Ukraine

[Serb]

Originally posted by Ned
It may be time for the Ukraine to divide into Ukrainan and Russian parts. No matter what the outcome here, one side is going to be bitterly disappointed. But the way the country seemed to vote by regions really mean it is not a nation, but two nations. The split should be formalized.

Perhaps it is the best solution. Western and Eastern Ukraine are too damn different.

[Gangerolf]

Ukraine's parliament has passed a no-confidence motion in Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych as a crisis over the disputed presidential poll continues


In parliament, 229 MPs - three more than required - voted in favour of sacking Mr Yanukovych as prime minister and creating an interim government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4057213.stm

[Gangerolf]

Here's an interesting read

Ukraine crisis exposes Putin's plans

By Peter Biles
BBC world affairs correspondent, Moscow

The Kremlin is maintaining a wall of silence on Ukraine, apart from saying the political crisis must be resolved without foreign pressure.

However, Russia is clearly watching the events with intense interest.

What happens in Ukraine matters a great deal to Moscow, not least because this could result in another foreign policy blunder for President Vladimir Putin.

The Russian leader visited Ukraine twice during the election campaign, in order to support the pro-Russian candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

Mr Putin was also the first foreign leader to congratulate Mr Yanukovych when he was initially declared the winner of the now disputed election.

Russia's blatant intervention makes a mockery of President Putin's accusation that the West is meddling in Ukraine and his statement that no-one should interfere in the electoral process.

The Kremlin's enormous investment in the Ukrainian election actually weakened Russia's standing on the world stage
- Nikolai Petrov, Carnegie Moscow Centre

The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, fuelled more controversy when he was welcomed at a pro-Yanukovych rally in eastern Ukraine at the weekend.

Mr Luzhkov's attendance was strongly criticised by Yulia Tymoshenko, the firebrand aide of the Ukrainian opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko.

"Politicians in Russia should simply watch what is happening. Ukrainians can find their own decision, and do what their country needs", said Ms Tymoshenko.

Post-Soviet imperialism?

At the heart of President Putin's foreign policy is a desire to formally maintain Russia's sphere of influence in the Commonwealth of Independent States - the countries that made up most of the Soviet Union.

However, writing in The Moscow Times this week, Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre argued that Mr Putin's actions had led to a rise of anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and around the world.

"The Kremlin's enormous investment in the Ukrainian election not only failed to strengthen but actually weakened Russia's standing on the world stage", said Mr Petrov.

"This intervention disrupted the Kremlin's ongoing attempt to integrate post-Soviet space, which even before this election, was widely viewed as neo-imperialistic."

Nevertheless, on the domestic front, Mr Putin has moved to place more power in the hands of the Kremlin since the Beslan school siege in the summer, and without much international censure.

The Russian leader is still regarded by the West as an important ally, particularly in the war on terror.

While Ukraine has made no secret of its desire for closer European integration and membership of Nato, President Putin is known to be extremely wary of an enlarged European Union on his doorstep.

Instability

In this highly-charged atmosphere, Mr Putin has been accused by his critics of trying to split Ukraine.

Some in the mainly Russian-speaking east of the country are opposed to any move towards Europe, and have been demanding greater autonomy.

We cannot even bring Chechnya into line. What could we hope to achieve in Ukraine, with its rebellious population of nearly 50 million?
Pavel Felgenhauer
Russian defence analyst
Russia, with important EU trade links in mind, won't want to widen the current rift in EU-Russian relations by aggravating Ukraine's instability.

However, it would not be the first time that Moscow had encouraged separatism in the countries of the former Soviet Union, notably in Georgia and Moldova.

So, might Russia intervene militarily in Ukraine?

The respected Russian defence analyst, Pavel Felgenhauer, thinks such a scenario is highly unlikely.

"Putin's Russia does not have the military power to send in the tanks and dominate foreign countries", says Mr Felgenhauer.

