Rival troops face off in Ukraine

[AnOhioan]

Source: CNN

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's president summoned thousands of troops to the capital Saturday, but forces loyal to the nation's prime minister stopped them outside Kiev, escalating the two leaders' ongoing power struggle.

Tensions have grown since President Viktor Yushchenko ordered parliament disbanded in April, claiming Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych and his supporters were trying to usurp presidential power. This week, the president moved to fire the nation's chief prosecutor and take control of Interior Ministry troops, adding to the acrimony.

The ministry's 32,000 troops answer to the interior minister, a Yanukovych loyalist. Ivan Plyushch, the head of the national security council, said the president had ordered the troops to Kiev to forestall violence, though some feared it would have the opposite effect.

"Moving the Interior troops into the city is necessary to guarantee a calm life for the city, to prevent provocations," Plyushch was quoted on the presidential Web site.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/26/ukraine.ap/index.html?eref=rss_world

[MrPrax]

1. OK quik guide

Yushchenko = he's the guy that got poisoned and led the Ukraine People Power Revolution using the army. He's our guy.

Yanukovych = he's the other guy that had fraudulent elections that is using troops this time. He's the bad guy.

Now your are up to date on the Orange Revolution.

(no...it's not a spam tie in to some British phone company...it really is a Revolution...honest!)

[ohio2007]

2. Yushchenko ordered parliament disbanded

Why was that?
Is Yushchenko still "our guy" for doing that?

[Igel]

4. But, of course, he didn't leave it at that.

Yushchenko didn't have the authority to dissolve parliament--in many systems he'd have been able to, but not the Ukrainian one--but he did, simultaneously calling for 'snap' elections. He wanted them, well, tomorrow (5/27), but he and Yanukovych worked out a deal to have elections in July, IIRC.

The problem is that Yanukovych's crew believes that Yushchenko should just step down, and don't much care for what he has to say. Yushchenko and his allies had the same attitude towards Yanukovych, and one group had simply walked out of parliament to protest what it considered overreaching on the part of the pro-Yanukovych parliament.

Part of it is economic politics, part ethnic politics, part international politics, and part social politics. Yanukovych tends to be more Socialist/Communist leaning, more pro-Russian, more pro-Russia/pro-Putin, and generally more conservative. Yushchenko is more free-market, more pro-Ukrainian, more pro-Western, and more liberal. While these traits come bundled, in any election some are more important to voters than others, so you could get Ukrainians voting for a pro-Russia candidate.

I have little love for Yushchenko. But, personally speaking, I'd rather not see Yanukovych win.

[FarCenter]

8. They are both stooges

Yanukovych tends to be more Socialist/Communist leaning, more pro-Russian, more pro-Russia/pro-Putin, and generally more conservative. Yushchenko is more free-market, more pro-Ukrainian, more pro-Western, and more liberal.

I doubt the "pro-Ukrainian" part.

[Robbien]

17. I agree they are both stooges

but you state Yushchenko is more liberal. Yushchenko is neo-liberal, i.e. he is very much pro-privatization.

Yanukovych is supported by Russia. How can one be more Socialist/Communist leaning and be the conservative guy?

[FarCenter]

23. Words have many meanings

It was a quote from the news story.

They are probably using "conservative" and "liberal" in the story in the general sense that Yanukovych favors the status quo and less change, while Yuschenko favors more change and the adoption of new economic and political policies.

In that sense, conservative and liberal don't equate to right and left political views.

[Selatius]

24. The term liberal has different connotations in Europe than it does in the US.

To many leftists in Europe, being labeled as a "liberal" is akin to being a called a "false friend" of the working people.

[TheLastMohican]

25. Many mistakes in this assesment

First of all Yuschenko is not liberal, he believes in economic chaos where you can fish in muddy waters. His times as the head of the National Bank of Ukraine speak volumes about corruption at the very top.

Yuschenko is not privatising much, he just takes away from one oligarch and gives it to the other or allows the other to buy what was plundered. Just a sheer redistribution of assets by the ruling criminal clan, that's it.

Yanukovich is not supported by Russia, he is just more predictable a politician for Russia. The closest politician in full support of Russia is Nataliya Vetrenko.

Yanukovich is not Socialist/Communist. He is as pro raw capitalism as you can get. In fact his "Party of Regions" consists of the best and brightest ukrainian oligarchs and financial aces.

Where do you guys take the information from, jeez?

[otherlander]

22. So let me get this straight...

The power struggle is between a pro-capitalism liberal (?) and a conservative who is Communist-leaning (?) and pro-Putin, even though Putin isn't a Communist. And most of the Communists in Russia don't like Putin, and have formed an uneasy alliance with other anti-Putin groups, including rightwingers who back Yushchenko, several of whom are Trotskyites?

Fuck it, I'm going to go live in a tree.

[sanskritwarrior]

3. Sorry I tend to not be so simplisitic

So far no US President has yet to dissolve Congress, nor use the Army to keep in power......So............how is Yuschenko still our guy again?

