, eventually, EU membership, could hasten
Ukraine's reforms. It could provide the impetus for the country to shake
off the last vestiges of its totalitarian history, and on the evidence of
what
has happened to Mr Yushchenko's that is something that is urgently needed.
Russia too would benefit. Mr Yushchenko's orange- clad supporters have
given heart to Russian democrats. The success of their vigil in Kiev has
shown that it is possible to stand up to the apparatus of an oppressive,
post-Soviet regime. If Ukraine succeeds, a better future might beckon for
Russia too. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
7. "UKRAINE: POISONED RELATIONS"

The Guardian, London, United Kingdom, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

First it was herpes, then a dodgy dish of sushi. Official attempts to
explain the drastic change in the looks of Ukraine's opposition leader
Viktor Yushchenko, were never convincing. The confirmation by his Austrian
doctors that he had been poisoned by a massive dose of dioxin will come as
no surprise to his supporters. It confirms what they knew all along - that
their enemies will go to any lengths, including assassination, to nobble
their leader. Mr Yushchenko first claimed he had been poisoned after a
dinner with Igor Smeshko, the head of the security service of Ukraine, and
he told rallies his scarred face was the face of dirty politics in Ukraine.
But the news from Vienna could further sour relations between Moscow and
Washington.

Events in Ukraine have pitched the two strategic partners in the fight
against terrorism against each other. The normally circumspect Colin Powell,
the outgoing US secretary of state, ratcheted up the rhetoric last week by
attacking "developments in Russia affecting freedom of the press and the
rule of law". Others are pushing George Bush to speak out more forcibly
about democratic values in Russia and its near abroad, a policy shift that
could be seen as an attack on the line set by Powell's replacement
Condoleezza Rice, who originally advocated a "realist" approach to Moscow.

Meanwhile, conservative forces in Moscow are pushing President Putin to
reappraise his alliance with Bush. Never before has Washington been so
forthright in condemning an election on Russia's doorstep. Yet with each
seismic tremor in the post Soviet world - the fall of Slobodan Milosevic
and of Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia, and now Ukraine - Washington's
presence has become sharper all over Russia's near abroad.

Of course, Washington denies directly funding opposition candidates. It
does not deny funding the NGOs, the parallel counts, the "voter education
initiatives" and, it is claimed, youth activist groups such as Pora, which
fermented the protests during the crisis in Ukraine. Washington's methods
are more subtle and slick than Moscow's hamfisted attempts to influence the
outcome in Ukraine, but US actions are far from disinterested attempts to
improve the democratic process in a faraway country.

The question Washington should be asking is whether its new "muscular
democracy" helps or hinders the long-term prospects of democrats in Eastern
Europe. To what extent do the cold war veterans around Bush and the KGB
veterans around Putin merely play into each other's hands? -30-
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
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8. VITALI KLITSCHKO CELEBRATES BIG WIN
RETURNS TO UKRAINE FOR ANOTHER FIGHT

By Tim Dahlberg, AP Worldstream, Las Vegas, NV, Sat, Dec 12, 2004

LAS VEGAS - Vitali Klitschko won a big heavyweight title fight by giving
Danny Williams such a savage beating that his hand hurt badly from hitting
Williams so much. That accomplished, he left on Sunday for Ukraine, where
an even bigger fight awaits outside the ring. Klitschko established himself
as the heavyweight to beat among the various champions by knocking
down Williams four times on Saturday before finally stopping the
Englishman in the eighth round of a fight that left the loser beaten,
bloodied
and battered.

He did it while wearing an orange flag on his trunks signifying his support
for Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. The gesture was
seen by millions of Ukrainians who stayed up late or got up early to watch
the fight on national television at 6 a.m. on Sunday. Right after leaving a
hospital where X-rays on his left hand proved negative, Klitschko turned
his attention to the crisis gripping his nation and his desire for democracy
in Ukraine.

"This win was very important for the people. It was a gift of good nature,"
Klitschko told The Associated Press on Sunday morning. "It was not
enough to show a good fight but to show that we're together as a people."
Klitschko, who briefly considered pulling out of the Williams fight because
of the turmoil in his native land, instead used the fight as both a showcase
for
his skills and his desire to see Yushchenko elected in the Dec. 26 revote in
Ukraine.

He was successful in both, giving Williams the beating that Mike Tyson
couldn't administer, and then sending a message to his countrymen who
watched the fight. "I hope this fight supports people who fight themselves
for democracy," Klitschko said. "To win the fight was very important in
the fight for freedom in our country."

Klitschko lives in Los Angeles but travels often to his homeland, where he
and his brother, Wladimir, grew up as the sons of a helicopter pilot in the
Soviet Union's armed forces.

Both brothers have been vocal in their support of Yushchenko, and Wladimir
joined tens of thousands of protesters last month in Freedom Square in Kiev,
where he spoke to the crowd and relayed the support of his brother. "I'm
really proud of the people in Ukraine," Klitschko said. "This game they are
playing is very dangerous."

