Poland: Red, White, and Orange

http://www.tol.cz/look/TOL/printf.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=4&NrIssue=92&
NrSection=1&NrArticle=13122&ST1=ad&ST_T1=job&ST_AS1=1&ST2=body&ST_T2=
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by Jakub Jedras
29 November 2004

There's no doubt whom Poland's politicians, media, and people are supporting in Ukraine.

WARSAW, Poland--Thousands of Poles are on the streets decked out in orange. Both of Poland's post-communist presidents have been to Kiev to mediate. A near-total consensus in parliament and in the media: Poland has been absorbed by the events in Ukraine over the past week, and its politicians, media, and citizens are expressing an overwhelming solidarity with the Ukrainian opposition as it tries to overturn the results in Ukraine's flawed presidential elections.

In Warsaw crowds of Poles, most of them young, have gathered outside the Ukrainian Embassy, the parliament building, and the monument to Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national poet. Thousands have attended special concerts, Ukrainian poetry readings, and a range of other events in Warsaw. In some parts of central Polish capital where demonstrators gatheredy, not wearing anything orange has seemed at least a little odd. The same applies in Katowice, Krakow, Lodz, Wroclaw, Lublin, and many other cities with large student populations.

Those who believed opinion polls that indicated that Poles disliked Ukrainians more than Germans or Russians might now be feeling astonished. So too might Warsaw's shopkeepers as they try to cope with the new fashion for orange. Orange scarves, gloves, hats, and even shoes have reportedly been sold out, and kilometers of orange ribbon have been bought up.

"Yushchenko, Yushchenko!" "Ukraine without Putin," and "Free Ukraine" are just a few of the slogans being shouted by supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, presidential candidate and leader of Ukraine's opposition.

Why are they doing this? "This is the most important event in the past 15 years," says Michal, a university student reading economics. "Ukraine has an opportunity to be changed. We must support this!"

The view that Ukraine's current leadership is a relic of the Soviet era and Russia's perceived overweening involvement in Ukraine play a key role in Polish attitudes. Again and again, Poles say that the protests in Poland's eastern neighbor remind them of 1980 and 1989, the years when Poland's trade union movement Solidarity pressed the communist system to the wall and finally toppled it. "We were supported then; now we are supporting," says Magda, who has attended rallies every day since the second round of Ukraine's presidential elections on 21 November.

SOLIDARITY INTERNATIONAL

Solidarity figurehead and Nobel Prize-winner Lech Walesa swiftly flew to Kiev to give flesh to the analogy, apparently at Yushchenko's invitation. Though he talked with the government candidate, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, as well as with Yushchenko, there was no doubt where his sympathies lay when he addressed a crowd of 200,000 orange-clad Yushchenko supporters.

Others contented themselves with attending pro-Yushchenko rallies in Warsaw.

In fact, the only prominent Polish politician not to come out in favor of Yushchenko was President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who flew off to Kiev on 26 November, a day after Walesa, to act as an intermediary. There he joined Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus, a representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the head of EU foreign policy Javier Solana at roundtable talks.

As president, Kwasniewski has adopted a neutral stance, and officially his relations with Kuchma have always been very good.

But the details suggest a more critical stance, both now and in the past. Two days before going to Kiev, Kwasniewski told journalists that Kuchma was "disappointing me" as he had failed "to adopt a role as mediator between Yanukovych and Yushchenko," a reference to Kuchma's close relationship with Yanukovych and his consistent support for him during the election campaign and in the early days of the post-election crisis.

He also backed the visit by his predecessor, Walesa, after Ukraine's President Leonid Kuchma sharply criticized Walesa's mission as "increasing tensions."

"I had less room to act as I must take care of future Polish-Ukrainian relations," Kwasniewski said, in an ambiguous statement that seemed designed to imply where his sympathies lay.

The Polish president has also had reason to be disappointed on several occasions in recent years. To no avail, Kwasniewski has urged the Ukrainian president to clarify the circumstances of the killing of journalist Georgy Gongadze in 2000, a crime in which secretly recorded tapes implicated Kuchma. Poland also recently suffered a setback in its "strategic relationship" with Ukraine, as it is always described, when Ukraine decided to allow Russia access to a pipeline that runs from Odessa in Ukraine to Brody in Poland.

While there have been some symbolic advances--the joint commemoration in 2003 of the 60th anniversary of massacres in the border region of Volhynia--those have been offset by setbacks, such as a scuttled joint ceremony at a cemetery for Polish victims of fighting in 1918 in Lviv, close to the Polish border.

Now, the political consensus seems to be that Poland has much more to gain by backing the opposition than by trying to preserve good relations with Kuchma and his prime minister.

Feelings are particularly strong among the founders and activists of Solidarity. "A mass movement very similar to Solidarity has emerged in Ukraine," one former Solidarity leader, Bogdan Borusewicz, told the daily Gazeta Wyborcza. "It has no name at the moment, but we can see that civic society has raised its head."

He added that Poland now has a great role to play and that the weight of Polish public opinion could help avert bloodshed in Ukraine.

Henryk Wujec, who also was a member of the anti-communist movement, echoed those feelings, pointing to visits to support the Ukrainian opposition by Polish politicians such as former Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek and former Defense Minister Bronislaw Komorowski.

Not all of this political support may be selfless. Some newspapers, among them the left-wing Trybuna, accused right-wing politicians of seizing on the crisis for domestic political purposes.

The parties most actively supporting the Ukrainian opposition are the liberal Civic Platform (PO) and the conservative Law and Justice (PiS), which may well both form a new governing coalition after parliamentary elections next year. The PiS sent its leaders, the brothers Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczynski, to the demonstrations in Kiev.

Civic Platform went further, inviting Boris Tarasyuk, the former Ukrainian foreign minister and a close ally of Yushchenko, to speak in the Polish parliament. Tarasyuk’s speech in the Sejm was unprecedented; normally, only those officially invited by parliament are allowed to address the chamber. Tarasyuk underlined the shared history of Poles and Ukrainians, the importance of Solidarity, and a geopolitical axiom expressed by Jerzy Giedroyc, a Polish intellectual who died in 2000: "There can be no independent Poland without a free Ukraine."

Walesa used the same quote when he addressed the crowds in Kiev.

Some Polish politicians have, however, remained on the sidelines. Their reasons are various. "I am not going to Ukraine," said Wojciech Wierzejski, a far-right Polish member of the European Parliament. "The situation is not unambiguous; Yushchenko is backed also by nationalists hostile to Poles."

Janusz Wojciechowski, leader of the Polish Peasant Party, called for Poland to be "reserved," arguing, "We don’t want anybody to pry into our affairs, and the same goes for the Ukrainians. They must solve their problem by themselves."

THE ORANGE PRESS

The media has made clear its affinities. Gazeta Wyborcza--the country's leading paper, edited by a former dissident, Adam Michnik--has gone the farthest. It has supported Yushchenko and the opposition, handed out orange ribbons, and prepared a special eight-page supplement in Ukrainian that was distributed for free in Kiev and Lviv.

The public service channel TVP and the news station TVN24 have carried live broadcasts from Kiev and Lviv, with hourly reports from around the country. Most newspapers have devoted acres of space to articles, analyses, commentaries, and interviews relating to events in Ukraine.

The warmth felt toward Ukraine is accompanied by chilly feelings about Russia's role. Moscow's overt support for Yanukovych has reinforced perceptions that Russia still has an imperialist mindset.

President Kwasniewski expressed the sentiment in more careful but still clear terms when he told Gazeta Wyborcza that Russia's main aim is to re-establish its influence in this part of the former Soviet Union through "concrete political and economic acts."

Claims that Russian troops have been brought into Kiev have awakened fears of bloodshed. But ultimately, "If Ukraine's orange revolution is won, it will be a very serious blow to Russia," wrote Agnieszka Romaszewska in Rzeczpospolita, expressing a very widespread perception

Janusz Onyszkiewicz, a member of parliament and former minister of defense, believes Russia will have to accept whatever solution is reached in Ukraine. "In any case, Yushchenko is not an anti-Russian politician," Onyszkiewicz added.

The events in Ukraine and the massive support for the opposition in Poland is being seen as an opportunity to reinvigorate Poland's and the EU's eastern policy. The strong backing expressed by the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania--and the presence of Kwasniewski and Lithuania's President Adamkus, rather than representatives of Germany or France, as negotiators in Kiev--is adding to the belief that the EU's new member states should and can influence EU policy. In Poland, the EU is generally seen as preferring good relations with Russia to becoming involved in Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Moldovan affairs.



Jakub Jedras is a TOL correspondent

Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Urged to Push for Federalized Ukraine

Paul Goble

Tartu, November 29 - A leading Russian nationalist foreign policy analyst has urged the Russian government to look past the Ukrainian presidential elections -- which he says Viktor Yushchenko would have won if there had not been massive fraud -- and to push for a federalized Ukraine to preserve both the unity of that country and Moscow's influence there.

