Free Republic

>President Bush just found the right words about Stalins evil empire yesterday, when he was talking to the people of the Baltic nations, who are free now from Sowjet oppression.
Latvia and Estonia have sided with Hitler during WWII.
They were the Bad Guys and they lost.
That's all there is to it... >A mass murderer who killed millions of innocent Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles and people from many other nations for his low base motives.
I find presence of Germans in your list startling. They were anything, but innocent in this war, IMHO.

Glory to our heroic Red Army which has defended independence of our Motherland and won a victory over enemy!

http://www.livejournal.com/users/morrire/47757.html#cutid1

Have a look at this article. It has a detailed list of Ukrainian mafia clans which back each candidate http://www.elections-ua.org/publication6.html

Come on, be fair to poor guy. Yanukovich might be a gangster, but his boss is in Donetsk, not Moscow and his name is Renat Ahmetov...

Interesting piece of propaganda, this http://www.ukrpravda.com/archive/2004/october/15/3.shtml
No new facts about Yanukovich's convictions, just dark hints and baseless allegations.
I am not convinced.
Though hardly this is surprising, given the source's name - "Ukrainska Pravda"...

>Politicians feign faith everywhere

True, but Yanukovich's deep connections to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are well known. Even his political enemies acknowledge this. In fact, just yesterday I read anti-Yanukovich atricle which referred to Yanukovich's supporters as a "clique of clerics and gangsters"...

>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).

How about this Christian?

Viktor Yanukovich, Prime Minister of Ukraine and candidate to the presidential post, stands in front of icons in an Orthodox church in Kiev two days before the elections.(AFP/Sergei Supinski)

>I think you do not understand what it is to live in post-communist country where communist leaders still in power.

I am very sorry, but this has to be the funniest sentence I've read on Freerepublic for some time...
>You can't commit fraud it will be all over 4 goverment control channels.

Yanukovich has no control over western Ukraine. He doesn't control the capital city of Kiev. He doesn't even control much of eastern Ukraine.
He controls only Donetsk and Luhansk, where people already support Yanukovich.
As for the government, it is pretty much split with president Kuchma supporting Yanukovich, but most of government officials both in Kiev and western regions supporting Yushchenko.
This is pretty much evident from the election results since the OFFICIAL Central Election Committee reported 93% vote for Yushenko in Lvov.
So this is NOT a fight between "Communist government" and "Democratic oppposition". It is a strugle between two factions of the Ukrainian government personified by figures of Victor Yushchenko, former Kuchma's Prime Minister and Victor Yanukovich, present Kuchma's Prime Minister...

And finally, let's give you one concrete example of Yushenko's fraud. The official Central Elections Committee reported that voter turnout in Lvov region in western Ukraine was 81,97 per cent and that the people there overwhelmingly voted for Victor Yushchenko.

Well, these figures are simply impossible, because half of population of the improverished western Ukraine and Lvov in particular are out of the country, working as gastarbeiters in Spain, Portugal or Moscow. There is no way there could be 80% turnout in Lvov, it's physically impossible. It's a blatant fraud which added to Yuschenko probably a million false votes in western Ukraine alone.

I think both sides commited massive fraud, but their frauds sort of cancelled each other, so the end result is pretty representative of a genuine vote.

The reality which both sides have to face is 96% of vote for Yanukovich in Donetsk and 93% vote for Yushchenko in Lvov.

It would be a miracle, if such different regions can still remain parts of the same country.

I think somebody wants to divide the Ukraine.

Obviously, Donbass or Crimea will never agree to have a president who is "CIA agent" (or "husband of CIA agent", if there is any difference...)

And similarly, Western Ukraine and Kiev will never accept "Donetsk gangster" as a president.

Given such a choice of candidates, the only possible result of this election is a breakup of the country and civil war.

Maybe this is exactly what Moscow/Washington/Brussels/Soros (pick your choice) wants to happen to the Ukraine...

>I saw on one site that they are blaming the poisoning on dioxin. I've heard another version. Two, in fact. First, it was a plastical surgery accident. Second, Yushchenko has a leprosy.
Looking at this picture again, I am inclined to believe the latter

Ukraine divided
left green area - Yushchenko country and the percentage of votes for Yushchenko
right red area - Yanukovich country and the percentage of votes for Yanukovich
Looks like elections of 1860 in one north american country...

Can't resist posting this picture again and again...
Victor Yushchenko, the pro-western candidate

Victor Yushenko, the pro-western candidate.
If I were an Ukrainian, I'd sooner vote for Freddie Kruger...

Proposed Putin's reforms have nothing to do with democracy or authoritarianism.

Putin wants to abolish Russian federalism and turn Russia once again into a unitary state without explicitly breaking Russian Constitution.

While such a big country probably would have been better off as a federation, historically Russia was unitary state. Current Russian federalism is thus a historic abnormality.

(Note that federal state and unitary state do not stand for democratic or authoritarian. France and Britain are unitary states, Germany and the US are federal states, all four are democracies)

Moreover, Putin seems to think that federalism in current form makes Russian state weaker and Russian regions more corrupt.

And neither corruption nor weakness can be tolerated when Russia is at war.

I think you mistake Communism with Russia's greatness.

Russians and Putin want great and strong Russia back, not Communist regime.

As Alexander Solzhenitzyn put it, "They targeted Communism, but they killed Russia"

I guess by "KGB media sympathizers here" you mean me.

Anyway, it's very simple actually.

Georgia is not an Islamic state, they don't even like Chechens much, but they do help Chechen terrorists in order to bring some pressure on Russia.

Russia and Georgia have a very serious disagreement regarding breakaway regions of Abhazia and South Ossetia since the breakup of the Soviet Union.