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Action Ukraine Report

                              "THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR"
                                            An International Newsletter
                                              The Latest, Up-To-Date
                     In-Depth Ukrainian News, Analysis, and Commentary

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

                            RUSSIA BACK IN FASHION AS UKRAINE'S
                                 'ORANGE REVOLUTION' FOUNDERS
What about the angry masses who protested in the freezing streets of Kiev
last year, decrying the previous Ukrainian regime's suspect bonds to Moscow?
What about Yushchenko's promises to lead Ukraine away from Russia and
into western Europe? Where did the 'orange revolution' go? [article six]

"THE ACTION UKRAINE REPORT - AUR" - Number 574
Mr. E. Morgan Williams, Publisher and Editor
Washington, D.C., Kyiv, Ukraine, SUNDAY, October 2, 2005

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

1.                 FEELING BLUE ABOUT THE ORANGE REVOLUTION
Since the two heroes of their revolt split over an ugly power struggle,
the mood among Ukrainians has slid from euphoria to disillusionment
By Mark Mackinnon, The Globe and Mail
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Saturday, October 1, 2005 Page A19

2.                                   THERMIDOR IN UKRAINE?
              Yushchenko's efforts to put the country back on original path
UPDATE: by Adrian Karatnycky
To his essay "Ukraine's Orange Revolution"
Foreign Affairs journal, March/April 2005
Foreignaffairs.org, Wednesday, September 28, 2005

3.       CHANGES ARE ONLY ABOUT TO BEGIN, OR IS THE SECOND
                  PHASE OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION POSSIBLE?
COMMENTARY: By Mykola Tomenko
Former Vice-Prime-Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko's Government
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Fri, September 30, 2005

4.      HAS YUSHCHENKO BETRAYED THE ORANGE REVOLUTION?
END NOTE: By Jan Maksymiuk
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Friday, September 30, 2005

5. YEKHANUROV IN MOSCOW AS UKRAINE 'SURRENDERS' TO RUSSIA
Agence France Presse, Moscow, Russia, Friday, September 30, 2005

6.                          RUSSIA BACK IN FASHION AS UKRAINE'S
                                  'ORANGE REVOLUTION' FOUNDERS
By Christopher Boian, Agence France Presse (AFP)
Moscow, Russia, Sunday, October 2, 2005

7.         RUSSIANS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT IDEA OF UNIFIED
                                     RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN STATE
By Paul Goble, UPI, Vienna, Austria, Wed, Sep 28, 2005

8.                                 "NO MORE PEOPLE POWER"
Fuelled by e-mails and western cash, Ukraine's orange revolution was a
new kind of upheaval. Other ex-Soviet states don't want it happening again.
COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Jo Durden-Smith
New Statesmen Online, Furthering the aims of Beatrice & Sydney Webb
London, United Kingdom. Monday 3rd October 2005

9.                             USA: OBSEQIOUSNESS TOWARD PUTIN
                                               Bush's deferential posture
TODAY'S COLUMNIST: By Andrei Piontkovsky
The Washington Times, Washington, D.C.
Friday, September 30, 2005

10.                                          "OUT OF THE ABYSS"
          First person by one of the few survivors of the Babi Yar massacre
By Grigory Rodin and Anne Sebba
As told by Grigory Rodin to Anne Sebba
FIRST PERSON: Financial Times Weekend Magazine
London, United Kingdom, Monday, Sep 24, 2005

11.            POLAND TO PAY FOR STALIN'S ETHNIC CLEANSING
The case involves a Polish citizen whose property now lies in Ukraine.
Radio Polonia, Warsaw, Poland, September 30, 2005

12.                            BELARUS: ACCIDENTAL TYRANNY
Belarus is one of the most repressive and bizarre regimes in Europe.
But Tom Stoppard, on a recent trip to the capital, Minsk, found a thriving
opposition and a hunger for art that challenges the 'national psychosis'
By Tom Stoppard, The Guardian
London, UK, Saturday October 1, 2005

13.         UKRAINE: FOR $110, ONE CHILLING DAY IN A HOT ZONE
19 Years After Nuclear Accident, Tourists and Wildlife Populate Chernobyl
By Peter Finn, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Saturday, October 1, 2005; Page A12
=============================================================
1.                FEELING BLUE ABOUT THE ORANGE REVOLUTION
Since the two heroes of their revolt split over an ugly power struggle,
the mood among Ukrainians has slid from euphoria to disillusionment

By Mark Mackinnon, The Globe and Mail
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Saturday, October 1, 2005 Page A19

KIEV -- It's a familiar sight: Ukrainians gathered under an orange flag in
the centre of Kiev, demanding change. But a year after the euphoria of the
Orange Revolution, the last such banner still flying in the centre of Kiev
has a black ribbon of mourning tied to it.

The 10 tired-looking men and women gathered under it aren't celebrating
the events of last fall that brought President Viktor Yushchenko to power.
They're protesting the betrayal of the ideals that brought so many
Ukrainians into the streets to support him.

"This is the funeral of Yushchenko's politics," said Andrei, who gave only
one name. The 38-year-old farm-equipment dealer has been sleeping for
weeks in a pup tent in front of the Agriculture Ministry, a miniature
version of last year's sprawling tent city that occupied Kiev's central
Khreshchatyk Street.

The protesters, who say they were among the crowds supporting the Orange
Revolution, initially set up the encampment to demand the resignation of the
Agriculture Minister over rising prices in the industry.

Now they have an additional demand: that Yulia Tymoshenko be reinstated.
The populist blond firebrand who stood beside Mr. Yushchenko throughout the
uprising was recently fired as prime minister after a very public spat with
the President over corruption.

"The two of them led the revolution together, and they should be in power
together," Andrei said.

In last year's revolt, tens of thousands of orange-clad Ukrainians swarmed
the centre of Kiev for weeks to demand that a fraudulent election result be
overturned and that Mr. Yushchenko be installed as president. It was
supposed to have marked a clear departure from the corrupt, incestuous
politics of the country's recent past.

But Ukraine's mood since the Orange Revolution has slid from initial
euphoria at the performance of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko team in office,
to deep disillusionment at how the two heroes of the revolt split after an
ugly power struggle.

Independence Square, where demonstrators gathered daily last November and
December, is today a place where Ukrainians can go to display their dismay
at what's happened since then.

Supporters of Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Russian candidate who vainly
resisted defeat at Mr. Yushchenko's hands, have erected a garbage bin on the
square where people -- about 70 of them a day -- throw out the orange flags
and scarves of a year ago. Orange was the colour of Mr. Yushchenko's
election campaign.

One of the clearest signs that the Orange Revolution has gone sour has been
the re-emergence of Mr. Yanukovich as a political power broker in the
country.

Mr. Yushchenko struck a pact with Mr. Yanukovich's party in exchange for the
parliamentary approval of Yuriy Yekhanurov as Ms. Tymoshenko's replacement.
The wording of the deal provides immunity to many who participated in the
vote fraud that set off the Orange Revolution.

The deal has been most disconcerting for those who thought the uprising had
finally pulled Ukraine out of the Kremlin's orbit after centuries of Russian
domination. Mr. Yanukovich was backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin,
and the defeated presidential candidate brings his Russian allies back to
the Ukrainian political scene.

"This alliance of Yanukovich and Yushchenko will dismay their supporters,"
read a recent editorial in the Ukraine Moloda newspaper, which is normally
pro-Yushchenko. "This means that once more, east and west, business and
politics, will be mixed up. Many of those who stood on Independence Square
will view this as a betrayal."

"It's exactly what we expected,'' said Sergei Markov, a Kremlin-affiliated
political analyst who was in Kiev this week hosting a seminar on Ukraine's
political crisis. "The program of the Orange Revolution was unrealistic. . .
. They prepared for a revolution, but had no strategy for running the
country after they won."

To complicate matters further, Russian prosecutors suddenly cancelled a
long-standing arrest warrant for Ms. Tymoshenko last weekend, a signal that
she may now ally herself with the Kremlin in a bid to trump Mr. Yushchenko's
party in parliamentary elections scheduled for next spring. (Ms. Tymoshenko
had been accused of illegally siphoning off gas that was transiting Russia.)

Most opinion polls now put her popularity ahead of the President's.
"Yushchenko has always been afraid of her," said Sergei Ossipenko, an aide
to Ms. Tymoshenko.

It's not just the political infighting that has people disillusioned. The
leaders of the Orange Revolution have failed to deliver on almost every key
issue dear to their supporters.

The country is no closer to joining the European Union -- a key, if
unrealistic, promise often made by both Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko
during the uprising -- than it was a year ago.

They did not bring the country out of isolation; in fact, foreign investment
fell under their leadership, and economic growth slid to 6 per cent in the
first half of this year from 12 per cent in 2004. The percentage of
Ukrainians who believe the country is headed in the right direction has
fallen from 43 per cent in April to 23 per cent in a recent poll.

An investigation into the death of opposition journalist Giorgiy Gongadze,
which many Ukrainians believe was carried out by senior figures in the hated
regime of former president Leonid Kuchma, has gone nowhere, leading the
dead man's mother to charge that the new authorities were no better than the
old ones and that she would not shake Mr. Yushchenko's hand if she saw him.

Amidst all the disappointment, the allegations of corruption have stood out
as particularly repulsive to Ukrainians who supported the
Yushchenko-Tymoshenko team hoping they would put an end to the post-
Soviet kleptocracy under Mr. Kuchma.

Disappointed insiders, however, say members of the new government
behaved little differently than those who preceded them.

Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko fell out after Oleksander Zinchenko,
the president's chief-of-staff, quit his post in disgust earlier this month,
saying "corruption is now even worse than before."

Mr. Zinchenko specifically accused Petro Porashenko, a key financial backer
of the Orange Revolution who later became head of the National Defence and
Security Council, and Olexandr Tretyakov, an adviser to the president, of
nepotism and influence peddling.

"People who come to power still see the state as a huge trough. They gorge
themselves as quickly as possible because they don't know how long they're
going to be there before the next group comes along. It's been that way
since independence," Dan Bilak said.

Mr. Bilak, a Canadian lawyer who has been advising the government on legal
reforms, was speaking in general terms and not about recent allegations.

The implosion of the Orange Revolution was months in the making. Mr.
Porashenko, a millionaire confectionary tycoon, and Ms. Tymoshenko, herself
a millionaire, were privately at loggerheads even as they stood together in
front of the crowds on Independence Square.

By most accounts, Mr. Porashenko, who was granted extensive powers by the
President, never reconciled himself to Ms. Tymoshenko's having got the top
job. He ran the Security Council as something close to an alternative
government and frequently clashed with Ms. Tymoshenko and her cabinet on
economic policy.

