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 so confused.
Putin is the bad guy who has thrown many of these mafia barons into jail, like Khodorovsky, while the so-called pro-western forces claim this as opression of an innocent capitalist.
But he is also the ally of the mafia barons in elections?
Really, something doesn't add up here.
How's your nephew, the Army medic, doing?
Take a look at this thread! Please.
If Soros and MoveOn are against Putin's man, then I'm for him.
Soros is the prototype of the mafia gangster.
Whatever happened to his lawsuit against Hastert for saying he gets his money from the drug trade?
Ukraine and eastern Eu is not Eu. They were under communist domination, they were screwed morally and materially, but they are the best ally US can have. Don't mix Eurowienies and Ruskies with them. Forget the Soros, just like his $$$ didn't work here, they will not "buy" Ukraine.
Ukrainians in WW2 fought both Germans and Soviet occupiers untill 1950ies. They want free country run by Ukrainians and not foreigners. US will have ally in Ukraine if Yushchenko wins, his wife is American, so can't be too far.
We are all upset as he is NOT doing well at all. Seems this disease is both large and small intestines which is rare. Thanks for asking.
I have had two major surguries in recent months and am almost completely home bound now.
Give me a break you loser.
Soros was against George Bush too. You voted for JOHN KERRY? WOW!
This is sort of a general post.
The Ukraine (I'm old enough to like the "the") has had a rough go of it. The western part is heavily Catholic, with a distinct accent, and Lviv (Lvov, Lwow ...) was Polish for a long time. And the western Ukraine was pro-Nazi when the Germans came through. But they're all East Slavic, by language if not always by blood. Like Belorussia and Russia. The standard language is more based on the eastern variant, which has fewer polonisms. Kiev was the center of Rus', the original seat of authority before the Golden Horde moved in.
Lots of Russians there: esp. in Kiev, even Odessa. Mostly in the cities and Russia-adjacent areas; not so much in the rest of the country, or the west. Even lots of Ukrainians were much better in Russian than Ukrainian, although it's true that they're mutually intelligible, given a little patience. I find it a bit hard to read, but easier than Polish.
As for Putin (I've been pondering this for a while), I don't see the problem. I seriously don't like some of what he does; but I certainly don't expect him to do things in the interest of the US. I think that a bit of the anti-US nationalism's petered out: they know their military's trashed, but nobody (but Islamists) have bothered to invade. Given that there are serious problems to be faced all along Russia's southern border, I'd rather have a strong state there than a weak one. (Although given Russia's demographics, it doesn't matter, they're so screwed.) But I don't see Russia spreading revolution like the USSR did.
And the Crimea was Russian, but out of "fraternal bonds" it was given to Ukraine before the breakup in '91. The Black Sea fleet was stationed there, and a low-grade international tussle occurred when Ukraine broke away--they tried to claim the fleet.
I agree and since the EU is pro islamic it would figure that they would want a weak Russia and a weak USA.
You people are insane. You should be the ones rounded up and sent to Gitmo.
Stalin was a Georgian, not Russian. Most of his and Lenin's murderous henchmen were atheists of Jewish descent from the Pale of Settlement, which encompassed Ukraine and Belorussia, but not much of Russia proper.
That's why when the Nazi's came along and conquered Ukraine from the Communists, the Ukranians immediately turned on any Jew they could find and killed them, blaming them for 20 years of Communist opression. But they didn't turn on any Russia they could find and kill them.
The Ukranian identity as a distinct ethnicity is a construct of the Poles and Jesuits in order to discourage any feelings of loyalty among the "Ukranians" towards Russia through the several hundred years of Polish occupation, and is centered in the mainly Catholic area of L'viv and stretches east to K'yiv, which was the extent of the Orthodox Dioceses that had reunited with Rome in 1596. The Germans partially awakened these old feelings for purposes of separtism in 1917 by creating an independent Ukraine under German protection in the 1917 armistice with Russia (the Germans also created the modern states of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Georgia at the same time with the same treaty for the same purposes). Most other "Ukranians" think of themselves as just a different kind of Russian (i.e. Great Russians=Russia Proper, Little Russians=Ukraine, and White Russians=Belarus). The language difference is a matter of dialects more than anything else. Basically, Ukranian is Russian with a bit of Polish influence. The people look indistinguishable.
The Nazi's, for example, recognizing this, only admitted as Ukranian those who were from western Ukraine and were Catholic. Only Ukranians from the west were allowed into the Ukranian SS battalion. Other Ukranians were considered as Russians, and if they wished to fight with the Germans against the Communists, had to join with Gen. Vlasov's army or work as Hilfi's (grunt labor) in the Wehrmacht.
At the same time famine was being spread across the Ukraine by Stalin, he was also spreading famine across the Cossack Steppe to the east and in the large German settlement in Sartov and continuing to kill off the peasant-owner farmers known as Kulacks. The Ukraine drew the bulk of attention because it had the bulk of Russia's people at that time, and also the bulk of the independent farmers Stalin wished liquidated.
Well I hope the Army does right by him, and that you'll get to the point where you can go spend some time with him and re-acquaint him with civilian life.
Many people here have been trying to assert that being anti Putin is to be "pro Al Qaida" etc. Don't you see what they are doing? They are trying to tar patriotic Americans who DARE to question Putin with an unfair label of "Traitor"
I don't take kindly to threats of being unfairly accused of supporting terrorism by someone who, if they are REALLY an Ex Marine living in Cupertino, ought to know better. But maybe he is REALLY an SVR agent, bent on the destruction of the USA and the West. All the better if he can get some real US Patriots, who despise not only the Terrorists, but all other anti Western forces, sent to GITMO. I spit on him.
Soros who hates George Bush so much he formed MOVEON to try to defeat him and spent his own millions to fund it. And these people have some nerve to post on this PRO-BUSH site. And then they call those of us who dislike Soros, "commies" or plants for Putin.
AMAZING 2 me.
Ping.
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