So is heavyweight boxing, of course, though Klitschko was never in any
danger when he administered a beating to Williams in the first defense of
the WBC heavyweight title he won in April against Corrie Sanders of South
Africa.

Klitschko dominated from the start, knocking Williams down in the first
round, and landed 52 punches to the challenger's four. Klitschko knocked
him down three more times before the fight was finally stopped at 1:26 of
the eighth round. Klitschko is only one of four champions recognized by the
various boxing organizations, but the win helped him stake his claim to
being the best of the bunch. Williams, who came back to knock Tyson out
in his last fight, was beaten to a pulp and his face was bloody and swollen.
Still, he never gave up, even getting up after the final knockdown and
seemingly wanting more. He was later taken to a hospital for precautionary
tests.

"He didn't hit as hard as Mike Tyson, but he was more consistent with his
punches," Williams said. As doctors examined Klitschko's hand, he said it
would be up to boxing fans to determine who is the best heavyweight. "It's
not the belt that matters, it's the audience who determines the champion,"
Klitschko said. "But I believe I'm the best in the world."

Klitschko might get a chance to determine that sometime next year, if talks
to match some of the top heavyweights together are successful. HBO wants
him to fight former champion Hasim Rahman on a card that would also feature
IBF champion Chris Byrd and WBA champion John Ruiz in a unification fight.

For now, though, Klitschko's mind is on problems at home. His cell phone
was ringing at the hospital with calls from Ukraine, where there was finally
some cause for celebration. "People are very happy with my performance,"
he said. "Everyone in Ukraine was watching." -30-
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.258: ARTICLE NUMBER NINE
Suggested articles for publication in the Report are always welcome
=========================================================
9. 'THE REVOLUTION HAS LOST STREAM RECENTLY BUT
KLITSCHKO'S WIN HAS LIFTED OUR SPIRITS'

Roman Olearchyk in Lvov, The Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Monday, Dec 13, 2004

LVOV - It's snowing in the city of Lvov, a place which historically is in
the heartland of Ukrainian nationalism and patriotism. This morning, despite
the biting cold, the people are visibly cheery. Everywhere you go at the
moment you can hear the country's most popular song, a defiant rap tune
celebrating the orange revolution. "Out with falsification, out with
manipulation, we are not low-life losers, we are not goats, we are many
and we will not be beaten."

And, on this particular morning, there has been a tangible boost to the
people's fighting spirit. The Ukrainian hero Vitali Klitschko, having
defeated Danny Williams in Las Vegas, is on his way home to celebrate
with his countrymen.

Vitali and his brother Vladimir endorsed the candidacy of the reformist
opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko before and after the election last
month. Vitali, who considered not fighting on Saturday night in order to
return to Ukraine to protest against the rigged vote, was wearing an orange
ribbon on his shorts as a sign of solidarity with the people back home,
while Vladimir, who was at the ringside, wore an orange shirt and hat.

"When the people see that such popular men like the Klitschkos are
supporting Viktor Yushchenko they will start to realise that something is
wrong with [Viktor] Yanukovich," says 11-year-old Andriy, sitting at a
computer in an internet cafe. "They are big, strong and powerful and can use
their influence to convince others to support Yushchenko and not to be
afraid of the ruling regime of bandits."

Wearing an orange scarf, Yuri, a system administrator at the internet cafe,
adds: "I consider his victory in the fight as a very big plus, a confidence
boost for those who support the orange revolution. I hope Vitali Klitschko's
victory will help change the minds of the majority who support Yanukovich.
Vitali and Vladimir are coming back to support the orange revolution. I
think we have lost some steam in recent days but this victory by Klitschko
and the brothers' return has lifted spirits."

"I am very proud and thankful to them for being super patriots of Ukraine in
our struggle for democracy," says Olha, a young girl. "I am an average
person and my support matters as does everyone else's, but the Klitschkos
have more authority. People across the nation look to them for inspiration."
Tetyana Mokridi, a spokesperson for the Yushchenko camp, says talks are
under way with the Klitschkos in the hope that they will join the opposition
leader at rallies around the country. Oleksandr, a marketing director for a
computer distributor, says the support of the Klitschko brothers is
"desperately needed as both are huge role models throughout the nation".

"Remember, they are not only boxers, but doctors with higher education
degrees in sports studies," says Zenik, a taxi driver. "I think the battle
for democracy is not over in Ukraine. The ruling regime is not ready to hand
over power. They will do anything in their power to keep it. They will
falsify the vote again if necessary. People like the Klitschkos can help a
lot in fighting this evil regime."