Mr. Porashenko favoured market-oriented policies; Ms. Tymoshenko had a
leftist, populist approach. Neither was able to push through the economic
reforms they wanted.

"They were very good at striking and leading protests, but due to their
personal characteristics, they were not good at administering," said Yuriy
Orobiets, an influential parliamentary deputy. "They only ever had one thing
in common: opposition to Kuchma."

As the personality clash threatened to run his presidency into the ground,
Mr. Yushchenko eventually decided he had no option but to fire the entire
government and start anew.

"He lost both his biggest political supporter, Tymoshenko, and his biggest
financial supporter, Porashenko, at once," said a Western diplomat based in
Kiev. "The winner seems to be Yanukovich, and Russia seems quite happy
as well."

Those inside the corridors of power say they know the people on the streets
feel let down. Many Ukrainians believed the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko team
was going to put the country on a path to greater affluence and integration
into Europe.

What they saw instead was the new leaders behaving just like the old ones,
squabbling for influence and trading accusations of corruption.

"It was not just a surprise, it was a shock," said Kseniya Lyapina, a member
of Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party. "There was this irrational, romantic
idea that Yushchenko and Tymoshenko would always remain together
[politically], and now this romantic idea has been disproved."

But despite the spectacular setbacks, politicians and ordinary Ukrainians
alike are also quick to point out that the country has nonetheless made some
strides from a year ago.

The once-dreaded security services have lost much of their influence, and
society is more open. Once the media were afraid to criticize those in
power, and today the press is as vibrant and diverse as almost anywhere in
Europe.

Once Ukrainians felt they had no choice but to endure decades of bad
government; now they know that if the authorities misstep, they can throw
them out of office, either via the ballot box or otherwise.

"Before, everyone worried only about himself or herself, but in the time of
the Orange Revolution, people saw what they can accomplish if they gather
together," said Masha Boronina.

The 20-year-old student from Eastern Ukraine was helping this week to set
up another small tent camp, this one in front of the country's Oil Ministry
in a protest against alleged corruption there.

Speaking of her own small protest, she said she expected it would succeed
in bringing about change. "They know the power of the people," she said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.theglobeandmail.com
=============================================================
2.                                        THERMIDOR IN UKRAINE?
              Yushchenko's efforts to put the country back on original path

UPDATE: by Adrian Karatnycky
To his essay "Ukraine's Orange Revolution"
Foreign Affairs journal, March/April 2005
Foreignaffairs.org, Wednesday, September 28, 2005

On the 9th day of the month of Thermidor, five years after the storming of
the Bastille, the French Revolution's radicals were ousted by more moderate
forces.

Nonviolent civic revolutions have had their own Thermidors as well, and this
pattern is what some have identified in last month's dismissal of the
Ukrainian government by President Viktor Yushchenko, less than a year after
reformers there toppled the previous regime.

In fact, however, Yushchenko's actions are best understood not as a retreat
from reform but rather as an effort to put the country back on the original
path of last fall's Orange Revolution.

Many people lay claim to the legacy of Ukraine's nonviolent civic struggle,
but there is little doubt that the Orange Revolution was about three things:
democracy, transparency, and an economy based on competition. Indeed,
one of the leading organized forces advocating change last winter, the Pora
youth movement, consisted of thousands of young activists driven by a
belief in liberal politics and free-market principles.

In keeping with this spirit, the recent government reshuffling reflected
Yushchenko's frustration with a stalemate in his coalition government that
had produced a rudderless economic policy, part statist, part liberal.

The charismatic prime minister whom Yushchenko dismissed, Yulia
Tymoshenko, claimed she was a modern, market-oriented leader but in fact
had pursued a moderately populist agenda, pushing for large increases in
social spending.

Although her policies to increase pensions and state-sector wages by 80
percent, impose price controls on commodities, and support widespread
reprivatization were popular, they contributed to a slowdown in economic
growth from 13 percent in 2004 to a projected 5.5 percent in 2005.

Endless backbiting and mixed economic signals had scared off investors
at home and abroad. After matters came to a head with charges and
countercharges within his Orange coalition about judicial tampering in
reprivatization cases and alleged inner-circle corruption, President
Yushchenko chose to act.

He asserted his mandate as the country's legitimately elected leader and
replaced Tymoshenko with Yuri Yekhanurov, a quiet technocrat with a
reputation for decency and efficiency, whose appointment was confirmed
by support from nearly two-thirds of parliament.

The president also sacked Petro Poroshenko, a multimillionaire who had
been his confidant and a financial pillar of his election campaign.

Tymoshenko has responded to the sacking with sharp attacks, asserting that
Yushchenko is making common cause with representatives from the old
regime. But the president appears to be acting to return the country to more
normal and predictable governance.

Worried about how to deal with past corrupt privatizations, he has chosen to
restrict reprivatization to a handful of the most egregious examples of
cronyism and outright corruption. (Ironically, Tymoshenko, concerned by the
slowdown, had herself recently been making a midcourse correction by
moving toward more market-oriented and investment-friendly policy.

But her unwillingness to agree to a reduction in the number of her allies in
the coalition government sealed her fate.)

Some might argue that the political upheaval in Ukraine is a sign of
disarray and instability. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Yushchenko's appointment of the pro-EU Oleh Rybachuk as chief of staff
and of the capable and steady Yekhanurov as prime minister should
reassure Ukraine's entrepreneurial classes and the international business
community.

At the same time, his decision to remove several aides accused of
corruption--or at the very least tainted by perceptions of conflicts of
interests--is likely to win wide support among Ukraine's citizens.

Once a technocrat himself, Yushchenko has emerged from several
assassination attempts and the high-stakes civic struggles of last year a
changed man. He is determined to leave his mark on Ukraine and not to
squander the Orange Revolution's mandate. In this. he deserves
understanding and support, including from the United States and the rest
of the West.

With Russia drifting toward authoritarianism and Belarus already a hard-line
dictatorship, change in much of the former Soviet Union will be influenced
in great measure by whether Ukraine succeeds in transforming itself into a
modern European state. And infighting in the upper reaches of the Ukrainian
state had put that important aim at risk.

Yushchenko's decisive actions have brought significant criticism from some
of his former revolutionary allies. But in the end, it will be up to
Ukraine's people to decide who is right. Ukraine will hold parliamentary
elections in March 2006.

At that time, voters will signal whether they prefer Yushchenko's more
business-friendly liberal economics or the more socially oriented policies
of his erstwhile ally Tymoshenko.

In all likelihood, neither of the two blocs behind the two leaders that lay
claim to the legacy of the Orange Revolution will prevail. This means that
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko could well reemerge as allies again.

No matter how events play out in Kiev, one thing is certain. The fact that
Ukraine's people will in the end decide their own future is a testimony to
the durability of last fall's nonviolent people-power struggle.  -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Adrian Karatnycky, Senior Scholar and Counselor at Freedom House,
has launched a new international nongovernmental initiative, the
Orange Circle, to support democratic and economic reforms in Ukraine.
=============================================================
3.      CHANGES ARE ONLY ABOUT TO BEGIN, OR IS THE SECOND
                   PHASE OF THE ORANGE REVOLUTION POSSIBLE?

COMMENTARY: By Mykola Tomenko
Former Vice-Prime-Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko's Government
Ukrayinska Pravda, Kyiv, Ukraine, Fri, September 30, 2005

Eight months after the Orange Revolution became "time X" that allowed
certain leaders of the revolution, as well as common people who drove the
revolution to success, to reconsider the events of autumn-winter of 2004.

In general, these events developed according to the rules of a well-composed
literary work. Appointment of all branches of new authorities became the
onset: the President moved there all Maidan's feudal lords, commandants
and financial donors.

The only problem with this great migration was that the President did not
ask the Prime-Minister's opinion regarding her new team.

Then, a turbulent and ambiguous activity of a new team started. Clash of
antagonisms among the key players in the government, Presidential
Secretariat and National Defense Committee of the Ukraine became a
culmination of post-revolutionary show.

And, finally, the culmination happened, when the President broke up the
Cabinet of Ministers to balance with this action the sacking of Petro
Poroshenko and Oleksandr Tretyakov, who were charged with corruption.

The President himself halted these squabbles, during which he wobbled
between the interests of the Ukraine and those of his personal friends.

      PRESIDENT YUSHCHENKO TRAPPED IN THE ENTOURAGE:
                HIS OWN, KUCHMA'S AND YANUKOVYCH'S
Now, when the authorities starting anew, one can analyze the events of
post-revolutionary period.

The main corollary is depressing. Unfortunately, the declared Maidan values
did not materialize in the deeds of people entrusted with people's hopes.
The majority of the ruling team that rode the wave of the revolution did not
realize who they owe their success to.

Businessmen, who occupied the offices on the Hrushevsky and Bankova
Streets, firmly believe even now that their paths were paved with the
millions of dollars spent on the revolution, but not with the millions of
Ukrainians at the streets.

Moreover, those apologists wholeheartedly believe that their input was
crucial, and appropriate the people with the role of grateful yet dirigible
crowd.

That is why they don't care about public opinion, for example, regarding
cooperation with Leonid Kuchma and Victor Yanukovych. It all became
apparent after signing the political Memorandum.

Kuchma's public christening of Yulia Tymoshenko's government dismissal
and Yuri Yekhanurov's following appointment finalized and legitimized the
union of old and new regimes.

During the first seven months the ruling team at least partially tried to
incorporate society's demands into their work, but now the President is
finally trapped in the entourage: his own, Leonid Kuchma's that is
represented in the Parliament by his son-in-law Victor Pinchuk and Victor
Yanukovych's. Those are the forces that direct the course of the new
authorities.

          THE FIRST AMONG EQUALS BECAME THE TALLEST
The President's mistake that may become his tragedy is that he invited to
build a democratic society too many people who do not share the values of
the freedom and democracy.

There were times when the President's closest allies stood side-by-side with
Leonid Kuchma, financed the family fund of his wife, defended him during the
tape scandal and together with Kuchma politically destroyed then
Prime-Minister Yushchenko.

Today the President's entourage tries to recreate the scheme tested during
Kuchma's rule, when certain businessmen-turned-ministers ensured the
wellbeing of presidential family, supplied his wife with jewelry, and his
son with apartments, cars and mobile phones, and managed the building of
the family residence near Yaremcha.

On these conditions new President becomes a hostage of the old system. He
used to be the first one among the equals, and now he became the tallest
among the rest.

In the existing system the principle of accountability according to
subordination is absent - yet it is a key principle in management. As a
result, the President governs intuitively - according to his own preferences
or aversions.