In articles posted on the Agency of Political News website on November 24 and 26 (http://www.apn.ru), Stanislav Belkovskiy,the president of the Moscow Institute of National Strategy, argued that even people in the entourage of Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Moscow prime minister, not admit that their candidate would have lost the reported vote by five to six percent had there not been massive fraud.

Belkovskiy said that all the experts with whom he had spoken believe that pro-Yanukovich officials had falsified some 2.5 million ballots, or nine percent of those cast, to give him an apparent victory. Those in Kyiv and Moscow who thought that the reported vote would end the matter were and are wrong, Belkovskiy continued.

But he argued that even if everyone agrees that Yushchenko won and that he is able to take office, that does not solve the problems for Ukraine and for the Russian Federation that the election simultaneously highlighted and exacerbated. In fact, he said, Moscow played a "destructive" role in this process.

The election showed that Ukraine is deeply divided, not simply between east and west, as most analysts would have it, but even more fragmented. Belkovskiy argued that the election showed there are many Ukraines. Unless something is done, he added, this multiplicity could tearplace apart to the detriment of both Ukrainians and Russians.

Without providing a source, Belkovskiy invokes no less a figure than the late Ukrainian leader Vyacheslav Chornovyl, who the Russian analyst says, believed that there exist "approximately nine political-mental clusters in Ukraine" and that "without a taking into account of the differences among them any campaign would be impossible."

According to Belkovskiy, not only a campaign but the governance of Ukraine requires a recognition of this reality. And he urges that Moscow work with Ukrainians to push for a radical reform of the Ukrainian state because "even the coming to power of Yushchenko will not change the problem of the interrelationships of these various parts" of that country.

Belkovskiy calls for a thoroughgoing federalization of Ukraine, with the regions enjoying extensive autonomy including on cultural and linguistic questions. Under his scheme, the regions would have the right to elect their governors and to send representatives to the upper house of a new bicameral legislature.

Such moves would reduce tensions and help both Ukraine and Russia recover from the recent vote, the Russian analyst suggested. Belkovskiy's ideas have been supported to a greater or lesser degree by other Moscow writers, including Valeriy Fedorov on the "Russkiy zhurnal" site (http://www.russ.ru/culture/20041126_fed.html), Aleksandr Khramchikhin on the Prognosis site (http://www.prognosis.ru?print.html?id=2572), and Boris Mezhuev on the APN site as well.

It is unlikely that Ukrainians would ever agree to Belkovskiy's plan. Yushchenko, for example, said on November 28 that Ukraine must not be split into two parts, Interfax-Ukraine reported. Such a move would leave their country too obviously weakened to future Russian involvement. But it is perhaps worth noting its existence as an idea circulating within the Moscow elite and possibly contributing to the formation of a Russian negotiating position on Ukraine.

After all, Moscow has pushed hard for radical federalization in Georgia and Moldova as a way of taking care of its clients in both places, and the Russian government has found at least some understanding for its position in the West.

But there is one great irony in Belkovskiy's plan and its possible use by Moscow now: His plan calls for Ukrainian regions to have all the autonomy and political authority that President Vladimir Putin is working to deprive the regions within the Russian Federation.

That is an irony that Ukrainians who want to see the orange revolution succeed may not yet have noticed, but it is certainly an irony that they would be quick to use.

Ukraine President backs re-run of disputed election

By Philippe Naughton, Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1380657,00.html



The outgoing President of Ukraine today proposed that a bitterly disputed election to choose his successor be re-run to end a political crisis threatening to split the country.



The compromise proposal came as Ukraine's Supreme Court met to hear an opposition appeal to have last week's election annulled because of allegations of massive electoral fraud.

Leonid Kuchma said: "If we really want to preserve peace and consensus and build this just, democratic society, of which we speak so much but have failed to carry out in a legal way, let us have new elections. This is the only more-or-less legal way to proceed."

Viktor Yanukovich, the Prime Minister, was declared the winner of a run-off election on November 21, despite reports from official Western election monitors that the vote was rigged. Mr Yanukovich was backed both by Mr Kuchma and by neighbouring Russia.

Since then, Viktor Yushchenko, his liberal challenger, has brought hundreds of thousands of protesters on to the streets of Kiev to demand a new poll. Mr Yuschenko today stepped up the pressure by urging parliament to pass a no-confidence in Mr Yanukovich.

Mr Kuchma said he had no intention of running in any new poll. "I will not be a candidate to ensure there is no doubt about this."

In an apparently conciliatory move, Mr Yanukovich had earlier said in comments broadcast on television that he would agree to stage a new presidential vote in two regions if mass fraud were proven to have occurred in the poll.

"If there is proof of cheating, that something illegal occurred there and if there is no doubt among experts, I will agree with such a decision," he said in televised comments, referring to two regions in his native eastern Ukraine.

Earlier, Supreme Court judges began hearing an appeal against the election results filed by Mr Yushchenko last week. The opposition is believed to have gathered evidence of some 11,000 separate instances of abuse.

The inauguration of Mr Yanukovich has been suspended until the judges hand down a ruling, which court officials said could take a week.

This afternoon, judge Anatoly Yarema said there would no ruling from the court today, and Mr Yanukovich's team had been given until 10am tomorrow (8am UK time) to examine documents submitted by the Yushchenko camp.

The crisis is proving increasingly divisive. Ukraine's giant industrial base, the eastern Donetsk region that is Mr Yanukovich's stronghold, scheduled a referendum on autonomy for next Sunday.

The Supreme Court groups around 100 judges, of whom only 21 were to be used for this case, their names kept secret until the last minute to avoid undue pressure. Under Ukrainian law, the judges cannot overturn the overall result, but can declare results invalid in individual precincts.

Mykola Katerinchuk, a Yushchenko aide, said the appeal focused on results in eight eastern and southern Ukrainian regions - covering more than 15 million votes or almost half of the total cast in the presidential run-off. The opposition claimed "severe violations of Ukrainian legislation" and asked the court to annul the results, he said.

In solidarity with the protesters in Kiev.

http://www.nationalreview.com/stuttaford/stuttaford200411290818.asp

It's Time
In solidarity with the protesters in Kiev.

New York City, Saturday - In Manhattan, they say, everyone wears black, but not this Saturday, not in this plaza just across from the U.N. The demonstrators, perhaps 500, perhaps more, have turned up on this briefly glorious late autumn day in orange hats, in orange scarves, in orange coats, in orange sweaters, draped in orange blankets, wearing orange ribbons; anything, however small, will do so long as it is orange. Baseball cap advertising Land Rover? No problem. If it's orange, it's fine. Sweatshirt proclaiming the virtues of Steinway pianos? Why not? It's orange.

Orange flags flutter, orange balloons bob against a clear, lovely sky that matches the blue on the other flag, pale blue and yellow, which flies this day. Blue and yellow, the colors of Ukraine, and orange the color of the movement that might, maybe, finally bring the people of that country the decent government they have awaited for far too long."Pora". "It's time." Indeed it is.

Banners, orange naturally, proclaim the loyalties of the crowd:

"Yuschenko - Yes!"

"A Criminal Should Not Be President."

"Putin, Don't Mess With Ukraine."

"Boston Ukrainians for Yuschenko."

"America and Ukraine Together."

"Kyiv, We're With You."

"Ukrainians Deserve Freedom Just Like You."

Indeed they do. In the 20th century, the people of the Ukraine, a land of two genocides, the country of Hitler's Babi Yar, and the nation of Stalin's broken, emptying starving villages, went through the worst that two totalitarian systems could do to them, the raw death toll, millions after millions after millions, supplemented by decade after decade after decade of more selective, careful purges, a cull of the best and the brightest, generation after generation after generation.

And yet, somehow, Ukraine endured.

But Putin seems to feel little or no remorse for the crimes of his Kremlin predecessors. There have been no real apologies, and no trials of those butchers who still survive. As the Russian president looks at those other far, far larger crowds in orange, the ones gathered for days in Kiev's Independence Square, he sees, doubtless, only irritants, troublemakers, hooligans, obstacles to be removed, perhaps even dupes, according to some in Moscow, of wicked Polish plotters. What he should be seeing are the countless ghosts of those that went before, victims of that Soviet past that even now he seems curiously unwilling to confront. That, however, would take a conscience.

In 1933 (wrote the writer Vasily Grossman) "horses pulled flattop carts through [Kiev],and the corpses of those who had died in the night were collected. I saw one such flattop cart with children on it. They were just as I have described them, thin, elongated faces, like those of dead birds, with sharp beaks...Some of them were still muttering, and their heads still turning. I asked the driver about them, and he just waved his hands and said: "By the time they get where they are being taken they will be silent too." There was, we should remember, more food in Kiev than anywhere else in the Ukraine that year. Five, six, seven million died in that Soviet-made famine, the Holodomor, maybe an even greater number: no one knows for sure.