"We cannot even bring Chechnya into line. What could we hope to achieve in Ukraine, with its rebellious population of nearly 50 million?"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4057605.stm

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Serb

Let me guess, according to Heresson, both Ukraine and Armenia should be Poland's vassal.

Nah, while I think Poland was harmed by the boarders decided after ww1, I don't think anything can, and anything should be changed now, especially since Poles of Ukraine were either slaughtered or expelled later on.
Polish interest is a strong, but friendly Ukraine that separates us from You, Russians.

Please accept my condolences, it's such a great lost for a freedom fighting community.

Please accept my condolences. May your brain rest in peace

You have a pretty twisted logic- "I hope the best for Ukraine ", that's why "I even wore one of these orange stuffs on my blouse". With the same success you could say- I hope the best for Ukraine, that's why I agitate for a civil war and split of this country.

The same You could be accused of that after You support Janukowicz, Serb.
I think Juszczenko's rules shall be better for Ukraine than Janukowicz.
I have some doubts, if it shall be better for Poland in every aspect, though. I've heard that (but I don't know if it is true) that both Juszczenko and Tymoszenko praised Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists and did not express (it;s an euphemism in fact) any sign of being sad about the slaughterings of Poles in Wolyn and other regions during ww2.
I think that about such cases, it's much easier to discuss with eastern Ukrainians, as OUN-UPA tradition is allien to them and they can be less biased.
But except for the matters of judging history...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Serb

Bull****.

This has the signature of good old coup initiated by old good US of A (the heavy world champion of this sport).
In case if you didn't notice South and Estern regions of Ukraine currently on the streets now too, but they support their candidate Yanukovich. :

we've heard plenty about them. About rallies in the east, and also about coal miners bussed in to Kiev, using clubs on the Yuschenko demonstrators. Didnt work in Bucharest.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Serb


Guardian loves truth.

'"Freedom's front line

Europe must give immediate and total support to Ukraine's velvet revolutionaries

Timothy Garton Ash
Thursday November 25, 2004
The Guardian

Can Europe's velvet revolution claim another prize? When Ukrainian demonstrators on the frozen streets of Kiev place flowers in the perforated metal shields of their country's riot police, they are sending us two desperate yet dignified messages: "We want to join Europe" and "We want to do this in a European way". Peacefully, that is, supplanting the old Jacobin-Bolshevik model of violent regime change with Europe's new model of velvet revolution - as in Prague and Berlin in 1989, as in Serbia's toppling of Milosevic, as in Georgia, where exactly one year ago the people's president marched into parliament bearing a long-stemmed rose. If we, comfortably ensconced in the institutionalised Europe to which these peaceful demonstrators look with hope and yearning, do not immediately support them with every appropriate means at our disposal, we will betray the very ideals we claim to represent.
Tomorrow may already be too late. I'm typing these words on Wednesday afternoon. Who knows what will have happened in Ukraine by the time you read them? As I write, both sides are still just about respecting the first commandment in Europe's new catechism: no violence. But for how much longer? During the presidential election campaign, leather-jacketed thugs beat up supporters of the pro-European candidate Viktor Yushchenko. But the young female protester in Kiev can still express her hope for a peaceful solution: "as in Georgia a year ago ... as it should be in a civilised country".

The learning chain of Europe's velvet revolutions is fascinatingly direct. One of the most active groups in Ukraine's democratic opposition is called Pora. Pora means "It's time", which is exactly what the crowds chanted on Wenceslas Square in Prague in November 1989. The student activists of Pora received personal tutorials in non-violent resistance from Serbian students of the Otpor ("resistance") group who were in the vanguard of toppling Milosevic. Those same Serbs also helped the Georgian vanguard movement Kmara ("enough is enough"). On Tuesday, a Georgian flag was seen waving on Independence Square in Kiev. In Tbilisi, the rose-revolutionary Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili interrupted his first anniversary address to speak a few words of encouragement, in Ukrainian, to his "sisters and brothers" in Kiev. Now the Ukrainian opposition has asked Lech Walesa, once the leader of Solidarity, that Polish mother of all east European peaceful revolutions, to come to Kiev and mediate.