[Igel]

5. Sometimes different sides, with different moralities, use the

same tactics.

Hitler bombed London; the British bombed Dresden; the Americans bombed Tokyo. Obviously Roosevelt had no moral superiority to Hitler.


It's not clear that Yushchenko is using the army to keep power. The judge he dismissed was worthy of dismissal: He was a former minister that was appointed as a judge, and constitutionally required to resign his political post--and he did not. But he was pro-Yanukovych, so Yanukovych decided to use the army to prevent the new guy from taking over, defending his supporter in breaking the law.

How exactly could Yanukovych be considered 'our' guy? Clearly he can't be; he's Putin's guy. Yushchenko is more in keeping with my politics, so if I'm forced to choose, it's Yushchenko.

(full disclosure: I translated a bunch of Russian-language reports generated by the Yushchenko/Tymoshenko group during the "Orange Revolution" and posted on Maidan; it was for a Ukrainian professor in Canada who was recycling the info into press releases. Since then, Maidan's apparently gone Ukrainian-only.)

[sanskritwarrior]

6. I think we should avoid Ukraine's byzantine politics altogether

we don't need to back either side as it is none of our business, just like Iraq was........

[Igel]

19. "We" do.

International politics is a spectator sport, and I have people that I'd like to see win or lose--it's no different from having a favorite sports team and being a lukewarm supporter.

The State Department has people "it" (in some benighted sense) roots for. In this case, however, it's presumably looking out for US interests--just as Chavez in Venezuela plays international politics to look out for what he perceives as Venezuela's interests, China does what it thinks is appropriate for China's interests, or--since we're talking Ukraine here--Putin does what he thinks is best for, I guess, Russia's interests.

[MrPrax]

13. Kewl!

A good friend of mine once upon a time translated an important book dealing with the Solidarity Movement in Poland. It was important coz it happen during the collapse.

OH ya which one of the Russian dudes this time? Havel? ;-)

[Igel]

20. Argh. Havel.

Nice guy, weird plays, odd politics.

Had to work through a moderately lengthy book of interviews with him, in Czech, of course, for a course that basically consisted of prepared sight translations and discussion of the text's stylistics.

(You enter a grad program in Slavic linguistics, you get buried in Slavic languages.)

[MrPrax]

7. Good Point!!

...so far no US President has yet dismiss a government (they only let the media do it by hiring people to promote extremist policies like beating people with sports equipment) or used the Army, (other than keep it a threat to folks in the Ukraine or down the block from YOU)...

But there is always hope...

Oh the joke was that neither is acceptable to the people of the Ukraine, but one is a good 'western-leaning' pragmatist and the other is a Pro-Russian Putin loving kitten killer...I wonder which side we choose?

[TheLastMohican]

26. He is "our guy"

because his wife used to work for U.S. State Department and is actively involved with ukrainian nazi organisations both in US and Canada.
This bitch runs the whole show in Ukraine, in case you didn't know.

[foo_bar]

9. "our guy"

Yushchenko favors European Union and NATO membership for Ukraine. Not surprising, he is backed, and strongly, by Washington. Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has been directly involved on behalf of the Bush administration in grooming Yushchenko for his new role.

As far back as November 2001, Yushchenko was reportedly wined and dined in Washington by the Bush administration, paid for by the US Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Martin Foulner in the Glasgow Herald of November 26 reported the details of the meeting. NED, it's worth noting, was set up during the Ronald Reagan administration by US Congress to "privatize" certain Central Intelligence Agency operations, and allow Washington to claim clean hands in various foreign meddling. Ukraine is part of a wider US pattern of active "regime change" in eastern Europe and Central Asia.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/GA20Ag01.html

Reveling in the apparent election of a pro-Western president in Ukraine, the Bush administration on Monday urged Russia to join with the United States in helping the former Soviet republic. "Let's all join together now and see what we can do," Secretary of State Colin Powell said.
(...)
Rejecting any suggestion the Bush administration backed Yushchenko, he said U.S.-funded organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy merely helped Ukrainian citizens to participate in open, free elections.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/28/content_403917.htm

During his last State of the Union speech, on January 20th, 2004, President Bush announced that he would double the budget for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and that its «new tasks would focus on the promotion of free elections, free exchange, freedom of press and trade union freedom in the Middle East». For the White House, it is all about complementing its military actions in the region with an ever increasing interference with the domestic affairs of certain countries.
(...)
Most of the historic figures involved in the CIA’s covert actions have, at some point, been members of the NED’s Administrative Council or of its board of directors; among them Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros or Elliot Abrams. Currently, it is presided over by Vin Weber, former Republican congressman from the state of Minnesota, founder of the ultraconservative Empower America association and fundraiser for the presidential campaign of George W. Bush in the year 2000. Its executive director is Carl Geshman, a former Trotskyite that became the person responsible for the US Social Democrats and a member of the neo-conservative trend <1>.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30022.html

New York (August 21, 2005) — Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko will be the guest of honor at the Founding Dinner of the Orange Circle, a new initiative that will work to advance the values of democracy and freedom that represented the essence of the Orange Revolution. The Dinner will be held at New York's Rainbow Room on September 15th, 2005.

