Ukraine: Forces Behind the Orange Revolution

What can you say about this all foundations? Nice example that sometimes in international policy internal opponents could developing democracy together.

Many of the above went to expanding democratic institutions but the ones that created organizations for protests and propaganda were clearly funded by Soros - staffed by Soros' people who did the same in Serbia and Georgia.

Let's hope all of this Revolution stuff spreads to N. Korea and Iran!

and why then Republicans and W supported this all revolutions? I know that W is in close relationship with Georgian president.

Of course it is better solution that war and less expensive. In Iran there is real chance but all democratic countries should increase their help. First we should install there free TV from Turkey for example.

Damn a massive FReep, I wish we could get the turn out.

Only to your mind did all those institutions above support "revolution". What many organizations supported was transparent democracy and such. Many other institutions seem to have spent their money organizing the logistics for demonstrations. Not exactly the same thing.

Not all the above cited organizations have the same ideology or policies.

The ones that I have a problem with are those that have links to Soros that funded exit pollers, election monitors and the demonstratuion organizers.

You know very well that such revolution was the only way to install democracy there. What Ukrainians should to do? Shut up and watch how Putin’s controlled puppet president with criminal past destroying their country? Watch election fraud and say nothing? Or take tha initiative in own hands, because Ukrainian made this choice not above mentioned foundations. There was will of Ukrainian people, not Putin, Bush or Soros.

Remove my name from your bump list, post haste.

I don't have bump list my dear.

Americans have funded mostly training seminars, legal training, election training, how to campaign and organize training. It didn't fund particular politicians or particular policies. People came up with their own parties, politicians and policies. The Ukraine government investigated US funding and confirmed the above.

Russia spent $300 to $500 million, their man in Kiev controlled almost all the tv and news. They still had to cheat to win. Then they lost it all.

America did not buy the election, buy the Ukraine, Ukrainians took it back for themselves.

Yes exacly that is what I mean.

When you sring invites to a thread as you did on this thread ... you have bump list.

Take my name off NOW!

I am not a "dear" to you.

You are angry cause my article proofs that your statments few minutes ago in other thread was just wrong. This was only continuation of the disccusion which YOU started.

You are not in my list cause I DO NOT have any list.

Oh - all Ukrainians, eh? Many don't want to live closer to the EU.

Russia spent $300 to $500 million according to what source? I am calling you on that figure - America spent a billion dollars on our elections and that was a world record - so your numbers don't pass the smell test.

Ukraine: Forces Behind the Orange Revolution

Please let me know if you want ON or OFF my Yushchenko vs. Yanukovych/Ukraine election ping list!. . .don't be shy.

Thank you for this informative ping.

Iran needs a revolution.

LIW,

You sure are a whiny baby. What's wrong?

Someone has the nerve to point out something that backs up their point of view (i.e. FACTS) and you explode like a 3 year old?

I saw the names that Lukasz pinged to this thread. You guys have been wrong, as well as mean and hateful through this entire thing.

We know your agenda. Why can't you listen to the opposing view without being a jerk?

Tammy

America did not buy the election, buy the Ukraine, Ukrainians took it back for themselves.

If you analyse the last Western sponsored elections by the regions, you will discover that Yanukovich won EXACTLTY the same regions.

The only differences is that under Western pressure the elderly and diabled were prevented from voting (they could not use absentee votes because they were grateful to Yukanovich for restoring their pensions wrecked by Yushchenko)

And in the west, EU/Sorosian experts on democracy helped to raise the votes for Yushchenko to the levels almost equaling victory of Saakashvili in Georgia (close to 100%).

Yushchenko won the national vote that way (as Gore did in 2000), but the regional votes did not change.

So I would not say that "Ukrainians took it back for themselves". It was EUcrats/Sorosians who took it to the detriment of Russia and America.

Iran needs a revolution.

Iran had a revolution and Shah was removed.

And all of the students born since want another revolution.

But you knew that.

Source it. I am calling you on the figures.

There is no country where everybody wants the same. But opinion of majority is saint thing and this don’t mean that other will be discriminated. Beside that I could bet that probably some groups of Yushchenko supporters don’t want to be in EU. But again majority will decide, what option is more popular we will see.

Oh - all Ukrainians, eh? Many don't want to live closer to the EU.

