Voters to deliver verdict in Ukraine

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Ukrainians are voting in parliamentary elections a year after the so-called "Orange Revolution" brought President Viktor Yushchenko to power.

Mr Yushchenko's popularity has since ebbed and his party is likely to be beaten by that of former rival Viktor Yanukovych, a close ally of Russia.

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Now that would be amusing. Wonder how the U.S. would deal with that? Bus in extras from Belarus?

[ 26 March 2006: Message edited by: unionist ]

This time they have a fully proportional system.

Apparently the Socialist Party will join with the pro-western parties in a coalition:

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The signing of a coalition agreement between the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, Our Ukraine and the Socialist Party is scheduled for Monday, March 27, 11 a.m. local time, Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc's headquarters chief Oleksandr Turchinov said.

This agreement was just reached between himself, Our Ukraine's Deputy headquarters chief Roman Zvaryvh and Socialist Party headquarters chief Iosif Vinsky, he said.

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Not only is the Eastern Ukraine heavily populated by Russian nationals, but the two countries are linguistically, culturally and socially similar, and share natural economic ties, which make them invaluable.

I just don't get it.

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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I just don't get it.

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Apparently a lot of Ukrainians don't either.

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Why is it that you assert that it is better for the Ukraine to be further away from Russia, politically? You seem do be asserting this is naturally better. On what basis to you make this judgement.

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Russia has dominated the Ukraine for hundreds of years, clearly it's better for the Ukraine to be a bigger player in the European pond, then it is for them to be dominated by being the small fish in the Russian pond. I mean, if your pro-Russian, and would prefer that they keep their influence from waining more, then I suppose it would be better for Ukraine to remain subservent to Russia. It's not as if the Ukraine is going to sever its economic and other links with Russia over night, its not as if they're going to kick out all ethinic Russians, but economically the Ukraine would benefit from closer ties to Europe, then it would to Russia. I mean seriously, which is better econoimcally Russia, or the European Union? Also, the less that Russia dominates the Ukraine the better as it will allow them to foster their own cultural idenetity, which Russia under the guise of both the Russian Empire and Soviet Union often attempted to quash.

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Vansterdam Kid ]

I also wouldn't say the Russia has dominated Ukraine for hundreds of years I would put it in the range of 500 years actually. And I would also note that early Russian Ukrainian history is as much a story of three more or less equal princedoms, Moscovy, Novgorod, and Kiev.

Isn't it also the case that this is true, and that support for the CPC is not something entirely imposed on us, but the result of natural and normal interelationships that result from our common history, and that numerous Canadians support the US backed government in Canada, of their own free will, and without duress, and they in fact voted for it.

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Russian and Ukrainian aren't the same language.

English and English, minus the French element mostly in Quebec, are.

There was no election rigging in Canada, whereas there was in Ukraine before the Orange Revolution. So it's not as if the Conservatives came to power on the finances, or with the overt political backing of the US of A. It was clear that the Russian government didn't want the Orange bloc to win. Whereas here while the US government would've liked the Conservatives to win, they would've easily been able to work with the Liberals especially considering that people like Frank McKenna were their choice to represent us to the US government. So essentially we or rather our government as expressed through the will of the average person wanted to be in bed with the US, whereas that is not the case with the Ukrainian Russian relationship, as Ukraine wanted to assert its independence more forecefully.

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Vansterdam Kid ]

So you are saying this last election was rigged, and the results of the latest election are false, and that Ukranians have not just chosen of their own free will to be more in bed with the Russians, now?

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

As far as Ukraine bettering themselves by associating more closely with Europe, that's mostly just fantasy. The Ukraine got a hell of a deal on natural gas from Russia, something they sure couldn't get from Europe.

And the European economy, like the US economy is in for some pretty hard times, whereas Russia has ample resources, and is willing to use those resources to political advantage.

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Originally posted by Vansterdam Kid:
It's not a good example.

Russian and Ukrainian aren't the same language.

English and English, minus the French element mostly in Quebec, are.

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But Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian constitute the East Slavic language group. They're more similar to each other than with western English.

By what I can tell, English and Germanic languages have more in common with East Indian language than any other. English has about 5000 or so real English words and utilizes many Latin, Greek and even French root words. French language is derived moreso from Latin and more in common with Italian and Spanish languages than, say, with English.