The key appointments are handled according to the same principle. So far,
the President relied on his friends Chervonenko and Poroshenko, who he met
up with on the regular basis; however, he ignored the head of the executive
power branch - the Prime-Minister, who he communicated with only when it
was required: during the celebrations or on TV.

          HONEST GOVERNMENT OF KUCHMISM PRESERVATION?
Obviously, that there is a conflict of global values between authorities and
people. Millions of people were fighting for the honest government, for the
equality in the face of law, for the just courts.

At first, many had an illusion that "the people and the party are united" in
their aspiration. But this illusion had quickly disappeared. Those who
eventually got the power tasted it and now they are trying to conserve
kuchmism. The authorities and the society live according to different moral
and ethical principles, rules and notions.

Instead of just evaluation of the past and clear and honest politics at
present, myths about good and bad oligarchs are created in society's mind.

The former have received their status after they materially supported the
future president during the last stage of the revolution. On the contrary,
the latter decided to save and made a mistake.

Now the attitude towards them reflects those events. For example, oligarch
P. is being promised Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant for the full support of new
authorities on his TV channels.

At the same time the principles of our government were fundamentally
different: all oligarchs are good, if they pay their taxes in full and on
time and don't violate the law. We argued that the unfair privatization were
to be corrected through the open auctions, where all interested parties
could have participated.

However, the concept of peace treaty as a way to civilize the corruption
dominates now, and the word "auction" is considered to be ideologically
harmful.

Another example of double standards is the situation around football club
"Dynamo". My approach is to turn the people's club into an open joint-stock
company, which means that there will be a chance for the ordinary fans - at
least symbolically, through one thousandth of a share, to influence the
development of the club.

Instead, the approach of the certain member of presidential team is as
follows: take the club away from millionaire S., give it to millionaire G.,
and the money received for being a middleman give to millionaires P. and M.

   IF THE FIRST PHASE OF THE REVOLUTION WOULD NOT CLEAN UP
THE COUNTRY THEN THE SECOND ONE WILL BECOME UNAVOIDABLE

The president is partially correct when he talks about the devaluation of
Maidan values. But there is no need to hide the fact that together with the
devaluation the substitution happened. Understanding of Maidan's philosophy
is different among its "generals" and "privates".

For the people the values of Maidan consist of the following: at last,
everyone should be equal in the eyes of the Law, evil deeds always must be
prosecuted and corrupted officials should leave their offices.

Instead, the new authorities consider it acceptable to cooperate with
Yanukovych who personifies the worst features of the previous regime, and
whose personality became a catalyst for the Orange Revolution.

The same applies to the ideas in favor of amnesty for the people who
falsified the results of the elections, headed by Kivalov, and providing
so-called "prisoners of consciousness", that were considered criminals
during the Orange Revolution, with guarantees.

But the authorities' problem lies in the fact that, unlike them, the society
has already changed and do not consider unavoidable any deeds against
itself  or the country.

The unique conditions have developed in the Ukraine, when the society,
and not the politicians, become to influence the strategic decisions.
Poroshenko and Tretyakov sacking could not have happened without
the power of public thought.

But despite all this, those actions can not be considered a step, or even a
half-step towards establishing transparent and honest government.

All discussion regarding the necessity to exchange politicians for
pragmatics turned out to be powerless. The voice of the society was heard
regarding a few odious persons, but the result turned out to be much worse
than expected.

Now the entire elections office of the ruling party, including the Head of
the Advisory Committee, the Head of the Executive Committee and his first
lieutenant is concentrated in the Cabinet of Ministers.

The authorities should not relax and assume that the public will cool down
after a few showy sackings. Without the systematic changes the situation
will conform to a well-known revolutionary formula, when "the tops doesn't
want, and the bottoms - can't".

And then the new phase of the revolution will become imminent. And if that
happens, Blue would not fight against Orange, but Orange-Blue will fight
against further unionization and oligarchization of old and new regimes.

That is why if the first phase of the revolution didn't clean up the
country, than the second one becomes a matter of not so distant future.

Today revaluation of Maidan's values looks very attractive. Because
Ukraine and its citizens proved their rights for the honest politics, decent
government and just life.   -30-   [Action Ukraine Report Monitoring]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mykola Tomenko, ex-Vice-Prime-Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko's
Government. Original article was in Ukrainian.  Translated into English
by Anna Levchuk. http://www.pravda.com.ua/en/news/2005/9/30/4795.htm
==============================================================
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==============================================================
4.       HAS YUSHCHENKO BETRAYED THE ORANGE REVOLUTION?

END NOTE: By Jan Maksymiuk
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
Prague, Czech Republic, Friday, September 30, 2005

On 27 and 28 September, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko
appointed some 20 ministers to the new cabinet of Prime Minister
Yuriy Yekhanurov. The appointments apparently marked Yushchenko's
recovery of control over a government that found itself in a serious
political crisis, triggered by public allegations of corruption in
the presidential entourage and the sacking of the previous cabinet of
Yuliya Tymoshenko. However, many in Ukraine and abroad wonder if
Yushchenko has not paid an excessive price for getting the new
cabinet down to work so quickly.

Yushchenko suffered an unpleasant setback in the Verkhovna
Rada on 20 September, when Yekhanurov fell three votes short of being
approved as prime minister. Therefore, to secure himself against such
nasty surprises in the future, Yushchenko made a political deal with
his main rival in the 2004 presidential election, former Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych. After that, Yanukovych's Party of Regions
parliamentary caucus, consisting of 50 deputies, threw its support to
Yekhanurov and the latter's nomination was easily endorsed on 22
September with 289 votes (226 were required for approval).

Yushchenko and Yanukovych outlined their political pact in
the 10-point "Memorandum Of Understanding Between The Authorities
And The Opposition," which was signed by both politicians and by
Yekhanurov shortly before the 22 September vote. Some Ukrainian media
have speculated that the memorandum was accompanied by a "secret
protocol," in which Yushchenko allegedly made even more concessions
to Yanukovych in exchange for the latter's support for the new
cabinet.

But even without any supplement, the memorandum is such a
bewildering document that it has prompted many in Ukraine to assert
that Yushchenko has betrayed the ideals of the November-December 2004
Orange Revolution and backed down on many of his election promises.

To start with, the memorandum stresses the need to implement
the political reform that was a cornerstone of the compromise reached
by Yushchenko and the Verkhovna Rada in the 2004 election standoff
and that paved the way for his victory. According to a package of
laws passed by the Verkhovna Rada on 8 December 2004, the
political-reform law redistributing powers among the president, the
parliament, and the prime minister is to take effect automatically on
1 January 2006.

There was no apparent reason to include such a point
in the memorandum, perhaps apart from Yanukovych's personal desire
implicitly to insult Yushchenko by suggesting that the latter might
have played with the idea of canceling the reform in order not to
lose his current presidential prerogatives.

Point two of the memorandum emphasizes "the impermissibility
of political repression against the opposition." However one looks at
this statement, it is obviously embarrassing and disadvantageous for
Yushchenko.

Because the phrase either implies that Yushchenko might
resort to such repressions or provides the opposition with a strong
point of reference if the authorities undertake any legal action
against opposition figures who might violate the law.

However, the most stunning statement in the memorandum is the
third point, whereby Yushchenko obliges himself to draft a bill on
amnesty for those guilty of election fraud. It was the massive
election fraud in the 2004 presidential election's second round that
pushed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians into the streets and made
Yushchenko's victory in the repeat second round possible.

Now Yushchenko seems to have forgotten or ignored that fact
and is offering general pardon for the fraudsters, taking upon
himself the role of top judge.

Additionally, in the fourth point Yushchenko agrees to legislation to
extend immunity from criminal prosecution to local council members,
which seems to be another guarantee of the unaccountability to many
individuals involved in the 2004 election fraud.

What has become of Yushchenko's solemn promise during the
Orange Revolution to send "all bandits to jail"?

The signatories of the memorandum also agree that it is
necessary to urgently adopt laws on the opposition, the cabinet of
ministers, and the president; form a cabinet on the principle of
separation of government from business; provide legislative
guarantees of ownership rights; ban pressure on judicial bodies; and
conduct the parliamentary and local elections on 26 March 2006
without governmental interference or the use of "administrative
resources."

Each of these pledges, if interpreted in a manner
unfavorable to Yushchenko, represents a significant step back from
Yushchenko's election manifesto or, at a minimum, testifies to
Yushchenko's public humiliation by his former presidential rival,
whose political career seemed to have been tarnished forever by his
behavior in the 2004 presidential.

"Signing the memorandum, the president may have earnestly
wished to put an end to the crisis. But the price he paid was too
high: The deal gave rise to a more serious crisis, a crisis of
trust," the Kyiv-based weekly "Zerkalo nedeli" opined. And
Yushchenko's staunch ally in the Orange Revolution, former Deputy
Prime Minister Mykola Tomenko, described the Yushchenko-Yanukovych
pact in even more bitter words: "For the people, the ideals of the
Maydan [Kyiv's Independence Square, seen as the Orange Revolution's
main rostrum] mean that the law should be the same for everyone, that
evil should always be punished, and that those involved in corruption
should be removed from politics," Tomenko wrote in an article for the
"Ukrayinska pravda" website on 28 September. "For the new
authorities, however, it is acceptable to collaborate with
Yanukovych, who personifies all the worst features of the previous
regime and who became the catalyst of the Orange Revolution."

Arguably, the Yushchenko-Yanukovych deal provides a lot of
propagandistic ammunition for former Prime Minister Yuliya
Tymoshenko, who intends to launch her 2006 parliamentary election
campaign under the slogan of continuing the Orange Revolution until a
victorious conclusion and with the intent of regaining the job of
prime minister after the elections. Now Tymoshenko can persuasively
claim that she, not Yushchenko, has remained true to the Orange
Revolution ideals.

A recent poll by the Kyiv-based Democratic Initiatives Fund
found that Tymoshenko's eponymous bloc is supported by 20.7 percent
of Ukrainians, about the same as Yanukovych's Party of Regions.
Yushchenko's Our Ukraine People's Union is third, with the support of
13.9 percent. It seems that Yushchenko's political troubles,
temporarily alleviated by the deal with his former rival, will return
to him amplified by the 2006 parliamentary elections.  -30-
==============================================================
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5. YEKHANUROV IN MOSCOW AS UKRAINE 'SURRENDERS' TO RUSSIA

Agence France Presse, Moscow, Russia, Friday, September 30, 2005

MOSCOW - Ukraine's new Prime Minister Yury Yekhanurov came
to Moscow Friday for talks with officials expected to focus on energy deals
as newspapers said "orange revolution" President Viktor Yushchenko had
sent his man to Moscow "to surrender" to Russia.