Standing in that New York plaza I talk to one of the demonstrators, Marko, about what's going on. We touch on the past. "My father," he says, "survived the Holodomor." I look around at some of the older faces in the crowd, and wonder what they had heard back then, what they knew, what they had lived through.

Not inappropriately, perhaps, there is behind us a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swede who rescued thousands of Jews from wartime Budapest only to disappear into Stalin's hands. A small plaque reads that on "January 17th, 1945 Raoul Wallenberg was detained by the Soviet government. His fate remains unknown." Fate unknown. Just another ghost. Not inappropriately, perhaps, someone in the crowd is carrying a placard showing Putin in a KGB uniform.

Someone else has a sign announcing that she is from Donetsk, the city that is the heart of the Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking east, an area that is likely to come into sharp focus in coming weeks - exaggerated it may have been, but there is no doubt that Russia's candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, has real support in that part of the country. Taras, a friend of mine who's also at the demonstration, is more optimistic. His father, from Ternopil in western Ukraine (the city where Viktor Yuschenko had studied as a young man)had just returned from Kiev. While he was there he'd talked to a few of the miners who have been shipped in from the East to rally support for Yanukovych, the second-round "winner." They were O.K. guys, he said, enjoying an all-expenses, all-vodka trip to the big city with no plans to stick around for long. We'll see.

But Saturday is not a day for such worries. The likeable crowd, mainly twenty or
thirtysomethings, a blend of recent immigrants, visitors, and the diaspora, were festive, optimistic, excited, cheering the speeches, the singers, and the sentiment, pausing only to chant the only name that counted, the name of their president:

"Yushchenko, Yushchenko, Yushchenko."

He's their hero, their man, their champion, and their best hope for the true restorationof a squandered independence. In fact, like many politicians that emerged in the rougher corners of post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Yuschenko is not free from awkward questions about his past, or the nature of some of his support, but this is not something that anyone wants to think about this day.

"Yushchenko, Yushchenko, Yushchenko."

An older woman points to a poster, a standard politician-and-child image, the usual fluff, and shakes her head sadly. "It's terrible what they've done to him." The man in the photograph is healthy, good-looking, fortyish. It's Yuschenko, and the picture was probably taken less than a year ago. His face looks nothing like the terrible, cratered wreck that it has become, the product, almost certainly of a poison attack, an attack that has transformed him into a martyr for the cause, the real cause, he now leads.

The crowd starts to sing a lovely, enchanting tune, verse after verse. They know the
words, and they sing them smiling. "The national anthem?" I ask. "No", two women say,
"It's like a pledge." "What's it called?" Thought. Pause. Embarrassed looks. "We don't know." And then they start to laugh.

It's time.

Official Text of Sec.Colin Powell's statement on Ukraine 11/29/04

Secretary Colin L. Powell
Four Seasons Hotel
Washington, DC
November 29, 2004
(10:55 a.m. EST)

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, do you have time for a question? Could we ask you about Ukraine and how concerned you are that Ukraine could break apart?

SECRETARY POWELL: I had a good conversation with President Kuchma this morning, and I also had a good conversation with the Russian Foreign Minister, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. And we were concerned at some of these reports, and I reaffirmed to President Kuchma that it is the United States' position, and I think the position of everyone, that the territorial integrity of Ukraine is important, and that we once again reaffirmed that we hope that the Ukrainians would find a legal way forward, as well as a political process based on the constitutional law to resolve the problem they are now having with respect to the last election.

The Supreme Court is meeting today, and of course, the Parliament meets again tomorrow. We're very pleased that there's been no real violence, that people are being allowed to assemble peacefully and demonstrate peacefully and express their views on both sides. And if we can keep things calm and allow the leaders and politicians and members of the international community who are trying to help the Ukrainians all come together, then hopefully a peaceful solution will be found.

But we certainly do support the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Participants of a Yushchenko mass-meeting beaten in Luhansk

A group of people armed with hammers and cold weapons fiercely beat the
participants of a mass-meeting in support of Viktor Yushchenko, Ukrainian News reports.

Dozens of journalists, including journalists from the information agency Ukrainian News, foreign observers and supporters of the opposition leader were injured.

The incident occurred about 1 p.m. on Monday during the mass-meeting of Yushchenko
supporters in Luhansk. According to a journalist from Ukrainian News, who was also injured during the incident, a column of about 300 Yanukovych supporters came up to the column of 70 Yushchenko supporters. Suddenly, when the columns were close enough, about 30 armed people in black leather jackets came out of the crowd and surrounded the column of Yushchenko supporters. Journalists covering the event were mingled with Yushchenko supporters.

The attackers made a tight circle around the crowd and began beating people, taking away their cell-phones, video cameras and other devices. Only the injured who had no means of communication were allowed to leave the column.

The attackers beat the journalists with hammers on the head, beating them with feet and heavy items. According to witnesses, about several dozens of people were injured.

According to one journalist, the attackers were fiercely beating the correspondent of the Luganchany newspaper and the coordinator of projects of OSCE in Luhansk Oblast. A volunteer of the John Howard Society (Canada), Silve Rossel, received a craniocerebral injury and is now being operated on.

Two people from Yushchenko headquarter in Luhansk Oblast were also beaten, Yevheniy
Savchenkos nose was broken. The full names of other injured persons are being released. The staff of the information agency demands that the law enforcement bodies take urgent measures to catch the criminals.

Data about the number of injured and possible fatalities is now being specified.

http://www.obozrevatel.com/index.php?r=news&t=2&id=168037

Focus: Talking about a revolution

November 28, 2004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1378260,00.html
Focus: Talking about a revolution
For seven days thousands of young people have partied in the streets of Kiev, hoping to turn their country towards the West. It’s an incredible display of people power, reports Mark Franchetti, but behind the scenes government forces are now massing

Draped in a blue pro-government flag and swigging from a vodka bottle to keep warm, Viktor Kolukh was in no mood to compromise yesterday. A hefty miner with thick, tattooed hands, he had travelled 600 miles by bus from Ukraine’s heavily industrialised east with an unmistakable message for the opposition demonstrators on the streets of Kiev.

Cheered on by dozens of fellow miners gathered around a camp fire, Kolukh spat contemptuously on an orange opposition banner and trod it deep into the snow.

“We want to avoid violence but the situation is very tense. It could blow up any moment,” said Kolukh, 34. “The opposition must accept that it lost the elections. We are patient but if the results are annulled and we are robbed of our victory, there will be blood on the streets.”

While television cameras have focused on the carnival-like sea of hundreds of thousands of orange-clad protesters in the Ukrainian capital, the blue army of men like Kolukh has been steadily on the march, pouring in by bus and train from the east.

These mostly impoverished miners and industrial workers voted in Ukraine’s disputed presidential election for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian prime minister who is fighting to hold on to a victory widely condemned as rigged.

Some 20,000 cheered Yanukovych as he called on them to do all in their power to stop a constitutional coup — raising fears, as the standoff entered its seventh day, that the remarkably festive mood in this ancient city could turn violent, with repercussions far beyond Ukraine’s borders.

Tomorrow, if it is not overtaken by events this weekend, the Ukrainian Supreme Court is due to hear evidence about the vote-rigging and decide whether the result should stand.

The opposition wants another election. Kolukh and his friends are ready to fight: “If the courts rule against Yanukovych we will not accept it. He won the elections and is our president. If he is not sworn in, anything could happen. We won’t go home empty-handed.”

Is he right? Or does Ukraine’s destiny lie with Tatyana, a 29-year-old blue-eyed blonde draped in an orange poncho, who five days ago left her job as a hotel receptionist to take to the streets? “This is our chance to shape our future,” she said. “We are not violent. We have been out for days without causing a single violent incident. We want to achieve our goals by peaceful means but we will stand firm to the end. It’s a wonderful feeling. We are changing our country and turning our back on our authoritarian past.”

In what is now being dubbed the Chestnut Revolution, because of Kiev’s numerous chestnut trees, the number of young protesters in Independence Square grew yesterday, beating drums and dancing, waving orange flags as they surrounded the presidential palace and government buildings. Pretty young women smiled at heavily armed riot police and placed flowers in their shields and gun barrels.

EUROPE has seen nothing as joyous as Ukraine’s popular revolt since 1989 when the fall of the Berlin Wall set pro-Moscow regimes toppling all across the old communist bloc. More than a decade on, Kiev is reliving the same romantic scenes, the same sense of history on the move as exuberant pro-western crowds brave heavy snow and bitter winds to defy the dead hand of the apparat.

Ukraine, however, is different. It is not an outlying colony of the Soviet bloc but an integral part of the Russian soul, its eastern region ruled from Moscow since the 17th century. Its relationship to Russia is roughly analogous with Scotland’s to England. It has supplied Moscow with political leaders, soldiers, engineers, inventors, artists, writers — plus food, fuel, holiday homes for the Russian elite and a base for Moscow’s nuclear submarine fleet, which Russia still uses.

