Posted on 11/23/2004 5:56:02 PM PST by wagglebee
Would-be Czar Vladimir Putin has taken a giant step toward reasserting the regional hegemony of the former Soviet Union by stealing the election in the Ukraine right under our noses.
As an unpaid, volunteer adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, the democratic candidate for president, I have seen, first hand, how Viktor Yanukovich, the Putin candidate backed by a rogue coalition of Russian Mafia, oil barons, former KGB officials and Communists, stole the election and thwarted the obvious will of the voters.
While the former Soviet Union was composed of many smaller nations, now independent, the key was the combination of Russia and the Ukraine. Russia’s 145 million people and the Ukraine’s 45 million are the core of what was the Soviet Empire. Reuniting them has to be the primary goal of any aspiring Russian czar.
But the people of the Ukraine don’t want Russian domination. The election contest pitted Viktor Yushchenko, who got the virtually solid support of the 60 percent of the population that is Ukrainian by ethnicity against Yanukovich, who won equally united backing from the 40 percent that is ethnically Russian.
The result was obvious: Exit polls (more accurate in Ukraine than when our own TV networks do them) showed Yushchenko winning by more than 10 points. But the final results announced by the government, which supported Yanukovich, showed a small margin in favor of the Russian-backed candidate.
Putin regarded the contest as so important that he personally visited the Ukraine in the weeks before the election to campaign for his candidate, a clear violation of the most elementary standards of independence and protocol. His former KGB henchmen – and once and future Communists – combined with Russian organized crime figures and oil barons to pump money into the race and to intimidate voters on the ground.
Yushchenko, a pro-Western former prime minister, survived two assassination attempts to make the race. At the start of the contest, he was run off the road while driving in the Ukraine. When he walked away from the wreck, the opposition poisoned him. Hospitalized in Vienna, his doctors diagnosed the poison, which mimicked a stroke in its symptoms, and nursed him to a full recovery.
If they couldn’t commit murder, Putin’s boys decided to commit larceny and did all they could to stack the election. Their totally controlled print and television media – all the information outlets in the nation – refused to give any favorable coverage to Yushchenko and biased all their news toward Yanukovich. We couldn’t even buy advertising space in any mass media outlet.
But, undaunted, Yushchenko’s supporters got their message out by hand, ditributing leaflets and flyers to every single household in the nation several times each week.
When, finally, the forces of freedom won the election, Putin’s operatives rigged the count and released totally phony results showing their stooge to be the winner.
The stakes could not be higher. If the Ukraine and Russia combine, as Putin clearly wants, the old Soviet Union will be back on the road to regional domination and the old ambitions of global power will return. And 45 million people will be cheated of the right to determine their own future.
We in the West are at best distracted and at worst willing to cede to Putin regional control in return for his assistance in the war on terror. This is a mistake of the same order of magnitude the allies made in the 1930s in dealing with Hitler.
The theft of the Ukrainian election is parallel to Germany’s decision to march into the Rhineland. And our refusal to notice or act is akin to the French and British policy of turning the other way.
Freedom may be on the march in the Middle East, but it is in full retreat in Eastern Europe.
So, again, the echo of the Nixonian question about China: Who lost the Ukraine?
I think it was his open letter to Hitlery that was the final nail in the coffin.
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/6/13/105143.shtml
Soros is doing the bidding of the EU as I see it. The EU is the enemy of a free USA and a free Russia as I see it. They are a combination of fascism and communism and they really like islamics.
Putin likes Bush? I think Putin is just saying that he likes Bush. His actions contradict what he says.
You must prefer the EU to the USA if you think ths political situation in the Ukraine will in anyway help the USA.
Dick Morris sounds like Stanislav Lunaticev here.
Just in the past month, we have heard accusations that elections in two major countries (USA and Ukraine) must have been fraudulent because the "exit polls" showed the loser ahead. Who cares about exit polls except those who use the supposed news to try to influence perceptions?
Putin didn't drop 27 megabucks to defeat Bush. Soros did. And this new guy is a Soros flunky.
Not sure I like either candidate, but Soros is a definite enemy of America for personal profit (the money end of the WoT makes it harder for him to manipulate currencies).
Ouch. Too close to the truth of the matter here in the States.
Then again, they have no real reason to trust a EU dominated by Germany, either. (c8
Allow me to correct you. Ukraine has a large East Slav minority due to all the East Slavs who moved there during the Soviet Union days. However, prior to that Ukraine had more in common with Poland and Czechoslovakia. My own grandmother was born there, a God fearing Roman Catholic from a family of 11, 8 of whom stayed there and by now, I've got probably 100 cousins there as a result. Final note, during the days of the Polish-Lithuanian Empire, most of what is now Ukraine was consumed within that particular state.
That wouldn't be fair to the people of the Ukraine who don't want to join Russia but are forced to.
Any Ukranians who wish to live in a less free country such as Russia -- should move there.
Now that's fair and just.
Stop with the disinfo. You are still the minority in the ancestral homeland of one of my grandmothers. Ukraine is closer to Czechosolvakia and Poland, culturally and religiously, than to Russia.
Are the people "liberated" by NATO/EU in Bosnia/Serbia/Kosovo more free than before?
Thanks for posting this. Historical context always helps, for those who take an interest. I imagine some of the people slamming Yuschenko on this thread barely know anything about Ukraine's history.
In any case, the ignorance of many of the FReepers on this thread is appalling. They can't see past the supposed Soros connection and Putin's supposed support for the war on terror. They probably don't know the significance of Vaclav Havel supporting Yuschenko, implicitly to the point of revolution.
It is obvious to me that Yuschenko is the good guy here.
Your sentence doesn't follow from anything that I said -- it doesn't even make sense.
Ping me when you've got something.
Crimes which are still untried, unpunished and unforgiven. Most of the perps have passed on. Of course, newer crimes have occurred. Putin and others still in power are the perps.
Supposed, my a$$.
I've wondered for years how anyone could be so naive as to think a KGB guy -- no matter how fit and Western-appearing -- could be anything but what he is. I learned long ago to watch what politicians do, not what they say. Pootie-Poot has been doing some might unfriendly stuff.
Agreed. Lion's post is absurd. The quality of discussion on this thread is appalling, an embarrassment to FReep.
Heck, Putin has the most stone-cold terrifying stare I have ever seen.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.