Yekhanurov met his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Fradkov, and other senior
officials as press reports in both countries said problems with delivery of
natural gas from Russia to Ukraine would figure prominently on the agenda.

Ukraine has faced mounting difficulties this year in obtaining gas
deliveries from Russia, and has signed long-term deals with other ex-Soviet
republics to offset plans announced by Russian gas giant Gazprom to set
prices for Ukraine at world market rates, effectively tripling the price.

"It is anticipated that Yury Yekhanurov will today find new solutions for
resolving this problem," the opposition daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta said.

In an article headlined "Yekhanurov has come to surrender," the liberal
newspaper said the visit to Moscow by Yekhanurov, his first trip outside
Ukraine since becoming prime minister earlier this month, confirmed that
Yushchenko is doing an about-face and realigning his policy with Moscow.

"This means de facto that the leaders of the 'orange revolution' have
abandoned their earlier ideals," the daily wrote. "The Yushchenko team has
turned back to the principles and methods for conduct of foreign policy
that characterized the Kuchma regime."

Yushchenko came to power late last year after a bitterly-disputed
presidential election in which his opponent to succeed former president
Leonid Kuchma was seen as "Moscow's man" in Kiev while Yushchenko,
who promised a break from Russia, was cast as the West's favorite son.

In a banner six-column, page-one headline, the respected business daily
Kommersant stated: "Ukraine Signals Change of Course" and commented
in a sub-heading that the "cabinet of Yury Yekhanurov will be pro-Russian."

The article said Yekhanurov had made clear his government will defend and
advance Russia's political and economic interests.

Both Yekhanurov and Yushchenko rose through the ranks of the Soviet
bureaucracy.

"Finding a common language with his partners in Moscow will obviously not
be complicated," Kommersant said. "The new cabinet, in contrast to the
previous one, is closely-linked to Russian capital."

Yekhanurov is seen in Kiev as a moderate technocrat of unquestioning
allegiance to Yushchenko.

Prior to being tapped for prime minister, Yekhanurov had served briefly as
the head of a regional administration in the heavily-industrialized and
strongly pro-Russian east of Ukraine, where he was placed by Yushchenko
to soothe hurt feelings after last year's crisis.  -30-
==============================================================
6.                          RUSSIA BACK IN FASHION AS UKRAINE'S
                                 'ORANGE REVOLUTION' FOUNDERS

What about the angry masses who protested in the freezing streets of Kiev
last year, decrying the previous Ukrainian regime's suspect bonds to Moscow?
What about Yushchenko's promises to lead Ukraine away from Russia and
into western Europe? Where did the 'orange revolution' go?

By Christopher Boian, Agence France Presse (AFP)
Moscow, Russia, Sunday, October 2, 2005

MOSCOW - They took power vowing to cast off Russian shackles and cozy
up to the West. Not a year later, Ukraine's divided "orange revolution"
leaders are lining up to receive Moscow's blessing and the Kremlin is once
again playing kingmaker in its southern Slavic neighbor.

First President Viktor Yushchenko fired his prime minister and revolutionary
cohort, Yulia Tymoshenko. Then he made a deal with his pro-Russian political
nemesis, Viktor Yanukovich, and said his new prime minister would go Moscow
to confer with Russian leaders as quickly as possible.

The jilted Tymoshenko beat him to the punch, praising President Vladimir
Putin and making a furtive dash to Moscow -- she never visited while prime
minister -- to meet prosecutors, who promptly dropped their warrant for her
arrest in connection with a bribery probe.

PUTIN-YUSHCHENKO:

Suddenly, Putin is voicing support for Yushchenko and plans to visit him in
Kiev this month, Yanukovich has escaped from the political boondocks and all
roads seem to lead to the Kremlin, which looks again like the real locus of
power in Ukraine.

What about the angry masses who protested in the freezing streets of Kiev
last year, decrying the previous Ukrainian regime's suspect bonds to
Moscow?

What about Yushchenko's promises to lead Ukraine away from Russia
and into western Europe? Where did the "orange revolution" go?

"It's a post-revolutionary hangover," said Yury Korgunyuk, political expert
with the INDEM think tank in Moscow. "After the 'orange revolution,'
whatever government came to power would sooner or later have had to
repair relations with Russia.

"Russia is the country from which money, and lots of it, comes to Ukraine.
There is no way around this. Ukraine's economy depends heavily on
Russia.

All the talk about 'turning West' was euphoric. The fact is Russia and
Ukraine have long and close ties that neither can do without."

Under a European Union-brokered compromise at the height of the political
crisis in Ukraine last year, key presidential prerogatives are to be
transferred to parliament at elections next March -- polls looming as the
most important event on Ukraine' political calendar for years ahead.

Even those most dedicated to the nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking,
pro-Western "orange" movement strongest in the mainly agrarian west of the
country understand that to win in next spring's parliamentary elections they
must also secure support in the industrialized, Russian-speaking east.

And winning that support, analysts say, depends in large measure on signals
sent to those voters from Russia itself, where much of the ruling elite
privately regards Ukraine not just as within Moscow's traditional "sphere of
influence" but practically as part of Russia itself.

"Who will really run Ukraine in the coming years depends on the results of
the elections" next spring to the new, fortified parliament, the online
newspaper Gazeta.ru said in a commentary.

For the 'anti-orange' regions, the word from the Russian powers may prove
decisive," the article said, noting that the Russophone eastern portion of
Ukraine, where bonds to Russia are strongest and where many of Ukraine's
profit centers are located, simply holds the most voters.

Western-style democracy:Yushchenko and Tymoshenko together rallied
support among Ukrainian voters last winter partly with promises to lead
their country into the European Union (EU) and into the greater prosperity
and Western-style democratic values most voters there associate with
the West.

France's failure to ratify the EU constitution last spring, coupled with
wider questions about EU expansion and the bloc's future, have put Ukraine's
EU ambitions on the back burner, while a major influx of foreign investment
has failed to materialize since last year's crisis in Ukraine.

At the same time, Russia, stung after backing the losing side in last year's
election, has implemented basic changes in conduct of policy toward
countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, aimed at making relations
more pragmatic, less personalized and more profitable.

"The very fact that the Russian leadership is no longer trying to define
'good guys' and support them against what it sees as the 'bad guys' means
that Russian-Ukrainian relations are becoming more pragmatic and rational,"
said Nikolai Petrov, expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Revived political synergies between Kiev and Moscow, he added, may also
have been fostered by the fact that "the West itself was not very happy with
Mrs Tymoshenko's policies" as prime minister, notably the way she planned
to revise the privatizations of the past decade.  -30-
==============================================================
7.      RUSSIANS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT IDEA OF UNIFIED
                                     RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN STATE

By Paul Goble, UPI, Vienna, Austria, Wed, Sep 28, 2005

Vienna, September 28 - More than a decade after the Soviet Union fell apart
and nearly a year after the "Orange Revolution" in Ukraine, nearly three out
of every four Russians say they support the idea of uniting the Russian
Federation and Ukraine into a single state, according to the results of a
new poll.

But if 71 percent favor that outcome with only 24 percent opposed, only 18
percent told the Levada Center they believe that there is a realistic chance
of that happening with 35 percent saying it could occur in the distant
future. Thirty-four percent said it was unrealistic
(http://www.polit.ru/research/2005/09/27/unification.html0).

Asked whether they would prefer to have the Russian Federation unite with
Ukraine or Belarus, 18 percent of Russians said they would prefer to unite
with Ukraine, 40 percent with Belarus, and 22 percent with neither, with 20
percent saying they found it hard to give an answer.

But when asked which outcome they thought was possible, 15 percent of the
Russians polled in mid-September said with Ukraine, 48 percent with Belarus,
and 20 percent with neither, with 17 percent saying that they found it
difficult to express an opinion on this subject.

These results come at a time when Russians are increasingly hostile toward
Ukraine.  In December 2004, the Levada Center said, 79 percent of Russians
viewed Ukraine positively; now only 63 percent do. Over the same period,
those with negative views more than doubled from 13 percent to 28 percent.

And those attitudes were reflected in the answers that Russians gave to the
question of whether they would support the unification of the Russian
Federation and Ukraine if in such a state a Ukrainian politician could be
elected as president. Only 19 percent said they would agree if that would be
the case, with 95 percent then opposed.

This poll and its results are significant. On the one hand, they show that a
large percentage of Russians have still not come accepted as definitive the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a set of attitudes that helps to
explain both the statements and actions of many Russian political leaders
who may share the same sentiments.

On the other, these results inevitably complicate relations between the
Russian Federation and its neighbors and the development of both, leading
many in the latter to view the Russian Federation itself and even ethnic
Russians living on their territories as threats to their own new-found
independence.

These results are disturbing, but to say this is not to argue that such
polls ought not to be conducted. Rather it is to insist that such polls and
the results they find have important consequences, a reality long recognized
in Western countries but seldom acknowledged or discussed in contemporary
Russian media.   -30-  [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
==============================================================
8.                                  "NO MORE PEOPLE POWER"
Fuelled by e-mails and western cash, Ukraine's orange revolution was a
new kind of upheaval. Other ex-Soviet states don't want it happening again.

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS: Jo Durden-Smith
New Statesmen Online, Furthering the aims of Beatrice & Sydney Webb
London, United Kingdom. Monday 3rd October 2005

When the Kremlin's spin-doctors blew into Ukraine last year to help with the
election of Viktor Yanukovich, they thought it would be a breeze. His party,
after all, controlled most of the press and all the TV stations except
Channel 5, which didn't reach much outside the capital.

So they behaved like colonial nabobs, threw parties for each other and for
their cronies, and distributed orders and millions of dollars in cash (it is
said) to the local bosses, factory managers, bureaucrats and election
officials who had always taken care of such things before.

That time around they failed. The repercussions of their failure are today
being felt all over post-Soviet space. For what took place in Ukraine was a
coup d'etat without violence, fuelled by public disaffection and spearheaded
by Pora ("It's Time!"), a youth movement armed with little more than text
messaging, e-mails, website postings, ridicule, rock music, an arsenal of
camcorders and a flair for PR.

It was, in fact, an information-age revolution, and it has left the
governments of other former Soviet republics - particularly Russia and
Belarus - jittery to the point of hysteria.

In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, who faces re-election next year,
has clamped down on foreign residents and expelled visiting teachers and
diplomats. He has closed non- state educational institutions and put
hundreds of independent publications out of business.

He has denied visas to humanitarian workers from abroad and pronounced
that students working "for the opposition" will be denied all access to
higher education.

Meanwhile in Russia, Vladimir Putin's Kremlin, thinking ahead to a
presidential election of its own in 2008, is tightening control over every
single element that it sees as having played a part in Ukraine's orange
revolution: the internet, mobile phones, rock music, foreign NGOs and
disaffected youth in general.