Pulling in the other direction against this bond are memories of the abuse that Ukraine has suffered at Moscow’s hands, particularly under communism. Stalin slaughtered its peasants when he collectivised their farms on Ukraine’s famously rich “black soil”, and reprisals after the second world war on those Ukrainians who had welcomed the conquering Germans as liberators, only to be reconquered by the Red Army, were brutal.

The most visible dividing line is the River Dnieper, which, running south through Kiev, bisects the country before emptying into the Black Sea. To the east, people are mainly Russian-speaking and Orthodox Christian, working in mining, traditional industries and the military. In the west, they are mainly Ukrainian speaking and Greek-Catholic, with a largely rural economy.

The current electoral dispute is not simply about fraud but about a deeper conflict over these complex historical, political and religious roots. It could be described as a clash of rival visions of Europe — if not of civilisations.

Ukraine has long reflected the continuous debate in Russia between Slavophiles and westernisers. Slavophiles in 19th-century Moscow and Kiev saw Russia as “the third Rome”, chosen by God to rekindle the flame of true Christianity and conquer the world for the true faith. Westernisers saw Russia’s — and Ukraine’s — future as part of a democratic and secular Europe.

Yanukovych, who is campaigning for virtual reunification with Russia and Belarus to help President Vladimir Putin create a big Slavic power to counterbalance the European Union and America, represents the Slavophiles. The opposition presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, represents the westernisers’ dream of joining the EU and Nato.

As a result, Ukraine is work in progress, an accidental country looking for an identity. Sandwiched between Russia and four Nato members, it has become the vortex of a mini cold war over the past week as Moscow and Washington fight by proxy over its future. Russian interference has been blatant. America’s has been more subtle, but money has been channelled to Ukrainian westernisers.

THE present confrontation was sparked off by Ukraine’s third presidential election since it gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. After two five-year terms, Leonid Kuchma, the authoritarian president, is stepping down. The two men vying to replace him could not be more different from each other.

Yanukovych, a burly former governor from the eastern Ukraine who in his youth was convicted of robbery and assault, is close to the country’s most powerful oligarchs — wealthy businessmen who made their fortunes in privatisation deals under Kuchma.

Yushchenko, married to an American citizen of Ukrainian descent, is a liberal-minded economist who favours freeing the Ukrainian economy of state controls.

Less than three months ago Yushchenko was a handsome, fit 50-year-old. But he was rushed for treatment in Vienna after falling ill with a mysterious disease that has left him horribly disfigured.

Yushchenko claimed that he had been poisoned in a secret operation sponsored by Russia’s former KGB. The Ukrainian government denied any wrongdoing and claimed the extraordinary physical transformation was caused by “bad sushi”.

Long before the result of last Sunday’s election was announced, Yushchenko called his supporters onto the streets — where yesterday the demands for a rerun of the election grew relentlessly while the Ukrainian parliament met in emergency session.

There were ecstatic cheers from the multitude when parliament ruled by a large majority that the election was fraudulent and had failed to reflect the will of voters.

Last night, the crowds were still on the streets, determined to keep up the pressure in advance of the Supreme Court’s verdict tomorrow.

The court is comparatively independent-minded, but the exact legal status of Yushchenko’s appeal is in doubt. Ukrainian law does not provide for an all-encompassing appeal of national election results, only region-by-region appeals.

Some feared that the joyful street parties and open-air concerts could still turn into a bloodbath. Lurking in the background, phalanxes of stone-faced riot police and Ukrainian special forces in black body armour and helmets, brandishing machineguns and batons, stood guard silently around the presidential palace.

The key to the revolutions of 1989 was the compliance of the security forces in bowing to the wind of change. There has been little sign that today those same forces would be prepared to switch sides and join the opposition. But one woman student leader said confidently: “Of course the army or police won’t fire on us. They have children our age. They would never harm us.”


Additional reporting: Amir Taheri

Russia ‘will back force’ by Ukraine president

November 28, 2004

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1379054,00.html


RUSSIA has offered to back the Ukrainian government if it uses force to crush pro-democracy demonstrators who have taken control of the capital and other cities, it was claimed last night, write Askold Krushelnycky and Mark Franchetti.
A senior figure in the Ukrainian presidential administration who declined to be identified said that Boris Gryzlov, President Vladimir Putin’s personal envoy to Ukraine, had promised “diplomatic cover” against any international backlash prompted by such a move.

The source emphasised, however, that the pledge had been given at the beginning of escalating protests prompted by last Sunday’s elections that handed the presidency to Viktor Yanukovych, the prime minister.

The poll was condemned by international observers as a sham and supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate, took to the streets.

Details of the pledge emerged as the Ukrainian parliament yesterday declared the presidential poll to be invalid. Parliament has no legal authority to annul the results but the declaration gave a political boost to the opposition.

As the session opened, 100,000 of Yushchenko’s supporters wearing scarves, hats and ribbons in his campaign’s orange colours gathered outside parliament.

The Supreme Court is due tomorrow to examine Yushchenko’s complaints of widespread irregularities.

Revealed: the full story of the Ukrainian election fraud

By Tom Parfitt in Kiev and Colin Freeman
(Filed: 28/11/2004)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/28/wukra28.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/28/ixworld.html
It was 5.30pm on election day in Ukraine when the thugs in masks arrived armed with rubber truncheons.

Vitaly Kizima, an election monitor at Zhovtneve in Ukraine's Sumy region, watched in horror as 30 men in tracksuits stormed into the village polling station.


Riot police guard the Ukranian presidential administration compound in Kiev

"They started to beat voters and election officials, trying to push through towards the ballot boxes," he told The Telegraph.

"People's faces were cut from blows to the head. There was blood all over."

The thugs - believed to be loyal to the pro-Russian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich from his stronghold, Donetsk - were repulsed only when locals pushed them back and a policeman fired warning shots.

The catalogue of abuses in the contest between Mr Yanukovich, the prime minister, and his opponent, the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, is growing longer by the day.

Ukraine is split, with the western, Europe-leaning regions voting overwhelmingly for Mr Yushchenko while the eastern part of the country - where many speak Russian - backing Mr Yanukovich.

Maya Syta, a journalist working at polling station 73 in a Kiev suburb, witnessed ballot papers destroyed with acid poured into a ballot box. "The officials were taking them out of the box and they couldn't understand why they were wet," she said.

"Then I saw they started to blacken and disintegrate as if they were burning. Two ballots were wrapped up into a tube with a yellow liquid inside. After a few moments they were completely eaten up."

In her polling station, 26 ballots were destroyed and had to be invalidated. Six other cases were recorded of ballots destroyed by acid.

The most common trick was "carousel" voting, in which busloads of Yanukovich supporters simply drove from one polling station to another casting multiple false absentee ballots.

In another brazen fraud recorded by observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, voters were given pens filled with ink that disappeared, leaving ballots unmarked and invalid.

Mr Yushchenko has refused to accept the election results, which gave him 46.61 per cent of the vote against 49.46 per cent for Mr Yanukovich. The figures are due to be reviewed tomorrow by the Supreme Court, although it cannot reverse them.

Diana Dutsyk, a member of Mr Yushchenko's campaign team, claimed that "dead souls" - late citizens' ballots used by imposters - were also used to augment his opponent's share of the vote.

And late last week Mr Yushchenko's headquarters released an audio recording in which senior members of Mr Yanukovich's campaign team were allegedly caught red-handed discussing how to fix the election result.

In the telephone conversation, a member of the team can be heard saying that he ordered a local election commission to disqualify votes.

Mr Yanukovich denies rigging the vote and claims that a "small clique" of his opponents is trying to divide Ukraine.

But mediators, including Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, have hinted that a new election should be called and President George W Bush, said the world was "watching very closely" after Washington called the result into doubt.

Both candidates enjoy genuine support but election observers say that Mr Yanukovich's team used its bureaucratic muscle to rig last Sunday's election in his favour.

"The openness and cynicism of the manipulation was unprecedented," said Olexander Chernenko of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), an American-funded organisation that has monitored elections for more than a decade.

About 11,000 complaints have been lodged so far with regional courts.

Mr Yanukovich has described the protest movement as an attempt at an "anti-constitutional coup"; Mr Yushchenko sees it as the "people's self-defence". But the scale of the indignant response from hundreds of thousands of protesters who swept onto the streets - and the extent of the election fraud - are a reflection of larger forces at work.

The state of almost 50 million people, crunched between East and West, was once Kievan Rus - the proto-state that gave birth to the Russian nation. Many in Moscow still think of the country as a southern province.

In recent years, a resurgent Russia under President Vladimir Putin has sought to reassert control over Kiev. Ukraine is an important pipeline route for Russian oil and gas, and a friendly regime will not impose high transit fees.

