Posted on 12/02/2004 6:55:29 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Embassy Row
By James Morrison
Published November 9, 2004
Ukraine undecided
A chief adviser to the Ukrainian prime minister sees uncanny parallels between his boss's campaign for president and last week's U.S. presidential election.
The Nov. 21 runoff between Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and Viktor Yushchenko, a former prime minister, is too close to call. Each candidate received about 39 percent in the first round of voting on Oct. 31. Ukrainians appear divided between Mr. Yanukovych's rural supporters and Mr. Yushchenko's urban ones.
Also, as in the American election, billionaire George Soros, who poured millions of dollars into efforts to defeat President Bush, is also spending millions on the campaign against Mr. Yanukovych, said Eduard Prutnik, the prime minister's adviser, on a visit to The Washington Times yesterday.
"It's very much alike. We hope the outcome will also be the same," he said, predicting a victory for Mr. Yanukovych by about five percentage points.
Iraq is also an issue, with Mr. Yanukovych pledging to keep Ukraine's 1,600 troops within the U.S.-led coalition and Mr. Yushchenko promising to withdraw them within weeks if he is elected.
One of Mr. Prutnik's goals on his visit to Washington this week is to try to explain why Mr. Yanukovych would be a better U.S. ally than his opponent, who is supported privately by some State Department officials and publicly by many Ukrainians in the United States.
"Unfortunately, people in this town want to speak in terms of black and white, making one 100 percent positive and the other 100 percent negative," Mr. Prutnik said.
Critics suspect Mr. Yanukovych of harboring authoritarian tendencies like the current president, Leonid Kuchma, who is supporting the prime minister. They also claim Mr. Yanukovych is too close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and would bring .....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1288126/posts
Let me copy that important last sentence one more time, because it describes the key difference in this election.
Ukraine's presence in Iraq will push it further away from Europe bringing it closer to America.
its an interesting point. the key difference in this election is not whether the candidate supports iraq or not, the key difference is whether the candidate is for russian re-occupation, or for freedom. if we should support a free election or a coerced one.
if a country goes one way or another on an eletion is important but the election process should never be stolen or coerced. when yanukovych supports putin, and stealing the election he is unacceptable.
My guess is that Soros is backing the anti-establishment candidate, regardless of his politics, in an effort to further destabilize the country and make it easier for Soros to move in and take over the economy as he has done in other countries.
Georgie boy might want to watch his steps. Just because we dont dispatch people to dispatch meddlesome a-Holes doesn't mean that someone else might not.
Curious. The geographical spread you describe suggests that Yushchenko got most of his support from the western region of Ukraine where ethnic Russians are concentrated, while Yanukovich won in the eastern region where ethnic Ukrainians predominate.
In most former Soviet republics, ethnic Russians oppose independence and favor reunion with Russia. Yet, in Ukraine, ethnic Russians appear to have voted overwhelmingly for Yushchenko -- the candidate whom we are told represents an anti-Russian policy.
That is very odd.
You have your ethnography reversed - the Russians are in the east, the Ukes in the west.
the concentrations you mention are reversed. russian concentration is in the east, ukrainian nationalism is predominate in the west.
so who are good Americans supposed to be rooting for?......Soros is evil and anything he supports is suspect, IMO..
Oh. Silly me. :-)
I'll agree with you that stealing an election is unacceptable. It needs to be fair and open.
But I do disagree on the concepts of the election, Soros, the leftists, and the Socialist Party candidate Yushchenko seem to represent Europe, and closer EU ties.
The other candidate represents closer American ties. Yes it is also much closer Russian ties, but I see France and their EU a much bigger enemy than Russia.
how? russia supported iraq, iran, north korea, china. they are aligning with our worst enemies to recreate the soviet union. the only alliance we have with russia is that we are fighting muslims. russia has never been kind to ukraine. ever. and this election is proof that they dont intend to be kind to ukraine.
Connie Bruck The New Yorker 23-Jan-1995 George Soros buys Ukraine
Ukraine's own Mother Theresa. Of course it is always a bit of mystery to see someone like George Soros behaving philanthropically, giving away vast sums of money merely to do good to others. To Ukraine, George Soros appears in the guise of a selfless Mother Theresa — and yet selflessness is such a rare trait that when it makes its appearance, some observers can only stand and stare at it in wonder, and sometimes even in disbelief.