In July, 3,000 "commissars" of a new, Kremlin-financed youth movement called
Nashi ("Our Guys") convened at a summer camp outside Moscow to be told by
the Kremlin spin-doctor who was once Russia's chief election strategist in
Ukraine: "You must be ready to . . . physically oppose anti-constitutional
coups." A few days later, at a meeting at the Kremlin, Putin made it clear
who he thought they would be up against.

"I categorically object [to] overseas funding for political activities in
Russia," he said. "We understand that he who pays the piper calls the tune."

It is not known how much western, and specifically American, money was spent
on promoting and backing the orange revolution, but it is no secret that the
US government has for years been funnelling money under the Freedom Support
Act to groups in former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe "committed to
democracy and free elections" - organisations such as Otpor ("Resistance")
and Kmara ("Enough!"), which helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and
Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia.

Nor is it any secret that these two organisations, and Pora in Ukraine, have
links both with each other and with US NGOs.

In June, for example, representatives of all three held a meeting in Tirana,
Albania, sponsored by an American NGO, Freedom House - with extra funding
from Usaid, the US government agency. Also present were delegates from
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kosovo, Macedonia and Uzbekistan.

In the same month the director of Russia's FSB security service, Nikolai
Patrushev, announced that two months previously in Bratislava, Slovakia,
another American body, the International Republican Institute, had set aside
$5m "to encourage democracy" in Belarus.

Western NGOs, Patrushev declared, "provide cover for western spies", and
were bankrolling plans "to stage revolutions in Belarus and other nearby
ex-Soviet republics". The secret services of all the republics had met to
discuss the matter in April, he said. Since then they have been active.

A member of Pora was recently deported from Azerbaijan; an American NGO,
the International Research and Exchanges Board, was forced by the courts to
suspend operations in Uzbekistan "for violating Uzbek legislation".

It is hard to see the US wanting to disturb present arrangements in
oil-and-gas-rich Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, but there is no doubt that a new
generation of e-revolutionaries - sponsored by the west and inspired by
Poland's Solidarity movement - is at large in post-Soviet space.

Belarus in particular is regarded as fair game. The US secretary of state,
Condoleezza Rice, has described the Lukashenko regime as "the last
tyranny in Europe".

To counter state control of the media, videos and CDs are being smuggled in.
There are moves to set up Belarussian-language TV stations in Lithuania and
Poland, which have offered sanctuary to students from schools and
universities that Lukashenko has closed down. Money is flowing to opposition
politicians and to Zubr, Belarus's nascent equivalent of Pora.

The methods are the same as before: mobile-phone and web-based networks
of sympathisers, chatrooms, e-competitions and video loops lampooning the
Boss, leading to e-summoned rallies in the capital. Certainly, this is what
Lukashenko fears.

Besides sacking journalism students suspected of "co-operating with the
opposition" and moving against cartoonists who publish their work on the
internet, his secret services have also deported two Kmara activists, one of
them a junior member of the Georgian government.

There is a problem, however, with the west's aspirations in Belarus.
Lukashenko is a close ally of President Putin - so close that discussions
are even going on about turning the two countries into a unified state.

If a Soviet-style election in Belarus were to return Lukashenko to power and
a Kiev-style revolution were then to strive to unseat him, Putin would
almost certainly send in the Russian army to quell it. That would prompt
confrontation with the west.

In Russia, the effects of the west's public embrace of the so-called
"velvet" revolutions can already be seen. Human rights groups have been
threatened with reprisals if they stray on to political terrain and at least
one Russian NGO, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (funded by the
US State Department, the EU and Norway), has been virtually hounded out
of business.

The FSB, in addition to demanding powers to regulate NGOs on Russian
soil, has called for increased control over the internet and mandatory
registration of all mobile phones with internet access. An attempt has also
been made to woo rock bands into the service of the state, and a $17.5m
fund set up to promote patriotism.

Most sinister of all, there is Nashi, which already hugely outnumbers the
youth movements of all the other political parties combined. Its platform is
patriotic, anti-western and "anti-fascist". Its members have roughed up
journalists and twice invaded the headquarters of its most effective rival,
the radical situationists of the National Bolshevik Party, led by the writer
Eduard Limonov.

Nashi is suspected of attacks on Poles in Moscow and of a recent assault
on the youth wing of the Communist Party. Its public face is of a
liberal-denouncing, street-fighting force aiming to cow all opposition,
particularly in universities and schools.

It inevitably reminds some observers of the Hitler Youth, a comparison that
a speech at the commissars' camp this summer by Putin's deputy chief of
staff, Vladislav Surkov, did nothing to discourage.

Surkov told his young audience that their duty was "to protect the youth
from western influence" and - in an eerie echo of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me",
the Hitler Youth anthem from Cabaret - urged: "Come to us sooner and we
will hand over the country to you."

All this signals that even though the Lukashenko regime in Belarus (like
others in post-Soviet space) may be corrupt, anti-democratic and shaky, any
moves to undermine it will have undesirable consequences. It is also a
reminder that, in Russia, to which the US Senate assigns tens of millions of
dollars each year under the Freedom Support Act, a "velvet" democratic
revolution is still pie in the sky.

Democracy and the west are anathema to the majority of Russians - surely
a direct result of the last time, in the early 1990s, that the west tried to
export its ideas to Russian territory.   -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINK: http://www.newstatesman.com/200510030021
==============================================================
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==============================================================
9.                            USA: OBSEQIOUSNESS TOWARD PUTIN
                                              Bush's deferential posture

TODAY'S COLUMNIST: By Andrei Piontkovsky
The Washington Times, Washington, D.C.
Friday, September 30, 2005

President Bush, at his joint press conference with Russian Leader Vladimir
Putin after their recent summit meeting, assumed a deferential posture,
constantly repeating, "Thank you, Mister President."

"I thank you for being our loyal ally in the fight against international
terrorism." "I thank you that our countries are together moving along the
path of democracy and the rule of law."

Mr. Putin majestically and condescendingly accepted the deference of the
leader of the world's only superpower, and from time to time delivered
formally courteous, yet ever more caustic barbs at Mr. Bush's foreign
policy.

We have never before seen such a Putin and a Bush. No one, for a long time,
has witnessed this kind of Russian (Soviet) and American leaders, except
perhaps at Yalta in 1945.

A rhyme came to mind which I learned 60 years ago in kindergarten: "Thank
you that in the days of severe trials You in the Kremlin thought about all
of us. Thank you, Comrade Stalin, that You live on Earth."

Comrade Putin does always think about America in days of severe trials. He
announced after the Beslan tragedy that: "Islamic terrorists are merely an
instrument in the hands of the more powerful, the more dangerous traditional
enemies of Russia, who still perceive nuclear-armed Russia as a threat and
seek to weaken and dismember her."

And he is thinking about America when he tries to squeeze the US bases out
of Central Asia; and when he demands that a date be set for the withdrawal
of the U.S.-led coalition from Iraq (and how impatient he is for all of the
international terrorist scum, which Americans have attracted in Iraq, will
be free to go to the Caucasus and Central Asia); and when he provides
political cover for Iranian ayatollahs desperately seeking nuclear weapons;
and when he was thinking first of all about his beloved Americans while he
was planning large-scale Russian-Chinese maneuvers, with the participation
of strategic air forces, in an amphibious invasion. (Try to guess where the
Chinese intend to make an amphibious invasion in the foreseeable future.)

The Americans are not so naive that they do not see and understand all of
this. So, what forces them, in Winston Churchill's famous formula, "to rise
up and stand at attention" in Mr. Putin's presence?

Everyone understood what was behind Stalin in February 1945. But what
is behind Mr. Putin in September 2005? Those in Moscow think there is a
great deal.

A high-ranking Foreign Ministry official told me some days before the summit
that Mr. Putin is traveling to the United States in a triumphant mood. He
will feel himself Mr. Bush's equal for the first time, if not more than
equal - Hurricane Katrina especially inspired the Moscow geopoliticians.

America has become overextended, has exhausted its resources and is
suffering defeat on all fronts, including at home. Russia is rising from its
knees. Our military maneuvers with China, the gas-pipeline contact with
Germany, launches of strategic missiles, promising deals with Iran, the
government crisis in Ukraine - all are powerful blows on the idea of a
unipolar world that is cracking at the seams.

And the Yankees are swallowing all of this like darlings because they know
that if they drop us as "strategic partner," we will engage in such military
technical cooperation all over the world that they will regret it. Now they
even pay us billions of dollars "for the security of our nuclear complex."

"Yes, of course" an American, not a Russian, expert told me after the summit
several days later, no longer in Moscow, but in Washington, "he's no longer
any damn ally of ours." "But today we cannot permit ourselves a
confrontation with him. Anyone else in his place might end up being worse.

This one at least values invitations to Camp David and the ranch. And we
don't have so many friends left in the world that we can openly declare that
Mister Putin is not one of them. And then, don't forget that our president
once looked deeply into Mr. Putin's soul."

 It is as if Mr. Putin has found a universal instrument for solving, or
rather avoiding, all of his problems, domestic and foreign: "Yes, I am
possibly imperfect, but another will be worse."

When the mothers of Beslan embarrassed Mr. Putin with a sensitive
question, he quietly said, "I'm working three more years and then I'm
leaving. Then look what will happen" A heavy pause followed this remark
as an air of hopelessness settled over the room.

This, of course, is not a strategy either for foreign or domestic policy.
But he was not taught strategy in his "university." He studied German,
agent recruitment, and "active measures." And he mastered all these
subjects assiduously.

Thank you, Mr. Putin that you live on Earth.  -30-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Andrei Piontkovsky, a Russian strategic analyst from Moscow,
who is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Washington
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050929-085134-5477r.htm
==============================================================
10.                                      "OUT OF THE ABYSS"
       First person by one of the few survivors of the Babi Yar massacre

By Grigory Rodin and Anne Sebba
As told by Grigory Rodin to Anne Sebba
FIRST PERSON: Financial Times Weekend Magazine
London, United Kingdom, Monday, Sep 24, 2005

Those cries. That's what I'll remember all my life. Mothers wailing, holding
up their babies to the heavens and crying: "Hashem, wo bist du?" ("God,
where are you?" in Yiddish.) I still have nightmares about this scene. It's
in front of my eyes right now. I am reliving it. I will never, ever forget
it.

I didn't cry then. I was in shock. I didn't understand what was happening or
where we were going. I was tired, dirty and exhausted. I didn't feel like a
human being, even. But the mothers, the ones holding up their arms, shaking
and crying, I suppose they just guessed.