The country's Black Sea port of Sevastopol is also home to Russia's southern naval fleet, offering easy access to the Mediterranean.

Moscow is pushing for the creation of a "joint economic space" in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine - a project that Mr Yushchenko has said would dilute the country's sovereignty.

Mr Yanukovich, who has a criminal record and links to shady business magnates, is backed by Mr Putin, and draws his support from Russian-dominated eastern Ukraine.

However, Western countries such as Britain and the United States support Mr Yushchenko - who promises a turn towards Europe and pursuit of Nato membership. His supporters have been wooed with millions of dollars from the United States.

In turn, Mr Putin did what he could to support his preferred candidate. Immediately before the election, he made two high-profile visits to Kiev to meet Mr Yanukovich and the Ukraine's President, Leonid Kuchma.

Russian advisers, including a leading Moscow spin doctor, Gleb Pavlovsky, were said to be in effect running the prime minister's campaign.

Despite talk of an East-West showdown, many Ukrainians protesting about the election result say that Mr Yanukovich's criminal background is unacceptable, not his bias towards Russia.

The prime minister was twice convicted for robbery and battery in his youth and is seen as the protege of a group of business oligarchs known as "the Donetsk fellas" from the eastern region where he was once governor.

"How could they dare try to impose such a bandit on us?" asked Yuri, who was ferrying protesters to Kiev's Independence Square yesterday in a car festooned with orange streamers. "We will never accept it."

The Observer profile: Viktor Yuschenko

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1361266,00.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our man in Kiev

There's no doubt that the ravaged face of Ukraine's opposition leader is the one the West wants to see in power. But far from being a US stooge, the former Soviet banker is rapidly emerging as a genuine people's hero

Nick Paton Walsh
Sunday November 28, 2004
The Observer

Standing in the blowing snow addressing tens of thousands of Ukrainian, his face wrecked by an alleged poisoning attempt, Viktor Yuschenko does not seem to be anybody's 'patsy'. Certainly, the vast crowds who have joined Ukraine's opposition leader in Kiev, standing by him through a week of blizzards and political turmoil following the presidential elections, have made it clear they regard him as a hero.
Yuschenko casts himself as the accidental revolutionary. The epithet 'patsy' comes from Yuri Boldiryev, a former MP who knew the ex-chief of the central bank during his salad days in parliament. Leaning over a map of the Ukraine, he points at the tiny village near the north-eastern town of Sumi where Yuschenko was born in 1954.

'He has never been his own man. He has a village mentality,' says Boldiryev. 'Look how much closer he was in the Soviet Union to Moscow. But he never went there to study. Instead, he headed all the way here, to the west, to Ternopil, because his mother knew someone at the university.'

Boldiryev insists Yuschenko has always had a strong woman pushing him forward: his mother; his wife, Chicago-born ex-State Department official Katya, who introduced him to Washington; his deputy, Yulia Timoshenko. How, then, is this man with the ravaged face now threatening to overturn the Ukraine's corrupt political order? And, crucially, what does he promise?

A year ago, Victor Yuschenko was an uninspiring opposition politician in a largely ignored eastern European country best known for being one of the world's most venal. His movie-star looks made him the presentable frontman for the opposition, while his ritual patter was that of a prosaic fan of the free market.

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His own internet home-page reveals that woodwork, bee-keeping and archaeology are among his hobbies. His passion, he says, is volleyball. None of which seem the pastimes of a man challenging one of the most entrenched post-Soviet elites remaining in the former Soviet Union. These same, secure elites confidently put up the charmless but efficient Viktor Yanukovich - who had once been jailed - to face him.

Yet, in September, something happened to transform Yuschenko and the Ukraine. He fell victim to a mysterious illness that robbed him of his face but gave him the power of populist rhetoric. It led to the remarkable transformation of Yuschenko from nearly man to the visionary who is causing the crowds on Kiev's Independence Square to keep growing as the snow and threats of violence deepen.

At first Yuschenko dismissed it as a bout of severe food poisoning. But as the illness worsened he was rushed to the Rudolfinerhaus clinic in Vienna. Every organ was close to collapse yet doctors were completely baffled by what could have caused it.

The effect was staggering. He stood before parliament after his release from the clinic, his suntan now jaundice, his wrinkles transformed into the deep pock marks of chloracne that some experts say is consistent with ingestion of dioxins. With a new fury in his voice, he accused his government challengers to the presidency of trying to poison him.

'This is not a problem of food. I eat potatoes and pig fat, as do millions of other Ukrainians. What happened to me is not a problem of cuisine but a problem of the political regime in the Ukraine,' he said. 'I am not referring to the real cuisine, but to a political cuisine capable of brewing a politically motivated assassination. I want to know the names of the assassins very much.

'But even without any investigation the answer is simple - the [attempted] killer is the regime. I survived because my guardian angels were not asleep at the time. Every one of you is next, however'.

The government denounced it as a publicity stunt designed to attract sympathy towards a politician falling a few points behind in the polls. And while the state prosecutor did open a criminal investigation into the alleged poisoning, he concluded that Yuschenko had suffered a serious case of herpes.

Viktor Yuschenko was not born into the Soviet elite that retained control of the country after its independence in 1992. A teacher's son, he grew up in the tiny town of Khoruzhivka. After an education in Ternopil in western Ukraine, he returned home to take up a job his mother found him in the bank in their home town.

Yuschenko's account of his decision to head to Ternopil university rather than to Moscow is more colourful than that of detractors such as Boldiryev. It also suggests that there has been more than economics and number-crunching in the early life of this politician.

'As a boy I was a romantic,' he recalled in a recent interview. 'I read Jack London and Jules Verne. One day the former pupils who were studying in Ternopil arrived at the school-leavers' party and described the wonderful landscapes of Galychyna, about the caves, the Carpathians and the ancient forests. It was because of this I decided to attend Ternopil Financial Economic University, simultaneously joining three student groups: caving, mountaineering and tourism.'

This was a formative period for the young Yuschenko, and he established a lifelong love of sports that would feed into his later political ideas - ideas that would reflect the often vicious state of post-independence Ukraine.

'Sport is adventurous, unpredictable and sometimes violent,' Yuschenko has said. 'The same holds true for politics. It requires analysis and sober mind, devotion to the principles and ideas.'

But these were, perhaps, a later rationalisation. In his early career, Yuschenko would show little sign of being adventurous, moving into government under the tutelage of the then head of the USSR's central bank, Vadym Hetman, a powerful figure who went on to head Ukraine's first national bank and become Yuschenko's mentor as he rose to take his boss's old job.

Surviving a corruption scandal at the central bank, he impressed president Leonid Kuchma enough to be appointed his prime minister in 1999.

Two turbulent years would follow in which Yuschenko's free market ideas - his decision to pay off Ukraine's debts to Russia and try and regain the country's economic independence - would begin to rile the corrupt business oligarchs around Kuchma. A basket-case economy improved, but by 2001 he had upset too many interests and he was sacked.

It is this period that has led some at least to suspect Yuschenko's motives - most notably for his public statements of support for Kuchma in a series of controversies, including Kuchma's alleged involvement in the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze, that saw thousands of Ukrainians take to the streets in 2001.

But with his sacking, Yuschenko was suddenly on the outside and angry - his wife Katya becoming the catalyst for what would happen next.

Fervently anti-communist in her youth, Kateryna Chumachenko, had worked in the human rights bureau at the State Department, in the White House and the US Treasury - a devotee of free market economics described by one associate as 'one of the most dedicated conservatives I have ever known'. Katya took him to Washington, introducing him to senators as 'their man'.

While Washington has given financial backing to the growth of the opposition groups, it is not the whole story. Instead, it is Yuschenko's everyman appeal that keeps more than 100,000 people on the streets of Kiev in his support. When he addresses the crowd, he does not talk in ultimatums, or of bloodshed - harsh words that spark fear in a country whose history is wracked with conflict. Instead he jokes. He reads out figures about electoral abuse from a sheet of paper - a tiresome process that none the less appears to go down well with the placid people he seeks to lead.

Yet America's interest in his rise - and in the Ukraine - is part of the problem that is confronting the Ukraine. For as Russia felt threatened, and made blunter moves in retaliation, it turned an election race - initially a choice between two grey men called Viktor - into the last chapter of the end of the Cold War.

It is a chapter that in its final days has been dominated by that broken face. At first Yuschenko would sit for hours before a backstage mirror as an artist applied industrial strength make-up and fixing sprays. But since Sunday's allegedly fraudulent election, the foundation has come off, and now he addresses the crowd warts and all.

Gone too is a caution that - even in October - had led some of his closest supporters to wonder whether their man had the fire in his belly to go the distance. Now, as he addresses his supporters he tells them not to go home without 'victory'.

