Ukraine’s Orange Revolution Goes Sour
Following the Russian invasion of Georgia, there were growing fears that the Muscovite bear was sharpening its claws and hungrily eyeing the Ukraine for its next meal. These fears may now be put to rest. The deed has been accomplished without a single shot being fired or another gas pipeline being turned off. Neither armed threat nor spigot diplomacy will now be necessary. The Russians are back and the people of the Ukraine need not hunker down for another unheated winter. It is the West that is out in the cold.
The election as president of pro-Kremlin Viktor Yanukovich and the rejection of pro-West Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko can be explained by a number of salient factors. Ukraine has endured a crippling economic crisis for the last several years — as has much of the world, for that matter — but in this case systemic corruption and oligarchic infighting have contributed to a shrinking economy, leading to fierce public discontent. The promise of the Orange Revolution began to sour shortly after the election of Viktor Yushchenko in January 2005 and continued to deteriorate during the tenure of Ms. Tymoshenko. Add the usual, behind-the-scenes Russian meddling and something had to give eventually. For when the Russians aren’t hogging center stage, they’re busy in the coulisse.
Then there is an ethno-linguistic and geographic fact. Ukraine is split down the middle — more or less along the Dneiper River — between Russian speakers in the eastern part of the country, especially in the Crimean Peninsula, and Ukrainian speakers in the west, a state of affairs which produces a perennially divisive electorate and the inevitable schismatic destabilizations. (One gets a historical sense of this rupture from Nikolai Gogol’s celebrated 19th-century novella Taras Bulba, with one of the eponymous warlord’s sons defecting to the more sophisticated Poles — here representing the west — and the other remaining loyal to his Cossack brethren — that is, east Ukraine.) Barring separation, this is not a fissure about to be healed in the foreseeable future.
It must be noted that the same tepid, limp wrist, totally unreliable responses from Washington, in their lack of support for pro freedom movements around the world, is more than enough reason for them to throw their lot in with the stronger horse.
In the same manner that Washington’s obsessive jabbering dialogue has been music to the ears of the mad mullahs, so too have the surrounding Arab states taken notice. The point being, they understand that in the cesspool of the Middle East only might makes right-not jibber jabber. Therefore, why in the world would other freedom movements, surrounded by terror, rely on Washington’s aid when the sh-t hits the fan, knowing that at the end of the day they will be left exposed?
Not only that, but Eastern European allies surely are reading the tea leaves, having been left high and dry by Obama and his ‘talkers’ after Russia demanded they scrap the missile shields.With friends like these….
As an American I am at best embarrassed … How can I go out into the international business world and promise that I’ll deliver on contract? The reverberations on this will go a long way, and last a long time … provided we’re still around that is.
What are we? As a nation we are behaving as a prostitute …
More fallout (at least in part) from the POS that currently resides in the White House. . .How many things worldwide will be screwed up by this moron and his cronies before they will be kicked to the curb?!
The US MSM can fool most of the people
here all of the time, but the people of
the FUSSR satellite nations know better.
The US has a sad history of starting
rebellions, and then abandoning the
rebels: Iraq, Vietnam, Cuba, Hungary.
Lack of foresight, or persistence, or both.
Honor may be dead, but Realpolitik still
agrees with Machiavelli: Princes should
keep promises, with rare exceptions.
Sorry free people of the world, but we are in open rebelion ourself against socalism and gangsterism.
Conrad Black has called for a trusteeship for Haiti. Part of the explanation is, the deplorable level of ethics in that country.
I purport the same for Ukraine. On one hand, you have billionaires who stole, and on the other hand you have multi-millionaires who stole.
One other thing, Solway, the Kozakhs (or its anglicized form, the Cossacks) saw the threat of government which had too much power. This was Moscow under the tsars. So, don’t apply a distinction where there isn’t one.
As for the rest of Europe, I still like the idea of what David Lloyd George had for the British Empire, with one twist. An amalgam where there would be one foreign policy, one defense policy, and one currency. All the rest would be home rule. When
that is combined with more room than the EU would accord to those whose balance sheets are in disarray, it would be far too early to
throw in the towel.
Oh, good grief. The Ukrainian people have decided. Poland and the Czech Republic are cut loose from what? Aren’t they part of the EU and NATO? Is Russia going to invade Poland because the BIG BO didn’t put ABM’s there? I don’t shed a tear for Georgia, they are tied at the hip to US interests. Do you think the US didn’t know in advance that the Georgians would start the bombing that would draw in the Russians?
CIA’s Orange Revolution Goes Sour. David Solway is a warmongering liar.
The Ukraine is a part of Russia. The Ukraine has never been an independent country in modern times. You can’t count the short-lived puppet regime of the Germans in the last days of WW1. And ancient Rus was exactly that, Rus.
It was only because that drunk Yeltsin let all the republics go that Russia was dismembered. There was NO plebicite on whether the Slavs in the Ukraine wanted to leave Russia.Local party bosses created a country because it would be easier to loot.Let there be votes in all the areas where Slavs make up a substatial part of the population. Let the people decide whether they want to be a part of a Great Russia or not!
It sounds like the Ukraine needs to be split in half and let the disagreeing parties go their seperate ways. Otherwise, it may go badly.