Yet not everyone thinks the Klitschkos are the answer to the country's ills.
"For me they are only sports heroes," says Sergiy. "It's hard to say if they
have a future in politics. Maybe we will see them as respectable politicians
in several years, who knows." -30-
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roman Olearchyk writes for the Ukrainian newspaper Kiev Post
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER TEN
Names for the distribution list always welcome
=========================================================
10. OBSERVER: UKRAINE NOTEBOOK

By Tom Warner in Kiev, Financial Times
London, UK, Sunday, December 12 2004

A HEAVYWEIGHT DEMONSTRATION
You can't escape politics if you are Ukrainian these days - even in the
boxing ring. The first question put to world champion Vitali Klitschko after
he had retained his title in Las Vegas on Saturday night concerned not his
next challenger but "political reform". Klitschko anticipated the question
as effectively as he had British opponent Danny Williams' right hook.

"I support the people's fight for democracy against manipulation. For me it
is very important, the future of my government, and I give my best, do what
I can," the 6ft 7in giant told his interviewer after flooring Williams in
the eighth round.

Indeed, Dr Klitschko - he has a PhD, no less - made no secret of his
loyalties. He fought with an orange handkerchief dangling from his boxing
trunks to show his solidarity with his countrymen back home who had rallied
in Kiev for more than two weeks against a rigged presidential election, now
cancelled by the country's supreme court and headed for a December 26
re-run.

Vitali's "little" (ahem) brother, Vladimir, also a world-class heavyweight,
made it even clearer, joining the protests in Kiev alongside opposition
leader Viktor Yushchenko. Vladimir used his show business contacts to
arrange videotaped messages of encouragement to warm the crowds from
Britrocker Sting and ageing soul man Joe Cocker.

Meanwhile, back in Vegas, as Vitali's long arms were hoisted over his head
in victory, an orange Yushchenko campaign flag was hoisted over the ring,
while several members of Ukraine's parliament in the crowd raised their own.
ORANGE WINS
Orange has been lucky for Ukrainian sportsmen since the beginning of the
uprising, when Dynamo Kiev faced Roma in a Champions League soccer
home game.

Dynamo's owners, no friends of Yushchenko, ordered security guards to
prevent fans entering the stadium wearing orange. The game got off to a
slow, glum start before snow forced a switch to an orange ball for
visibility. The crowd went wild and Dynamo went up 2-0.

Meanwhile, Shakhtar Donetsk, the home-town team of Yushchenko's
opponent in the elections, Viktor Yanukovich, made a stand by playing
in black instead of its usual orange jerseys and lost 4-0 to Milan. Shakhtar
switched back to orange for a game against Barcelona and won 2-0.
EURO-VISIONARIES
Also appearing at the square, dwarfed by the younger Klitschko, was pop
singer Ruslana, the fast-stepping featherweight champion of this year's
Eurovision song contest. The euroteens who voted for Ruslana's Wild Dances
were knocked out by the exotic Hutsul horns and Cossack choreography. But to
fans back home the triumph was clear proof of their European identity. Some
even saw an omen of future European Union membership - after all, the past
three winners were Estonia and Latvia, who joined this year, and Turkey,
expected to be invited next week.

So imagine the pressure on the organisers of Eurovision 2005, to be held in
Kiev in May. The best venue they could find was the Soviet-built "Sports
Palace" where, last month, President Leonid Kuchma and Yanukovich gathered
thousands of police to remind them who was supposed to win the elections.
The Eurovision website says, in a rare understatement: "Various rebuilding
measures will be necessary."
McREVOLUTION
Reflecting the east-west divide in the country, many Russian commentators,
and some in the west, detect an American conspiracy behind the Orange
Revolution. They point to US government funding for pro-democracy civic
groups. Some over-excited Russian officials, Observer hears, even claim the
demonstrators are getting daily pay from the west.

In fact, while most want to rid the country of corruption, Moscow would be
interested to hear of the following incident. In the early morning of
November 26, when Kuchma deployed more than 1,000 police in an effort
to clear protestors blockading the presidential administration building, an
advance group of four bus-loads of police tried to drive to the building's
main entrance. Just then, a lorry roared up and wedged itself in the road,
blocking the police buses' way. Painted on the side of that lorry was
nothing other than a giant Big Mac and golden arches.
COLOUR OF MONEY
McDonald's might be bullish but for many Ukrainian businesses the political
crisis has been a serious disruption, most notably because it has
exacerbated a shortage of foreign currency. But Ukraine's stock market, tiny
as it is, has seen nothing but gains, with brokers hardly able to contain
their excitement.

Concorde Capital, a newly formed stock house, has sent out invitations to a
"Viva (sic) La Revolution! Investment Conference", saying: "The Ukrainian
investment and political climate has undergone a drastic change in the last
few weeks and now is the time to take advantage." The colour of money is
orange. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER ELEVEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
11. HARTFORD RALLY DRAWS SEVERAL HUNDRED
IN SUPPORT OF ORANGE REVOLUTION IN UKRAINE

Hartford, Connecticut, Sunday, December 12, 2004

HARTFORD - On Saturday, December 11, a crowd of several
hundred demonstrators gathered on the steps of the Connecticut State
Capitol, for a rally in support of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine.
Despite a thick fog and cold mist, the enthusiastic throng waved Ukrainian
flags and bright orange scarves and banners to show their support of the
pro-Western presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, and to demand fair
elections. The rally attracted a diverse crowd of participants, mostly from
the Greater Hartford area, but also including supporters from as far away as
New Haven, New Britain, Oxford, Colchester, Danbury and Bridgeport.