No, they want to live in "sunny" Siberia, working and dying in labor camps and gulags. Enough of that, some 30 million of Ukrainians paid that price, time to join the civilized world. Actually time to declare "Green Ukraine" - parts of Siberia as Ukrainian territory, it is populated by Ukrainians, just few Russian commiessars running the "prison show" there.

Source it. I am calling you on the figures.

Ask Kuchma. There are figures available what Yanukovych spent in US, hired PR companies, had a speach at Press Club and was trying to portray himself as a democratic reformer. We know better, propaganda doesn't work any more (maybe for few stupid, unenlighted morons). Those who lived there, escaped, lost their families there, know better. Commie crap won't cut it anymore without bayonet pointed at us. Interesting, where people have choice and chance to vote, they reject the imperial desires. Time for Russia to stand on its own feet, not to use slave labor and red terror to keep few commiessars happy.

thank you

:^)

America information news thank you
http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/121304WStand_McFaul.shtml

Putin Gambles Big--and Loses

He needs a new Ukraine policy; we need a new Russia policy.

by Michael McFaul

AS THIS ARTICLE goes to press, it remains uncertain who will emerge the winner of Ukraine's presidential election. The official tally favored Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich by 3 percentage points, but momentum is with opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, whom exit polls showed to be the actual winner. All credible electoral monitors denounced the vote as fraudulent, as did even one election commission official.

Tens of thousands of Yushchenko supporters remain mobilized on the streets of Kiev. The Ukrainian parliament has swung behind Yushchenko, the Supreme Court has annulled the election and called for a new vote, some of the prime minister's supporters have defected, and the guys with the guns have sent mixed signals about whether they would obey orders to repress the demonstrators.

Yet, the ancien régime has not given up. Pro-Yanukovich governors in eastern Ukraine have threatened to secede, and the lame duck president, Leonid Kuchma, is trying to secure constitutional amendments that would weaken presidential power as a condition of allowing a new election. If the stalemate drags on, the demonstrators' mood could shift, towards either radicalism or disappointment.

Whoever wins, Russian president Vladimir Putin is a clear loser. No matter what the endgame, Putin has suffered a serious setback because of the way he tried to deal with his most important neighbor. Putin's behavior has weakened Russia's influence in strategic Ukraine and damaged the Russian president's reputation in the West. It should call into question the Bush administration's embrace of the Kremlin leader.

Putin fancies himself a foreign policy pragmatist, adept at defending Russian national interests in a rational, dispassionate manner. In Ukraine, however, he has been exposed as a leader still driven by outdated ideological constructs like "spheres of influence" and "East versus West." The result is Putin's greatest foreign policy disaster since he took office four years ago.

In Ukraine, Putin made his first aggressive attempt to consolidate "managed democracy"--his advisers' term for Russia's new regime-type-- in another country. Hoping to prevent a democratic breakthrough like those in Serbia in 2000 and Georgia in 2003, Putin's administration orchestrated a giant effort, first to aid Yanukovich's electoral campaign, then after the vote to blur the world's understanding of the results. (Kuchma's own government needed no technical assistance from Russia to carry out the actual fraud--adding votes to precincts, some of which then reported 100 percent turnout, with over 90 percent voting for Yanukovich.)

Campaign consultants tied to the Kremlin set up shop in Kiev, millions of Russian rubles poured into the Yanukovich war chest, and Putin personally visited Ukraine twice to campaign for the prime minister. On Election Day, Russia sent its own observer mission, which pronounced--surprise, surprise--the vote free and fair. Putin congratulated Yanukovich on his victory well before the official results were released.

But this effort was all for nothing. Putin's advisers accurately foresaw that Yushchenko and his supporters would protest the stolen election, and they expected some perfunctory criticism from mid-level diplomats in the West. But they also calculated that Ukrainian protesters would eventually go home to escape the cold. And they reasoned that the West, especially the Bush administration, would soon forget about the fraud, as more important issues like the war on terrorism resumed their rightful place at center stage.

Putin's advisers were wrong, about both Ukrainian democrats and Western leaders. The opposition had prepared for this moment for years. Within hours of the announcement of the fraudulent results, Yushchenko supporters were pouring into the streets, ready to stay for the long haul. Then, as if in concert, every democratic government in the world refused to recognize the result. Secretary of State Colin Powell stated categorically, "We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse."