According to pro-opposition analyst Markian Bilynskyj: 'For a long time he sought constitutional and legal means to out-manoeuvre the government. Now he has become radicalised and is burning all his bridges.'

But even if he finally wins, he will inherit a country that is deeply divided. For all the allegations of attempts by the government to steal the election, it is also true that many - perhaps almost half of Ukrainians - did not vote for Yuschenko and policies that looked to a future with Europe and the West. Millions of Ukrainians in the east - who identify themselves as Russians - voted for a future allied with Moscow and the past.

Added to that, there are serious questions about what an 'orange revolution' - elements of whose Ukrainian nationalist coalition encompasses both anti-Semitic and anti-Russian sentiments - signify for the country's future.

For their part, his supporters say they are inspired by a hatred of the old regime, and a desire to see banished the former Soviet elite which stole the country's wealth. And it is with Yuschenko - the middle-man of the Soviet era, who many view as the quiet accountant and technocrat - that many see their future.

VIKTOR YUSCHENKO


DoB: 23 February 1954 (at Sums'ka Oblast)

Education: Economics at Ternopil

Jobs: Accountant; USSR State Bank; National Bank of Ukraine; Prime Minister; opposition leader

Family: Married to US-born Kateryna Yuschenko- Chumachenko

Ukrainian Police Use Tear-Gas Against Demonstrators — Yushchenko Aide

Created: 26.11.2004 15:35 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:37 MSK
http://mosnews.com/news/2004/11/26/teargas.shtml

MosNews


Police in the Ukrainian city of Chernigov used tear-gas against demonstrators supporting the opposition contender for president, Viktor Yushchenko, Ekho Moskvy radio quoted Yuschenko’s aide, Alexander Zinchenko.

Police say the demonstrators blew up several explosive devices themselves, the radio reported.

Protests against Ukraine’s presidential election results are still continuing. Zinchenko was quoted by the radio as saying they will not stop until the Ukrainian authorities admit their defeat.

The Union of Russia’s Ukrainians is planning a rally in support of Yushchenko, in Moscow, the radio quoted the union’s head, Valery Semenenko, as saying.

In the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, Yushchenko’s supporters have surrounded the governmental buildings. The outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma, is discussing the crisis with his Polish counterpart, Alexander Kwasniewski, and EU official, Javier Solana.

Pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine Threatens to Secede if Yushchenko Wins

Created: 26.11.2004 19:07 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 19:07 MSK
http://mosnews.com/news/2004/11/26/eastukraine.shtml

MosNews


Deputies from Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, where the disputed winner of the country’s presidential poll Viktor Yushchenko gained much of his votes, have threatened to call a referendum on the formation of an autonomous republic if opposition protestors favoring pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko get their way.

Donetsk deputies pledged to form an “East-South” autonomous republic, along with the Crimea region, which already enjoys more powers than Ukraine’s 26 other regions, Reuters reported.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters are still in the streets across central and western Ukraine denouncing the official count which shows Yanukovich as the winner of last Sunday’s presidential election.

“If they don’t clear people out of Kiev squares on Saturday and Sunday, we should, in an orderly, constitutional way, stage a referendum of trust to determine this country’s make-up,” Donetsk Mayor Alexander Lukyanchenko told the assembly.

“We can live without that half (of the country), but can they live without us?” the mayor in this primarily industrial region was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The east, which generates much of Ukraine’s wealth with its coal, chemical and steel industries, has rejected opposition calls for a nationwide strike. Crimea, which already has its own parliament and government, is also Russian-speaking and for a time in the 1990s protested against rule by Ukrainian authorities.

The disputed election has highlighted Ukraine’s centuries-old divide between the Russian-speaking east and the Ukrainian-speaking west.

Ukraine’s constitution only allows for nation-wide referendums. To stage a referendum three million signatures are needed in two-thirds of the country of 47 million. Each region has to provide at least 100,000 signatures.

Sign Language Presenter at Ukrainian TV Sides With Opposition

Sign Language Presenter at Ukrainian TV Sides With Opposition, Tells Own News
Created: 26.11.2004 13:00 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:56 MSK

MosNews
http://mosnews.com/news/2004/11/26/presenter.shtml

Natalia Dmitruk, a sign language presenter with the Ukrainian TV channel UT-1 has ignored the text read by the news presenter and instead transmitted the message that the results of the elections were rigged, Russia’s NTV television reports.

Dmitruk rebelled during the morning news broadcast on Thursday. The Visti news program is the only program on Ukrainian television adapted for people with hearing difficulties.

During the broadcast, the sign language presenter ignored the text about the results of the presidential elections read by presenter Tatyana Kravchenko and instead transmitted the following:

“The results announced by the Central Electoral Commission are rigged. Do not believe them. Our president is Yushchenko. I am very disappointed by the fact that I had to interpret lies. I will not do it any more. I do not know if you will see me again.”

After the broadcast Dmitruk joined the strike announced by journalists of the UT-1 television channel on Thursday. The strikers claim they will return to work only on condition that nothing but the truth is reported.

The text of Yushchenko’s parallel gov’t issues first decrees

Nov 26, 12:44

(Post Staff and Wire Reports)
http://www.kyivpost.com/bn/21917/

Viktor Yushchenko on Nov. 25 announced three decrees adopted by the National Salvation Committee (NSC), which he heads.

The NSC is not recognized under the Constitution, which says the acting president exercises power until his successor assumes office, and presidential powers can be terminated only on account of incapacitation, impeachment or death.

The text of the document reads:

NSC decree #1:

On the renewal of democracy in Ukraine

Being governed by the Constitution of Ukraine, which declares the people as the only source of power in Ukraine, relying on the will of the people of Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens of all nationalities,

- having taken into consideration the fact that the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma has not fulfilled his duties as the guarantor of state sovereignty, the Constitution of Ukraine, citizen's human rights and freedoms,

- having taken into consideration the fact that the prime minister of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych has not carried out the obligations laid upon him and the Cabinet of Ministers but chose to falsify the presidential election in Ukraine and administered the falsification process,

- having established that the CEC, headed by Kivalov, was engaged in falsifying the results and became the instrument of the violation of the will of the people of Ukraine,

- acting under conditions of mortal danger hanging over the democracy in Ukraine,

- in light of the falsification of the will of the people of Ukraine during the presidential election in Ukraine and in order to defend the real results of the people's will, expressed during the second round of the presidential election on Nov. 21, 2004,

- opposing attempts by criminal clans to usurp state power in Ukraine,

- defending the right of today's and the future generations of Ukrainian citizens to live free, prosperous, and deserving lives,

- having the support of the local self-governing bodies and of tens of millions of citizens of Ukraine,

The National Rescue Committee of Ukraine has decreed:

1. To create a national agency for defending the Constitution of Ukraine - the National Rescue Committee.

2. To make the National Rescue Committee responsible for the socio-politic situation in the country, defense of the Constitution of Ukraine, of the state sovereignty of Ukraine, of human rights and freedoms.

3. To call on the people of Ukraine of all nationalities to come to the aid of the Constitution of Ukraine.

4. The decree comes into force upon its announcement and functions until the complete restoration of democracy in Ukraine.



NSC Decree No.2:

On the make-up of the National Rescue Committee

In order to ensure the organizational and political protection of the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ukraine, to defend the results of the people's will expressed in the second round of the elections, prevent the usurpation of power in Ukraine by criminal clans, and being guided by the support of the people of Ukraine, expressed by people of all Ukrainian regions, the necessity for ensuring normal vital functions of all the objects of the social sphere and for preserving public order in the state, I decree:

1. To approve the composition of the National Rescue Committee, numbering 30 persons.

2. To announce the names of the Committee members via mass media.



NSC Decree No. 3:

On the make-up of the executive committee of the National Rescue Committee

In order to ensure the execution of the National Rescue Committee decisions and to organize its activities, I decree:

1. To establish the executive committee of the National Rescue Committee.

2. To appoint 15 members of the Committee.

3. To appoint Oleksandr Zinchenko the head of the Committee.



NSC Decree #4:

On ensuring public peace in the country

In order to ensure public peace in the country and to protect the lives of the people of Ukraine, I decree:

1. To establish the "National self defense" organization.

2. To make the "National self defense" responsible for ensuring law and order within the country along with the Internal Defense organs of Ukraine and the SSU.

3. All members of the enforcement institutions that cross over to the side of the people are uncharged of the breach of oath or of carrying out the orders of their superiors that contradict the law.

Orange power takes over in Ukraine

Kyiv, 25 November 2004, 9:45 PM
By Marta Dyczok

Its over. The orange revolution has won in Ukraine. As I started writing this, a police officer was standing on the podium at Kyiv’s Independence Square and announcing that the police are with the people. He said that if foreign troops arrive in Kyiv the police will use force to defend the people. The men in blue had donned orange ribbons onto their uniforms and joined the crowd. Protesters were shouting, “The police are with the people.” Half an hour earlier General Skybentsky of the SBU (Secret Services of Ukraine) also stood facing the crowd and announced that they were going to defend the constitution and the people. He is adviser to SBU Chief Smeshko. Lt Gen. Mykhailo Kutsin declared that Ukraine’s military will not act against the people. The men in uniform have taken the side of the protesters.