I think maestro and Cueball are right. Although there is some animosity towards Russia in general for past imperialism, I'd say the Russian's treated them better wrt to oil and natural gas exports than the western pro-market reforms have. A woman from Khyrgistan said to me that they were burning furniture in Bishkek in 2001 because the price of Russian natural has was so high. And terrorist bombings weren't helping matters.

ETA: And the reason we're here, living side-by-side with Francophones, is because of a clash of empires and probably the first global war that lasted seven years.

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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So you are saying this last election was rigged, and the results of the latest election are false, and that Ukranians have not just chosen of their own free will to be more in bed with the Russians, now?

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No. I've already explained the concept of the Orange Bloc being split, but even so considering Ukraine's electoral system the results can be interpreted diffrently than they could've been had they used our electoral system. Besides, as you can see by the preliminary results its not as if the Blue Bloc really had a big come back, let alone a come back at all. Yanukovich was never "slayed" persay he was just beaten fair and square in a fair election, after trying to steal an election a little while earlier. This is especially true if the Orange Bloc can still form a majority goverment, which looks like they can. Again, the results pretty much reflect a split between Yuschenko and Tymoshenko.

[ 27 March 2006: Message edited by: Papal Bull ]

Cueball: "I also wouldn't say the Russia has dominated Ukraine for hundreds of years I would put it in the range of 500 years actually. And I would also note that early Russian Ukrainian history is as much a story of three more or less equal princedoms, Moscovy, Novgorod, and Kiev." How much is hundreds of years? Five hundred would be hundreds of years! Russians were moved into various parts of the Soviet Union and while its no argument for their persecution it is also not an argument against a sovreign state forging itself. Latvia also struggled with this.

BTW when is the Ukraine going to restore Lwow to Poland?

[ 28 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

See, I can make historically questionable statements too!

However, the fact is that the Ukraine inherited Lwow from the USSR at the expense of Poland as a direct result of the Molotov-Ribentrop pact, and the settlement of the Polish issue at Yalta, as negotiated by Stalin who no doubt pounded his fist on the table and shouted: "Damn it! I want peace! A piece of Poland, a piece of Finland and a piece of Manchuria."

However while making an issue of Russian settlement in the region of Donetsk as a part of the Soviet equation,* people here and in the media do not seem interested in making people aware that Ukrainian occupation and settlement and annexation of the area around Lwow (a majority ethnic Polish region at the time) came also as a result of the Soviet equation.

*Actually begun much earlier under the Romanovs once the Donetsk Cossacks had been brought into vassalage, and the Tartars subjugated.

[ 28 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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"Together with the socialists and Our Ukraine we have the absolute majority," she said. "People want those promises given after the presidential elections [of 2004] to be fulfilled.

Ms Tymoshenko's officials say calls for a coalition have gone unanswered. "We have asked them to join us in a coalition, but we have not yet received an answer," party official Nikola Tomenko told The Scotsman.

Mr Yushchenko's party officials said no "formal agreement" was likely for days or weeks.

Western officials in Kiev say Mr Yushchenko wants to avoid becoming the junior partner to a woman he dislikes. Yet he may have no choice.

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The Vladimir Litvin bloc with 2.55 percent and the People's Opposition bloc of Natalya Vitrenko with 2.53 percent of the vote are the closest of all to the three percent barrier.

CEC Chairman Yaroslav Davydovich has pointed out that there are a number of regions where less than a half of the protocols of polling station commissions have been processed so far. "Vote-counting results may still change sharply," Davydovich added.

On the strength of the results of the processing of 62.7 percent of ballot-papers, Ukraine's Party of the Regions polled 29.51 percent of the vote.

According to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC), the Yulia Timoshenko Bloc gained 22.54 percent of the vote, Our Ukraine --15.62 percent, the Socialist Party -- 6.33 percent, and the Communist Party polled 3.5 percent of the vote.

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Tymoshenko-Yushchenko-Socialist coalition: 259 seats of 450. But Tymoshenko and Yushchenko are only 3 seats away from a majority without the socialists; better wait for the final count.

Channel 5 may have the most up-to-date figures.

[ 28 March 2006: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

My point is that resolution of conflict issues comes from understanding not just the underlying political terrain of disputes but also through trying to dimantle modes of discourse framed in apriori ideologically ossifications.

