ukraine???????????????????/

[thesightless]

what the fuck is gonna happen now?????

why dont they just have the "european mediators " hold a re-vote. keep it outta thier hands. not saying its a solution, just a suggestion. but maybe they whould just hold another vote and let someone like a UN oversee the vote.

[asdf_admin]

a yes the Eastern block ...

Politics my friend. Shit is pretty fucked up there ever since the fall of the USSR. When I was in Poland, I heard about all kinds of fucked up shit going on in the former red block. It is not an easy process to go from the "everybody owns everything" to "mine is mine, and yours is yours". I would beleive they are making an attempt to let the people of the Ukraine solve this within.

I do bet, once blood gets spilling people will jump on the boat and you will see other nations try to solve this.

[ezdude1970]

Re: ukraine???????????????????/

Old Divisions Resurface in Ukraine
Presidential Electoral Crisis Brings East-West Stereotypes to Fore

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, November 29, 2004; Page A01

KIEV, Ukraine, Nov. 28 -- On Ukraina television last week, viewers caught images of Viktor Yushchenko, the opposition candidate in this country's contested presidential election, greeting voters and kissing babies, standard glad-handing by a pol on the stump.

The broadcast of benevolent images of Yushchenko on a Russian-language channel that stridently supports his opponent, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was short-lived. Just as suddenly, the sequence cut to historical footage of Adolf Hitler, also greeting supporters and caressing the foreheads of German children thrust toward him by their beaming parents.



Yushchenko supporters, protesting in Kiev, have been called Russophobe extremists by backers of the prime minister. (David Guttenfelder -- AP)


The message, one that has been hammered home for months now, was clear: Yushchenko is a fascist.

Beyond a standoff that is playing out in the streets over allegations of electoral fraud in the Nov. 21 vote, the Ukrainian presidential election and its aftermath have been marked by crude propaganda that is exposing old fractures in this former Soviet republic. Differences over identity, language, culture and religion, which are broadly defined by an east-west divide, are bursting to the surface. The stoking of historical fears that divide what many perceive as a Russophile east and a nationalist west could continue long after the dispute over voting is settled, if it does not rupture the country first, analysts say.

"I think the tragedy of this campaign is the use of stereotypes by both sides, but especially Yanukovych's people," said Yulia Tishchenko, an analyst at the Ukrainian Center for Independent Political Research, "and the dangerous consequences are now becoming apparent. Everyone thinks that if they lose, they lose everything."

As tens of thousands of Yushchenko supporters continued to rally Sunday in Kiev, the capital, in a mixture of snow and drizzle, Yanukovych supporters gathered in Severodonetsk in the eastern part of the country. Yanukovych was declared the official winner in the election. But that verdict was blocked by the country's Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a ruling Monday that could open the way for new voting.

"I say that today we are on the brink of catastrophe," said Yanukovych, who continues to urge his supporters to exercise restraint. "There is one step to the edge. Do not take any radical steps. I repeat, none. . . . When the first drop of blood is spilled, we will not be able to stop it."

But after he left, 3,500 local officials from 17 regions in eastern and southern Ukraine voted unanimously to hold a referendum on the area's "regional status," an apparent first step to act on threats made in the last few days to break away from the rest of the country if Yushchenko wins the presidency.

"I have heard they are sending units here," a middle-aged man said on Ukraina television, referring to Yushchenko supporters. "We have nothing left to do but organize self-defense."

"The situation is very, very acute," said Anton Buteiko, the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian People's Party in Yushchenko's bloc and a former Ukrainian ambassador to the United States. "And this is a script that is being written in Moscow."

A key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, attended the rally with Yanukovych, raising fears in Kiev that the Kremlin, which had backed Yanukovych, might encourage separatism or at least view moves toward it as a bargaining tool in talks on resolving the crisis.

"On the one hand, we see the Sabbath of witches who have been fattened up with oranges and who pretend that they represent the whole of the nation," Luzhkov said in comments broadcast on Russia's NTV television. "On the other hand, we see the peaceful power of constructive forces that has gathered in this hall."