The keynote speaker was Dr. Lawrence DeNardis, a former Congressman
from the 5th District and President Emeritus of the University of New Haven.
Dr. DeNardis served as an election monitor in Kherson and spoke openly about
the fraudulent tactics he witnessed in the days leading up to the November
21st vote. "Any notion of freedom of speech or assembly was nonexistent in
what was supposed to be a free country." Other speakers included State
Senator John Fonfara of Hartford and State Senator Jonathan Harris of West
Hartford and Dr. Elona Vaisnys of Yale University, a member of the
Lithuanian National Executive Committee.

Senator Harris told the crowd how inspired he was to see the non-violent
reform movement growing in Ukraine, and he assured the crowd that it would
be much more difficult for the Kuchma-Yanukovych-Putin clique to derail the
December 26th election. Quoting the chant from the 1968 Democratic
Convention, Harris told the crowd: "By now, the whole world is watching!"
Senator Fonfara pledged that the State Capitol will be flying the Ukrainian
flag on December 26th to show Connecticut's solidarity with the people of
Ukraine as they go to the polls.

Julie Nesteruk of Wethersfield read a joint letter of support from US
Senators Joseph Lieberman and Christopher Dodd who have been outspoken
critics of election irregularities leading up to the November 21st runoff.

The rally was organized under the auspices of the Council of
Ukrainian-American Organizations of Greater Hartford. It attracted extensive
press coverage from the Hartford Courant, with a front page photograph and
article in the Sunday Local section, and reports on each of the State's ABC,
CBS and NBC news stations (Channels 8, 3 and 30, respectively). One of the
participants was quoted as saying, "Today is a day when all Americans and
people of all nationalities can rejoice in the renaissance of freedom in
Ukraine. We are here to tell our friends in Kyiv's Independence Square that
we stand with them, and we want them to know how very proud we are of
their passionate commitment to the deepest human values that unite us all."

The protesters waved Ukrainian flags and placards and banners that read
"Yes, Yushchenko!"; "Stay strong, Ukraine!" and "Hey, Putin! Keep your
KGB nose out of Ukraine", a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin
who has been sharply criticized for his interference in the Ukrainian
elections.

Many schoolchildren from the Saturday Ukrainian studies school at St.
Michael's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Hartford joined their parents and
grandparents at the rally soon after classes ended. The rally ended with the
singing of the Ukrainian national anthem. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For more information, please contact Irene Oleksiak at (860) 647-9946
or Natalie Korsheniuk-Pollock at (860) 675-1991.
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER TWELVE
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
12. UKRAINE MIGHT YET TASTE JUSTICE

GUEST VIEWPOINT: By Svitlana Kravchenko and John Bonine
The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon, December 10, 2004

Maidan Nezalezhnosti is the name of a public square in the center of Kiev.
For two weeks, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been demonstrating
there against election fraud.

Until recently, the official name of this public space - Independence Square
- had only a formal meaning. The truth is that Ukraine never had to fight
for its independence. Independence fell at Ukraine's feet in 1991, as the
Soviet Union collapsed.

But in the past two weeks, a new kind of independence has been created
in Ukraine. It not political independence from another country. It is an
independence of mind and spirit.

Flocking to Independence Square to protest an election that they see as
stolen, students, teachers, business owners and workers have proclaimed
themselves independent of the corruption and passivity that for the past
decade has plagued most of the countries formerly in the Soviet Union. The
corruption breeds the passivity - a feeling that no matter how much an
individual might strive to make independent decisions, important results
will be dictated by the corruption instead.

After visiting America years ago, one of us returned to teaching classes in
Ukraine and asked a law student, "What is your opinion on this law?" He
looked concerned and nervous. He was used to being told what to think,
not to express his own views. "My opinion?" he asked. "Will it affect my
grade?"

In 1994, one of us created a nonprofit law organization, Ecopravo-Lviv, to
help build the rule of law in Ukraine. The goal was to help citizens enforce
environmental laws. We have had a few successes, but the courts often have
been deaf. We know why. Even courts that try to follow the law learn where
the real power lies.

In a current case, Ecopravo-Lviv is trying to protect the Danube Delta
Biosphere Reserve against a destructive canal planned by the Ukraine
minister of transport. A judge in Odessa ruled against the reserve last
summer. Afterward, Ecopravo-Lviv's lawyer went to the judge's office to
get a copy of a document for an appeal.

She found the judge in tears. The judge collected herself and explained that
she had admired the solid legal arguments, but could not decide in our favor
because, "Everybody except the president of Ukraine telephoned me."

