Posted on 11/23/2004 5:56:02 PM PST by wagglebee
Would-be Czar Vladimir Putin has taken a giant step toward reasserting the regional hegemony of the former Soviet Union by stealing the election in the Ukraine right under our noses.
As an unpaid, volunteer adviser to Viktor Yushchenko, the democratic candidate for president, I have seen, first hand, how Viktor Yanukovich, the Putin candidate backed by a rogue coalition of Russian Mafia, oil barons, former KGB officials and Communists, stole the election and thwarted the obvious will of the voters.
While the former Soviet Union was composed of many smaller nations, now independent, the key was the combination of Russia and the Ukraine. Russia’s 145 million people and the Ukraine’s 45 million are the core of what was the Soviet Empire. Reuniting them has to be the primary goal of any aspiring Russian czar.
But the people of the Ukraine don’t want Russian domination. The election contest pitted Viktor Yushchenko, who got the virtually solid support of the 60 percent of the population that is Ukrainian by ethnicity against Yanukovich, who won equally united backing from the 40 percent that is ethnically Russian.
The result was obvious: Exit polls (more accurate in Ukraine than when our own TV networks do them) showed Yushchenko winning by more than 10 points. But the final results announced by the government, which supported Yanukovich, showed a small margin in favor of the Russian-backed candidate.
Putin regarded the contest as so important that he personally visited the Ukraine in the weeks before the election to campaign for his candidate, a clear violation of the most elementary standards of independence and protocol. His former KGB henchmen – and once and future Communists – combined with Russian organized crime figures and oil barons to pump money into the race and to intimidate voters on the ground.
Yushchenko, a pro-Western former prime minister, survived two assassination attempts to make the race. At the start of the contest, he was run off the road while driving in the Ukraine. When he walked away from the wreck, the opposition poisoned him. Hospitalized in Vienna, his doctors diagnosed the poison, which mimicked a stroke in its symptoms, and nursed him to a full recovery.
If they couldn’t commit murder, Putin’s boys decided to commit larceny and did all they could to stack the election. Their totally controlled print and television media – all the information outlets in the nation – refused to give any favorable coverage to Yushchenko and biased all their news toward Yanukovich. We couldn’t even buy advertising space in any mass media outlet.
But, undaunted, Yushchenko’s supporters got their message out by hand, ditributing leaflets and flyers to every single household in the nation several times each week.
When, finally, the forces of freedom won the election, Putin’s operatives rigged the count and released totally phony results showing their stooge to be the winner.
The stakes could not be higher. If the Ukraine and Russia combine, as Putin clearly wants, the old Soviet Union will be back on the road to regional domination and the old ambitions of global power will return. And 45 million people will be cheated of the right to determine their own future.
We in the West are at best distracted and at worst willing to cede to Putin regional control in return for his assistance in the war on terror. This is a mistake of the same order of magnitude the allies made in the 1930s in dealing with Hitler.
The theft of the Ukrainian election is parallel to Germany’s decision to march into the Rhineland. And our refusal to notice or act is akin to the French and British policy of turning the other way.
Freedom may be on the march in the Middle East, but it is in full retreat in Eastern Europe.
So, again, the echo of the Nixonian question about China: Who lost the Ukraine?
I'm waiting for Gen. Wesley Kanne Clark to come out and scream for us to bomb the evil Ukranians who refuse to vote for the Soros candidate.
She's meeting up with the rest of the crew for some R and R in chechnya afterward. Where they are being hosted by Basayev and Vanessa Redgrave.
Democracies are messy things. In fact our Founding Fathers feared full democracies. We don't even directly elect our presidents - that is how little our founding fathers trusted the demos.
Both sides cheated in the Ukraine - one side was better at it then the other.
I won't start WW3 over a disputed election.
In any case Russia can call our bluff easy - what will the USA do to punish the Ukraine for making a choice it is against? Trade sanctions? That will drive it closer to Russia. The Ukraine has been a basket case since independence. Where was the Marshall plan to save the Ukraine? There was none and there will be none.
I am not a Ukrainian. It is not my place to judge their nation and their electoral results.
Where I did judge was to compare the hypocritical responses our leaders had (exit polls showed the other side winning - how rich!) over their election problems.
Putin decided the Ukraine would not be helpful to him as a NATO member.
bump
Excellent nutshell explanation by Morris.
In the '80s, those under commie rule waged clandestine samizdat campaigns -- leaflets, pamphlets, privately printed posters, etc-- that were instrumental in bringing the USSR to an end. These people are very good at ignoring mainstream media and now, with the Net, they can reach even more people. They are not as gullible as Americans who swallow hook, line, and sinker everything the MSM tells them.
" Both sides cheated in the Ukraine - one side was better at it then the other."
I keep hearing this --- but have not seen any evidence that Yushchenko cheated to get his share of the vote. Why is this continuing to be repeated? Where are the news articles or first-hand accounts of cheating? And if Yushchenko's support is that soft, then what the heck are hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians doing in the streets for three days, ready to die if necessary to oppose the Russian military?
However, the documentation for the cheating on the Yankovich side is wide-spread and well-documented. I was shocked at the level. They could teach the Chicago Dems all sorts of things. That level of stealing the vote rightly delegitimizes the election, which is why practically everyone including the US has protested the "official" election results. Anyway, if there are news reports of the Yushchenko side cheating, please post the links. Thanks.
So, which side is the NY Slimes on re this election?
Are you Uki friends Catholic or Orthodox? The Catholic Uki's are very much like the Poles, because Poland dominated Ukraine for centuries.
That wasn't my quote, that was the quote to which I was replying. But yes the Ukranian Americans I know are Catholic, except the one who went Lutheran. The things people do for love. LOL.
I'm still and always was against our actions in Serbia/Kosovo and I think this "election" is highly suspicous.
You will not get much info from American news medai because they don't have people in the Ukraine so they rely on outside sources. In Europe they report both sides cheated - but now the news is mostly on the people protesting the election.
First, it's very bad form to not ping the subject of your malicious gossip to the post. If you want the comment to be private, just take it to FReepmail.
Second, Franks was describing in explicit detail how the Constitution would be a dead letter in the event of a WMD attack. When someone who supposedly swore an oath to defend the Constitution lays out a detailed mechanism for subverting same, I am forced to question his true faith and allegiance. Maybe he just had a case of brain flatulence. But you usually don't get four stars on your collar for being stupid, or for being prone to misstatements. So I keep an eye on him and certain other people.
To think that he was, if not lying about it, in the Marines, a termite, with these sorts of thoughts, for all those years.
Yeah, thoughts like taking my oath of enlistment seriously. I defend the Constitution against all enemies, be they foreign or domestic.
How many more are out there, like him, within the ranks of both active duty and retirees?
The short answer: a bunch. Those who wish to subvert the Constitution generally don't join the miitary. Those that do enter get blanket-partied out during initial training.
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