...Vladimir Putin... has again exhibited his contempt for democratic rule and his tin ear for the angry opposition in the world's democracies.... Ukraine was starved into submission by Stalin 72 years ago, but when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence. It was not, however, an independence willingly accepted by Russian hardliners.... The massive outpouring of demonstrators in what they call the "Orange Revolution" is an attempt to replicate the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia... Serbia... the Berlin Wall, the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia and the Solidarity victory in Poland. There was one significant failure too,...