"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"

YANUKOVICH AND MEDVEDCHUK URGED USE OF TROOPS

"Western diplomats confirm that Interior Ministry paramilitary troops were
prepared to strike. They say Mr Kuchma came under intense pressure to act
from Mr Medvedchuk and Mr Yanukovich, Mr Yushchenko's rival to succeed
Mr Kuchma as president. They say Mr Kuchma apparently called off the
Interior Ministry troops because he did not want to leave office with blood
on his hands." [article number one]

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT" Year 04, Number 259
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, TUESDAY, December 14, 2004

NOTE: Please send this Report to anyone you think would like to
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-----INDEX OF ARTICLES-----
"Major International News Headlines and Articles"

1. UKRAINE PRESIDENT SPURNED YANUKOVICH PRESSURE
TO USE TROOPS TO QUELL PROTESTERS
By Stefan Wagstyl, Chrystia Freeland and Tom Warner
Financial Times, London, UK, Tues, December 14 2004

2. "PEOPLE POWER A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH"
EDITORIAL: Canberra Times, Canberra, Australia, Tue, Dec 14, 2004

3 "AFTER UKRAINE, ROMANIA SHOWS DEMOCRACY AT WORK"
EDITORIAL, The Independent, London, UK, Tue, Dec 14, 2004

4. UKRAINE PAYS UP DESPITE TURMOIL
By Paivi Munter in Moscow, Financial Times, London, Tue, Dec 14 2004

5. CEC DECIDES TO DISCLOSE ELECTION DATA RECEIVED FROM
CONSTITUENCIES VIA TELEGRAPH BEFORE RECEIVING PROTOCOLS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

6. TYMOSHENKO FORECASTS REPEAT OF PROTEST RALLIES
IN CASE OF FALSIFICATION DURING RE-VOTING OF SECOND
ROUND OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

7. CEC PUSHES FOR IMPROVEMENT IN VOTING PROCEDURES
FOR SECOND RUN-OFF ELECTIONS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec, 13, 2004

8. YANUKOVYCH CONSIDERS INTERNATIONAL MEDIATORS'
PARTICIPATION IN RESOLUTION OF CONFLICT AFTER SECOND
ROUND OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE
IN UKRAINE'S INTERNAL MATTERS
Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

9."FREE AND FAIR" VOTE ONLY U.S. GOAL IN UKRAINE ELECTION
White House Report, Washington, D.C., Fri, December 10, 2004

10. "ORANGE REVOLUTION" EXPOSES EU'S
DEFICIENT UKRAINE POLICY
By Taras Kuzio, Eurasia Daily Monitor
The Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C., Mon, Dec 13, 2004

11. "THE RIGHT TO JOIN EUROPE IS NOT A REWARD"
COMMENTARY: John Kaym, Financial Times, UK, Tue, Dec 14, 2004

12. EIGHT EXPERTS: EAST-WEST 'MEDDLING' IN UKRAINE?
Untimely Thoughts: Weekly Analysis & Commentary
By Peter Lavelle for United Press International (UPI)
Moscow, Russia, Friday, December 10, 2004

13. DIVIDED THEY STAND: UKRAINE'S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
HAVE SPLIT THE NATION IN TWO, THE WEST SUPPORTING
YUSHCHENKO AND THE EAST YANUKOVYCH.
CAN THE STATE SURVIVE?
James Meek, The Guardian, London, UK, Fri, Dec 10, 2004
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 259: ARTICLE NUMBER ONE
========================================================
1. UKRAINE PRESIDENT SPURNED YANUKOVICH PRESSURE
TO USE TROOPS TO QUELL PROTESTERS

By Stefan Wagstyl, Chrystia Freeland and Tom Warner
Financial Times, London, UK, Tues, December 14 2004

The Ukrainian authorities came close to resorting to violence in trying to
solve the country's political crisis. The Financial Times has learned that
the administration of Leonid Kuchma, the authoritarian president, considered
deploying troops against the crowds of protesters gathered in central Kiev
in support of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader.

Those lobbying for the use of force included senior officials, among them
Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration
and Viktor Yanukovich, the prime minister. According to people inside and
outside Mr Kuchma's administration, the president resisted the pressure and
the danger passed.

"The key moment came on Sunday, November 28 (a week after crowds took
to Kiev streets), when soldiers were given bullets. Then they were going
around not with empty machine guns, but already fully armed. I think that
was the peak of the whole conflict," Mr Yushchenko said.

Vasyl Baziv, the deputy head of the presidential administration, told the
FT: "I know that many representatives of the [state] apparatus lobbied the
president to impose a state of emergency. They said it is time to use state
power. The president, from the first moment, was consistently against the
use of force."

Western diplomats confirm that Interior Ministry paramilitary troops were
prepared to strike. They say Mr Kuchma came under intense pressure to act
from Mr Medvedchuk and Mr Yanukovich, Mr Yushchenko's rival to succeed
Mr Kuchma as president. They say Mr Kuchma apparently called off the
Interior Ministry troops because he did not want to leave office with blood
on his hands.

One diplomat said that an attempt by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of
State, to telephone Mr Kuchma - who refused to take the call - may have
influenced his decision. There were also signs that some security forces
opposed to violent intervention might try to block the Interior Ministry
troops who would have been sent against demonstrators.

The crisis began with the disputed presidential election on Sunday, November
21 in which Mr Yanukovich, Mr Kuchma's candidate, was declared the winner.
Mr Yushchenko cried fraud and immediately called his supporters on to the
streets.

Tensions rose sharply on Wednesday, November 24, when the Central Election
Commission officially confirmed Mr Yanukovich's victory. Mr Yushchenko
responded by urging protesters to blockade public buildings, including the
cabinet office and the presidential administration.

With Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, and other
mediators due in Kiev for conciliation talks on Friday November 26, the
authorities considered using force to clear the blockade surrounding the
presidential buildings. About 2,000 anti-riot police were deployed in the
area. But, with the mediators urging restraint, the Ukrainian authorities
backed off.

The talks on November 26 failed to break the deadlock. The following day,
the pro-Yushchenko crowds in Kiev swelled to an estimated 500,000, with
smaller demonstrations in some other cities. The critical moments came on
Sunday November 28. Mr Yanukovich's supporters in eastern Ukraine
raised the stakes by making separatist threats.

Mr Kuchma chaired a meeting of the key National Security Council which
discussed plans for armed action. Western diplomats say intelligence reports
showed interior ministry troop movements around Kiev. One senior western
diplomat says: "There were credible reports that troops were moving on
Kiev."

Mr Yushchenko says the protesters responded by increasing their presence
outside the cabinet and presidential administration buildings and deciding
blockade Mr Kuchma's suburban villa. These actions worked, he says. "We
understood that the authorities were afraid to take a decision to use arms."
Mr Baziv argues Mr Kuchma's personal refusal to use force was crucial.
"This is Kuchma's one big positive contribution."

By the time Mr Solana and other mediators arrived for more talks late on
Tuesday November 30, the threat was over. On Friday December 3, the
Supreme Court cancelled the disputed election and ordered new polls on
December 26. -30- [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER TWO
========================================================
2. "PEOPLE POWER A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH"

EDITORIAL: Canberra Times, Canberra, Australia, Tue, Dec 14, 2004

THE UKRAINIAN revolution has won. There still has to be a re-run of the
second-round presidential election on December 26, but there is no doubt
that it will be pretty clean this time, and that opposition candidate Viktor
Yushchenko will win handily. So the heavy-industrial, Orthodox, Russian-
speaking minority in eastern Ukraine loses, and the less urban, Greek-
Catholic, Ukrainian-speaking majority in western Ukraine wins. Or to
put it more succinctly, Russia loses and the West wins.

Is that what really happened in Ukraine over the past two or three weeks?
It's certainly what most Russians believe has happened, and there are
numbers of people in the West (most of them, curiously, on the libertarian
extreme right) who believe it too.

They point to the support that Western diplomats and self-invited mediators
like Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign affairs commissioner, gave
to the opposition in its confrontation with outgoing President Leonid
Kuchma's pro-Russian government, to the high-profile presence of groups like
billionaire George Soros's Open Society, to the opposition's manifest desire
to work towards membership in the European Union (while Kuchma's protege
Viktor Yanukovich was promising to bind Ukraine to a Russian- led free trade
area), and they cynically conclude that it was just a late episode of the
Cold War. Are they right? Viktor Yushchenko doesn't think so.