I thought we were going to the woods at Babi Yar and would then be taken to
a ghetto. But I didn't really think about the outcome. I was looking for my
parents among the thousands of people in the lines.

I was born in Kiev in 1929. My mother and father were both deaf so I was
brought up by my grandmother. I had nine brothers and sisters and we were a
big, united family. But my older brothers went off to the front to fight; in
August 1941, when we heard the Nazis were approaching Kiev, my sister and I
tried to escape. But the train we were on was bombed and we got separated.

I spent the next month wandering through villages, sleeping by the roadside,
scrounging food. I tried not to think about fear, but I was very frightened
and at the end of September I came home.

My neighbours told me that my parents were in the big crowd of Jews that was
assembling in the city centre. The Germans had put up a notice ordering all
Jews to report there shortly after they had captured Kiev. I tried to search
for them but instead I was grabbed by a policeman and beaten into line.

We walked through the streets and out into the countryside. As we approached
the Babi Yar ravine, about 12km northwest of Kiev, we started to hear the
sound of guns and automatic fire. But there was no escape. The Nazis had
sticks and snarling dogs so you couldn't stray.

When I finally reached the pit I was so afraid. I just remember feeling a
terrible pain in my face where I had been shot. Luckily the bullet only
grazed my cheek - there is still a scar - and then I lost consciousness and
fell in.

When I woke I felt bodies all around, under and on top of me. I was covered
with blood and I was so frightened I screamed. But guards were patrolling so
I realised I had to keep quiet. I crawled out and reached a nearby cemetery
where I hid in a tomb.

I had no plan, no idea what to do. I just wanted to go home. A family
friend, a Russian, washed me, gave me some new clothes and a food
package, but told me I had to leave or I would be killed.

So in October I finally left Kiev and spent the rest of the year living
rough, just surviving. Eventually I arrived in Stalingrad, where I found
work in a factory. I stayed there until almost the end of the war.

But I was determined to get back to Kiev and learn what happened to my
parents. I started walking again, or riding free on the roofs of trains, and
soon ended up in a police station begging to be arrested as I was so
desperate for food and a bed. I was taken to a hostel for the homeless and
given a job in another factory. It was here I met my wife, Leah.

I wasn't brave. I was just a silly child. But there was a time, right after
the war, when I felt too tired to live without a home any more. I tried to
jump from a bridge into a river but an elderly man, a Russian, came past and
grabbed me. He said: God gave you life, how can you decide to end that life?

He took me to his house and explained that his own three sons had been
killed and he wanted to treat me as his own. He gave me food and hope,
and after that I was never able to contemplate suicide. But it is still very
hard to live with these memories.

I used to go regularly to Babi Yar, even though I can no longer recognise
the spot where I was shot. I was not looking for answers but it is the site
of my parents' graves and I feel it is mine too.

Now I am nearly 80 and not well enough to travel - my wife suffers from high
blood pressure and cannot go out, I've had three heart attacks, and we
manage only because a local Jewish charity brings us daily hot meals. But
something keeps pushing me to Babi Yar. I feel connected to it
rever.   -30-  [The Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: Grigory Rodin is one of the few survivors of the Babi Yar massacre
at the end of September 1941, when 33,000 Jews were gunned down on
the edge of a ravine outside Kiev, Ukraine. He was 12. He now lives in a
one-room flat in southern Ukraine with his wife.
==============================================================
11.            POLAND TO PAY FOR STALIN'S ETHNIC CLEANSING
The case involves a Polish citizen whose property now lies in Ukraine.

Radio Polonia, Warsaw, Poland
September, 2005

Poland will have to pay thousands of euros in compensation after the
European Court of Human Rights accused it of breaking International laws.
The case involves a Polish citizen whose property now lies in Ukraine.

This part of Ukraine used to be part of Poland before the end of the second
world war. In 1945 millions of ethnic Poles were put on cattle trains and
transported westwards to Poland. Some compensation in kind was offered for
the houses they left behind, but it was not nearly enough to make up for the
losses.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that one of the claimants should
receive at least part of the compensation which it says Poland was reluctant
to pay.

BZ has more
Millions of Poles had to abandon their property at the end of the Second
World War because the country's borders were shifted westward. The areas in
question were annexed by the USSR.

The shifting of borders meant that millions of Poles had to leave their
homes. Some families received houses in compensation in Poland, but large
numbers were just bundled into small flats, in turn abandoned by the fleeing
Germans.

For six decades after the end of the war, the Polish state seemed to turn a
blind eye on the property of people left behind in what is now Lithuania,
Belarus and Ukraine. But this didn't stop the Jerzy Broniowski family.

Mr Broniowski argued that he had been inadequately compensated for an
estate his grandmother owned before the war in the formerly Polish city of
Lwow now in western Ukraine. After a lengthy five year court battle the
European Court of Human rights ruled in favor of the claimant for an out of
court settlement with Poland valued at roughly 60,000 euros.

Jakub Woloczkiewicz from the legal treaties department of the Polish
Foreign Ministry says that Poland has agreed to fork out some 20% of
the value of the property.

MSZ 1
Polish officials argue that this compensation is in accordance with a newly
passed law which offers compensation to those claimants who have lost
their fortunes due to post - war border shifts that shifted the border
westward to the river Bug.

MSZ 2
But what about the restitution of private property in Poland. Polish
fortunes which were nationalized or illegally seized by the communists after
the war. Few of these have been settled.

Land Restitution expert Jim Yrkowski from TGC corporate lawyers says that
the ECHR ruling may open a Pandora's' box for thousands of potential
claimants who are still waiting for legislation which will provide proper
compensation.

Yrkowski 2
But Polish officials disagree with such assumptions
MSZ 3
There are yet another 230 claims advanced by the families of those whose
property was lost in the East to be sorted out in the next several months.
Under the law those parties found eligible for compensation may be paid in
cash or property value.   -30-
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http://www.radio.com.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=27995&j=2
==============================================================
12.                           BELARUS: ACCIDENTAL TYRANNY
Belarus is one of the most repressive and bizarre regimes in Europe.
But Tom Stoppard, on a recent trip to the capital, Minsk, found a thriving
opposition and a hunger for art that challenges the 'national psychosis'

By Tom Stoppard, The Guardian
London, UK, Saturday October 1, 2005

In a no-frills bar in an industrial quarter of Minsk, Sarah Kane's play 4.48
Psychosis is performed in Russian by two women moonlighting from the
Belarusian National Theatre. The bar is a narrow room on the ground floor of
a rundown office building next to an agricultural machinery plant. The
playing area is so small, and the place is so packed, that when one of the
actors lunges at the boundary my left shoulder takes the impact.

In the audience of 70 people, two or three cameras clack and flash, even
when, finally, the actors are stripped to black thongs. There is no stage,
no set. The play ends in candlelight.

watch me vanish
watch me
vanish

watch me
watch me
watch

 It is myself I have never met, whose face is pasted on the underside of my
mind    please open the curtains

The actors blow out their candles. The performance is over, and the lights
beam on to the national psychosis that is the present condition of Belarus,
a country with more policemen per capita than anywhere else in the world and
a feeling that no one knows where it is.

The feeling is not completely fanciful. At a theatre conference in Belgrade
this year, a young Belarusian playwright, Andrei Kureichik, was astonished
to find that "very few of the Europeans I met even knew exactly where
Belarus was situated, never mind [could make] any comment about Belarusian
theatre".

Someone else I talked to, Andrei Sannikov, a former deputy foreign minister,
who is now an active member of the dissident scene, said with a trace of
bitterness, "We're not sexy."

Ukraine is sexy. Poland is sexy. Lithuania is sexy. Even Latvia is quite
sexy. Belarus, landlocked between all of them and Russia, is not sexy. The
Lonely Planet guidebook is brutal: "With no history whatsoever as a
politically or economically independent entity, Belarus was one of the
oddest products of the disintegration of the USSR."

This is a rubber-stamp "democratic republic", with the last collective
farms, the last KGB, the last dissidents in the pre-1990 sense of the word,
and - in President Alexander Lukashenko - the last dictator in Europe.

Belarus was already ill-starred. In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster next door
in Ukraine contaminated the south of the country. A generation earlier,
there was almost nothing left standing by the time the Soviet and Nazi
armies had finished fighting over it. The war, the camps and Stalin's purges
killed some five million Belarusians. Kureichik adds: "Of over two thousand
writers, only a few dozen survived."

Psychosis is no doubt an overstatement of the confusion suggested by the
received wisdom of four days in Minsk. But a love-hate fixation on Russia is
in the mix. Lukashenko has spent years inconclusively bargaining Belarusian
sovereignty with his eastern neighbour President Putin, who could extinguish
Belarus like one of those candles in the theatre simply by turning off the
oil and gas, or even by charging market rates for them. But Putin - so the
wisdom goes - is happy to have an overt dictatorship taking the heat from
the EU, especially now that he has "lost" Georgia and the Ukraine to
pro-Europeans; politically, Belarus makes Russia look good.

Is this plausible? The argument goes round like a Mobius strip.
Privatisation on the back of foreign investment would ease Lukashenko's
dependence on Russian trade, but opening the place to entrepreneurs would
undermine his control over the country, which is total.

The government-controlled media names Russia and the US, logically enough,
as the main enemies of Belarus, but there is no doubt where Lukashenko's
heart lies: one of the president's first acts was to bring back the Soviet
version of the national flag and to demote the Belarusian language, which
had been restored briefly as the official language of the new republic.

So a closer union with Russia is pursued against a background of belligerent
rhetoric and condescension. An actual merger between the two countries, with
Lukashenko's vision of himself as a major player near the top of the pile,
foundered on Putin's counter-vision of Lukashenko as a provincial governor.

For the two Belarusian playwrights who invited me here, Nikolai Khalezin and
Natalia Koliada - husband and wife - a merger with Russia would be the worst
thing that could happen, but it's the Russian theatre that has opened its
doors to them, and to others like Kureichik, who in 2002 was the first
Belarusian to win Russia's major play competition.

He came back to Minsk and reported that Moscow was "like breathing fresh
air". Within two years he had 17 Russian productions of his plays.

Nikolai's play I've Arrived also won prizes in Russia and has been optioned
by the Moscow Art Theatre. He used much of the money to set up a "Free
Theatre" event, of which 4.48 Psychosis is the first fruit.

The main business is a series of master classes and a play-writing
competition, which began in March and has attracted 231 plays by 123 writers
from nine countries, including 30 Belarusian playwrights. The awards will be
announced in three weeks.

The idea was born on the train back from Moscow. Natalia says, "We realised
that Belarusian new writing was in a phenomenal period, and there was no
hope for it at home."

