What's the problem? Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, The Pope, the EU, our President -- are all supporting Ukraine here --- Yuschenko's Ukraine's last chance before Ukraine slides into the coming Soviet/totaliterian abyss.
Are we anti-Communists here, or not? for pete's sake!
There are tapes of Kuchma Sr. officials on how they'll rig the elections, for pete's sake (that's what Im hearing on Charlie Rose now)
Not all of us, apparently.
Putin has a small band of groupies who are spinning this as an "us against Soros" thing. It isn't. It's a "the entire world (except N Korea, China, Cuba, Iran, et al) against the KGB" thing.
Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze was instrumental in the fall of the Soviet Union.
Soros toppled him too.
Soviet role
Mr Shevardnadze joined the Communist Party in 1946 and rose through party ranks to become Georgia's Communist leader in 1972.
As Soviet foreign minister between 1985 and 1990 when the Cold War began to thaw, he oversaw a transformation in Soviet foreign policy.
He resigned in December 1990, giving a stark warning of imminent dictatorship - and his predictions appeared well-founded when hardliners attempted a coup the following summer.
After this he returned briefly as foreign minister of a now doomed Soviet Union.
Mr Shevardnadze put a halt to the anarchy that threatened to engulf Georgia when he returned from Moscow and took over as leader in 1992.
He won huge respect for his bravery under fire during the conflict in the breakaway region of Abkhazia the following year, and came within a hair's breadth of being killed or captured.
He was elected president in 1995 and re-elected in 2000.
Georgia has the potential to offer a positive contrast to some of its southern or eastern neighbours.
It is seen as pro-Western and broadly democratic, with a parliament that does more than rubber stamp executive decisions, and the beginnings of a genuine civil society.
Attacks
But the country is still poor and divided and pervasive corruption remains the biggest problem - one that Mr Shevardnadze was unable to tackle.
The 75-year-old - who claims with some justification to have ended the Cold War, liberated central Europe, reunified Germany and democratised the USSR - once looked likely to die a martyr's death after two armed attempts on his life: one bomb, and one assault on his motorcade.
He had said he would not stand for a third term, in the next round of presidential elections due in 2005.
In the end, he never got the chance of a dignified exit.