Such telephone calls are prohibited in properly functioning legal systems.
But during the Soviet era, "telephone law" was traditional. A Communist
Party leader would call a judge and dictate a ruling. After the fall of
communism, not much really changed - except it is a rich oligarch or the
government officials serving him.

In another high-profile case, a panel of judges told one of Ecopravo-Lviv's
lawyers this fall that the court's decision would be postponed until after
the presidential election. You can guess why judges might want to know
whether the same old interests will be in power before they even think of
ruling against the government.

The decision of the Supreme Court of Ukraine last Friday to overturn the
Nov. 21 election results as fraudulent could herald a new era for the rule
of law in Ukraine. In acting, regardless of political pressures, to protect
the voting rights of citizens, the Supreme Court has signaled that lower
courts should start acting as independent guardians of the rule of law.

During the Supreme Court arguments, which were televised in Ukraine and
which we could watch through the Internet here in Oregon, the attorneys for
the government often seemed ill-prepared. They had doubtless become lazy in
their courtroom skills, knowing that decisions often were made for improper
reasons, including bribes and political pressure.

Perhaps after this independent decision of the nation's highest court, other
courts will take heed. Maybe the government lawyers will now spend less time
trying to reach the courts through the back door and the telephone and have
to spend more time studying their law books and learning to form good legal
arguments. Perhaps that will become the pathway to success in court. If so,
the rule of law will have finally arrived, after more than 10 years of our
trying to build it.

After people stood for two weeks in subfreezing weather in the streets to
demand that their right to a fair vote be respected, the Supreme Court of
Ukraine has shown the courage to uphold those demands.

It has helped put real meaning in the name: Independence Square. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Svitlana Kravchenko and John Bonine teach law at the University of Oregon.
Kravchenko is also on the faculty of Lviv National University and president
of Ecopravo-Lviv in Ukraine. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/12/10/ed.col.ukraine.1210.html
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER THIRTEEN
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
13. UKRAINE SPLIT BETWEEN EAST AND WEST BY
HISTORY AND CULTURE

By Matthew Schofield, Knight Ridder, Sun, Dec 12, 2004

BALAKLAVA, Ukraine - On a small hill outside of town, farmers have
just finished their annual update of a monument to V.I. Lenin. White
stones in green grass depict the Russian revolutionary leader in
profile. The dates read, "1870-2005."

"The meaning is clear: Lenin lives, Lenin will always live, Lenin is
more alive than any other claiming to be alive," says Natalia Valova,
40, as she passes by. "We do not so easily forget the lessons of our
childhood."

Residents of the Crimean south of Ukraine, like those in the capital
Kiev and in the western and northern parts of the country, will return
to the polls Dec. 26 to elect a president. But that may be where the
similarities end.

The eastern and western regions of Ukraine are deeply divided. They
have different languages, national histories, cultures, religions,
economies and memories.

"Down here, we have more in common with Moscow than Kiev," said
Andrey Nikiforov, a historian in the Crimean city of Simferopol. "In the
end, it all comes down to the fact that the west has traditionally seen
Russia as an unwelcome invader, and the east has seen Russia as its
heritage, a source of pride."

Crimea was in the eastern bloc that voted for Prime Minister Viktor
Yanukovych, who was backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Yanukovych won the original Nov. 21 election against opposition leader
Viktor Yushchenko, but the Supreme Court later ruled the vote was
fraudulent.

Hundreds of thousands of people flooded Kiev to protest the vote and
to show support for Yushchenko, who favors closer ties with Europe.
So the re-vote is seen as another match between the west, which favors
Yushchenko, and the east, which favors Yanukovych.

"The best thing we can say about Yanukovych is that he is not
Yushchenko," said Sergey Slonov, who was standing beneath a Lenin
statue in the central square of Simferopol. "This is a choice between
two evils. We chose the evil we know. They chose the one we do not."

How deep do the divisions run? The talk in the west these days is all
about democracy, freedoms and nationalism. The talk here is about
jobs, pensions and ethnic divisions.

Ukraine has never really been a single nation, Nikiforov said. Before
the Bolshevik revolution, much of the pro-Yanukovych territory was
part of the Russian Empire and had been since the late 1700s. Crimea
was used as the Russian frontier. Russian empress Catherine the Great
moved through the area, establishing towns. She was followed by the
Cossacks and other settlers who moved in, shoving aside the native
Tatars. The Tatars are among Yushchenko's supporters in the region,
which has the Cossacks convinced he's made a secret deal ceding
regional control to them.

Viktor Meksun, a Cossack militia member in the traditional red and
black uniform and large black fur hat, said the west doesn't
understand the volatility of his region. Blood will flow at the
slightest sign of government weakness. Freedom isn't always such a
good thing, he said.

"We are Crimean people, not Western people," he said. "We are workers,
not idlers. Joining the European Union means nothing to us. Our future
lies in alliance with Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan."

After the Russian Revolution, Bolsheviks controlled the east. In 1922,
Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union, and much of the east was
included in a Ukrainian republic. In the 1950s, a drunken Nikita
Khrushchev added Crimea to the Ukraine, for the first time. And so
the language is Russian, not Ukrainian.

