Ukraine Elections: whats up?

Published on November 29, 2004 By DNCdude In International

During a seventh straight day of protests in Kiev's Independence Square, opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko defied current President Leonid Kuchma's call for the protests to end, and urged his supporters to maintain "peaceful protests ... here until the end."

In eastern Ukraine, where his support is strongest, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych also preached the value of peaceful protest. "I call on you not to take any radical steps," he said. "I repeat -- none. As soon as the first drop of blood spills, we won't be able to stop that flow."

Whats up with this? I don't know who either of these guys are but I find it interesting. Who do you support?

Comments

DNCdude

on Nov 29, 2004

Here's some more of the article,
Yushchenko is considered pro-Western, while Yanukovych has the support of Russia.

An eastern region backing Yanukovych on Sunday set a referendum for December 5 on forming a republic within a federal Ukrainian state, Reuters News Agency reported.

The council in Donetsk region in the Donbass coalfield voted 156-1 to stage the vote in response to efforts to overturn Yanukovych's victory in last week's presidential election.

RagnarokMPH

on Nov 29, 2004

This whole situation really has me worried about the stability of Eastern Europe. The Ukraine could potentially collapse into civil war over this. Even if it doesn’t turn into all-out war, civil strife on a massive scale is a very real possibility. What really worries me is how Russia could potentially use this situation as a pretext to send troops into the country. If there’s one thing that freaks Russia out more than Chechens getting a nuke, it’s NATO on its western border. The Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are already gone, so Russia needs to bring at least Belarus and the Ukraine back into it’s fold if it wants to reclaim Eastern Europe.

Putin has all but given campaign speeches for Yanukovych; it wouldn’t surprise me if Russia had a hand in the massive fraud reported. An election crisis breeds civil war, the violence spreads across the border, and Russia has no choice but to send in “peacekeeping” troops. Thus, Ukraine is under de-facto Russian control yet again. Belarus is right there, as is Moldavia and Bulgaria. A new Russian empire is rising, the only question is; will it stand against the western world once again or not?

Solitair

on Nov 29, 2004

Russia is already indicating that it would support another election if required. A major shift from it's policy last week of endorsing the election and refusing to back a recount or repeat election. The problem is that a repeat election is likely to give a repeat vote unless the huge irregularities, media bias and fraud were stopped. It'll be interesting to see how the supreme court rules this week.

As for Putin, he's just scared that the west are so strongly oppossed to election fraud, including media bias. The media was very state controlled and biased in his election. He's probably worried the west may refuse to acknowledge the winner of another election in Russia like the last one. The US will always cave in so long as Russia supports the US war on terror (it was embarrasssing to watch them fawn over Putin in the last election despite the media bias) but the EU has got bigger and more powerful since the last election, and now encompasses many states who would view undemocratic elections as a majopr threat to peace. Any diplomatic spat between the EU and Russia would be very very serious.

Paul.

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