Ukraine

Back before the American presidential election, I'd written about the election campaign in Ukraine. The short version of what happened over the past couple of weeks is that the initial election led to a runoff vote, as I said, and the campaign was about as ugly as I'd expected, albeit without any actual physical violence. They had the final vote on Sunday, and, well, yeah.

To make a long story short, once again, Yanukovych "won" the election despite the fact that Yushchenko clearly had more votes. Some of the highlights include at least one murder at a polling station, a semi-infinite amount of voter intimidation, the destruction of ballot boxes in areas populated by Yushchenko's supporters, and a strangely unanimous instance of 750,000 new voters in one region all voting for Yanukovych.

If you want to read an article or two about it, I'm sure I can accomodate you easily enough. This is everywhere and important news, guys; depending on what happens this will probably spill over Ukraine's borders into the world at large. You don't have any excuse to be ignorant of it.

So what's going on in Ukraine and behind that pile of links? We've got a few different things going on, so let's see.

• First of all, damn near the entire planet has dismissed the election as rigged. The United States' official observer used the phrase "concerted and forceful fraud," for crying out loud, and I fairly distinctly remember "total sham" showing up someplace as well. The European Union is fairly bluntly talking about slamming the borders shut in retaliation, and the US has made similar threats. This election was rigged and everyone knows it.
  
• Well, almost everyone. Russia has praised the supposedly clear, open election and its lack of irregularities, immediately recognizing Yanukovych's "victory" and condemning Yushchenko. Granted, Putin has openly campaigned for Yanukovych in a stunning disregard for sovereignty during the campaign, so this was expected.
  
• Yushchenko is showing no signs whatsoever of backing down from this - "We won. Full stop." Good for him; I was wondering when someone, anywhere on this planet, would finally call bullshit at a rigged election again. Kiev and other major cities are currently paralyzed by mass protests, and the protestors are preparing (despite the weather!) to hunker down for as long as it takes to have their victory recognized. One hundred thousand people were in the capital last night. While a lot of them went home for the night, a lot are also coming back. This doesn't seem like something that will blow over quickly.
  
• Perhaps most ominously, several cities - Kiev, Lvov, and at least three other major cities have publicly declared for Yushchenko, making it clear that they aren't taking orders from Yanukovych anymore. As of right now, I have no idea if this has spread or not, but Kiev and Lvov on their own are not a small support base.
  
• Yanukovych and Kuchma have begun threatening to suppress the protests, by force if necessary.
  

This could go in a variety of different ways right now. Yushchenko could fold and Ukraine could fall back under an unelected dictator. Most optimistically, the protests could continue until Yanukovych folds or is pushed out, a Ukrainian Rose Revolution that would finally bring a CIS state into the democratic sphere. Most pessimistically, Yanukovych could try to suppress things by force and create either a new largescale repression - or a Ukrainian civil war. If you believe that a country in a position such as Ukraine's can have internal conflict without Russia, the EU, or both getting involved, then you need to take the red pill; Yanukovych could destabilize the whole region by forcing a fight out of this, with a very real possibility of anything from regional economic malaise to the first major European land war in a decade breaking out.

My own hopes are that Yushchenko's people do not back down on this, whatever (and I mean literally whatever) the cost; to every regime such as this, there comes a time in which people need to say enough! and mean it enough to force the issue towards the conclusion it could have.

This could get worse before it gets better, and probably will. It might not get better at all. What happens is essentially up to the Ukrainians; it's their election, despite the wishes of Putin and Yanukovych to deny them that right. Whatever happens, though, you should all be paying close attention. This one could be too significant to ignore, both for geopolitical reasons and for the simpler facts that a threatened democracy, no matter where it is, deserves your notice - especially in this day and age. So open your eyes!

Posted by zibblsnrt at November 22, 2004 08:24 PM

---