There are so many suppressed premises in this article I don't know where to begin, but anyway...
The Times February 03, 2006
Ukraine turns back to Moscow as Orange Revolution is
betrayed
>From Jeremy Page in Kiev
THE last time The Times saw Viktor Yanukovych, the burly former convict and then Prime Minister of Ukraine looked like a broken man. His victory in a presidential election had just been overturned after a fortnight of massive protests centred on Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
Viktor Yushchenko, who led the Orange Revolution and went on to win the election re-run, was being hailed around the world as a democratic hero who had wrenched the country of 47 million people out of Russia’s stifling embrace. Mr Yanukovych was vilified as a Kremlin stooge.
Just over a year later, however, Mr Yanukovych had a defiant gleam in his eye as he met The Times in his newly refurbished office in the centre of Kiev.
And with good reason. He is not just back at the forefront of Ukrainian politics: he is on the verge of snatching back power from under the noses of the Western governments that so enthusiastically embraced the Orange Revolution.
“It is high time to end incompetence,” he says in a slick new campaign advertisement. “Together we will win for the sake of Ukraine.”
His Party of the Regions, which advocates closer ties with Russia, is leading all opinion polls before parliamentary elections on March 26. His personal ratings also outstrip those of his rivals. And since Parliament, rather than the President, chooses the Prime Minister under constitutional reforms introduced on January 1, he is now a front-runner to assume what will be the nation’s most powerful post.
The West may have won the geopolitical battle over Ukraine in 2004. But, with less than two months until the elections, analysts say, it appears to be losing the war.
“In 2005 this country went from one crisis to another,” Mr Yanukovych, 56, told The Times.
“People got used to worrying all the time about what’s going to happen tomorrow. People are tired of this instability. All they see from this Government is populism and unprofessionalism.”
The fault lies principally with the business leaders who bankrolled the Orange Revolution, analysts say.
Mr Yushchenko took power promising an end to the corruption, human rights abuses and economic bungling that had plagued Ukraine under his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma.
He pledged to lead Ukraine into the EU and Nato, tearing it out of Russia’s strategic orbit for good. But within a few months infighting and allegations of corruption tore his team apart and in September he sacked the Government of his revolutionary partner, Yuliya Tymoshenko.
“The fundamental mistake was a lack of coherent political strategy,” said Yuri Yakymenko, a political analyst at the Razumkov Centre in Ukraine. “Right from the start they were competing for position in the parliamentary elections.”
The problems were not just internal, however. Many Ukrainians feel they did not receive the support they had anticipated from the West. The EU quickly poured cold water on Mr Yushchenko’s promises to join the body and instead awarded Ukraine the nebulous prize of “market economy status” last year. “If there had been a definite signal on EU membership it would have been better for Yushchenko,” Mr Yakymenko said .
President Putin said this week that the United States had given Ukraine just $174 million (£98 million) in aid last year, compared with between $3 billion and $5 billion that Kiev had received in subsidies from Moscow.
Ukraine says it hopes to join Nato by 2008 but Western diplomats say that is unrealistic given popular opposition to the idea and the complexity of integrating technical standards. Russia, meanwhile, has been flexing its economic muscles to remind Ukrainians of their continued dependence on their former imperial and Soviet masters.
It has studiously avoided backing any individual politician since its explicit support for Mr Yanukovych’s presidential campaign backfired so badly. But it severely undermined Mr Yushchenko when it cut off Ukraine’s gas supplies on New Year’s Day in a pricing dispute widely seen as punishment for the Orange Revolution. Russia also banned imports of Ukrainian meat and dairy products last month.
The net result is that Mr Yushchenko is losing support in western and central Ukraine, his traditional strongholds, while Mr Yanukovych is consolidating his in the south and east. Yuri Yekhanurov, Mr Yushchenko’s Prime Minister, predicted last week that their Our Ukraine party would triumph in the elections and form a coalition government. The question is with whom.
The latest polls give the Party of the Regions 25 per cent of the vote, Our Ukraine 15 per cent and Mrs Tymoshenko’s bloc 12 per cent. Some analysts predict that Mr Yushchenko will resolve his differences with Mrs Tymoshenko to form a new Orange coalition. If that fails, he could have to link up with the Party of the Regions, or face an opposition coalition led by Mr Yanukovych. Either of the latter would entail significant changes, especially on foreign and defence policy.
Mr Yanukovych has polished his image in the past year with the help of an American PR consultant, who has helped to gloss over his convictions for robbery and assault in 1969 and 1970, and his alleged links to organised crime.
He now says that he supports Ukraine joining the EU — a change of tune since 2004. He rants less about how Western agents orchestrated the Orange Revolution or supplied protesters, as his wife once claimed, with psychotropic oranges and felt boots. But he still strongly opposes Ukraine joining Nato. He advocates making Russian an official language, and supports the creation of an economic bloc with Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
“Ukraine should be a bridge between the EU and Russia,” he says. “This Government has only driven us apart from Russia, while failing to bring us closer to Europe.”
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com