Earlier in the day the Constitutional Court declared that the Central Election Commission cannot legally announce election results until all the complaints have been investigated, thus Yanukhovych cannot be declared President. Shortly afterwards Yushchenko and his campaign manager went down to Independence Square and proclaimed the first four decrees of the National Salvation Committee formed by the orange leader yesterday. The key message was the need to maintain order and an end to censorship. This was the first concrete step in talking power.

And censorship has finally ended. Now the entire country can see what is really happening in the capital and the country. I have been glued to my TV set for much of the day and have been amazed at what I have been seeing. Two national TV channels reportedly owned by Victor Medvechuk (head of Kuchma’s presidential administration) started reporting the news impartially for the first time in years. This began with tonight’s 7:30 evening news programme TSN on Channel 1+1. It was the first newscast in 2 days. The channel had the most censored news in Ukraine but on election night (21 September 2004), their news journalists staged a revolt. The entire news team refused to present a censored version of the news and the election night show had to be cancelled. The only one left on the air was the news editor and censor Viacheslav Pikhovshchek.

Tonight’s evening’s broadcast began with a special announcement. The entire news team, except for the censor Pikhovshchek, was in front of the camera. Former general manager, Oleksandr Rodniansky, addressed Ukrainians and said that although in the past their journalists were forced to censor the news they were reporting, but this had come to an end. From now on they were no longer submitting to censorship and would report the full story and give all sides the opportunity to express their own views. Channel 1+1 has finally fired Viacheslav Pikhovshchek from his news editor post.

Half an hour later, another Medvechuk owned channel, INTER TV, began a live talk show where Petro Poroshenko and Nestor Shufrych were the invited guests. Poroshenko is one of Yushchenko’s main allies, head of the Parliamentary Budget Committee and owner of the alternative Channel 5 station. Shufrych is a key player in Yanukhovych’s inner circle. Poroshenko, began by greeting the viewers of INTER, saying, “Hello! For the first time in four years I have the pleasure of addressing you in a live show, am able to tell you my views and engage in an open debate with my political opponent. This is a wonderful moment for you, for the INTER channel and freedom of speech in Ukraine.”

The lifting of censorship really signals the end of the old regime. Now that all Ukrainians will be able to see and hear what is really happening in the capital Kyiv, what Yushchenko is saying directly and without a filter, Yanukhovych’s support is likely to melt away. A clear sign of this was that Novyi Channel’s evening news reported that Yanukhovych was giving a press conference but they did not have image the event. As I flicked channels, I realized that none of the TV channels were covering the Yanukhovych press conference live - all the reports were about what was happening in Independence Square. That is where the police officer was addressing the crowds.

Even the state-owned national channel UT1 submitted to the demands of their news journalist and released them from censorship. They too have been refusing to report biased news for 2 days and there has been no news on the country’s main channel until tonight, when on the 9:00 PM news the company’s director was shown telling journalists to report the news as they saw it.

Trade Unions leaders met in Kyiv today, elected a new, independent head, declared their support for Yushchenko and made their building available to the protesters. It stands on one of the corners of Independence Square where people have shouting Yushchenko! President! for four days. It quickly became a welcome warm place to go for people who have been standing in minus 10 degree temperature for days. Local government reps from the entire country also met in Kyiv and declared their support for Yushchenko. The Minister of European Integration quit his job – the first defection from the Yanukhovych government. The Kyiv Procurator’s office and 300 diplomats have also thrown their support behind Yushchenko.

Kuchma, Yanukhovych, Tabachnyk, Kravchuk and others are still calling for negotiations, but there is an air of desperation in their statements as they appeal to parents to take their kids off the streets and tell them to stop protesting. The momentum has clearly shifted to Yushchenko’s side it’s just a matter of time until he becomes the country’s leader. As a long time observer of Ukrainian politics, I was hesitating to make a prediction until today. But now it is clear that the people of Ukraine have stood up for their right to choose and they are choosing Yushchenko. The instruments of force have supported them, and the fact the censorship has been lifted is a clear sign that the authorities are in retreat. The only remaining question is how to determine the process for transferring power and this is a formality. The Supreme Court has opened up one route but the rest we’ll have to wait and see. There is little reason to fear violence – the old guard just won’t have the stomach for it.

The mood in Independence Square is celebratory – the music which has been playing for four days and nights has been turned up and people continue to be happy. The people who have been standing there in the cold and snow have not stopped smiling, singing and dancing since they arrived. It almost seems that they knew all along that they would win.



Marta Dyczok is Associate Professor at the Departments of History and Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, and Fellow at the Centre of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is the author of two books: The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees (Macmillan, 2000) and Ukraine: Change Without Movement, Movement Without Change, (Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000). For the last number of year she has been conducting research on mass media in post communist Ukraine.

How Ukrainians became citizens

From: www.OpenDemocracy.net

How Ukrainians became citizens

The massive popular protest against Ukraine's fraudulent election is a pivotal moment in the country's - and Europe's - history, says Alexander Motyl.

Ukraine in late November 2004 is in the grip of two refusals. The refusal of the state machinery to acknowledge the truth of the presidential election result is met by the refusal of millions of Ukrainian people to accept the lies of power.

The immediate political crisis is unresolved at the time of writing. But in a larger historical and political perspective the essence of the current convulsions is clear: Ukraine is on the brink of a democratic breakthrough. A quiescent post-Soviet state that seemed to be unable to do anything right is now poised to embrace democracy, rule of law, and human rights.

The blatantly fraudulent second round of the country's presidential elections on 21 November was designed to keep in power the parasitic authoritarian regime of President Leonid Kuchma and his anointed successor, prime minister Viktor Yanukovych. Instead, it has provoked what amounts to a classic revolutionary situation: this east-central European nation
of 48 million people is now in a condition of "dual sovereignty".

As the official Central Electoral Commission declares Yanukovych the election winner by a margin of 49.4% to 46.7% - a conclusion challenged by every election monitor and observer except those from the ex-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States - the contours of this political division are clear. On one side stands an utterly discredited and illegitimate regime based on oligarchic interests, a frightened population in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern provinces, and Russia's political elite. On the other is opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko and millions of ordinary people - ethnic Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians, ethnic Russians, and other minorities - who want to be rid of the corrupt authoritarian rule that has prevented Ukraine's development into a law-abiding and prosperous European state.

Large-scale demonstrations in support of Yushchenko and in defiance of the official results persist throughout Ukraine - not only in its traditionally nationalist western provinces and their heartland surrounding the capital city of Kyiv (Kiev), but also, and more significantly, in the supposedly pro-Yanukovych eastern provinces.

This popular sentiment is reflected at many institutional and cultural levels. Several cities and provinces have refused to acknowledge the election results. Diplomats at Ukraine's embassies in the United States and Australia have called on the diplomatic corps to side with the people. Over 150 officials of the foreign ministry have declared their solidarity with Yushchenko. Two members of the CEC have condemned its vote-counting procedures. University rectors have encouraged their students to go on strike.

The Klichko brothers - world-class boxers resident in the United States - have sided with Yushchenko. The Ukrainian winner of the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest, Ruslana Lezhychko , has declared a hunger strike until the true Viktor is recognised. The well-known novelist, Andrei Kurkov, has intervened on the side of democracy. And the colour of orange, the symbol of the opposition, has become ubiquitous throughout Ukraine.

On 23 November, when Yushchenko took an oath as Ukraine's rightful president, he crossed the Rubicon. After that, there was no going back for the opposition. In a move that recalls past revolutionary upheavals, the democratic forces have established a Committee in Defense of the Constitution and have refused to enter into negotiations with the regime.

The democratic forces in Ukraine know that they are winning; that both right and the might of popular opinion are on their side. They know also that they have no alternative to resistance: capitulation, now, would mean that Ukraine would be thrown into Russia's autocratic embrace and that all hope of living what Ukrainians call a "normal" life would be extinguished for decades.

Not surprisingly, the demonstrators - whether student activists or political elites or just ordinary people - are no longer afraid of the authorities. They have nothing to lose, everything to gain, and they know that they will win.

The Ukrainian paradox

How did Ukraine get to this point? What is the most likely outcome? And what can the world do to promote justice and democracy?

Since Ukraine attained independence in August 1991 out of the ruins of the Soviet Union, it has been viewed as the reform laggard of the post-Soviet space. Indeed, for much of this period, it was seen as the polar opposite of a vigorous, bold, and reform-minded Russia. In the last few years, however, Ukraine and Russia have reversed roles.