When he emerged from parliament on December 8 to report that the electoral
laws had been reformed and that the crisis was over, he sent the sea of
demonstrators on Independence Square home with the words: ''In these 17
days, we made this country democratic.'' But on the same day there was
Vaclav Havel, hero of Czechoslovakia's ''Velvet Revolution'' 15 years ago,
popping up on Ukrainian television to warn the victors of the ''Orange
Revolution'' that disillusionment is sure to follow. Well, of course it
will, and Havel was not saying that they should not have made their
revolution. He was just pointing out that democracy is not Nirvana.

It is a less oppressive, more respectful, more inclusive way of getting to
the deals between conflicting interest groups that practical politics always
requires - but there still have to be deals, and some people will still feel
aggrieved by them.

Democracy simply strives to give everybody a genuine say in the process,
at least once in a while, and gains its legitimacy from the degree that
people actually feel that they are being treated as equals politically. They
certainly weren't being treated as equals in the old Ukraine, where a
kleptocratic clique of ex-Communist bosses made all the decisions,
manipulated the media, and fixed the elections.

It won't be easy in the new Ukraine either, but at least many more people
feel that they have a stake in what is happening. And as for the claim that
this is just a Western plot to do in the Russians, it simply doesn't stand
up to serious scrutiny.

The West does want to defeat Russia's plans for Ukraine - or more precisely,
President Vladimir Putin's - but there is much more going on here than that.

The West also encouraged and helped to fund quite similar democratic
revolutions against other post-Communist criminal oligarchies in Georgia in
2003 and in Serbia in 2001, although neither of those regimes was actually
a Russian ally. Nor were the revolutions there fakes either.

Of course there was more organisation behind Ukraine's revolution (and
Georgia's, and Serbia's) than the stagecraft revealed. Of course it needed
money to happen. But the hundreds of thousands of people who stood vigil
night after freezing night in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities were not
ignorant dupes.They were there because they knew what they wanted, and
it could not have happened without them.

The longer pedigree of the ''Orange Revolution'' includes the Indonesian
revolution of 1998 (which overthrew a general, 30 years in power, who had
ordered the massacre of at least half a million Communists), and the
peaceful end of apartheid in South Africa in the early '90s, and the
revolutions that swept Communist regimes away in Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union in 1989-91, and Tienanmen Square in 1989, and the
South Korean and Thai and Bangladeshi revolutions in 1987-88, and the
grandmother of them all, the People Power revolution in the Philippines in
1986.

They were all about democracy, they were all non-violent, and the great
majority of them succeeded in bringing down cruel dictatorships.

It was a new thing in history, a whole new technique for bringing about
positive political change without incurring a legacy of blood, and it
dominates the calculations of every remaining tyranny in the world. They
know they are vulnerable to it, and work very hard to avoid the kind of
open confrontation between their policies and public opinion that might
trigger it.

They can succeed for many years, especially if the gods of economic growth
smile upon them, but they are almost all living on borrowed time. The
Ukrainian regime's time just ran out, but the governments of Russia and
China and Burma and Algeria and Zimbabwe should not send to ask for
whom the bell tolls. It tolls for them, too. -30-
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER THREE
========================================================
3. "AFTER UKRAINE, ROMANIA SHOWS DEMOCRACY AT WORK"

EDITORIAL, The Independent, London, UK, Tue, Dec 14, 2004

THE OUTCOME of Sunday's presidential elections in Romania has more
than a few echoes of Ukraine. The denouement in Bucharest is, for now at
least, more reassuring.

The tense stand-off during which Prime Minister Adrian Nastase, the ruling
left's candidate, and the opposition challenger, Traian Basescu, both
claimed victory, has ended in triumph for the reforming Mr Basescu. Mr
Nastase, a protege of the outgoing President and veteran former communist
Ion Iliescu, had nosed ahead in the first round of elections on 28 November.
But, as in Kiev, that vote was dogged by allegations of fraud, prompting
street protests and international concern. In another parallel with Ukraine,
the election exposed deep divisions between the urban middle classes and
rural voters wary of reforms advocated by Mr Basescu's centrist Justice and
Truth Alliance.

For the Romanian people and for the rest of Europe, the victory of the more
pro- Western candidate represents a welcome turning point. This is a country
still struggling to build democratic institutions and a functioning economy
almost 15 years after the collapse of communism. Mr Nastase could boast of
his achievements in leading Romania into the ranks of Nato membership this
year, but the sluggish pace of reform in other areas has delayed accession
to the European Union until 2007 at the earliest. The challenge for the
incoming leadership in navigating accession to the club of European
democracies remains formidable. Rampant corruption and political patronage,
the hallmarks of Mr Nastase's leadership, are hobbling progress.

Mr Basescu is not associated with the old communist regime. As mayor of
Bucharest he has proved effective, pushing through improvements like
removing urban eyesores and stray dogs. Unusually, he has also spoken up for
the rights of gays and other minorities. His most enduring campaign promise
was that he would stamp out corruption.

In a powerful victory speech yesterday, he repeated that pledge to the
cheers of his orange-clad supporters. Let us hope that he can deliver the
quiet revolution they expect. Ukraine will be watching. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 259: ARTICLE NUMBER FOUR
========================================================
4. UKRAINE PAYS UP DESPITE TURMOIL

By Paivi Munter in Moscow, Financial Times, London, Tue, Dec 14 2004

MOSCOW - The government of Ukraine has paid the coupon on its 2013
international bond in full and on time in spite of the country's recent
political and economic turmoil. The Interfax news agency yesterday reported
that Ukraine on Saturday paid a $38.25m coupon on its 7.65 per cent 10-
year bond.

Ukraine's international bond prices have recovered from the recent lows
following a contested presidential poll, which sparked a popular uprising by
the supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate, and threats
of a break-up of the country by the regions supporting Viktor Yanukovich,
the government's candidate, who favours close ties with neighbouring Russia.

Yesterday, the 2013 bonds were trading at 104.75 per cent of face value.
Ukraine has sold two foreign-currency bonds this year: a $600m fixed-rate
issue maturing in 2011 and a floating-rate note due in 2009.

The government is rated Single B-plus by Standard & Poor's and B1 by
Moody's Investors Service, although the latter put a "developing" outlook
on the sovereign rating as a result of the political crisis. Ukraine is due
to hold a rerun of the second round of the election on December 26.
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER FIVE
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========================================================
5. CEC DECIDES TO DISCLOSE ELECTION DATA RECEIVED FROM
CONSTITUENCIES VIA TELEGRAPH BEFORE RECEIVING PROTOCOLS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

KYIV - The Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has decided to tally
and publish the preliminary election results it receives by telegram from
constituencies during the re-run of this year's presidential elections
before it receives the election-result protocols bearing the "wet stamps."

The CEC made this decision at a meeting on Monday, December 13.
The CEC also approved the calendar plan according to which territorial
election commissions are to provide the CEC with information about
preparation for and conduct of the re-vote.

The CEC's Chairman Yaroslav Davydovych said at the meeting that
telegrams stating the contents of election-result protocols should be sent
to the CEC after the protocols are compiled, signed, and "wet stamps"
applied to them. The telegrams containing the data in the election-result
protocols have the status of a government telegram. "It will be a
government telegram. It has the weight of a document," Davydovych said.

Immediately after receiving the telegrams, the CEC will transfer all the
data in them into its database, process them, and promptly publish them.
The CEC also decided that all reports from territorial election commissions
will be sent to the CEC in paper form, in electronic form through the
Vybory information analysis system, as well as in the form of teletypes and
telegraphs.

"This provides an opportunity to more strictly control the voting process as
well as to establish the results of the elections," Davydovych said. As
Ukrainian News earlier reported, the CEC has estimated its expenditures on
preparation for and conduct of the repeat of the second round of this year's
Ukrainian presidential elections at UAH 20.6 million. -30-
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER SIX
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
6. TYMOSHENKO FORECASTS REPEAT OF PROTEST RALLIES
IN CASE OF FALSIFICATION DURING RE-VOTING OF SECOND
ROUND OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec 13, 2004

KYIV - Co-chairperson of the People's Power Coalition Yulia
Tymoshenko forecasts repeated rallies of protest in case the results of
re-voting of the second round of presidential elections are falsified.
Tymoshenko told this to journalists during her press conference.

In her words, if falsifications during re-voting are as obvious as it was
during first and second rounds, and if, on their basis, there is an attempt
to announce presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych as winner of
elections, Yuschenko's team will be forced to turn to people again.

"And I think, that reaction of Ukrainian people will be too far stronger
than it was [after the second round of presidential elections],"
Tymoshenko said. -30- [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER SEVEN
Your comments about the Report are always welcome
========================================================
7. CEC PUSHES FOR IMPROVEMENT IN VOTING PROCEDURES
FOR SECOND RUN-OFF ELECTIONS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, Mon, Dec, 13, 2004

KYIV - The Central Election Commission has initiated changes to the law
"On Particulars of Application of the Presidential Election Law During the
December 26 Repeated Second Round of Presidential Elections" in order to
improve the procedures for preparing and holding this ballot. The move was
approved at the CEC meeting on December 13.