The languages are similar. Those who speak one insist those who speak
the other should be able to speak both. Down here, they insist that
Western Ukrainians pretend they can't speak or understand Russian
purely out of spite.

In the square in Simferopol, Nikolay Grinevitch stood beneath a
Russian flag and banner reading, "The Russian language will unite us!"
He was surrounded by 100 others, all still, silent and stone-faced, in
what they called an election protest.

"There is a dangerous nationalism growing in the west," he said. "The
Kiev protests are the first step in a very bad road. They are
promoting strife, trying to divide the people. We will be singled out
for speaking Russian. We know this."

Throughout the area, residents talk of how the money they produce in
factories, on the docks, even in their tourism, flows north and west,
to bail out the west. Here, the east is seen as home to oil, coal,
steel, oligarchs, hard work and hard lives. The west is seen as home
to farmers, food processing, shoe-making, distilleries, lemonade kings
and idle students.

That view is particularly strong in the Crimean south. It's a region
dotted with Cold War cities that weren't shown on maps, secret
military bases and landing strips, and ports so secret that the men
who worked in them couldn't tell their families of their existence.

It's a region where Soviets tunneled under mountains to hide nuclear
submarines and where stunning Black Sea shorelines were admired for
their defensibility. Residents come from generations of Soviet
military, and before that, from centuries of warriors. It was here
that the Light Brigade made its ill-fated charge 150 years ago. The
cities and villages sprang up from the work of the Cossacks and Tatars
but they sit beside the ruins of ancient Greeks, Genoans and Ottomans.

Recently, a stocky man with two days' growth fished from a rusting
dock that once housed nuclear submarines, in a harbor with an entrance
twisting though rocky cliffs, making it invisible from the sea, and
ringed by steep hills, making it invisible from land. He cast into the
calm blue-green waters, snorted, spit and said he's Oleg Guennadiy. Of
course his family came from the Soviet navy. Of course he worked these
docks before the fall of the Soviet Union.

"Yes, of course, I am aware of the protests, and yes, of course, I
have voted for Yanukovych," he said, smiling as a fish takes the bait.
"But these protests, pah! What is the point? Better these people do
something worthwhile. Put food on the table. Work. Or even better,
they should fish. I have no time for them."

But Nikiforov, the historian in Simferopol who teaches at Tavrida
National University, said the political crisis could have a long-term
benefit.

"It's not these two candidates that matter," he said. "If this crisis
forces us to deal with a very deep division, this could well be the
moment Ukraine finally becomes one nation. "Of course, the crisis
could result in the opposite, as well." -30-
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER FOURTEEN
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14. POLAND PLAYS STRATEGIC ROLE IN UKRAINE'S
"ORANGE REVOLUTION"

By Taras Kuzio, Eurasia Daily Monitor
Volume 1, Issue 144, The Jamestown Foundation
Washington, D.C, Friday, December 10

U.S. President George W. Bush has thanked Lithuanian President Valdas
Adamkus and Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski for their assistance in
negotiating a compromise to resolve Ukraine's ongoing political crisis
(Lithuanian Radio, December 9). Poland and Lithuania dragged a reluctant EU
into holding three round-table negotiations that paved the way for the
December 8 compromise between the Ukrainian authorities and opposition.

The peacefully negotiated settlement represents a particularly strategic
victory for Poland in three respects.

FIRST, Poland is the largest of the post-communist states that joined the EU
this month, and one of the most pro-American. EU enlargement represents a
fundamental challenge to EU "deepeners," such as France, who have always
been the most lukewarm about the growing size of the EU. Other EU members,
such as Britain, are lukewarm about "deepening" of the EU and see its
enlargement as a way of overcoming demands to "deepen" the EU's level of
integration. Not surprisingly therefore, Poland and Britain have forged a
close alliance in the EU.

SECOND, Poland's pro-Americanism could be seen during the 2003 Iraqi
crisis. Poland led most post-communist states outside the CIS in supporting
the U.S.-British position on Iraq. Poland successfully lobbied for the right
to run one of four sectors in post-Saddam Iraq, where Ukraine has 1,800
troops, the fourth largest contingent.

THIRD, Poland is very critical of the EU's traditional policy of "benign
neglect" towards Ukraine (Wall Street Journal, November 29). Polish Prime
Minister Marek Belka complained that the EU has "largely ignored the
aspirations of Ukraine" (Bloomberg, November 30). Poland's participation
in resolving Ukraine's crisis will allow Warsaw to "demand that Brussels
acknowledge its competence" and force the EU to finally take note of
Ukraine's membership aspirations.

Germany sought to anchor Poland inside the EU and NATO to secure its
eastern flank. Likewise, Poland does not want a second "Belarus" on its
eastern border. Thus it has sought a central role in resolving Ukraine's
political crisis and, in the process, has pulled the EU along with it.
Kwasniewski said, "I am going as the Polish president, but I hope with
the backing of the European Union" (AP, November 25).