As things are, there is certainly no hope for her new play, which is about
six women, four of whom "lost their husbands", a tacit reference to the four
"disappeared" whose fate has - more than anything else - made Lukashenko's
regime a pariah. The four are often grouped together in news reports as "the
journalist, the politicians and the businessman".

The journalist Dmitriy Zavadskiy was a young man who worked for the
Belarusian affiliate of ORT, Russian public television. In July 2000,
Zavadskiy was supposed to meet a colleague arriving at the airport. His car
was found parked there. He hasn't been seen since.

The reason for his "disappearance", I was told, is that Zavadskiy was
working on a story about the Belarusian special forces' presence in Chechnya
on both sides. I had a friend with me, Arkady Ostrovsky, who reports for the
Financial Times from Moscow and has pretty much covered the waterfront on
Russian affairs. I saw Arkady blink and stare, and perhaps bite his tongue.

Zavadskiy was the latest of "the four" to disappear. General Yuri Zaharenko
was abducted in May 1999. He had been dismissed as Minister of Internal
Affairs when he fell out with Lukashenko. At that time, another senior
politician, Victor Gonchar, launched a presidential election campaign. In
July, Gonchar, who chaired the electoral commission, called time on the
president in protest against Lukashenko's way with elections and
referendums. In September, Gonchar was abducted and - unquestionably -
murdered, along with his friend, the businessman Anatoly Krasovsky, who
had been marked down for helping to finance the opposition to Lukashenko.

I met Krasovsky's wife Irina at a dinner party. It was exactly like being at
a cheerful chatty dinner party in London where politics is the main topic,
except that on this occasion Irina was explaining to me how she and her
children lost a husband and a father.

Last year Irina, now remarried to an American, made a statement before the
US House Committee on International Relations. She told me the story she
must have told a hundred times. "Anatoly and Victor drove away in Anatoly's
car, to go to the sauna. Anatoly asked me to come, but I decided to stay
home.

Later, witnesses told investigators what happened. Anatoly and Victor left
the sauna and got into our car. Immediately after they turned the corner, a
car cut them off. My husband tried to back up but he was cut off by a second
car. The doors of our car lock automatically if you hit the brakes. So the
people who jumped out of those two cars broke the windows and pulled out
Anatoly and Victor.

Traces of Victor's blood were found at the scene. They were put into
separate cars and driven away. Our car, a Jeep, was later towed away
by one of the squad."

Irina says she is certain the two men were killed within a day or two. The
cherry-red Jeep was never found. According to "information", it was
flattened by an armoured troop carrier and buried.

Natalia's play is not directly about the disappearances. It is about love in
a country where lovers may disappear. Will the play ever be seen in
Belarus - perhaps in a bar? Natalia says it would be impossible to find six
actors willing to take the risk.

The owner of the bar was the only person in town willing to offer 4.48
Psychosis a space. The Belarusian National Theatre at first told the young
director of 4.48 Psychosis, Vladimir Scherban, that his contract would not
be renewed for next year, but then shied at the prospect of a "scandal". He
ended up with a half-year contract, a pay cut and no chance of being given a
production.

The actors, Olga Shantsina and Yana Rusakevich - the one blonde and svelte,
the other dark and gamine with a motor that never idles - have become pals.
They seem irrepressively upbeat despite the shadow that has fallen over
them. Both have been reduced to the spear-carrying ranks.

Rusakevich is the author of a play which she entered anonymously for a
competition organised by the state theatre, with a production as the prize.
Her play won, to the discomfiture of the administration. She was told a
director could not be found for her play, whereupon Scherban said he'd
direct it.

At the run-through, the suits rejected the play for giving a "false picture"
of Belarusian youth (eg drugs). However, the theatre's chief liked it and it
played successfully in repertoire until 4.48 Psychosis. Then Rusakevich's
play was pulled and the scenery destroyed.

The "Free Theatre" has had to face a ubiquitous fear of involvement. The
first project, a master class for local playwrights, led by a distinguished
Russian critic, was rescued by the Lithuanians, ie by their local equivalent
of the British Council, who provided a room.

In my own case, Nikolai and Natalia decided it was safer to get out of town.

My seminar was bussed an hour into the countryside to a repro "traditional
village". So, in a setting of olde-worlde farm buildings, a working smithy,
a pottery and a museum full of costumes and artefacts, we sat down to talk
about making theatre.

I don't think I did too well. I must have said something about "the play of
ideas". One of the older participants, a woman who in Soviet times had an
"ideological" role, immediately said she didn't like the word idea - the
communists had ruined it.

Her own debut play, which (I'd been tipped off) was going to win the
first-play award, was about how it felt to be "an emigrant in your own
country". How things feel and how things are - that was the thing.

A young man put in: "I had 10 friends at school. Now only three are alive.
The rest died from overdoses. Should I not write about it?" Later he said:
"I am listening to you, and I feel there is a vast gulf between us. My
mother is 51. My father is 52.

They have never been abroad and probably never will. They live on 100
dollars a month. Everything they earn goes towards food. They don't go to
the theatre or cinema. They have worked all their lives only to feed
themselves and us children.

I wanted to describe their life. When my mother read my play she told me
she didn't like it, because she has enough darkness in her life. But I
wanted to show her how bad her life was."

My take on this doesn't play well in Belarus: "Theatre is firstly a
recreation, it doesn't score points for subject matter, for intention. If
you write about your mother, you better be good. Isn't that the point?"
Not really.

Natalia says: "There are so many subjects forbidden, and the only place to
talk about them is the underground theatre. It is hard for us to agree that
theatre is just a recreation. Our society could die without realising that
it was a nation."

I remember what she told me in a letter months before I came to Belarus,
that the "Free Theatre" event was inspired by "the problem of
self-identification in the era of globalisation". At the time it was a lumpy
phrase which passed me by. The meaning is clear enough now - "Who
are we?"

My little stock of Minsk vignettes doesn't measure up to the question. But
my very first impression is worth remarking. My plane was packed with
returning young Belarusians, and when I looked around in the baggage hall I
saw that everyone - everyone - was good looking.

 It was as if I'd flown in on a models' charter. Belarusians are used to the
compliment. Belo means white, and they are "White Russians", because -
according to one theory anyway - centuries ago, the Mongols who had swept
westwards rudely commingling with the locals, were frustrated when they got
to the endless forests and swamps of this flat land, and the fair natives
remained uncommingled.

Whatever the reason, the result is that when you're sitting with a
cappuccino at a pavement table in the London Bar on Independence

Prospect, you see more beautiful blondes going by in an hour than in the
real London in a month, all of them dressed to crick the neck.

The bar itself is almost worth a detour to Minsk. It's tiny, but boasts a
library in which every book is stamped "Milk and Coffee and Aero Kisses".
Upstairs is a "living room" with a sofa. Needless to say, you can smoke.

Further along the boulevard outside another café-bar, I squeezed in among
parents and children under a canopy, courtesy of Coca-Cola, to watch a
student puppet show, which wittily used household objects to stand in for
puppets. The music was a 78 rpm recording of "Underneath the Arches" by the
Bert Ambrose Orchestra. Guillaume Apollinaire, who came from here, would
have loved it.

I may be giving the impression that downtown Minsk is a bit like the Left
Bank. It is not. Independence Prospect is as wide as a football pitch and
flanked by monumental Stalinist architecture. There is no advertising in
sight unless you count the golden arches of an opulent McDonald's.

There is little traffic. The shops don't look like shops. At night in the
floodlights, Independence Prospect looks like a deserted film set, dominated
on one side by the vast yellow columned façade of the KGB. Until a few
months ago, the street was named for Belarus's greatest son - not Kirk
Douglas, who was born here, but the Renaissance scholar and printer
Francis Skaryny.

Lukashenko changed the name to Independence Prospect, which - alas -
suits it better. It's a street built for victory parades.

There is no litter. None. One morning, waiting to be collected, I stood
outside my hotel smoking a cigarette and watching the street cleaners with
the kind of fascination a tourist would normally bestow on the leaning tower
of Pisa. There were four of them within a hundred yards.

They wore bright orange overalls. Each had a Cinderella broom and a
long-handled dustpan. They patrolled their patch, eagle-eyed for - what?
There didn't seem to be a toffee-paper the length and breadth of
Independence Prospect. To all intents, they were dusting.

Then two middle-aged women in smart colourful overall coats came out of the
hotel. Their hair was beautiful. One had blonde highlights, the other shone
like the plumage of some deep red tropical bird. They looked as if they'd
emerged from a beauty parlour, except that they were carrying a battered
step-ladder, which they set up against the wall, chatting the while.

Then they took turns to climb up and wipe the high sills of the windows. Job
done, they went back in, the cleaning ladies of the Hotel Minsk.

I stepped on my cigarette-butt and put it in my pocket.

One of the sights I missed was the speeding convoy which several times a
week crosses Independence Prospect on Lenin Street, taking the president to
his ice hockey game at the Sports Palace. Unfortunately, the progress is not
advertised.

Lukashenko is mad about hockey. When he wants a scratch game it's a
three-line whip. Players - some pros, some businessmen, some guards - have
been known to get up from sickbeds. The president wears a number "1" shirt.

He has his own bench and no-one is allowed to talk to him. His team always
wins, its victories uncelebrated in the closed arena.

It's a movie. Is it true? I'm assured the sources are reliable. Lukashenko
stories abound, often accompanied by an amused shrug because the president,
with his sad comedian's moustache, is perceived as a dangerous buffoon. (His
previous job was manager of a collective farm, a kolkhoz, hence his put-down
nickname kolkhoznik, roughly Farmer Giles.)

The moustache is everywhere in a fun-poking documentary film by
Khashchavetskiy which travelled around Belarus like an underground fire. It
is said that 140,000 VHS copies were made. Khashchavetskiy, a cheerful,
rumpled personality too large for his crowded and cluttered workspace,
showed me his film, which is not all fun.

The documentary, An Ordinary President, was shown on television in Germany
and France in December 1997. Two days later, Khashchavetskiy answered his
doorbell and saw "two grey figures", who jumped him and beat him up. "When I
came round, there was nobody in the flat. I was on the floor. My face was
bleeding, my head was hurting, my leg was hurting. It turned out they broke
my leg."

"When you were making the film you must have known you were sticking your
head above the parapet ...?"

"I was just very interested in making it. It was an artistic itch. It was
too good a story."

I have been here before, in Moscow, Leningrad and Prague, the visiting
English writer on a dissident tour, nodding sympathetically while his
patient host - another writer or film-maker - provides the coffee and
obliges yet again with his story of injury, imprisonment, banning and the
rest of it. However dressed down, I always feel overdressed.