CEC member Maryna Stavniichuk said that when passing the law on the
revote, the Verkhovna Rada targeted making the election fraud impossible,
but some provisions of the law still require urgent improvement.

For example, the deadline for setting up district election commissions
(DECs) should be brought forward by 2 days to enable the DECs to get
ready for the revote. Besides, the CEC proposes to simplify the procedure
for voting outside polling stations. "So that as many people as possible
cast their votes," Stavniichuk said.

The procedure for manufacture of ballot papers also needs simplification and
they must be printed at one company like it is specified in the law. The CEC
sees the necessity to establish the requirement for quorum needed to hold
meetings of the territorial election commissions (TECs), which would say
that half of the TEC composition is enough for a meeting. The CEC further
suggests toughening control over the delivery of electoral documents from
the TECs.

Meanwhile, parliamentary deputy Yurii Kliuchkovskyi, who represents Our
Ukraine Coalition leader Viktor Yuschenko at the CEC, doubts that
parliament will revise the law on particulars of application of the
presidential election law during the December 26 repeated second round so
that it reflects the proposals of the CEC.

He said the revision has not been discussed by the Our Ukraine parliamentary
faction yet, but he himself considers it superfluous. Kliuchkovskyi reminded
that the opposition insisted on printing ballot papers at one company, at
the Mint. He also views as unnecessary the proposed simplification of the
procedure for voting outside polling stations.

However, authorized persons of the presidential candidates must be entitled
to receive copies of voters' lists to exercise additional control over their
correctness, Kliuchkovskyi added. -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring]
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER EIGHT
=========================================================
8. YANUKOVYCH CONSIDERS INTERNATIONAL MEDIATORS'
PARTICIPATION IN RESOLUTION OF CONFLICT AFTER SECOND
ROUND OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION INTERFERENCE
IN UKRAINE'S INTERNAL MATTERS

Ukrainian News Agency, Kyiv, Ukraine, December 13, 2004 (18:35)

KYIV - Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who is a candidate in this
year's presidential elections, believes that the participation of
international mediators in the resolution of the conflict triggered by the
second round of this year's Ukrainian presidential elections amounted to
direct interference in Ukraine's internal affairs.

Yanukovych expressed this belief at a press conference in Kyiv. "I
believe that it was a direct interference in the internal affairs of
Ukraine," Yanukovych said.

According to him, Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski and the
other international mediators supported the legal nihilism that took place
during the "orange revolution."

Specifically, Yanukovych said that the international mediators supported
the Ukrainian Supreme Court's illegal and "anti-constitutional" decision to
order a re-run of the second round of the presidential elections as well as
several decisions of the Ukrainian parliament.

At the same time, Yanukovych said that he considered Russia's position on
the issue proper. Yanukovych stressed that the speaker of Russia's Duma
(the lower house of parliament), Boris Gryzlov, clearly expressed the view
that the decisions of the Supreme Court and the Ukrainian parliament
violated Ukrainian laws during the third roundtable talks aimed at resolving
the crisis.

"Russia, as a partner of Ukraine, is behaving itself properly... I had and
have huge respect for Russia and Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Russia
was, is, and will be a strategic partner of independent Ukraine," Yanukovych
said. He stressed that Ukraine's international partners have no right to
interfere in the country's internal affairs if they respect Ukraine and the
Ukrainian people.

Moreover, he stressed that if the Ukrainian people respect themselves and
want to live in a country ruled by law, they should defend themselves and
make the right choice on December 26, the day of the re-vote in the second
round of the presidential elections. -30- [Action Ukraine Monitoring]
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No.259: ARTICLE NUMBER NINE
=========================================================
9. "FREE AND FAIR" VOTE ONLY U.S. GOAL IN UKRAINE ELECTION

White House Report, Washington, D.C., Fri, December 10, 2004

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said the Bush administration's
support to international and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for the
Ukrainian elections are to ensure that the elections are "free and fair,"
and not to support a candidate for the country's presidency.

"We do not support any particular candidate in Ukraine's presidential
election. We support the Ukraine people in their efforts to have their will
reflected through a peaceful democratic process," McClellan said December
10.

According to press reports, the Bush administration has given $65 million
in aid to Ukraine since 2002 to support election training, human rights and
independent media. The media have said some of the money helped train
groups and individuals opposed to presidential candidate Prime Minister
Viktor Yanukovych, whose candidacy is supported by Russia and the
current Ukrainian government.

McClellan said the United States supports worldwide efforts to build
democratic institutions and free societies, including through NGOs and o
other international organizations.

There is accountability for the funding, he said. "[W]e make sure that money
is being used for the purposes for which it's assigned or designated."
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http://usinfo.state.gov/eur/Archive/2004/Dec/10-558331.html
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ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 259: ARTICLE NUMBER TEN
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=========================================================
10. "ORANGE REVOLUTION" EXPOSES EU'S
DEFICIENT UKRAINE POLICY

By Taras Kuzio, Eurasia Daily Monitor
The Jamestown Foundation, Washington, D.C., Mon, Dec 13, 2004

One of the biggest ironies of Ukraine's democratic "Orange Revolution" is
that it will cause difficulties in the European Union, an organization that
claims to embody "European values." Had former Prime Minister Viktor
Yanukovych won the presidential election, it would have resolved the EU's
dilemma: Brussels and Strasbourg could still use the excuse given earlier to
Presidential Leonid Kuchma, namely that Ukraine has shown itself to not be
part of "Europe."
The EU's dilemma over Ukraine may dominate the EU's Brussels summit on
December 16-17, less than two weeks before Ukraine repeats the second
round of the disputed presidential election.
Challenger Viktor Yushchenko, who is set to win the new runoff, told his
supporters, "I am convinced that the world will recognize us as a civilized
European nation. I am deeply convinced that after the events of the last 17
days Ukraine will never be the world's backwater" (Channel 5, December 8).
Yushchenko is being too optimistic, as the EU is unable and unwilling to
accept how the Orange Revolution represents a break with the Kuchma era.
Ukraine's democratic revolution, the likely Yushchenko victory, and
constitutional reforms that will transform Ukraine into a parliamentary
republic all testify to the need for the EU to re-formulate a clear policy
toward Ukraine.
The post-communist states that joined the EU this year are not accepting the
EU's continued complacency over Ukraine. Poland and Lithuania encouraged
the apathetic EU to host round-table negotiations between the authorities
and Yushchenko to break the political deadlock. Former Czech President
Vaclav Havel sent two statements of support to Yushchenko and former
Solidarity leader and Polish President Lech Walesa traveled to Kyiv and
addressed the orange-clad crowds.
The crisis has caused post-communist EU members to take a harsher attitude
toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has confirmed their suspicion
that Russian imperialism and neo-Soviet attitudes remain alive and well.
They are also dismayed at the continued Russophilia expressed by "old
Europe," namely France, Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Yet it would be an over-simplification to state that the EU's unwillingness
to treat Ukraine as a "European" state lies solely with its "old European"
members. Both British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George
W. Bush have forged close personal relations with Putin.
But Ukraine's future could pose problems for the four "old European" EU
members. French and German leaders have built up personal relationships
with Putin that are now coming under strain. France, in particular, seeks a
closer alliance with Russia against the Bush administration's
"unilateralism."
The EU's decision to dangle membership in front of the western Balkans --
and possibly Turkey -- while denying it to Ukraine is now untenable. Romania
is set to join the EU in 2007 and yet its recent presidential elections were
also undemocratic. The difference lies in the fact that only Ukrainians --
not Romanians -- launched a popular revolution to overturn their election
fraud.
Yushchenko has challenged the EU to embrace the new Ukraine that he is
set to lead. In Yushchenko's eyes, the EU should take four concrete steps.
First, it should recognize Ukraine as a "market economy," a political step
long over due after Russia's status was upgraded in 2002. Second, the EU
should support Ukraine's membership in the WTO, a step that would allow
Ukraine to create a free trade zone with the EU. Third, the EU should sign
an associate member agreement with Ukraine. Finally, Brussels should offer
Ukraine EU membership sometime in the future (Financial Times, December 10).
These four steps could be only undertaken if the EU moved towards NATO's
"open door" position on membership, which depends on fulfilling criteria.
This would be the Copenhagen criteria for the EU and a Membership Action
Plan (MAP) for NATO.
Currently, Ukraine has only an Action Plan with NATO, not a MAP. NATO
refused to consider a MAP for Ukraine due to Kuchma's poor reputation after
the Kolchuga radar scandal. But the grounds for this refusal will evaporate
under Yushchenko, and the post-communist members of NATO will again be
clamoring for NATO to offer Ukraine a MAP. Such a step would strain the
Bush administration's delicate attempts to both criticize Putin for
interfering in Ukraine's elections while maintaining a cooperative
relationship with Russia for the international struggle against terrorism.
Washington's attempts to not be too critical of Russia will only grow after
Condoleezza Rice replaces Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Yet in
reality, as Stanford's Michael McFaul has pointed out, "The Russian
president is not much of an asset in fighting the global war on terror" (The
Weekly Standard, December 13).
The EU continues to only offer Ukraine a three year "Action Plan" as part of
its Neighborhood Policy, a "Plan" that does not depend on the outcome of the
Ukrainian elections. The inadequacy of these steps were already evident when
the policy was unveiled in 2003, as it placed Ukraine on the same level as
northern Africa and Israel, which are not part of Europe and therefore have
no right to join the EU, and Russia, which has never declared its intention
to seek EU membership.
Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who takes up the EU's
rotating presidency in January, said, "I can only warn against offering
Ukraine the prospect of full membership" (The Times, December 10). In
reality, the EU has been doing its best to avoid the issue, which will no
longer be tenable if the EU allows in Turkey while refusing to consider a
Ukraine led by Yushchenko (Wall Street Journal, December 8).
As the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza (December 9) pointed out, when Ukraine is
discussed in Paris they state, "And don't forget about Russia's
sensitivity." Yet, ironically Putin is ahead of "old Europe" on this
question. Anticipating a Yushchenko victory as likely to lead to Ukraine's
westward orientation, Putin has stated his lack of opposition to Ukraine's
membership in the EU. For Putin the only "nyet" is to Ukraine's membership
in NATO (Financial Times, December 10). -30-
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 259: ARTICLE NUMBER ELEVEN
=========================================================
11. "THE RIGHT TO JOIN EUROPE IS NOT A REWARD"