The tricks on the other side are familiar too. Most important of all is the grotesque abuse of state television to favour the pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovich. (State television stations are today's Bastilles.) Then heavy-handed interventions from Moscow, including two visits by the Russian president and former KGB-officer Vladimir Putin. Intimidation. Censorship. Lies. Dirty tricks, including a novel variant in which Yanukovich supporters were apparently given multiple voter registration cards so they could "vote early and vote often" in several different constituencies. The Ukrainian opposition refers to them ironically as "free voters". Miners from the Donbass region are reportedly being bussed in to sort out these pansy urban liberals. (Something very similar happened to keep Ceausescu's successors in power in Romania.) Then there are the incredible turnout figures, as in east European dictatorships of old, including one marvellous return of more than 100%.

Who says Europe is boring? Yet until Tuesday, many west Europeans probably did not even know that there was a presidential election going on in Ukraine. We were all focused on that other crucial presidential election, in the US. And, shamingly, Americans probably have done more to support the democratic opposition in Ukraine, and to shine a spotlight on electoral malpractices, than west Europeans have. Poles, Czechs and Slovaks have been more actively engaged, understanding how much is at stake.

What's at stake is not just the future of Ukraine: whether it turns to Europe, the west and liberal democracy, or back to authoritarianism and Putin's Russia. It's also the future of Russia itself, and therewith of the whole of Eurasia. A Russia that wins back Ukraine, as well as Belarus, will again be an imperial Russia, as Putin wishes. A Russia that sees even Ukraine moving towards Europe and the west, has a chance of itself becoming, with time, a more normal, liberal, democratic nation-state. But at the moment, under Putin, Russia is launched on a different, worse trajectory, and western leaders have been united in their pusillanimity towards it. We have all been appeasers there.

Of course, there's a global power play involved, too. Georgia, under its new government, has become a closer partner of the United States. Ukraine under Yushchenko might do the same. But above all, it will be turned towards Europe. These days, the most fervent pro-Europeans are to be found at the edges of Europe, and none more so than westward-looking Ukrainians. It's the European Union they hope one day to join, not the United States of America.

In the short term, there's a limit to what we can do. For once, the leadership of the EU has spoken out as plainly as Washington. "We don't accept these [election] results," said the Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, speaking for the current presidency of the EU. "We think they are fraudulent." Well said, Mr Bot. And Javier Solana, the nearest thing the EU has to a collective foreign minister, has warned that Ukraine's relationship with the EU will depend on its relationship to democracy. Yet clearly, the immediate crisis has to be resolved internally, between the Ukrainians themselves.

It should, however, be our unambiguous position that peaceful civil disobedience is a legitimate, even a necessary response to electoral fraud. And that the use of military or police force to deny people the right to peaceful protest is something we do not accept in 21st-century Europe. Actually, it's in places like Kiev, rather than in Brussels, that you see what a great story Europe has to tell, if only we knew how to tell it. It's the story of a rolling enlargement of freedom, from a position 60 years ago when there was just a handful of perilously free countries in Europe, and virtually the whole continent was at war, to a position today where there are only two or three seriously unfree countries in Europe, and almost the whole continent is at peace. Today, the front line of that forward march is in Ukraine.

Orwell writes somewhere that "from inside, everything looks worse". Whatever its faults seen from inside, and they are many, seen from outside the European Union is a great magnet and promoter of freedom. Most of our neighbours want to join it in order to become more free (as well as richer), and so as to secure the freedoms many of them have fought for in velvet revolutions.

In the longer term, to say, as I believe we should, that a democratic Ukraine has its proper place in the EU, is the best support we could give Ukrainian democrats. Immediately, though, we need the hardest, sharpest warning that Europe, the US and any other democracy that has influence in Kiev or Moscow can deliver. A group of students in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv send us this appeal via the BBC website: "We just hope Yanukovich decides not to turn the guns on us ... Don't let them kill our will." '

[Az]

So, LOTM, do you really think that Yanukovich has no support, and this was no close election?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Azazel
So, LOTM, do you really think that Yanukovich has no support, and this was no close election?

