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 ...
Yeah. But this is the only article I've seen that actually stated
$orryA$$ had any stakes in either candidate. Everything I saw
was "undocumented" (no link) until this article.And I'm skeptical how much truth there is in this, too.
On November 9, 2004, Eduard Prutnyk, an advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine V.F.Yanukovych, at a meeting with the correspondents of the Washington Times, declared that George Soros is allegedly financing the campaign that aims at defeating Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential race in Ukraine. This statement has nothing to do with the truth. This year the International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) concentrated a certain part of its efforts on promoting fair and free elections in Ukraine, without giving preferences to any of the candidates, since first of all the Foundation supports those NGOs and their coalitions that aim at spreading information and enhancing voters activity, monitoring the infringement of voters rights and violations of electoral legislation, promoting adequate mass media coverage of elections campaign, conducting exit polls and TV debates of the presidential candidates. Complete information on IRF projects regarding elections has been sent directly to campaign headquarters of the candidates on October 12, 2004. Besides, all this information is freely available on the IRF web site (http://www.irf.kiev.ua). The fact that IRFs support for fair and free elections is being associated with the support of the opposition reveals the ignorance or the conscious rejection of democratic standards by the representative of the current administration.
Hryhorij Nemyrya, Chairman of the IRF board of administration
Yevhen Bystrytskyj, IRF Executive Director
Maidan-Informs comment:
Some people suffer from megalomania they are eager to feel themselves Soross victims. We recommend them to assess more adequately their own weight in the world.
Interfax News Agency, 01.04.04 - U.S. financier George Soros told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday that he and Ukrainian parliamentarian Viktor Pinchuk are planning to create a joint fund to provide legal assistance to citizens in Ukraine. Speaking about the agreement with Pinchuk, Soros said this is the first major contribution of a local philanthropist toward organizing a legal assistance fund. - irf.kiev.ua
Pinchuk (Kuchma's son in law), Soros and
Olena Franchuk (Kuchma's daughter)
Shaken oligarchs keep their money on Yanukovich - Mr Yushchenko has pledged to review the controversial privatisation of Kryvorizhstal, Ukraine's biggest steel mill, which was sold to Mr Pinchuk and Mr Akhmetov earlier this year for $800m (604m, £424m), far less than foreign bidders were prepared to offer.
I would have difficulty believing a statement from IRF which is Soros funded Open Society Ukraine.
I have difficulty believing Edward Prutnik, a member of Yanukovych's campaign.
Ping for later
Hope he spends all his money thus, and has none for our next election cycle.
..... at a meeting with the correspondents of the Washington Times, declared that George Soros is allegedly financing the campaign that aims at defeating Viktor Yanukovych in the presidential race in Ukraine. This statement has nothing to do with the truth .....To me, THAT makes more sense. I could easily believe that $orryA$$ would throw money behind Yanukovych than Yushchenko .....
Sure. All you have to do is discount the massive, documented vote fraud in the Yanukovych provinces. It ain't as clear cut for partition as you would like to believe.
I'm not taking either for fact at the moment. I'm just researching like everyone else.
Where is it documented?
And why is everyone here so gung-ho for the pro-abortion socialist candidate, Yushchenko?
i will bet you yanukovych and putin are pro-abortioin as well. the election is not over abortion, but over freedom and identity.
Thank you. Word retrieval was poor this AM. In fact, it's been this way for the past 10 years!
Thank you for responding, sorry I'm so late to reply.
In effect you found what I thought you would find. I take those statements to mean that there may be fraud in the election. It doesn't speculate which side. And even if they meant them in a different way, I could come up with US Bishops who wouldn't refuse to give Communion to Kerry, and the statements of the Ohio Priest where he went to Mass. It didn't mean the Catholic Church was behind Kerry.
Its like the election here, in many states like Illinois, and even Minnesota and Wisconsin there likely was lots of fraud. If the dead hadn't voted for Kerry, Bush would have at least won Wisconsin and Minnesota. There was huge turnout in the dem areas in Minnesota where people aren't nearly as regular about voting as in the rural GOP areas.
So you see, it could be fraud by Yushchenko, and there are demonstrators for both candidates, and the whole will of the people thing can go either way.
Thank you for stating the obvious. I don't know for certain, but I thought Yanukovich was pro-life. At least he wasn't for abortion on demand.
Follow-the-money...
A million votes were dumped in for him after the polls closed--his party monitored the tabulation to determine the number needed.
Rush, Fox and Sean covered this today.
As for Soros, no doubt he is pissed at Putin for throwing his sorry ass out of Russia and will go to great ends to spite Putin for that--witness the Soros vendetta against Bush, beyond reason.
Yanukovych and company deserve prison, not another vote.
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