COMMENTARY: John Kay, Financial Times, UK, Tue, Dec 14, 2004

Crowds in the streets and an assertion of independence by parliament and
judiciary seem to have restored democracy in Ukraine. These developments
pull the country towards western Europe and away from Russia. The European
Union will this week decide whether to begin discussions on Turkish
accession. Should Ukraine also be a candidate?
It is a measure of the EU's success that everyone wants to join. In last
weekend's Romanian presidential election, each party claimed to be keener
than the next about the country's imminent accession. Moroccans wish the
Strait of Gibraltar bridged so they can qualify as European. There is
something odd about a club that arouses more enthusiasm from those outside
than those inside. But there are reasons.
Mutual support for freedom and democracy is one of the purposes, perhaps the
central purpose, of the EU. But such mutual support is a process from which
the weak gain more than the strong. Integrity of institutions, like personal
integrity, is enhanced or diminished by the integrity of those with whom you
associate.
Only three European nations have been truly democratic sovereign states
throughout the last century. The two that are members of the EU, Britain and
Sweden, are among the most eurosceptical. The other, Switzerland, has
chosen not to join. The stronger a country's own institutions, the less need
it perceives for those of Europe.
The EU's promotion of free institutions has been a triumph so far. A
rehabilitated Germany was brought back into the international community. The
Mediterranean expansion of the 1980s was a gamble that southern countries
would be able to integrate with western Europe and thus secure democracy and
promote economic development. In Spain and Portugal, the outcome is
successful beyond reasonable expectations. The record of Greece is inferior
but still good.
This year's simultaneous admission of 10 new states is a bigger gamble
still. Although their combined population is not much larger than the
Mediterranean group, the gap in living standards is much greater. There is a
high probability that at least one of them will encounter severe economic
difficulties or a crisis of democratic legitimacy in the next 10 years.
The EU is not strong enough to cope easily with such problems. Both the
establishment of the euro and the admission of candidate states demonstrated
that it was much easier to impose rules on countries wanting to join than on
those that were already members. If it were feasible, the best means of
imposing economic discipline and liberal democratic reform would be to keep
countries such as Turkey and Ukraine perpetually on the doorstep of the EU
but never to let them inside.
But the EU is not a device for rewarding good behaviour. There are many
different views of its future. Some see it as a purely economic association,
others want it to be the embryo of a federal state. But even a minimalist
view of the union involves substantial economic integration.
Goods and services can cross borders without formality, capital can be
freely transferred, companies can choose to invest in one area or another,
without much regard for national boundaries, people can go and work in other
member states if opportunities arise.
All these measures of integration require faith in the quality of the
processes of other states. Goods must be what they say they are, and must be
owned by the people who claim to own them; investment demands secure
property rights. Access to public services, whether healthcare or justice,
must be available everywhere on a basis not too different from people's
experience at home.
Even a small degree of foreignness impedes economic integration. Few
contiguous countries are as similar as Canada and the US but there is far
more trade between adjoining states than across the Canadian border. Without
sufficient similarity of institutions, economic integration is a sham and
political integration a pipe dream.
EU membership is not a prize. Most Americans would regard as ludicrous and
impertinent the suggestion that Costa Rica should be rewarded for its
admirable record of democracy, peaceful co-existence and economic
development by becoming the 51st state. Yet many talk about EU expansion
in essentially those terms. (www.johnkay.com)
=========================================== ==============
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 259: ARTICLE NUMBER TWELVE
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
12. EIGHT EXPERTS: EAST-WEST 'MEDDLING' IN UKRAINE?

Untimely Thoughts: Weekly Analysis & Commentary
By Peter Lavelle for United Press International (UPI)
Moscow, Russia, Friday, December 10, 2004

MOSCOW ------ UPI's Russia analyst engages experts Edward Lozansky,
Vlad Sobell, Janusz Bugajski, Dale Herspring, Andrew Kuchins, Ira Straus,
Ethan S. Burger, and Gordon Hahn on the recent charges of "outside
meddling" and use of "double standards" concerning Ukraine that have chilled
U.S.-Russia relations.
UPI: This week U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov traded barbs under the rubric of foreign "meddling"
in another country's domestic affairs, as well as calling involvement in a
third country's affairs as applying "double standards." Ukraine, still
experiencing political turmoil in the aftermath of its failed presidential
election runoff, was the focus of this heated exchange.
Irrespective of the media hype surrounding Ukraine's political crisis, there
is no doubt the West and Russia have heavy involved themselves in Ukraine's
politics. The Kremlin invested larges sums and sent high profile
spin-doctors. The West, a bit subtler, financed and trained non-government
organizations.
Aren't the West and Russia both guilty of "meddling" and "double standards?"
After all, the United States has a very long history of involving itself in
foreign elections around the world. Russia also has a longstanding record of
being interested in what happens in countries on its borders. Aren't charges
of "meddling" and "double-standards" simply public rhetoric signaling
dissatisfaction with an election outcome that pleases neither the West nor
Russia?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Edward Lozansky, president, American University in Moscow:

Of course, the Western countries are often "meddling" in the internal
affairs of other nations and in many cases are installing their puppet
regimes. As for the United States, we did this in Haiti, Guatemala, Iran,
Vietnam, Chili, just to mention a few. However, since this was always
portrayed as the necessary global fight with communism, the overwhelming
majority of us, including myself, have approved of such policies. When
Ronald Reagan secretly aided the Polish Solidarity, we for the same reason
enthusiastically supported him. In 1996 we helped Boris Yeltsin to get
reelected despite his devastating 2 percent rating and despite a disastrous
Chechen war that he started. Since his opponent was Stalinist Gennedy
Zyuganov, we applauded these means, as we believed that they justified the
ends - the final defeat of communism.
However, when we are talking about current situation in Ukraine, this
American and European interference in the internal affairs of Russia's most
important neighbor is no longer acceptable. We keep saying that modern
Russia is our friend and partner. So, isn't it true that Russia should
therefore be treated differently than the USSR? On one hand the State
Department spokesman Adam Ereli is stating that "the United States and
Russia have an outstanding relationship," pointing out that these relations
were "broad, complex, intricate." He said that U.S. President George W. Bush
and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, can find common understanding
and cooperation on a whole host of matters, whether it be arms reduction,
nonproliferation, global war on terror, or other regional issues. President
Bush also said last week that elections in Ukraine ought to be free from any
foreign influence."
At the same time well-informed Congressman Ron Paul, R-Tex., from the
House Committee on International Relations, tells us that the United States
probably spent tens of millions of dollars on the presidential election in
Ukraine and that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular
candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. Ron Paul calls for an investigation by the
Government Accounting Office into how much the U.S. government money
was spent in Ukraine and exactly how it was spent. Russia, of course, most
likely spent similar or larger amount to support Victor Yanukovych, and I
doubt that there will be a similar investigation, but what we see is a Cold
War-type confrontation without any justification because there is no longer
communist or any other security threat emanating from Russia. I think that
both Russia and the U.S. are equally guilty of "meddling" in Ukrainian
affairs. We should leave the Ukrainians alone and have them choose their own
destiny. We should concentrate instead on building strong U.S. - Russian
alliance to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) Vlad Sobell, senior economist Daiwa Research, UK:

The tensions between Russia and the West produced by Ukraine demonstrate
that, despite the change of the last two decades, the Cold War mindset
thrives.
But this time around, the clash is decidedly farcical rather than tragic.
The West faces not a powerful Soviet empire, but a post-totalitarian Russian
power, fighting a rearguard action against perceived hostile encirclement
and possible dismemberment. The West is not rolling back a suffocating
communist tyranny; it is colonizing the inner sanctum of Russia's historical
statehood and national consciousness.
One can sympathize with the yearning by the majority of the Ukrainians for a
European, rather than Russian-style path to democracy. But commentators
portraying these events as on par with the collapse of the Berlin Wall
desperately need a reality check. This is not victory in a new Cold War. It
is a needless humiliation of a nation already conclusively defeated in the
real Cold War.
Luminaries such as Zbigniew Brzezinski have likened Putin to Mussolini (and
his actions indirectly to those of Hitler) and are now celebrating his
defeat. Has the world really gone mad? If analogies apply at all, then the
unstable and internationally bullied Weimar Republic, preceding Hitler, is
the truly meaningful comparison.
The new Cold War warriors' myopia is staggering. I thought that 9/11
shocked us into realizing that the real threat lies in the "axis of evil" -
the failing states and terrorism - not in post-Soviet "evil empire". The
"Terrorist Internationale" - and especially, its Chechen Section - must be
exultant: the West is siding with it against the Kremlin!
Instead of intervening in Ukraine by its more "civilized and democratic"
methods, the West might have worked towards a joint Russia-EU/NATO
strategy. But that would have required less hubris and more sympathy for
Russia's dire predicament. Bashing Putin - the new Brezhnev - looks
clever and heroic. Actually it is very unintelligent and cowardly.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) Janusz Bugajski, director of the East Europe Project at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington:

The real issue is not "meddling" in elections but determining Ukraine's
political system and strategic direction. If the U.S. government, together
with the OSCE, the EU, and numerous NGOs, stand accused of promoting
democratic practices in Ukraine, then they are all guilty. And if the
Russian government is charged with seeking to uphold an authoritarian proxy
government in Kiev, then it too is guilty. The real issue is not "meddling"
but the East-West confrontation over Ukraine.
Although the U.S. and the EU officials have avoided portraying the Ukrainian
upheaval as a West-East conflict, this is exactly how it has evolved at two
critical levels: political and strategic. If "the West" means transparent
democracy, civil society, open media, and the rule of law, and "the East" is
synonymous with authoritarianism, statism, and centralization, then these
two distinct systems are battling in Ukraine. This is not a "clash of
civilizations" but a collision between opposite socio-political structures.
Putin's public relations machine has invented Orwellian formulae for
gullible Western commentators to camouflage the essence of Putinism. Instead
of "party vanguards," we now have "power verticals." Instead of "democratic
centralism," we now have "managed democracy." Instead of "socialist
internationalism," we now have "liberal empires." These linguistic
contortions have direct political ramifications. Allowing elections but
forging the results is evidently an example of "liberal authoritarianism."
In marked contrast, Western institutions are intent on developing grassroots
civic groups that can hold politicians accountable to the electorate.
Clearly, a majority of Ukrainians approve of such a political system.
At the strategic level, Ukraine is also caught between West and East. If the
"West" signifies a system of collective security based around NATO and a
confederal Europe that generates prosperity, and the "East" means that the
Kremlin "chekists" determine CIS security arrangements, foreign policies,
and economic relations, then Ukraine faces a directional choice regarding
its security and independence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(4) Dale Herspring, professor of political science at Kansas State
University, former U.S. Navy and retired career diplomat:

I have no doubt that both the U.S. and Russia (and others) have meddled in
Ukraine's internal affairs -- but what is new? That is the world's
second-oldest profession. The West is interested in human rights (or as the
Russians see it, having a friendly ally on Moscow's border), and Russia is
interested in having a friendly ally who can form the basis of a new
Russian-led common market on its border (or as the West sees it, another
authoritarian regime loyal to Moscow).
In spite of the media frenzy about Western and Russian interference, the
fact is that -- just as many of us expected -- a compromise was found. The
constitution has been re-written so that Yushchenko can be president, albeit
in a weakened position, with the parliament in a stronger one. This means
that from the Kremlin's as well as Washington's and the EU's standpoint,
the outcome will favor neither side so that the battle over Ukraine's
political allegiance will continue to be in doubt. Not surprisingly, this is
a recipe for further meddling, but given how important Kiev has become
in East-West relations, and how much is at stake between Moscow and
Washington in particular, the meddling will be handled carefully so as
not to precipitate a crisis. It is also an outcome that will permit Ukraine
to straddle the fence between East and West. To be honest, (this is)
not a bad outcome considering the fears that have been expressed
on both sides of the fence.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(5) Andrew Kuchins, director, Carnegie Moscow Center:

It is incorrect, in my view, to equate the goals and the magnitude of
Western (In this case the U.S. and the EU are unified) and Russian
involvement in the Ukrainian elections and their aftermath. That is
precisely what pro-Kremlin spin-doctors would like for us to believe, but
there were fundamental and principled differences to the approaches. Mr.
Putin and the Russians made very clear that their preferred outcome was a
Yanukovych victory, and they invested tremendous political and financial
resources to achieve that. The U.S. and European governments, NGOs, and
observers were involved to try to ensure free and fair elections. The
preponderance of evidence leads to the conclusion that there was massive
fraud and falsification of results in the Nov. 21 second-round election. If
Yanukovych had prevailed in an election that was not marred by such obvious
falsification and fraud, the U.S. and the Europeans would have calmly -- if
not with great enthusiasm, perhaps -- accepted the results.
Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets not principally
because of training and financial support from U.S. and European supported
NGOs but rather because they felt they were cheated in the election by a
corrupt regime. To argue otherwise buys into the myth being purported by the
Kremlin that the USAID, Freedom House, George Soros, and others are the
cause of supposedly irresponsible policy and activities on the part of
opposition supporters of Yushchenko. The Kremlin misread the situation
before the elections, and this resulted in a heavy-handed policy that
backfired. However, Mr. Putin is to be commended for his remarks earlier
this week that Russia is prepared to accept the results of the re-run of the
second round on Dec. 26. Now the U.S., the Europeans, and the Russians
should work together with the Ukrainians to ensure that the rerun is
conducted in as free and fair a manner as possible that meets approval of
all international observers. It really looks absurd when CIS and non-CIS
election observers are reaching diametrically opposed conclusions about
elections, as happened in Belarus and then Ukraine. Agreement about the fair
conduct of this election can go a long way to starting to repair the
tremendous damage from our differences over what happened on Nov. 21.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(6) Ira Straus, U.S. coordinator of the Committee on Eastern Europe
and Russia on NATO

Powell is right, Lavrov wrong. There is a single standard in this case; one
based on facts, as the Supreme Court of Ukraine determined. Russian moral
equivalence argumentation on this score is false, and dangerous: It is used
as an opening wedge for conspiracy theories about what the West is doing.
There was a big difference between the Russian and Western meddling. Russian
meddling went over the line, getting Kuchma to delete ... goals of joining
the EU and NATO from the national strategic doctrine, undermining the
both-East-and-West orientation needed for Ukrainian cohesion, setting East
against West Ukraine in hope of political advantage, and threatening
economic consequences if Yanukovych lost.
Post-election Russian meddling consisted of plotting together with Ukrainian
leaders to steal the election; Western "meddling" consisted of supporting
Ukrainians in trying to prevent the theft. Putin was in visible conspiracy
with Kuchma to attempt a coup against the constitution of Ukraine.
The legitimacy of normal meddling -- money, advisers -- is a matter for
public law to regulate. The 1975 Helsinki accords were an invitation to
mutual meddling throughout the CSCE area. It is sad to see Lavrov
complaining when the OSCE does its job. This is the institution Russia
always said ought to be built up into a Common European Home.
In complaining always about double standards, Russia is in effect renouncing
the international standards it has signed. It is like a 1960s teenager who
has no moral code to offer, but denounces the "hypocrisy" of his parents
who preach standards while compromising them in practice.
Powell says the U.S. goal is for Ukraine to build democracy, not to make it
choose the West against Russia. He speaks truthfully (unlike the Western
media). Russia turned this into a forced East-West choice. And lost. And is
now talking itself into an almost rogue attitude to norms. A dangerous
tendency.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
(7) Ethan S. Burger, Esq., adjunct associate professor, Washington
College of Law, American University:

The term "meddling" is not neutral. It suggests improper conduct. Where
exercising one's influence ends and interference begins is highly
subjective.
Mr. Putin and other Russian officials actively supported the presidential
candidacy of Mr. Yanukovych. Mr. Putin congratulated Mr. Yanukovych
on his victory before the Ukrainian Central Election Commission released
the official tallies, at a time when allegations of widespread fraud and
intimidation were being reported by OSCE election observers as well as
most Ukrainian domestic observers. Mr. Kuchma sought the counsel of
Mr. Putin in Moscow (as if there were no telephone lines).
Certainly, the U.S. and other Western countries are guilty of applying
double standards by expressing the unacceptability that the Ukrainian
presidential election (in particular Round 2), while feeling that merely
expressing displeasure about the conduct of election in Belarus,
Turkmenistan, etc., while denying visas to certain of such countries
officials represents an adequate response.
The real issue is that (1) the Russian political and military elite have not
been willing to accept their diminished role on the world stage, and (2)
the Ukrainian population, or large segments of it, in 13-years have
developed a national consciousness, and that during Soviet times, the
borders between the country's sub-divisions had only limited importance.
(For example, who in the U.S. really cares where North Dakota ends
and South Dakota begins?).
Ethnic, linguistic and national (tribal) borders throughout the world do not
usually correspond to political borders. Throughout, this is a result of the
actions of empires such as England, France, Holland, and Spain, but to a
lesser extent China, Russia and the U.S.
Today, Ukraine is in the process of generational change and developing real
institutions. The only question is whether organized crime groups and other
entrenched interests will try to fight the inevitable.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(8) Gordon Hahn, scholar at large and author of "Russia's Revolution
for Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet
Communist Regime, 1985-2000":

It is true that the West in a less obvious way took sides and supported one
of the candidates in the Ukrainian election. There appear to be a set of
unwritten rules about how to do this in the West. One of the most important
is that a country's leaders should not voice their support for one or
another candidate or party in another country's elections. This unwritten
rule was openly broken by Putin in the Ukrainian election.
Russia would have been better off if it had played both sides of the fence
from the start, doing as the Saudis and others do in the U.S. and
contributing to both campaign efforts. A perhaps very subtle statement by
Putin, instead of two blatant campaign trips to Kiev, would have expressed
Moscow's support for Yanukovych without antagonizing the West and the
pro-Yushchenko, ethnic Ukrainian electorate.
To be sure, the West interfered indirectly but needlessly in the campaign.
For example, U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, R. Tex., stated at the Dec. 7
hearings before the Congressional International Relations Committee, of
which he is a member, that he has found (that) USAID money went to fund U.S.
NGOs and anti-Russian Polish-American émigré-led organizations which in turn
funded Ukrainian partisan websites supporting Yushchenko. Paul asked State
Department officials at the hearings to investigate this issue and supported
a GAO investigation as well.
However, at least the West tried to influence the outcome while supporting
the conduct of free and fair elections. Russia backed its candidate while
supporting the corruption of the election process. Despite the mistakes
committed by both sides, it appears that each is aware of the dangerous
situation their brinkmanship has created and worked to contain the conflict.
Things should never have gone so far. It is a failed policy when its product
is a crisis that the slightest spark could make an inter-communal
conflagration (civil war) that could escalate to an international one.
Still, the intensification of a U.S. policy that increasingly isolates
Russia that began with NATO expansion will be a loss for all sides. Remember
that a hard, rather than the present soft, stealth-like authoritarian regime
in Russia will create greater problems for us in the FSU and could
eventually succeed in fashioning an alliance with China and even Islamic
states and terrorists in a Eurasian Axis. Unfortunately, I think it is too
late to correct the mistake and remove the effect of NATO expansion and
save the Russia-West relationship. The only way out is a risky lesser of two
evils - to fund a "birch revolution" in Moscow. This will be an even more
difficult century than the previous one. -30-
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.untimely-thoughts.com/?art=1151
=========================================================
ACTION UKRAINE REPORT-04, No. 259: ARTICLE NUMBER TWELVE
Letters to the editor are always welcome
=========================================================
12. DIVIDED THEY STAND: UKRAINE'S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
HAVE SPLIT THE NATION IN TWO, THE WEST SUPPORTING
YUSHCHENKO AND THE EAST YANUKOVYCH.
CAN THE STATE SURVIVE?