And yet, it's not the same. Lukashenko's Belarus is not like Husak's
Czechoslovakia, with which it is routinely bracketed by the dissidents. In
some ways it is worse. Husak didn't resort to kidnapping his opponents in
broad daylight and disposing of them like a Chicago gangster. He didn't
have to; which is the point.

The communist state machinery worked in broad daylight, too, but that was
because, in its own terms, it had nothing to hide. There were laws against
"anti-state activity", with appropriate prison sentences. Small fry and
minor irritants might find themselves unable to get a job.

Not having a job meant you were a "parasite", and there was a law against
that, too. In its cynically formalistic way, the whole communist tyranny was
above board, contextualised in a historical supra-legalism. Rocking the
boat was a defiance of "the leading role of the Party", so it was anti-state
activity, QED. And the prison terms were long. A year or two was quite
normal for parasites.

Major irritants go much more.

But the Belarusian dictatorship has no monolithic party behind it to
legitimise it. Lukashenko is a dictator without an ideology, only a business
plan. (Sannikov calls it "an accidental dictatorship".

The president, he says, hires and fires down to factory manager level, and
imprisons at state company director level wherever he suspects conspiracy
against his unchallenged rule.)

The effect is a form of dictatorship which I found - still find - puzzling.
Who investigated the "disappearances"? None other than the KGB and the
Prosecutor's Office, and the report, which leaked out, was no cover-up.

Allegedly, it was the reason why four of the investigators died
mysteriously. Two others sought political asylum in America.

So, on the one hand, there is "Lukashenko's death squad", a phrase one
hears everywhere. On the other, there's the T-shirt with the faces of the
four "disappeared" which Nikolai was wearing to meet me at the airport.

There are other "dissident T-shirts", too, openly worn. A woman told me
how she had been embraced by a stranger while wearing a T-shirt which
said, "Lukashenko-free Zone". Belarus is different.

There is a Charter 97 organisation modelled on the Czech Charter 77, but
the Belarus version has an office, a website and a press officer. The office
of another organisation, Zubr (it means bison), is at a secret location but
it has an e-mail address, a logo and a well-produced colour brochure in
English.

This is dissidence raised to another level, and there are several such
groups whose remit is laid out in another colour-printed booklet. Irina
Krasov-skaya's group is called "We Remember", with an office in
Washington DC.

There is no doubting the bravery of the thousands of (mostly young) people
who day after day publicly dissent from the one-man rule of Lukashenko.
Almost everyone I met knows what it is to be arrested, detained and often
roughed up, Nikolai and Natalia among them.

A good number, including Nikolai and Andrei Sannikov, have been recognised
as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. Another is Dmitry
Bondarenko, one of the Charter 97 founders, though no one is quite like this
genial bear of a man, who has been through the police mill on occasions too
numerous to detail.

Zubr, with its stated principles of "non violence, solidarity and personal
courage", has notched up over a hundred beatings and a couple of thousand
detentions.

The brake on Lukashenko is applied in Strasbourg, where human-rights
violations in Belarus are monitored and robustly condemned. EU visa bans
have been imposed on Lukashenko and on named cronies implicated in
skullduggery.

As I read it, the resulting balance is that political opponents, like
Mikhail Marinich - ex-minister, ex- ambassador, now another T-shirt - go to
jail, while "ordinary dissidents" are subjected to frequent arrests, short
detentions, possibly beatings, and constant surveillance.

Not that the detentions are a picnic. After one demo, Nikolai was held first
in a prisoner-transport known as "cells on wheels" where he shared a two-
metre steel module with Bondarenko, Khashchavetskiy and half-a-dozen "Zubr
guys". His progress to court took three days by way of the concrete "monkey
house" at the militia station, another spell in the transport and a
one-metre-square cell.

His got 15 days loss of liberty without being allowed a lawyer, so lay on
the floor in court and was carried off to prison. Such might be the penalty
for distributing underground literature or taking part in "street actions".

Khashchavetskiy's film shows several of these street actions, including a
famous one with demonstrators in Lukashenko masks. There is a shot of
Zavadskiy at work, reporting on a demo. It is shocking to realise how young
he was. He looks only a boy.

I do my bit to Khashchavetskiy about how uncomfortable it feels to be a
privileged visitor watching his film with him, knowing that soon I'll be on
a plane home, where I can publicly call the prime minister a liar and a
criminal if I want to.

He lights up another Belarusian Kent and says, "The fact that you can call
your prime minister a liar and a criminal is not his virtue, it is your
virtue, the virtue of your people. I hope you can come back to Minsk and
we'll be able to watch the film together in a huge cinema hall, even if it's
just the two of us."  -30-  [The Action Ukraine Report Monitoring Service]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1581238,00.html?gusrc=rss
==============================================================
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==============================================================
13.         UKRAINE: FOR $110, ONE CHILLING DAY IN A HOT ZONE
19 Years After Nuclear Accident, Tourists and Wildlife Populate Chernobyl

By Peter Finn, Washington Post Foreign Service
The Washington Post, Washington, D.C.
Saturday, October 1, 2005; Page A12

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Passing through the first checkpoint, marked by a
couple of low-slung buildings and a red-and-white pole across an otherwise
desolate road, is an anticlimactic affair: A police officer sidles up, scans
an official letter of invitation and glances into the back of the van before
waving it on into the Chernobyl exclusion zone. It's a lovely fall morning.

The two visitors, a Post correspondent and an interpreter, ride past some of
the zone's 74 abandoned villages, derelict little homesteads overgrown with
weeds. Many of their owners now live in high-rise apartment buildings
between here and the capital, Kiev, about 60 miles to the southeast.

The driver maintains a modest speed. Too many animals -- the fat wild boar,
in particular -- tend to toddle out of the birch and pine trees now, he
says. The flight of humans after one of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's
four reactors blew up in April 1986 was a boon for wildlife.

There are wolves, elk, deer, fox and bison here. Bird watchers have spotted
white-tailed eagles, fish hawks, owls, black storks and the rare green
crane. Fish are bountiful, and there's even aquatic life in the former
cooling ponds.

Nature is bountiful, but this is still a spooky place.

Little mounds covered with radioactive signs indicate where contaminated
rubble was dumped into hastily dug trenches and covered with soil. Hunting
and fishing are banned within a 19-mile radius extending in all directions
from the ruined reactor and reaching into neighboring Belarus.

The town of Chernobyl, several miles from the plant, once had 10,000
residents and now is home to some of the 9,000 people who work in the zone
decommissioning the nuclear power plant and servicing the forests and dams.
If not exactly bustling, there are at least signs of human life -- offices,
a functioning store, a bar and laundry hanging outside windows.

The statue of Vladimir Lenin, outside the Chernobyl administration building,
was painted orange late last year, the color adopted by supporters of a
popular revolt that ushered in a new government in Kiev. Now it's back to
gray.

At the Chernobyl Information Center, the visitors pick up their guide, Yuri
Tatarchuk, 32, who works 15 days on, 15 days off, shepherding reporters,
scientists and, increasingly, tourists around the exclusion zone's sights.

Extreme tourism, it's been called, a term Tatarchuk dismisses. "We prefer to
think of this as educational," he said. Officials in the zone expect close
to 1,000 tourists this year. A one-day excursion from Kiev cost two visitors
$220, including lunch (guaranteed not radioactive!).

At the information center, they step onto something that looks like a
person-size scale and press their hands against two steel pads. A green
light flashes: So far, clean.

Next stop is Reactor No. 4, now encased in an ugly concrete sarcophagus that
was hastily thrown up after the accident and needs to be replaced before the
end of the decade lest it collapse. There are plans to encase the casing in
a metal tomb.

The building literally abuts another reactor, No. 3, which was shut down in
2000. There are two other decommissioned reactors and two reactors that were
never completed. Snaking through the vast complex is a wide cooling channel
leading to an 8 1/2 - square-mile cooling lake.

The destroyed reactor can be observed at a distance of about 300 yards
through the bay windows of a building that serves as an information center.
But for security reasons, no photos are allowed from this vantage point.
There are 180 tons of nuclear fuel, now in a lava state, resting inside the
sarcophagus.

More than 200,000 emergency workers, known as liquidators, picked through
the radioactive debris in the months and years after the explosion. Soviet
exhortations still adorn some walls: "The Power of Friendship between the
Peoples of the USSR is Stronger than the Atom," one reads.

Lunch, back in the town of Chernobyl, is what used to be known in Soviet
times as a complexny obed , or fixed lunch menu. The canteen is out of a
time capsule, a picture of Soviet prim.

Today's fare is tomato salad, borscht, meat and mashed potatoes, washed
down with heavily salted mineral water. Workers pay little attention to the
American, Canadian and Japanese guests, who make tepid jokes about
mutant vegetables.

Next up is the city of Pripyat, now completely abandoned and located beyond
another checkpoint. Beside the police post is a sign, "www.pripyat.com,"
advertising an online gathering point and news source for some of Pripyat's
45,000 former residents, now scattered around the world.

Built in the 1970s, a couple of miles from the plant, Pripyat was a young
model city when it died. Lenin Avenue's pedestrian zone is now a tangle of
overgrown greenery, and branches brush the side of the van as it passes down
the street. Moss covers the sidewalks. The apartments themselves were
stripped long ago; they stand empty, their windows bereft of glass.

The avenue opens up onto a large square and around it stand the silent
Palace of Culture, a sports complex, the Hotel Polissa, the Communist
Party's local headquarters and a department store. Nearby is the amusement
park with a ghostly Ferris wheel that was never used; it was supposed to
start operating on May Day 1986, Tatarchuk says.

Hot spots with elevated radiation levels still dot the city and the wider
zone. A trip to a huge vehicle graveyard where 2,000 radioactive cars,
trucks and machines are parked is declined.

On the way back, the van stops at Evhenia Rubanova's house, a sweet little
cottage on a tree-lined street in Chernobyl. Rubanova, 76, is among 358
mostly elderly settlers who have returned to their homes in the zone and are
quietly tolerated by the authorities.

"We were given an apartment, but this is my place," Rubanova said, standing
by the carefully tended flowers in her fenced yard, her chained dog barking.
"What's an apartment? Chernobyl is a beautiful place, and this is where I
want to be."

Rubanova, who returned in 1989, professes to have no fears about radiation.
"If I was going to die, I'd be dead," she said, and then recommended with a
hint of mischievous glee the local mushrooms, which are heavily radiated.

"They're delicious," she said. "Just boil them and then fry them and they're
fine."

As the van passes the checkpoint to exit the zone, the visitors are required
to step through another radiation-detection device. The green light flashes.
Kiev beckons. -30-  [The Action Ukraine Report (AUR) Monitoring Service]
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