Bump!
http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,11483088%255E401,00.html
Russia backs Ukraine vote
By Yana Dlugy in Moscow
24nov04
DETERMINED to rebuild its influence in former Soviet territory, Russia has squared off against the West over Ukraine's disputed presidential election.
In an echo of Cold War-era confrontations, Moscow found itself on the opposite side of the barricades from Western capitals over the weekend runoff, which official results handed to a pro-Russia prime minister.
As observers from Europe and the United States slammed the election for fraud, Russian President Vladimir Putin called to congratulate the disputed victor for an "open and honest" win.
The Russian leader had staked his prestige on a victory by Viktor Yanukovich - he twice travelled to Ukraine to meet with the ruling party candidate ahead of the election.
His defeat would be a "huge personal and tactical defeat for Vladimir Putin," Russian liberal politician Boris Nemtsov said this week from Kiev.
After the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia fell into the Western camp last year, when a reformer ousted the entrenched regime in a peaceful "rose revolution," Russia has been keen to reassert its influence in what it calls its "near abroad."
Meanwhile the West is keen to have Ukraine in its camp as a buffer against an increasingly authoritarian Russia.
"Ukraine is our neighbour and closest relative and Putin's Russia will be put on notice if it takes a democratic route," said Vladimir Pribylovsky, an analyst at the Panorama think tank in Moscow.
And so ahead of Ukraine's presidential election, Russia worked hard so that the "Georgian scenario" does not occur in the nation of nearly 48 million that stretches along half of its western border.
It threw its weight behind Yanukovich, a blue-collar industrialist from Ukraine's coal mining east, a Russian-speaking region that wants Kiev to retain close ties to Moscow.
The 54-year-old was also the chosen successor of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma.
"Yanukovich was chosen because there are people in Russia's government who are interested in a continuation of the status quo in Ukraine," said Masha Lipman, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
His main rival, opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko was seen by Moscow as being too unreliable, backing Ukraine's entry into the European Union and potentially even joining NATO.
"It is more practical to have a neighbour who is like you instead of a neighbour who is more democratic and has a better reputation," Lipman said.
So Moscow brought out the heavy guns in the run-up to the election. Putin visited Ukraine days before a first round, meeting with Kuchma and Yanukovich in highly publicised photo ops.
He met again with the two men ahead of the second runoff vote and billboards in the Russian capital urged the city's large Ukrainian diaspora to cast their ballot for Kremlin's choice.
"Politics in Russia are conducted in a primitive manner," Lipman said. "The government considers the people as a mass to be manipulated... but while that is for the most part true for Russia, where the population is passive, it is not true in the case of Ukraine."
"They deployed Russian notions and procedures in Ukraine, but the situation there is different and the people are different," she said.
Indeed Yushchenko has refused to concede defeat, saying the government rigged the vote and demanding a recount.
Much of the international community has backed him, with Washington warning Kiev of sanctions if the alleged voting fraud is not reviewed.
Nevertheless, "there will be no confrontation between Russia and the West over Ukraine," Pribylovsky said. "(US President George W.) Bush forgives Putin everything and Europe - the more the price of oil rises, the more it will forgive us."