James Meek, The Guardian, London, UK, Fri, Dec 10, 2004

UKRAINE - At Lviv railway station, just after 7am last Wednesday, every one
of the city's old stones seemed damp and chill. There weren't many people
around, but it was evident that this was Viktor Yushchenko territory. Every
fourth person going about their business here in western Ukraine wore the
candidate's orange colours.
The station had been smartened up since I was last in the city nine years
ago. Attractive carved wooden kiosks in a Hapsburg style had been set out
on the platform. This was an Austro-Hungarian terminus once. It was called
Lemberg then. When the Poles had it, between the wars, they called it Lwow.
The Russians call it Lvov; Lviv is the Ukrainian name. It means "City of
Lions".
Few places have been the nexus of as much evil as Lviv station, from where
the Nazis sent tens of thousands of Jews to death camps, and the Soviets
tens of thousands of Ukrainians to the Gulag. The Soviets' forced transfer
of tens of thousands of Lviv's Polish residents to within the new borders of
Poland is a usually forgotten detail by comparison, but it too left its mark
on the city's strange atmosphere, that feeling that the people living there
now are not quite of the people who built it.
Lviv's overwhelming vote for Yushchenko in the disputed first two rounds of
Ukraine's presidential election was a pro-western vote. But which "western"
was it for: the old western Ukraine, anti-Russian, defensive and stubborn,
which believed its devout, conservative, rural nationalism was the proper
inspiration for the whole country? Or western Europe, a future of Ikea and
multiculturalism and the rule of secular law?
Against the odds, the first person I met in Lviv was a fervent supporter of
Viktor Yanukovych, the big, Russian-speaking champion of heavy industry from
the east. Tanya Kotova was the young administrative secretary of one of
Lviv's Jewish organisations, the B'nai B'rith Leopolis Association. There
are a few thousand, mainly elderly Jews left in Lviv now; most arrived with
the Soviets after the war. Kotova gave me a pamphlet detailing the hideous
ways in which the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators exterminated about
270,000 Jews in Lviv region.
Kotova could not understand why so many of her Jewish colleagues supported
Yushchenko. The nastiness of petty anti-semitism which has always grumbled
away in the old Soviet sphere seemed to have turned her into a kind of
mirror image of a Slav chauvinist. She could see no possibility of
redemption for Ukraine. She said the Ukrainians exaggerated the numbers
taken to the Gulag. Kotova's experiences had left her with a bleak outlook.
"Everything that happens in Ukraine is terrible," she said.
Later I met one of Kotova's Ukrainian counterparts, Stepan Oleksyuk, of the
local branch of the Memorial organisation. He said that after the Soviets
occupied Lviv region, more than 400,000 people, overwhelmingly Ukrainians,
were arrested and either shot, deported to Russia and Central Asia, or sent
to the slave labour camps of the Gulag.
"We have documents which show that many Jews were in the NKVD, which
shot many Ukrainians," he said. "It doesn't mean that we don't want to work
with them. They suffered as we did. Only the Jewish community exaggerates
its losses many times over." I felt Oleksyuk's response was unlikely to
satisfy Kotova. Nor would the Jewish community be pleased to see the
pin-up poster of a wartime Ukrainian soldier in SS uniform on the wall
of the Memorial office.
Oleksyuk took me on a tour of Lviv's past. He pointed out Hebrew writing on
walls that had survived half a century. He showed me where the ghetto had
been; there was the prison the NKVD had used - still a prison - the monument
to the victims of Stalin, and there, on the other side of the road, was the
giant steel menorah paying tribute to the Jewish dead.
He began to lead me round Lviv's many churches. The dominant religion in the
city is the hybrid Greek Catholic faith, where worshippers follow the
Orthodox rite but acknowledge the authority of the Pope. Oleksyuk wanted to
make a point about eastern Ukraine: they were Godless ex-communists, and
fond of the bottle to boot.
I asked why western Ukrainians still seemed to see themselves as a minority
in their country, even though ethnic Ukrainians were now a majority in
Ukraine. Did they still use that same contemptuous term for ethnic Russians
you often heard in the early 1990s, "Moskali"?
Oleksyuk softened. "I used to think that the Russians were bad," he said.
"Now I look at Independence Square and see there are Russians there
supporting us, and I recognise that I have to look at my views again, that
there's a new generation that wants to live better. The people in the east
need to consider their position, too. But we must take the first step. We
can consider ourselves the victors now."
As the day got brighter, the ghosts faded. The sight of history being made
was too intoxicating to allow Lviv's past to keep it trapped. Not for a very
long time has Ukraine been a place to wear fresh political colours, so
widely and so proudly. Women wore ornamental orange parcel ribbons around
their wrists or arms or in bows pinned to their coats. There were loops of
orange wool round the straps of handbags, filthy scraps of torn orange cloth
round a street boozer's neck.
On Lviv's central square, a stage and sound system had been set up, and
from mid-morning to late at night a miniature version of Kiev's orange
festivities drew thousands with songs and speeches. The song that had
become the anthem of the revolution, a rap by a group from Ivano-Frankivsk
called Grinjolly, thumped across the city:
The people united, Shall never be divided!
No to falsification! No to machination!
No to stitch-ups! No to lies!
Yushchenko, yes! Yushchenko, yes!
You're our president! Yes, yes, yes!
One day I had lunch with three of the young Ukrainian journalists who put
together Lviv's sharpest daily paper, Postup. They were in their 20s; they
were children when the Soviet Union collapsed. They spoke of their despair
when the results of the second round of voting came in on November 22 and
their astonishment at the tenacity of the Kiev protestors. They said that,
even before the revolution, western Ukraine had changed.
"For several years, people who are younger haven't seen things in
categorical terms," said Vsevolod Polishchuk. "Thinking has become more
liberal. The chauvinists are always getting fewer."
Irina Smertiga, the paper's economics correspondent, had been to Kiev for a
weekend to join the demonstrators. "It's not so easy to make a revolution in
Ukraine," she said. "I never thought it'd take on the character it has. I
thought they'd stand and shout for a couple of days and then disperse and
recognise their defeat.
Vsevolod said: "We must teach the authorities that they can be changed if
the people so desire. The main thing is to prevent the authorities
developing the feeling that they are untouchable, that they can do whatever
they want as long as they check, from time to time, that people aren't dying
of hunger."
Over and over again I would hear the same: an indignation rising in people,
not just at the corruption and coarseness of the nepotistic clans who have
come to control Ukraine under President Leonid Kuchma, but at their arrogant
presumption of invulnerability.
Lviv's proximity to the west has brought it little in terms of prosperity or
responsible governance. The city remains poor, shabby, and run-down. Its
picturesque cobbled streets are badly maintained. Hardly any of its handsome
Mitteleuropa tenements have been restored. There are new shops, but tens of
thousands of citizens are still eking out a living in the kind of
cloth-on-the-pavement street trading which began after the USSR vanished, or
have been forced to work as low-paid migrant workers in the EU's shadow
economy. Too much time has passed for the authorities to be able to blame
Stalin and Brezhnev for everything.
The night sleeper to Kiev takes eight hours. I shared the four-berth
compartment with a pensioner on his way to join the protests. "I was there
already for six days," said Stepan Onisko, who is 73. "I went home for a
couple of days to wash and rest. Now I'm going back, until we're
victorious."
In 1949, when he was 19, Onisko was arrested by the NKVD, accused of
collaborating with Ukrainian separatists, and sentenced to 15 years hard
labour in a Siberian copper mine. "I left my youth there," he said. "It got
down to minus 40, minus 45, and there we were in nothing but a padded
jacket and torn felt boots.
"The government is made up of criminals," said Onisko. "We've had an
independent Ukraine for 13 years, and we already have billionaires. Not
millionaires, but billionaires! My pension's 288 grivnya now (pounds 28.80).
I get an extra eight grivnya (80p) for being a victim of repression. It used
to be 248, but just before the elections, they gave us another 40, like
throwing a dog a bone."
Back in the early days of Ukrainian independence, if you talked about
Ukraine splitting east and west, it would have been hard to say which side
Kiev would fall on. In 2004, there is no doubt that a large number of
Kievans voted for Yanukovych; but the authorities, who, it is now widely
accepted, falsified the results heavily in Yanukovych's favour, nonetheless
gave the Ukrainian capital to Yushchenko by a weighty margin. In the streets
of Kiev last Friday, the density of people wearing orange was almost as
great as in Lviv.
Further east than Lviv, Kiev, none the less, looks more superficially
"western"; richer, more brightly lit, with better dressed people. A typical
December thaw was setting in after the first hard frosts of November and the
streets resounded to the sound of meltwater hammering onto tin porches. I
set off for Independence Square.
As a revolutionary space, Independence Square is perfect. Roads lead from
it straight to the presidential office, the Central Bank, the government
headquarters and parliament. The square itself can hold tens of thousands
of people; the steep slopes leading up to Pchersk which overlook it form
a natural amphitheatre. Underneath the square is a network of pedestrian
tunnels and escalators leading to the metro system which provides shelter
when the weather gets too bad and can keep feeding in fresh protesters from
all over the city.
All day and much of the night while I was there, the square stayed full,
thousands of people squeezing in and out from underground with an eerie
tranquillity as musicians and politicians came and went from the stage that
was the focus of the protest. I saw no one drunk or violent. All trace of
Yanukovych's supporters had long vanished. For a revolution, there was an
atmosphere of extraordinary restraint and decorum. As one sympathetic
Anglo-Ukrainian observer, Markian Bilynskyj from Nottingham, said: "This
is a bourgeois revolution."
The student tent city stretching out along the main drag bisecting the
square, Kreshchatik, had the atmosphere of a scout and guide camp. Had the
Ukrainian riot police raised a truncheon to the crowd, of course, it would
have been different. As it was, a second manifestation of the tent city went
right up to the walls of Kuchma's office. Moody young men in watch caps
sat warming their hands at braziers outside their grubby canvas igloos at a
point close enough to the centre of power that, had it been the White House
or Downing Street, they would long since have been bundled away.
"I made a choice for Viktor Yushchenko, and I came here to defend my right,"
said Sergei Perun, a 22-year-old ecology student from Zhitomir, a city west
of Kiev, standing among the tents on Khreshchatik on Friday evening.
"Everyone has the right to insist on their voice being heard.
"First and foremost, I'm here for honesty. I'm not so much for Yushchenko
because I really like him, but because I'm for honesty without
falsification. Our rulers thought that, once again, they'd be able to do
what they wanted. But they've deceived us so much that the people simply
couldn't take it any more. Nobody forced me to come here."
Perun was under no illusions about the vice he is squeezed in. On one hand,
he described in detail the pressure that was put on the students to vote for
Yanukovych. On the other, he knows that Yushchenko is not likely to be able
to make an immediate difference to his life, and may not even want to do
what Perun would like. "We don't expect everything to be free," said Perun.
"But maybe they could make things a little less expensive."
At just before 6pm, the supreme court was expected to declare its verdict in
the suit brought by the Yushchenko camp seeking to have the results of the
second round of elections overturned. I joined others at a vantage point on
the roof of a shopping centre overlooking the crowds. I wondered what would
happen if the court threw Yushchenko's case out. Would the activists begin
storming the centres of power? Would the revolution lose momentum? As we
waited, the amplified music from the stage went silent. The giant TV screens
were blank. An uncomfortable near-silence settled over the crowd. Was this
how protests end, when the music stops and the feckless begin to drift away?
The screens flickered into life. Anatoly Yarema, the stout, moustachioed
chairman of the supreme court, appeared. This was it. Rapidly, he began to
read through the judgement. Ripples of cheers ran through the crowd. I
badgered my neighbour for a translation. After little more than five
minutes, there was an enormous cheer, and two fireworks burst over
Kreshchatik. The court had declared, against all expectations, not only that
the elections were void, but that Yanukovych and Yushchenko would have
to go head to head a second time. It was an extraordinary, historic,
crushing defeat for Kuchma and his coterie of manipulative oligarchs.
For a short time, my journalistic detachment dissolved, and I felt like
crying. My first article for this paper was about the day Ukraine voted for
independence, and in the months that followed I and the rest of the rag-tag