Poland's ruling elites express a remarkable consensus in their views of the
dangers of Russian imperialism. Such views have only been reinforced by
Russian President Vladimir Putin's blatant interference in Ukraine's
elections.

The best way to keep a neo-imperial Russia at a distance is by having a
friendly neighbor -- Ukraine -- standing between Poland and Russia. "A
democratic and independent Ukraine is perceived in Poland as a guarantee
against imperial tendencies from Russia," Public Affairs Institute Ukraine
expert Tadeusz Falkowski commented (AP, November 25).

Poland has been Ukraine's main lobbyist within the EU and NATO, often with
strong backing from the United States. Although Kwasniewski has attempted to
play an impartial role by insisting only that Ukraine's presidential
elections be "free and fair" such a demand, most observers understand, would
benefit the opposition. The third round of the elections scheduled for
December 26 should be the freest round yet and therefore more likely to lead
to a victory for opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko.

The Polish Sejm passed an appeal to the Ukrainian parliament to undertake
everything it could to "make the truth, freedom and democracy win" (PAP,
November 25). "We are convinced that Ukrainian citizens want to live in an
independent and democratic state that is governed in an honest way. And such
a Ukraine is needed by Europe and the entire world," the appeal stressed.
"We have the feeling of sharing a common destiny with Ukrainians," declared
center-right Civic Platform parliamentarian Bronislaw Komorowski (AFP,
December 7).

During discussion of the Sejm's resolution on Ukraine, legislators wore
orange ties and ribbons, a reflection of their allegiance in Ukraine's
political crisis. Demonstrators in Warsaw and other Polish cities have
supported Yushchenko. Four days after Ukraine's November 21 runoff,
Warsaw's city government passed a resolution symbolically recognizing
Yushchenko as Ukraine's elected president, which Komorowski explained
was "to express solidarity with Ukraine" (Ukrainian News Agency,
November 25).

Poland's ruling elites are sympathetic toward Ukraine's "Orange revolution"
because they see echoes of their own communist-era opposition movement,
Solidarity. In 1989 Solidarity activists attended the inaugural congress of
the Ukrainian Popular Movement (Rukh) in Kyiv, a movement that eventually
spawned Yushchenko's Our Ukraine.

Solidarity's original leader and former president, Lech Walesa, was one of
the first foreign dignitaries to visit Ukraine and meet Yushchenko in the
first week of the Orange Revolution. Demonstrators on Independence Square
greeted Walesa with cries of "Polsha! Polsha!" (The Times, November 27).
One Polish university student said, "Ukraine needs a Walesa. Maybe
Yushchenko will be the new Walesa" (Los Angeles Times, November 30).
The main Solidarity monument in Gdansk, Poland, has been draped with an
orange-colored shawl for the last three weeks.

Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, who came to power on the wave
of his own popular Velvet Revolution, sent two messages of support to the
demonstrators. Czechs, who traditionally lumped Ukrainians with Russians
as lying outside Europe, have now changed their views. Thanks to the
Orange Revolution, EU members now see Ukrainians as fellow Europeans.
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 258: ARTICLE NUMBER FIFTEEN
Your financial support for this Report is needed
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15. 'THE COUNTRY CALLED ME'
Ukraine's newly sovereign society is throwing off the governing mob

Timothy Garton Ash in Kiev, The Guardian
London, United Kingdom, Thu, Dec 09, 2004

It's a freezing winter's night. Standing between the tents of the
revolutionary encampment on Kiev's equivalent of Regent Street is Svyatoslav
Smolin, a tough-looking, pasty-faced man in a khaki jacket, whose usual job
is checking the radiation levels at Chernobyl. He tells me how, on that
fateful Monday just over two weeks ago when he heard the news that the
opposition candidate had supposedly lost the presidential election, he
turned to his wife and said: "I just have to go." He came to Kiev, joined
the vast protesting crowds on Independence Square and, seeing the tents
going up, offered his services. Now he's in charge of the guards in this
well-organised section of the "tent city", which stretches for perhaps half
a mile down the broad city boulevard.

Warming himself by one of the braziers of burning timber is Vasil Khorkuda,
a stocky, clear-eyed countryman from a rural area near the Carpathian
mountains, where he runs a small travel agency. He has never, he says, been
active in politics before. But that Monday he, too, decided he simply must
go to Kiev. He's been here ever since and he'll stay until "success", which,
he explains, means a president chosen in a free and fair election.

Further on, giggling by an all-orange synthetic Christmas tree - this is the
orange revolution, so even the Christmas tree has to match - is Elena
Mayarchuk. Clad in fur and the obligatory orange scarf, she's the owner of a
beauty shop in a small town in central Ukraine. Again, the same story: she
heard the news. She knew she had to come. And she'll stay till the end. Or
there's Vova, a worker from an industrial city in the north-east, who,
striking a heroic pose with both black-gloved, ham-sized hands raised in
V-for-victory signs, declares: "The country called me!"