NOW THAT PUTIN'S ATTEMPT to wield "soft power" in Ukraine has backfired, there are no good outcomes for Russia.

If Yushchenko eventually becomes president, the setback for Putin is obvious. Remember, the candidate for whom Putin aggressively campaigned has a criminal record (robbery and assault) and is closely tied to corrupt oligarchic networks in the southeastern city of Donetsk, whose surrogates tried to poison Yushchenko to get him out of the race. After Putin's intervention, a President Yushchenko would have every right to adopt anti-Russian policies.

It did not have to be this way. If Putin had been motivated by Russian national interests alone, he would not have invested his personal reputation in a candidate as unattractive and corrupt as Yanukovich. He would have stayed on the sidelines during the campaign, reached out to the winner after the vote, and mediated national reconciliation.

In that scenario, Yushchenko would have bent over backwards to meet with Putin and prove to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine that he was a uniter, not a divider. Putin might have been able to guarantee Kuchma's retirement somewhere in Russia (useful, since Kuchma has been accused of ordering the murder of Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze), and he might even have secured a commitment from Yushchenko to make Russian a second official language in Ukraine.

In addition, before the radicalizing events of the fall campaign, Yushchenko was more likely to have been friendly to Russian investors in Ukraine, in contrast with Prime Minister Yanukovich, who has made money for himself and his cronies by keeping economic competitors out of Donetsk. Putin's blunders during the election make a cooperative relationship less likely now.

In the wake of last week's events, a Yanukovich victory would be no triumph for Russian foreign policy. If Yanukovich or someone from his camp manages to become Ukraine's next leader, he will spend his entire term trying to hold the country together and avoid civil war. Ukraine will stand in the same relation to Russia that Poland did to the Soviet Union during the Cold War--an ally in name, an oppressed and hostile society in reality.

So Putin loses either way. At this stage, only a major strategic mistake by Yushchenko and the opposition--a spontaneous eruption of violence in downtown Kiev or the adoption of a new, strident position in the negotiations underway to defuse the crisis--could offer Putin a face-saving exit.

Paradoxically, democracy in Ukraine is strengthened when an American "ally"--Russia--pursues a misbegotten foreign policy. Putin not only had the wrong objective in Ukraine, he also proved unable to construct a strategy for achieving it. Is this really the kind of partner President Bush should cultivate? As Bush assembles his new foreign policy team for the second term, perhaps it's time to reassess his Russia policy.

When he first came to office, President Bush made a strategic decision to develop a personal relationship with Putin as a means to achieve important foreign policy goals. Before September 11, what was important to Bush was national missile defense, which required, for diplomatic reasons, Putin's acquiescence to the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. Thanks to his rapport with Putin, Bush got what he wanted. That's good diplomacy.

For a while, the close bond between the two also served American interests in the aftermath of September 11. Putin sided unequivocally with the United States in the war on terror and provided real assistance to the U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan.

Since Afghanistan, however, it is difficult to identify any American foreign policy objectives that Putin has helped us to achieve. The Russian president is not much of an asset in fighting the global war on terror. Putin's ruthless and unsuccessful war against Chechnya, where the death toll of well over 100,000 in the last decade has reached genocidal proportions, has not defeated Islamic radicals, but inspired them. Nor is Putin a champion of American nonproliferation efforts, especially in places like Iran, where Russians continue to build a nuclear reactor and transfer nuclear know-how, despite overwhelming evidence that Iran has been hiding a secret nuclear weapons program for years.

But Putin does most harm to Bush's foreign policy agenda precisely in situations like the crisis in Ukraine, where Putin is actively undermining democracy. Since September 11, Bush has made the promotion of liberty abroad one of the central pillars of his foreign policy. After his reelection, he has the opportunity to make his liberty doctrine his greatest foreign policy legacy.

To date, the Bush administration's response to events in Ukraine has served that legacy well. Bush officials have rejected Moscow's attempt to frame the crisis as a struggle between East and West, insisting instead that the battle is between supporters and foes of democracy. But Ukraine also shows the difficulty of maintaining the fiction that Bush's promotion of democracy in Ukraine is compatible with his indifference to autocracy in Russia.