bunch of western correspondents cutting our teeth in Kiev spent a great deal
of time complaining to each other about how apathetic and apolitical the
Ukrainians were in the face of their greedy new masters. Now, out of the
blue, here they were, in their own time, bloodlessly, efficiently and with
great deliberation, giving their president the finger.
Next to me was a middle-aged businesswoman and ex-mathematician, Natasha
Skarbovichuk. I asked her what she made of it. "We got what we wanted," she
said. "There has to be justice sometimes in the world. A leader appeared: a
personality." Tears came to her eyes. "When Yushchenko became PM, we felt
changes immediately. It was the first time things started changing for the
better since perestroika."
I went down the hill into the swelling crowd on the square. The
demonstrators still seemed stunned by the scale of their victory. Zoya
Gurber, an eye surgeon, was in the crowd with her young son. "We've never
had a chance like this before," she said, though she was cautious. "People
have never been so deceived before, and we never had such a candidate as
Yushchenko to vote for before."
Kreshchatik was still buzzing at midnight. On the great, rumbling old
escalators carrying people down to the metro, a small group of orangified
youngsters chanted Yushchenko's name and the bare white walls threw it back
at them. Now it did sound like a football chant. A girl, alone, smiled
beatifically at everyone moving in the opposite direction as she sailed down
into the Ukrainian underground.
Sometimes, when there's been a great party, you suddenly remember afterwards
a whole bunch of people who weren't there, and you wonder why. It was a bit
like that on the sleeper from Kiev to Donetsk the following night.
No one doubts that the eastern regions, particularly Lugansk and Donetsk,
voted overwhelmingly for local boy Yanukovych, and it is easy to see why.
The economy of the east is made up, crudely speaking, of two parts: mines
and metal. The metal sector, fed by China's insatiable demand for steel, is
booming and profitable. The coal mines aren't, and swallow up large
subsidies from Kiev. The miners may be naive in crediting Yanukovych with
the fact they now get their salaries on time; but at least Yanukovych
promises to do all he can to keep loss-making mines open. Under his
premiership, some mines which were closed have even been started up. As
the train pulls in to the sprawling, grey-brown, low-rise bleakness of
Donetsk on a Sunday morning in December I'm haunted by something the
Yushchenko supporter Bilynskyj said: "They're not doing enough," he said
of his camp, "to explain to the east of Ukraine that the transition period
could be economically devastating."
I wish Stepan Oleksyuk, the Memorial man from Lviv, could have been with me
when I drove into central Donetsk. There were new churches everywhere, as if
someone was opening a pop-up book. A Roman Catholic cathedral was about to
open not far from the station. A Russian Orthodox cathedral, the Cathedral
of the Holy Transfiguration, was almost complete near Lenin Square. In the
basement of the cathedral, perfumed with candles, Father Georgy was holding
a service in front of a blindingly gold new iconostasis.
One of Yanukovych's election promises was the offer of dual citizenship for
ethnic Russians in Ukraine, something currently forbidden by Ukrainian law.
Father Georgy said, in the course of explaining how the cathedral came to be
built, that he and his parishioners had dual citizenship already. "First of
all, we're citizens of the kingdom of Christ," he said. "It's not poor
people who built this cathedral. We have holy princes. If a person does
something good for the church we will pray for him and, if possible, we will
vote for him." The holy prince being, in this case, Viktor Yanukovych -
"Brother Viktor" in Father Georgy's prayers - who, as governor of Donetsk,
oiled wheels to help get the cathedral built.
Tension between the Russian Orthodox church, or at least that part which
owes allegiance to the Moscow patriarchate, and the Greek Catholic faith
of western Ukraine is one of the facets of the tension between the two
borderlands. "We suffered from the Soviet authorities as much as they did in
western Ukraine," said Father Georgy (a claim the Greek Catholics would
dispute) "but we never equated the Soviet authorities with the Orthodox
authorities in Russia."
On Lenin Square itself, a statue of the revolutionary hero still stands.
Contrary to the warnings of Kievans and Lvivites, the centre is not swarming
with alcoholic troglodytes ready to bludgeon anyone wearing orange as soon
as look at them. The centre of Donetsk is neat, just about prosperous, and
blessed like everywhere else with the yellow arches of Ronald M.
I get talking to Lena, 21, from Mariupol in the south of Donetsk region. She
works in a clinic. She tells me a version of what I hear from everyone I
talk to here; that the Yushchenko camp should be ashamed, driving children
on to the streets, taking them away from their education to shout political
slogans, that as governor and as prime minister Yanukovych was the best
thing to happen to Donetsk since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that,
yes, there was electoral fraud, but Yushchenko's camp was as much to blame
as Yanukovych's. And like everyone I spoke to, Lena didn't take the idea of
separatism seriously.
"They've put my pay up three times," she said. "I started on 217 grivnya a
month (pounds 21.70) and now I'm on 350 (pounds 35 ) . . Yuschenko's ill.
He's all black in the face. How can he be president? If people vote for
Yushchenko, though, so be it. As long as there's no war."
Donetsk, founded by a Welshman in Tsarist times, looks a great deal less
kempt outside the central circle of prosperity. The peripheries of all
Ukrainian cities look neglected but even by Ukrainian standards the margins
of this city of a million people look as if they might begin collapsing at
any time. Winding shafts and slag heaps are the dominant verticals among the
houses. Outside one mine on the edge of town I found Alexei Ivanov, a
19-year-old miner, with his face still covered in coal dust and his work
clothes frayed and patched. He gave me the conventional wisdom on Ya and Yu
as it filters down to a teenage coal worker: Yanukovych raised students'
stipends and pensions. Yushchenko was a crook. "He hasn't done anything for
us."
Not that Ivanov was happy in the mines. "I get 600 grivnya (pounds 60). Is
that money? If I had children, I'd do my best to make sure they didn't have
to work down the mines."
Ivanov knew the elections had been dishonest. He saw one person stuffing six
ballot papers in a ballot box. He didn't really care. Compared to the orange
hordes on Independence Square, he was not the stuff revolutionaries are made
of. "I don't really care who wins, as long as they pay the money on time.
We're all the same, east and west, we're all Ukrainians." But: "If the mine
closes, where are we going to go?"
Down the road, at a bus queue, the anger and fear was stronger. "What would
Yushchenko give us if he was president?" asked Tanya Kurkova. "He closed
down mines when he was prime minister. I work in a mine, my husband works in
a mine, and my mum works in a mine. Why should I vote for Yushchenko?"
The greatest fear is in towns like Ugledar, across green fields an hour's
drive outside Donetsk, where there is nothing except coal. Western advisers
and the Yushchenko camp may talk grandly about restructuring. But in
Ugledar, they know what restructuring means: "You're fired." Ugledar's South
Donbass Mine Number 1 is a relatively modern mine - 30 years old - which
produces more than a million tonnes of coal a year. But the coal is hard to
get to. Russian and Polish coal is cheaper. Without its government subsidy -
84 million grivnya (pounds 8.4m) - the mine would struggle to stay open, and
its 4,300 workers, part of the 350,000-strong mining workforce in the
Donbass, would be in trouble.
The director of the mine, Mikhail Bugara, is a close political ally of
Yanukovych. Falsification in Ugledar? Absolutely not. Falsification in
western Ukraine? "100%." From behind his desk in his big wood-panelled
boardroom, bare except for a portrait of President Kuchma, he holds forth
like the politician he is. Life was so much better when Yanukovych was
premier. He put up pensions, didn't he? If he was president he would start
opening up all the old Soviet factories in western Ukraine.
"We're not such a rich country that we can make our democratic values the
first priority," advised Bugara. "We need to sort out industry first."
Bugara refused to accept that any of the protesters on Independence Square
was there because of a concern for honesty and fairness. They were all there
because they had been paid. And the ultimate paymaster was Washington. "It
used to be Yugoslavia. Then Iraq. Now it's Ukraine," he said.
I asked Bugara which he would prefer - a dishonestly elected president who
was good to him, or an honestly elected president who would deprive him of
his livelihood. It was a difficult question, and I don't blame Bugara for
not answering it. As I was leaving, he told me how much he liked the present
government of Belarus.
Next day, in the car to Kiev's airport, I had the almost unprecedented
experience of a Ukrainian taxi driver with an interest in politics. "Do you
think Kuchma will fire the government today?" he asked. He was excited.
"Probably not a single country in the world has had elections like these."
I opened my mouth to challenge him, and closed it without saying anything.
Wasn't he right? Where else was there a country whose citizens were free
enough to have elections, but not free enough to have fair ones, and who
felt strongly enough about it to stand up for their rights in the frost and
snow and rain, without either them, or the authorities who cheated them,
possessing enough hate and contempt to try to settle the matter with
bloodshed? -30- {The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
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