These are the so-called ordinary people who, by their spontaneous reaction
on that Monday, November 22, made history. First it was the Kievans, taking
ownership of their own city. Then it was the outsiders. All the well-funded
campaign for the opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko; all the carefully
prepared student activists of the resistance movement Pora ("It's time");
all the western support for NGOs, exit polls and the like; all the
international election monitors; all the telephone calls from Washington or
Brussels - none of them would have prevailed over President Kuchma's vicious
regime with its manipulated media, Russian advisers and electoral fraud were
it not for the Svyatoslavs and Vasils, the Elenas and Vovas, coming on to
the streets of Kiev in such numbers that they changed everything.

So much is still obscure, corrupt and inauthentic in Ukrainian politics, but
at the very heart of this change is something very authentic: human beings
hoping to take control of their own destiny. Mere objects of history who
become, however briefly, active subjects. Subjects who will be citizens.

Great outside interests are at stake here - Russia and the US struggling for
mastery in Eurasia, the shaping of a new European Union - but that is not
the story you hear on the streets and the square. Even the most pro-European
intellectuals admit that the attractions of turning from a post-Soviet union
towards the European Union played only a small part in the campaign.

No. The story you hear is of a country that was handed independence on a
plate in the break-up of the Soviet Union 13 years ago, but only now is
creating the social reality of a sovereign, would-be democratic country.
It's the story of a post-communist regime under President Leonid Kuchma
which has been so manipulative, bullying and corrupt that even sober
analysts describe it as "gangocracy". What they call the "blackmail state"
has worked by the president controlling most of the top positions in public
life, guaranteeing his placelings' loyalty by holding compromising
material - people use the old Soviet secret police term kompromat - on
their illegal activities. Government by kompromat

If collaborators did step out of line, their businesses were closed down, or
they were put in jail, or they were beaten up, or worse. Those monstrous
carbuncles on the once-handsome face of Viktor Yushchenko testify to what
may well have been a deliberate poisoning. As Yushchenko himself says, his
is the face of Ukraine today.

But not, the powerholders hope, tomorrow. In the end, they overplayed their
hand. They proposed for president an apparatchik, Viktor Yanukovich, who
as a young man served two prison terms for theft and causing grievous bodily
harm. (One of the many jokes circulating in Kiev quips that, unlike the
incumbent president Kuchma, Yanukovich doesn't want a third term.) The lies
on the main television channels and the election-rigging became too blatant.
And then the Moscow godfather, Vladimir Putin, who presumably holds his
own kompromat on Kuchma, acted as if Ukraine were still a satrapy of Soviet
Russia. That was the last straw.

Probably for the first time in Ukrainian history, the democratic and the
national aspirations are marching together. In places such as Bosnia, East
Timor or Iraq, western occupiers talk implausibly of "nation-building". Here
you see how nations are built, in the solidarity of chanting crowds and the
brandishing of new symbols.

"I feel more Ukrainian now than I did three weeks ago," says a young man
of Russian origin. There, in a single sentence, is the essence of true
nation-building. In this still largely Russian-speaking country, just 42% of
those asked in a nationwide survey this February identified themselves as
"above all" citizens of Ukraine. (An amazing 13% answered "Soviet citizen".)
One of the survey's designers bet me that next February it will be 50% or
more.

Nation-building includes the invention of tradition. These days, that's done
not by bards or historians but by television. Already I see, on the more
independent TV channels here, stirring photomontages of the orange-bedecked
demonstrators in the snow, with beautiful girls, crying grandmothers and
patriotic music. Oh yes, and that great white-and-gold column on
Independence Square, which looks as if it must date back to the early 19th
century, was erected in 2001.

Now parliament has cleared the way for the corrupted second round of the
election to be repeated on December 26. I have just returned from hearing
Victor Yushchenko declare "victory" after "17 long days" to a flag-waving
crowd beneath that column. "In these 17 days," he said, "we made this
country democratic". But he hasn't even won the election. There will be many

twists and turns ahead. Even if, as seems most likely, he is now elected,
disappointment will follow under a president Yushchenko. Touchingly, I see
the father of Prague's velvet revolution, ex-president Vaclav Havel, on
Ukrainian television with an orange ribbon in his lapel and warning,
precisely, of post-revolutionary disenchantment.

Romantic idealisation is certainly not what we should offer here; but
clear-sighted respect, yes. Would you leave your job and your family for
several weeks to go and live with strangers in a crowded tent on a dirty
street, in temperatures plunging to minus 10 degrees? I was so frigging cold
after two hours, I had to go back to my hotel at midnight for hot tea and
first aid. They've been living there for two weeks. These so-called ordinary
people, now doing an extraordinary thing, have at least earned the right not
to be treated as the objects of outsiders' ideological fantasies or fetid
conspiracy theories. Instead, we can simply listen, with critical respect,
to their own story of why they are there. -30-
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