Here's a pic I took last April or May. Yushchenko banners are in orange.
You know more than I about the Ukraine.
I'm confused about Soros in this deal. He's anti-Bush, anti-Putin. He is directly responsible for getting Kuchma into power, but has been supporting Yushchenko.
Yanukovich is a Donbas gangster - the ex-Donetsk oblast governor is connected to the notorious Ryadchenko. He, Rybak, Ryadchenko, and Chernomyrdin ripped off the world bank and the Russian treasury in a huge hotel complex in Mariupol in the mid-1990s. Rybak is now mayor of Donetsk, Chernomyrdin is Moscow's ambassador to Kyiv, and Yanukovich is close to being president of Ukraine.
OTOH, Yulia Timoshenko, Yushchenko's big partner in a future coalition, probably stole billions from the Ukraine, and Yushchenko has some right-wing ulta nationalists supporting him in the Crimea.
It's hard to know who to root for or against.
When I lived in Donetsk, the mood there was that Ukrainians ruined everything. Coal mines shut down, land lays fallow, and Ukraine imports grain while Russia is a net exporter. It takes a real idiot to make Ukraine hungry.
Friends in Kyiv are independence-leaning and don't like what they've experienced of Russian history, and don't want to see a repeat.
Probably no one is on the side of the angels, but I just hope it doesn't get too bloody.