A rather simplistic analysis that avoids all nuance in favor of simplistic ‘evil Russia’ ‘blame America’ nostrums. Perhaps Yanukovych was elected because the Orange Revolution failed almost immediately and Yuschenko and Tymoshenko proved themselves to be totally inept at running the country. Yuschenko’s approval ratings were in the 4-5% region long before the Russia/Georgia war, and long before Obama pulled out of Poland and the Czech Republic. The EU never had any interest in letting Ukraine join, that was a fantasy on Yuschenko’s part. Meanwhile you seem not to have read the news reports of a few months back on the study that found Georgia and Russia equally to blame for the war. By the way, what’s your stance on Ossetian/Abkhaz rights? If the Georgians and Ukrainians should be free of Russian thuggery, then are not the Ossetians and Abkhaz entitled to be free of Georgian thuggery? Because thuggery was/is the attitude held by the Georgian state towards its minorities and has been since the war in the early 90s that left approx 10% of the South Ossetian population dead. Or don’t you know about that? Thought not.
And so on.
10@Role Play Lover
Yes the divide is between Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic. The Vatican CIA color revolutions in Ukraine and the ‘stans have been successfully thwarted. They were simply USA machinations all along. USA should stick to manipulating unsuspecting banana republics in the usual countries where cahtholocism welcomes fascist death squads and Italian-style mafiosi.
Putin, Medvedev, Yanukovych on one side. Yushchenko, Nemtsov and Kasparov on the other.
It looks like which Russia is best for Russia and her neighbours, and which Ukraine is best for Ukraine and her neighbours.
Because Putin has as much in common with Yanukovych as Yushchenko has with Nemtsov.
For Christ sakes, stop with this nonsense that people of Czech Republic have been found cut loose. It is not true, more than 65% Czechs didn’t want to have part of missile shield system in our country. You can disagree with it, but that’s all you can do.
How Obama treated the iniatiative is dishonesting, yes. You can’t imagine how it polarized our society and he just stopped it by phone at midnight CET…
But it has nothing to do with an impact it had on our electorate and I really doubt it is any different in Ukraine. Do you think if Ukrainians fear Russians that they voted for eastern Ukrainian (“Russian”). Do you really treat them like such cowards? Or is it what Vern said, simplistic vision? I would say the latter.
Paladin: What the hell are you saying? That Ukrainians aren’t Slavs or what? Any significant non-Slav minority in Ukraine are Crimean Tatars. And in every soviet republic there were plebiscites weren’t they? As in Ukraine.
liuk:
Are you saying that the countries which were allies of the US when George W. Bush was President, are viewed just as warmly today by the Obama Administration?
David W. Lincoln: I am saying that in any society there isn’t just one homogenic opinion about anything. And it can very happen that government and people have different opinions. And that happened in Czech Republic, our former government pushed through this missile shield in contrary what large majority people wanted. I am not saying it is good or bad, I am saying what happened. So, people didn’t like this very important policy Bush pursued. And it has of course showed in public opinion polls about our perception of nations. Americans kinda dropped in popularity and jumped in viewing USA as security threat (12% of people). And both those perceptions improved with Obamania. And are still ok. (now 5%)
So: Obama’s international policy Eastern Europe didn’t have any negative effect on Czech society. And not at all abandonment of missile shield.
We are very hesistant to deployment of foreign troops in our country, because of understandable reasons. And I would say Obama had done nothing wrong in relation to our concrete nation apart from embarassing way of cancelling the missile shield like we are some vassal state. But that was just a bad behaviour, not unpopular policy, so no biggie.
16@liuk
And indeed why would Czech Republic wish to play a role in Vatican USA attempts to instigate WWIII? Especially when Czech Republic itself will be the recipient of these nuclear explosions?
The Kim Zigfelds and other hacks have run out of things to say. Their boy the tie-eater is next after Yuschneko, and they keep trying to pretend they didn’t push unpopular policies on the former Soviet countries and that Yuschenko’s failure doesn’t reflect on them at all.
liuk, your profound reluctance to draw the line, and refrain from using standards that do not change – this is more dangerous than giving an 18 month year old kid 100 pounds of nitroglycerine to play with.
As for your charge that Obama’s policy didn’t have any negative effect on Czech society, I hope you are right, but I conclude that you are wrong. It shows that he can be pushed around, and frankly that has the effect on the Sons of Allah as adding jet fuel to a 5 alarm fire.
19@David W. Lincoln
In 1990 USA was killing Serbs and assisting Muslim Albanians, in service of the Catholic Croats. Around the world people are tired of American senility, when all the USA does is serve the Vatican’s interests.
kochevnik, I have Serbian friends, and frankly when the Croats and Muslims hire better PR firms than Serbs to communicate, it is very easy to have the tail wagging the dog.
As for American senility, and I am speaking as a Canadian, at least the US and Canada have a
common mother – namely Great Britain. Which speaks volumes as to why the Republic of Georgia
applied to Whitehall to join the British Commonwealth. Those lands which were part of the british empire have made the most progress in securing the interests of the ordinary people,
at the expense of those who treat them like sweepings. Check this blog posting by Daniel Hannan, who in my conclusion, is the most credible legislator whose first language is English: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100026409/libertarianism-has-made-georgia-rich-and-free/
Besides, kochevnik, this is the season of the journey to Pascha, so keep that in mind in regards to your comments.
Russia’s getting it together, it seems. In a BIG way.