The Orange Circle is an emerging association of eminent international leaders, including Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who will address the Founding dinner. It includes important business leaders, including Tim Draper, the head of the $ 3 billion investment fund Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which has announced the creation of a Nexus fund to invest in high technologies in Ukraine. As importantly, it includes leading Ukrainian-Americans and Ukrainian-Canadians, who have committed themselves to building the longterm nongovernmental initiative.

http://www.brama.com/news/press/2005/08/050821orangecircle_founding.html

And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board!
(...)
This May, the Virginia-based private management consultancy Development Associates, Inc., was awarded $100 million by the US government “for strengthening national legislatures and other deliberative bodies worldwide.” According to the organization’s website, several million dollars from this went to Ukraine in advance of the elections.

http://www.zvestia.com/1/us-ron-paul/ron-paul-20704.html

Then US secretary of state Colin Powell immediately condemned the results, as did EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana (1). The EU, NATO and the US urged a review of the election (2), and Powell warned Ukraine that it would be internationally ostracised if Yanukovich remained (3). Apparently without irony, the EU complained that Russia had been intervening in the election.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/303/

[armodem08]

10. Bush likes Yushchenko because he's anti-Russian

Both Bush and Putin stand to benefit from increased rivalries or even "cold" hostilities. Remember the story a month or so back that the Russian government had ordered that Americans be portrayed as the enemies in state media broadcasts? This is all "a enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine" stuff. It's classic Cold War posturing.

edit to clarify

[AnOhioan]

11. Update: Ukraine Leaders Resolve Political Crisis

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine's feuding president and prime minister agreed early Sunday to hold an early parliamentary election on Sept. 30, defusing a crisis that threatened to escalate into violence when the president sent troops streaming toward the capital.

"We found a decision, which is a compromise," President Viktor Yushchenko said after emerging from eight hours of tense talks. "Now we can say that the political crisis in Ukraine is over."

Tensions had been growing since April, when Yushchenko ordered the dissolution of parliament, where Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych leads the majority coalition. The president claimed the premier and his supporters were trying to usurp presidential power. Parliament defied the order, calling it unconstitutional

The president summoned thousands of troops to Ukraine's capital Saturday, but forces loyal to the nation's prime minister stopped them outside Kiev.

More at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UKRAINE_POLITICS?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=HOME

[MrPrax]

12. Doubleplus good?

America is still fucked?



That's a picture from Space! It cost the developers about a thousand bucks, some talent and a camera.

It cost us nothing but created a 'fuck you' statement to the world. Even you and I can collaborate on a simple means to photograph Space! People like us can built a rocket and send a cheap camera into space.

I am privileged to live a simple life in simple religious error. Where I am always amazed by light bulbs and wonder, 'HOWTO does a culture that can create people to max their credit cards to photograph space while at the same time destroy those same idealists?"

Why are you talking about gains in the Ukrainian assembly when folks you know discovered an end 'round to the corporatism' that is called Amerika.

We are simple folks like the people in the Ukraine that wonder why does simple life seem so complicated?

[AnOhioan]

14. Color me confused

I merely posted a news item I thought mught be interesting. Not sure what your post is meant to say or imply.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

15. Get it through your knucklehead! It's Space!

A picture.

Of space.

Lordy.

[AnOhioan]

16. Don't be an ass

I was not even talking to you. Some people...sheesb

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

18. Lookie:

:sarcasm:

[Paula Sims]

21. When the Orange Revolution first started, I was pretty vocal

on these boards. In addition, I swore that if things didn't work out, I'd also say so and admit it. Sadly, as a fellow Ukrainian, it hurts to see what's going on there. So much promise but sadly it looks like Yushchenko sold his soul to the West, and from what I understand (and I may be mistaken), some allegedly unsavory characters, to win the Revolution. Still, I'd rather have Yushchenko than Yanukovych any day, especially since Putty-Put is going more and more hard line.

What I think we need to understand is the psyche of the Ukrainians (and any others under oppression). They really haven't had their own country or their own government since 1918, and even that was for a year or two. Prior to that, it was a couple of hundred years. It takes generations to change thinking and behaviors of a country, and that is assuming they want to change. Under the Commie system, some had it good, very good, and others didn't. Today those that had it good are for "democratic reform" as long as it doesn't change their way of life, and sadly, they're often the ones with the purse strings. Not all countries are ready or suited for "democracy", and certainly not American (vs Amerikan) style democracy. No, I think the Ukrainians are better off under a monarchy type system (Sweden, to a point England) than what they have now. Just look at Iraq and the middle-east. The psyche of the population is not one for democracy and that's OK. It's when it's thrust upon you and you don't know how to handle it that it doesn't work.

We'll see what will happen. Don't forget, you also have Yulia Tymoshenko as a factor and don't underestimate the power or focus of a P***ED OFF Ukrainian Babushka!

Paula