In this case the ideological ossification I am attacking is the idea the Russia is innately predatory, as exampled by its past abuse of the Ukraine when it led the Soviet Union, and by Russian "colonization" of the Don river region, but that the Ukraine is "prey" only and not "predatory" itself even though it holds onto a piece of what is quite arguably Poland, a fact which is also derived from the Soviet legacy to which the Ukraine is also an inheritor.

In my view the simplistic predatory/prey pardigm is too covenient a disguise for what I believe are Western Europes own predatory intitiatives, I think, which are never mentioned in the same tone as those of the Russia's predatory designs.

It is "our" hearfelt desire to defend the helpless "prey" that instigates our intervention, or our desire to "preserve the Ukraines nuetrality," not our own predatory desires. One really has to question such concepts as preserving neutrality when considered in the light of the fact that Germany "intervened" in Denmark and Norawy in 1940 in order to defend their neutrality from the rapacious British.

Frankly I couldn't give a flying fuck if Donetsk cedes from the Ukraine to become part of Russia, and Lwow (AKA Lviv in Ukrainian, or Lvov in Russian) votes to become part of Vietnam, that is not my point.

Although I am interested in how those ideas becoming manifest in political discourse.

[ 28 March 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

As far as a closer association with Europe having a positive effect on the Ukraine's economy, it's worthwhile to remember that South American countries had a very close association with the United States, and that sure didn't do them any good.

Europe has no energy resources they can sell to Ukraine, and Russia does, so at a very fundamental level, the Ukraine is pretty much dependent on Russia's good will.

The language issue is quite interesting.

From Wikipaedia:

Census data on Ukrainian language use.

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In the 2001 census, 67.5% of the country population named Ukrainian as their native language (a 2.8% increase from 1989), while 29.6% named Russian (a 3.2% decrease).

It should be noted, though, that for many Ukrainians (of various ethnic descent), the term native language may not necessarily associate with the language they use more frequently. The overwhelming majority of ethnic Ukrainians consider the Ukrainian language native, including those who often speak Russian and Surzhyk (a blend of Russian vocabulary with Ukrainian grammar and pronunciation).

For example, according to the official 2001 census data [3] approximately 75% of Kiev's population responded "Ukrainian" to the native language (ridna mova) census question, and roughly 25% responded "Russian". On the other hand, when the question "What language do you use in everyday life?" was asked in the sociological survey, the Kievans' answers were distributed as follows [4]: "mostly Russian": 52%, "both Russian and Ukrainian in equal measure": 32%, "mostly Ukrainian": 14%, "exclusively Ukrainian": 4.3%.

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Less than 5% of Ukrainians use exclusively Ukrainian. Regardless of the historical rights and wrongs the fact remains there are a lot of Russian speakers.

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Originally posted by Cueball:

However, the fact is that the Ukraine inherited Lwow from the USSR at the expense of Poland as a direct result of the Molotov-Ribentrop pact, and the settlement of the Polish issue at Yalta, as negotiated by Stalin who no doubt pounded his fist on the table and shouted: "Damn it! I want peace! A piece of Poland, a piece of Finland and a piece of Manchuria."

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A recent history channel documentary said that Ribbentrop was rather coy during the meeting. Hitler sent a cameraman to photograph Stalin. He wanted to know whether Joe's ear lobes were Aryan or Jewish. And Joe had been studying Mein Kampf off and on for 15 years. He meticulously underlined the parts referring to Bolsheviks being scum of the earth and took note of the many references to Jews.

Stalin told Molotov to query Ribbentrop as to how many German divisions might be in Switzerland and Romania at the time.

The demands for a second front were made during several backdoor visits to Churchill and Roosevelt over the course of two and half years from the start of barbarossa. The fist on table pounding incident took place at Casa Blanca.

Churcill complained about having to travel so far over hill and dale and past carnage after carnage on the way to Yalta. The discussion of Poland was now complicated by the fact that it was occupied by the Red Army. A union of freely trading and bartering Soviet republics?. Who needs borders if true free trade is the objective ?. Now that a Ukrainian border is recognized, they will pay market prices for natural gas when not siphoning-off Russian supplies illegally. And surely the CAN-AM-Mexican borders will dissolve at some point if workers are to be as free as our natural resources and jobs shipped to all cardinal points every day.

[ 28 March 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Yanukovych, who is supported by the industrial magnates of eastern Ukraine, has called for closer ties with Moscow and an end to Kyiv's bid to join NATO, but he supports European Union membership.

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