Russia is now firmly in the hands of an autocratic president committed to repressing civil society and the media, extending state control over the economy, and establishing a "dictatorship of the law." Most distressing is that Vladimir Putin continues to enjoy the support of many Russians. In contrast, Ukraine has become a democratic society capable of resisting dictatorial rule - despite the best efforts of Kuchma and his cronies to cow journalists, repress the media, outflank the democratic opposition, and dominate civil society.

The paradox is that Ukraine's belated democratic success and relative economic backwardness are alike rooted in the glacial quality of its post-Soviet reform process. Ukraine's leaders eschewed "big bangs" and "great leaps forward" from the very start - not from any theoretical belief in the advantages of incremental reform, but out of fear, ignorance, and a desire to maintain their rule as long as possible.

This protracted experience had three results - one overwhelmingly negative, but two with healthily progressive aspects.

First, Ukraine came to be dominated by a parasitic, despotic elite in cahoots with criminal oligarchs and clans.

Second, the process of institution-building, which by its very nature takes time, was able to proceed more or less undisturbed for fourteen years. As a result, Ukraine's ethnic Ukrainians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians, and ethnic Russians have been able to develop a modus vivendi, a general sense of community premised on a common desire to improve their life-chances in the face of the parasitic class of rulers. Civil society was also able to develop and consolidate, and along with it came a growing sense of civic entitlement and genuine empowerment. Ukraine's people progressively became citizens, free people who wanted to rule and be ruled.

Third, Ukraine's economy finally began taking off in 1999; since then, it has experienced tremendous, though inequitably distributed, growth. The combination of a strong civil society and economic expansion meant that unfulfilled expectations of improved living standards could finally find their social expression. For the first time in Ukraine's post-Soviet history , popular dissatisfaction could be channelled into autonomous social institutions that were strong enough to challenge the authorities.

To add fuel to the fire, the Kuchma regime did almost everything wrong, succeeding only in alienating Ukraine's increasingly resilient and participatory citizenry. Corrupt, incompetent, and ignorant, Kuchma managed to infuriate world and domestic public opinion with his likely involvement in the murder of a journalist, Georgii Gongadze . Yanukovych, who was
supposed to succeed Kuchma as president, has been even more of an embarrassment. A convicted criminal, a known informer for the Soviet secret police, and a quintessential oligarch, he has come to be best known for his inability to spell "professor" - a title he dares to append, without any sense of irony, to his name.

What should the world do?

Four aspects of the post-election protests are remarkable: generational, regional, political, and international. First, Ukrainian young people in particular have become fearless. Raised in post-Soviet conditions, they want a democratic, market-oriented, open, and modern Ukraine. Second, the regional breadth of Yushchenko's popularity is striking; contrary to some media simplifications, it extends to the industrialised, Russian-speaking provinces of the east and south. Thousands of Russians and Russian-speakers have also taken to the streets, suggesting that their ostensibly unanimous support of Yanukovych in the polls (exceeding 100% in several cases) was the product of fraud or intimidation.

Third, if history is any guide to Ukraine's future, the Kuchma-Yanukovych regime is finished. Filipinos, Serbs, Poles, East Germans, Czechs, Romanians, and Indonesians have shown in the last two decades that "people power" can become unstoppable - and Ukraine's people power may have reached that point.

The prospect is that as people continue to demand democracy, elite defections will multiply, and the regime will become increasingly isolated. It is too late to shoot back and expect the citizenry to disperse. The Ukrainian army and police are unreliable and likely to side with the people - especially if the regime is stupid enough to employ Russian special forces units against its own population. When the regime finally comes to understand that it has lost - and it will, sooner rather than later - some form of abdication will occur.

Fourth, Russia's own democrats are also watching events in Ukraine hopefully, as they understand that their own chances of resisting Putin's authoritarian rule and achieving democracy now rest on Ukraine's success. But it is the west - the European Union and the United States in particular - that is best equipped to promote democracy in Ukraine. It can do so in four ways.

First, both the EU and the United States must formally declare - as the US secretary of state and the president of the European Commission have begun to do - that they insist on the people's will being heard in Ukraine. They must also make clear to Russia that any interference in the democratic process in Ukraine - especially by special forces - will result in their
reconsideration of Russia's membership in the World Trade Organisation.

Second, the EU must finally abandon its indifference to Ukrainian democracy and openly proclaim that it welcomes Ukraine's membership - if and when Ukraine fulfils all the criteria of membership . A "partnership and cooperation agreement" premised on Ukraine's long-term exclusion is no longer enough. The EU, which understands that the prospect of membership was a key driver of democratic reform in theeast-central European states, must extend that prospect to Ukraine.

Third, the United States must push for a democratic Ukraine's membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Nato is no longer a military alliance, but a security club of like-minded democratic states. Ukraine's inclusion in Nato would send a powerful signal to democracy's opponents in the Kremlin that the west genuinely wants to preserve democracy in Ukraine.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, the west will have to do everything in its power to help Ukraine succeed economically and politically after it becomes democratic. Fourteen years of exploitative authoritarian rule will not be easily undone. President Yushchenko will need western, and international, support. There is scope for many imaginative openings: removing trade barriers to Ukraine's goods would greatly assist its economy, expanding student exchanges would provide the country with a world-class cadre of experts.

But more even than these, celebrating Ukraine as a country that has finally joined the community of democratic states would help its citizenry to sustain the sense of pride and the extraordinary momentum that has enabled them, finally, to take their fate and their future into their own hands.

-----------------

Alexander J. Motyl is professor of political science and deputy director of the Center for Global Change and Governance at Rutgers University. Among his books are Imperial Ends: the decline, collapse, and revival of empires (Columbia 2001 )

Russian troops 'on hand in Ukraine'

From correspondents in Sofia
26nov04
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,11508523%255E1702,00.html

UKRAINE'S opposition claims a thousand Russian troops are in Kiev ready to intervene if violence breaks out between supporters of the two candidates in the country's disputed presidential vote.

There was no official confirmation of the report, which came as Ukraine was embroiled in a major political crisis over the elections.
"I confirm the presence of Russian special units in Kiev, I can tell you where they are staying. They arrived in Kiev by plane and put on Ukrainian uniforms. They are armed with submachine guns," Boris Tarassuk told bTV private television.

Mr Tarassuk is the president of the Ukraine parliament's foreign affairs commission and a close ally of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, who claims that Sunday's vote was stolen by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

He alleged that the Russian troops were plotting "an operation to physically eliminate the leaders of the democratic opposition."

"We know that there are plans to provoke clashes between Prime Minister Yanukovich's men and ours, which the special units plan to exploit," he said.

Asked whether outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma was aware of the alleged presence of the Russians, Mr Tarassuk said: "Who else could be involved?"

"The presence of foreign troops with the permission of parliament is unconstitutional... it is an act of aggression," Mr Tarassuk said.

He said the opposition, which has brought tens of thousands of demonstrators onto the streets, was "ready for a political solution" which entails "not recognising the false results announced by the election commission."

He said in 5000 of the country's 33,000 voting stations no international observers were present to monitor the vote, which Europe and the US have refused to recognise.

Mr Tarassuk gave the interview at Vienna airport while in transit between Warsaw and Sofia.

He was invited to Bulgaria by the conservative Union of Democratic Forces, and was due to hold talks with the president of the Bulgarian parliament Ognian Guerdjikov and the leaders of the various political parties in parliament.

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
http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1359099,00.html

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."

Opposition sets up own 'national guard'

By Askold Krushelnycky
26 November 2004

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=586805

The Ukrainian opposition announced last night that it had set up a "national guard" to co-ordinate members of the army and police who had defected.

Moments after the announcement made by Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition leader, to hundreds of thousands of his supporters in the centre of Kiev, a number of military officers stood on stage to declare their loyalty to him.

A lieutenant-colonel and a major said that fellow officers and the men they commanded wanted to be placed under Mr Yushchenko's command. The colonel said: "We will not carry out illegal orders to use force against the people. We support president Yushchenko. If he orders, we will come here with a thousand men tomorrow."

The officers said that, in the four days of demonstration in the Ukrainian capital, soldiers had been arriving to join the protesters and were ready to help in the event of any attack against them. Yesterday was the first time serving officers of the security forces had emerged alongside opposition politicians to declare their loyalty to Mr Yushchenko.

Many local and regional governments across Ukraine have declared loyalty to Mr Yushchenko and members of the security forces have said they will obey the orders of the pro-Yushchenko authorities. Armed forces from some cities have been escorting Yushchenko supporters into Kiev through cordons designed to keep them out. There have been no reports of armed conflict between different forces.

Demonstratorssurrounding the presidential administrationhave been exchanging friendly remarks with special police units, armed with helmets and shields, who are guarding the building. Demonstrators were presenting armed men with flowers yesterday and, when the opposition crowd sang the national anthem yesterday, some of them mouthed the words.