The moment is ripe for a new approach to Putin and Putin's Russia. On issues of nonproliferation, antiterrorism, and ending regional conflicts in the states of the former Soviet Union, the U.S. government still has real business to do with the government of Russia. State-to-state cooperation, facilitated by personal ties between our presidents, must not only continue, but grow.

In parallel and at the same time, however, Bush must develop a real strategy for bringing his message of liberty to Russia. Bush should be able to work constructively with his Kremlin counterpart without having to check his values at the door. This dual-track diplomacy, which worked so well for Ronald Reagan in dealing with his Kremlin counterparts (even before Gorbachev came to power), must be attempted again.

On that score, Ukraine offers several lessons.

First, words matter. The demonstrators on the streets of Kiev cheered when they heard Colin Powell's hard-hitting message rejecting the results of the presidential vote. Speaking the truth about democratic rollback inside Russia will similarly inspire the democrats there.

Second, a united Western voice matters. The United States and Europe both strongly denounced the fraudulent elections in Ukraine. Had a major European leader defected and reached out to Yanukovich, the West's positive influence in this crisis would have been greatly diminished. A common Western message about the seriousness of Putin's antidemocratic policies currently does not exist. It should.

Third, assistance matters. European and American support for Ukrainian civil society helped election monitors, exit pollsters, and independent journalists who told the truth about the fraudulent vote. In turn, this has inspired democrats in Kiev, London, Kharkiv, and Paris to stand firm. Rather than cutting funds earmarked for democracy-building and educational exchanges with Russia, the Bush administration should expand those programs dramatically.

Finally, the pull of the West matters. Most Ukrainians want to live in a normal, prosperous, and boring Europe. To bring Ukraine into such a community, they fully understand that democratic consolidation is a precondition, while reversion to autocracy would doom them to pariah status like Belarus, the last full-blown dictatorship in Europe. Similar incentives for reform must be offered to the Russians, most of whom also want to live in a normal, prosperous, boring country considered part of Europe. In this sense, the eastern border of Europe, whether defined as NATO or the European Union, can never be finally fixed.

Russian democrats face a far greater challenge today than does the opposition in Ukraine. But as they press their long and difficult struggle, first to stop and then to reverse the establishment of authoritarian rule in Russia, they should at least know that we are on their side.

Michael McFaul is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and teaches political science at Stanford University. He is coauthor, with James Goldgeier, of Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia after the Cold War (Brookings, 2003).

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_50/b3912076_mz054.htm

His meddling in Ukraine's election could cost him dearly at home

Is Russian President Vladimir V. Putin losing his touch? Once admired for his steely efficiency, Putin suddenly doesn't seem to be able to get anything right. He has managed to alienate Russian Big Business and many foreign investors by destroying oil company Yukos. September's terrorist attack on Beslan left him looking weak and ineffective and exposed the disorderly state of Russia's security forces. His bureaucratic reforms have led to administrative chaos, while cuts in the social benefit system have sparked Russia's biggest public protests in years. But when future historians come to write the history of Putin's presidency, they may well conclude that his biggest mistake was his disastrous policy in Ukraine, where he has just suffered a failure of epic proportions.

Putin clearly imagined he was promoting the obvious winner when he interfered so heavily in Ukraine's presidential election in favor of Viktor Yanukovych, the candidate backed by outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Yet the millions of protestors on the streets of Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, and the collapse of the government's authority have made it impossible for the Nov. 21 election result -- which had Yanukovych winning by 49.46% to 46.61% -- to stand. If there is a fair reelection, the candidate demonized by Russia, pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, will almost certainly win, just as he would have won the Nov. 21 runoff but for massive ballot-stuffing, documented in detail by international observers. There's a risk that pro-Yanukovych regions in eastern Ukraine will refuse to accept Yushchenko as President, in which case Ukraine could split apart.