The incumbent president, Leonid Kuchma, said in televised remarks that a compromise over the crisis was needed to avoid "unforeseeable consequences." He also said talks between representatives of the two camps over the elections, which international monitors described as marked by widespread fraud, were not going well.

"We demand the opening of a criminal inquiry against the separatist governors," said Yushchenko, speaking to the crowds in Kiev's Independence Square on Sunday afternoon.

And in the east, charges that fascists from the west were staging a coup were becoming what Tishchenko described as both fraught and predictable. In parts of the region, Yushchenko has been so demonized in the media that some Yanukovych supporters say they believe his victory would mean the end of their way of life.

Yushchenko has been portrayed as the servant of extreme, Russophobe nationalists from the western part of the country who would suppress the Russian language and assault the Orthodox Church, which is under the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate. Leaflets found in Orthodox churches have described Yushchenko as a "partisan of the schismatics and an enemy of Orthodoxy."



Yushchenko supporters, protesting in Kiev, have been called Russophobe extremists by backers of the prime minister. (David Guttenfelder -- AP)



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Western Ukraine has a large population of Uniate Catholics; Yushchenko, however, is an Orthodox Christian.

Yushchenko, who favors closer ties with the European Union and NATO, has also been depicted as a CIA stooge, with opposition supporters noting that he is married to an American who once worked for the U.S. government.

Yanukovych's campaign manager said in an interview that it was not responsible for such anti-Yushchenko material.

"Yanukovych supporters are not voting for the prime minister," said Mikhail Pogrebinsky, a political adviser to Kuchma. "They're voting against Yushchenko because they fear the threat represented by the radical nationalists in his team who hate Russian culture. It's a real threat."

In July, Yushchenko expelled Oleg Tyagnybok, a member of parliament, from his campaign after Tyagnybok used strong anti-Semitic and anti-Russian language in a speech commemorating Ukrainians who fought against both the Soviets and the Germans in World War II.

Yushchenko condemned the speech, but it was fodder for his opponents who charge that extremists continue to ally themselves with Yushchenko's campaign.

"Absurd," Buteiko said. "There is no room for such people, and Yushchenko has made that very plain."

Yushchenko supporters, who also trade in stereotypes, say they are no less fearful that a Yanukovych presidency would destroy their lives, according to Tishchenko.

The opposition leader's backers see Yanukovych as the puppet of a post-Soviet elite, centered in Donetsk, that has gorged itself on privatization deals, reaping fabulous wealth from the country's mining and steel industries.

Yushchenko supporters also portray Yanukovych, who reportedly had two teenage convictions for robbery and assault, as a thug whose sometimes coarse language and poor Ukrainian are emblematic of his unfitness for high office.

In some opposition posters, Yanukovych's forces are shown as a boot crushing an insect.

"He will turn the country into a criminal state," said Oksana Sytnik, 37, who runs a small company in Romny, near the border with Russia. "If he wins, I think we have to leave, for Canada or America."

But Yanukovych has also proved himself an astute politician who as prime minister presided over a economy that has grown robustly. This fall, he raised the salaries of public workers and doubled pensions and other social payments, a move that effectively resurrected a dying campaign. He has appealed to Communist voters by saying he would not support land privatization.

Yanukovych also solidified his core constituency by saying he would make Russian an official language and promote an economic union and open borders with Russia.

[Yao]

Since recent the media have become the primary weapon it seems, next to voter intimidation...

Threats with separation and civil war haven't really increased the situation there, and even though Yuchenko's supporters still protest peacefully, I fear that violence will make it's way into Ukra?ne soon if a solution isn't found quickly.
If a civil war breaks out, it wouldn't surprise me if Moscow would send in troops to the aid of the Eastern Russia-minded part, now that it has already openly shown it's support by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov attending at a rally.

I hope for a revote, a peaceful one. But what does hope have to do with reality?