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>Read the first post, by Dick Morris analyzing the vote. Ethnic Russians voted for Putin's guy; ethnic Ukrainians, 60% of the pop, voted for Yushchenko, who is trying to break Ukraine away from Moscow's domination.

He is oversimplifying things to absurdity.

Fact is, three fourths of Ukrainian population are considered ethnic Ukrainian and ethnic Russians make almost a quarter of population.

However, most of ethnic Ukrainians are primarily Russian speakers. They are ethnic Ukrainian, but Russian speaking Ukrainian. Many of them speak Ukrainian just as well, but many others don't.

And since everybody in the Ukraine understands both languages(which are very similar and mutually intelligible anyway), this is usually no big deal. You can frequently see two people speaking to each other one in Ukrainian, the other in Russian and both understanding each other.

The line of divide in this election is not ethnic, with exception of Crimea, Ukrainains are a majority in every region of Ukraine. It's not even linguistic. The capital city of Kiev is a Russian speaking region, but Kiev supports Yushenko, while almost all other Russian-speaking regions in the east and south support Yanukovich.

The real divide is both geographic and civilizational. The people who voted for Yanukovich are from the more industrially developed and richer regions of Ukraine. They don't want to keep paying taxes which all go to support the dirty poor rural western regions and parasitic bureaucrats in Kiev. They really, really dislike the present government of Ukraine and make exception only for their compatriot Yanukovich (who joined the government only two years ago).