Ukraine undecided; George Soros "spending millions on the campaign against Mr. Yanukovych"

Washington Times ^ | November 8, 2004 | James Morrison

[MeekOneGOP]

Embassy Row

By James Morrison
Published November 9, 2004

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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 .....

[GopherGOPer]

Well, its a moot point apparently now, just now as I type, FNC news alert, Ukrainian Supreme Court ruled election invalid.