Alienating the West
Either alternative will represent a massive blow to Putin's authority and prestige both at home and abroad. A divided Ukraine would lead to instability in a region where Russia has important economic interests -- 80% of the gas Russia exports to Europe goes through Ukraine -- and would be a permanent point of tension between Russia and the West. If the country remains united, as now seems likely, Putin's goal of linking Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in a new economic union dominated by Russia looks like a pipe dream. A Yushchenko government is not likely to be great friends with Russia after Putin's blatant interference in the election. And if Kuchma and Yanukovych figure out a way to retain power, a deeply unpopular regime in Kiev would hardly be a stable partner for Russia. Another risk for Putin is that the Ukrainian revolution inspires democratic opposition movements in other former Soviet republics, perhaps even in Russia. "Putin has put himself into a corner. Now no outcome looks good for Russia," says Nikolai Petrov, scholar-in-residence at Carnegie Moscow Center.

Putin would have been wise to hedge his bets in Ukraine, not least because Yushchenko was always the favorite to win a fair election. Instead, the Russian President made the election in Ukraine a personal priority, pulling out all the stops to secure a Yanukovych victory. Russian advisers and election funds flooded Ukraine, Russian state TV, which is widely received in Ukraine, unleashed a wave of pro-Yanukovych propaganda, and Putin himself appeared on Ukrainian TV to endorse Yanukovych. All these efforts failed to win over proudly independent Ukrainian voters. "Russian political advisers and spin doctors simply don't understand the situation in Ukraine," says Kost Bondarenko, an independent political consultant in Kiev.

The irony is that Russia could quite easily have lived with a Yushchenko victory. "There is a difference between Russia's interests and the Kremlin's interests," says Petrov. Although Moscow's propagandists painted Yushchenko as a rabid nationalist and Yanukovych as a loyal ally, the reality was much less dramatic. As Prime Minister in 1999-2001, Yushchenko signed important agreements with Moscow and welcomed Russian investments in Ukraine. In contrast, the "pro-Russian" Yanukovych shut out Russian businesses from the Ukrainian market and supported Washington by sending Ukrainian troops to Iraq.

The damage to Russia's interests goes well beyond Ukraine. Putin's interference further alienates opinion in the West, which is increasingly inclined to see the Russian President as a throwback to an earlier, scarier era. Despite its present anti-Western rhetoric, Russia obviously can't afford a new Cold War. As the terrorist attack on Beslan in September showed, Russia's security is already in a perilous state, which is why Russia needs all the cooperation from the West it can get.

Meanwhile, Ukraine isn't the only former Soviet republic chafing at Putin's policies. For the last few weeks, there has been a political crisis in Abkhazia, a Russian protectorate in the nearby state of Georgia, because the Russian-supported candidate refuses to acknowledge that he lost a presidential election. Last year, Georgians themselves took to the streets, overturning the results of what they considered a rigged vote. In both Ukraine and Georgia, the protests were directed against corrupt local elites. It is Putin's costly error to treat these democratic political movements as fundamentally anti-Russian.

The sensible thing for Putin to do now is to tell the discredited regime in Kiev that it can no longer rely on Russian backing, and work with the West to ensure a democratic election, even if it means a Yushchenko victory. That might cost Putin some credibility in the short term, but there's still plenty of room for Russia and Ukraine to cooperate.

The more determined Putin is to stick to his guns in Ukraine, the more he will be damaged at home. Already, despite government control of the broadcast media, some Russian TV channels have gleefully reported the mass defection of Ukrainian journalists, who quit en masse rather than put out propaganda prepared by the Ukrainian government -- a veiled attack on Putin's own repression of independent media. If Russia continues blaming the West, Russian nationalists, and the public at large, will sooner or later ask themselves how their trusted President managed to let Russia be humiliated so close to home. "After this, Putin's authority will be twice as weak as before," says Stanislaw Belkovsky, director of the National Strategy Institute, a think tank in Moscow.

True, a Russian revolution seems unlikely given the Kremlin's almost complete control over the political system, the absence of realistic alternatives, Russia's revived economy, and Putin's own continuing popularity: His most recent approval rating was 69%. But events in Ukraine are sure to have a powerful influence on Russia, which has strong ties with its neighbor. Russia's apparent political stability may not last beyond 2008, when Putin is scheduled to retire at the end of his second term. Like Boris Yeltsin before him, he will no doubt look to find a loyal successor who will then be marketed to the public using the massive resources of the government. But as Ukraine's surprising revolution has shown, it never pays to count on foregone conclusions.

Thank you

It's time for Putin to wake up and let freedom ring!

thank you