Part time philanthropist, part time plunderer? How to avoid noticing that this particular philanthropist's career consists in getting rich by taking money away from others in a vast, international poker game, in which no goods or services trade hands, and in which the only goal is to pauperize all opponents by outwitting them? How does a poker player who thrives under the guidance of this motivation find room in his personality for selfless philanthropy? How can such a philanthropist manage to avoid viewing the very people that he is giving money to as sheep that he will be able to shear tomorrow just like the sheep that he sheared yesterday? Had it been the case that subsequent to George Soros's intervention in Ukraine, the nation had prospered, then we would be obligated to consider thanking him. But as, instead, Ukraine has instead been plundered, what thanks are owed George Soros?
Any harm in George Soros? Is there evidence that George Soros works to injure Ukraine? The Ukrainian Archive lacks the resources to systematically gather such evidence. This is a job for the Ukrainian press, which, however, Leonid Kuchma has made giant strides toward intimidating and suppressing what he has been unable to buy up. Not likely, therefore, that the Ukrainian press will ever discover that Leonid Kuchma first strode upon the world stage as a George Soros flunkey. Curious that George "Mother Theresa" Soros is unable to prevail upon his protégé, Leonid Kuchma, to allow a free press — one might have imagined that in his selfless efforts to modernize Ukraine, a free press would have been among Soros's most urgent goals. But instead, despite all of George Soros's efforts, somehow Ukraine has ended up with the press of a police state, in which journalists are sued, harassed, beaten, and assassinated. Despite such daunting obstacles to arriving at a clear view of what is happening, suggestive clues that George Soros works to injure Ukraine do emerge.
Don't invest in terminal cases. For example, George Soros does invest in Russia, but does not invest in Ukraine — a discrepancy whose explanation might be that Soros is aware that the plan for Ukraine, but not for Russia, is economic collapse. If anyone can think of any other explanation for the combination of George Soros holding particular sway over Ukraine, and yet for George Soros designating Ukraine as the only country that is nurtured by his philanthropy and yet that he refuses to invest in, I would like to hear what that alternative explanation is. As investment may be considered to be one of the most efficient forms of philanthropy, we are faced here with a major incongruity.
Stealing Ukrainian brains for Russia? For another example, Net-Moscow Times-14Oct97 reports that George Soros donated $100 million to promote Internet access in Russian universities, but mentions no corresponding figure for Ukraine. If the figure for Ukraine is zero, or disproportionately less than for Russia, then the effect will be to draw Ukrainian brains to Russia, than which there could be no more devastating injury to Ukraine.
Saving a country by giving travel grants to its scientists. On top of that, evidence bearing on the possibility of a long-standing Soros policy to drain Ukraine of its brains may be found in the UKAR discussion — What's George Soros up to? — that travel grants may have as their chief goal the emigration or Ukrainian brains out of Ukraine.
He who pays the piper calls the tune. Another thought that the following quotations are capable of eliciting in some restless minds. That one way of guessing the likelihood that an individual will work toward the success of the Ukrainian State is to count the number of internal y's in his surname, or to see if it has some such ending as iuk or iak or yshyn or enko. Quite a different way, which does not always give the same answer as the first way, is to notice whose payroll he is on.
Sorry gophergop, I meant to ping GopherGOPer.
Do you recall that a representative from Open Society Ukraine was recently imprisoned? I thought I saw a post within the last month. Also does PORA and International Renaissance Foundation tie into Soros Foundation? Would someone correct me if I'm wrong, PORA is the student youth movement clothed in orange.
France and Russia are on the same side in this instance. Neither one of them wants to see a united, democratic Ukraine enter the EU.
Why? Russia, for the obvious reasons of wanting to maintain a buffer between it and the West while also retaining her Black Sea ports and strategic corridors into Central Asia. France, because she does not want to see the balance of European power shift even further to the East (i.e., "New Europe.")
No, no! You've got it backwards. The Russians are in the east where Yanukovich won, and the Ukies in the west.
It may be much more parochial than abortion. If both candidates support abortion, other factors may come into play quite strongly:
The Catholic Church was strongly suppressed by the Russians, who killed tens of millions of Catholic Ukranians, siezed all their properties, and forced any parcticing Christian to adopt Russian Orthodoxy. To this day, the Russians have refused to return the churches to the Catholics. Since Yuschenko represents the Catholic-leaning West and independence from Russia, it makes sense Catholics would support him.
The position of Rome is that voters may support a pro-abortion candidate if there are "proportional issues." Several American bishops were quick to point out that in our Democracy, there were no issues proportional to abortion. In a country where neither candidate is pro-life, but where totalitarianism has resulted in a largely atheistic society which has slaughtered or starved tens of millions, there may well be proportional issues.
great analysis. thanks.
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.