I think he clearly has support. And not just from coal miners. Really, you're not objecting to a justified countertroll to Serb, are you?

I dont know the actual vote, and wont until theres a fair election.

Just want to keep pointing some things out, in response to the Orwellian accusations floating around. I mean doing what these people are doing and then having the chutzpah to accuse the West of interfering, and Yuschenkos forces of illegality.

[Az]

Ummm, the west is interfering, as and so are they. What's wrong with that. I don't see you saying that the west has hutzpa WRT attacking the "undemocratic practices" while it interferes itself in the process.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Azazel
Ummm, the west is interfering, as and so are they. What's wrong with that. I don't see you saying that the west has hutzpa WRT attacking the "undemocratic practices" while it interferes itself in the process.

Not one western govt has given money to either side, AFAIK. While Putin apparently gave like $300 million to his side, against trinkets from NGO's to Yuschenkos side (one of the posters here managed to come with the fact that some NGO had funded a Yusch website - sheesh!) Western spokesmen have expressed concern about the results AFTER observers and UKRAINIANS reported fraud. Putin, OTOH visited twice, and just sent Luzhkov to speak in Eastern Ukraine.

Look at the posts here - unless we shut up, and ignore the fraud, we're accused of interfering. Evidently they see our statement of the truth, know acknowledged by Ukraines own parliament, as constituting chutzpah. That was the approach in Soviet days.

[Az]

Not one western govt has given money to either side, AFAIK

You know wrong.

Western spokesmen have expressed concern about the results AFTER observers and UKRAINIANS reported fraud.

umm, wha? Observers from the OSCE and pro-Yuchenko Ukrainians? What's your point?

Putin, OTOH visited twice, and just sent Luzhkov to speak in Eastern Ukraine.

Wait, so do you want me to look for Western leaders visiting Ukraine?

Look at the posts here - unless we shut up, and ignore the fraud, we're accused of interfering. Evidently they see our statement of the truth, know acknowledged by Ukraines own parliament, as constituting chutzpah. That was the approach in Soviet days.

That's the point, that there was interference on both sides. That holier than thou attitude by both sides, is SOOOO cold war. Rally the troops, chief, the Russkies are coming.

[Heresson]

Wait, so do you want me to look for Western leaders visiting Ukraine?

Yes

[Az]

What would that prove?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Azazel

Not one western govt has given money to either side, AFAIK

You know wrong.

LOTM - no, I dont.

Western spokesmen have expressed concern about the results AFTER observers and UKRAINIANS reported fraud.

umm, wha? Observers from the OSCE and pro-Yuchenko Ukrainians? What's your point?

Every outside observer other than those sent by Putin. Press reports, from a wide range of media outlets. Reports from Ukrainian journalists, rebelling againt the censorship of their bosses. Really Az, look at reality here. Do YOU really think there wasnt massive fraud, on the part of the anti-yushenko forces?

Putin, OTOH visited twice, and just sent Luzhkov to speak in Eastern Ukraine.

Wait, so do you want me to look for Western leaders visiting Ukraine?

LOTM - yes. Other than Lugar, who went as an observer, and did NOT address rallies, as Luzhkov has done.

Look at the posts here - unless we shut up, and ignore the fraud, we're accused of interfering. Evidently they see our statement of the truth, know acknowledged by Ukraines own parliament, as constituting chutzpah. That was the approach in Soviet days.

That's the point, that there was interference on both sides. That holier than thou attitude by both sides, is SOOOO cold war. Rally the troops, chief, the Russkies are coming.

No, Im distinguishing between making a simple statement about the accusations of fraud, and Putin going all out for one side.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Azazel
What would that prove?

If nothing, why have You replied in such way?