Time for a white-and-blue revolution

This week Viktor Yuschenko was declared the winner of the re-run Ukranian presidential elections, but the newly defeated candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, is refusing to accept the election's outcome.

Yanukovich had been declared the winner of the original presidential election that was held in November, but this election was later nullified because of fraud and mass protests.

But Ukraine's democratic revolution may not be all it's cracked up to be. Even the most blithely pro-Yushchenko Western reporters had to pause momentarily last weekend when the electoral "reforms" brought in to help their Viktor to victory were deemed unconstitutional by the Ukrainian constitutional court.

Didn't it seem just a little strange that the democrats of the "Orange Revolution" were opposing measures, like home voting, that allow more people to vote? Was it a matter of shutting down avenues to fraud, or was it an effort to disenfranchise the pensioners who were central to Viktor Yanukovich's efforts?

Yanukovich has not taken defeat in these circumstances philosophically. He told the Russian newspaper Izvestia that he would fight on, and that the deaths of eight elderly voters should be "on the conscience of Yushchenko supporters who didn't allow them to vote at home". Yanukovich said he and his supporters would "under no circumstances" cooperate with Yushchenko.

Many of his supporters, concentrated in the east of Ukraine, are looking forward to the 2006 parliamentary elections. Yanukovich said that in the meantime opposition would take extra-parliamentary forms, though it was too early to say what these would be." One of his supporters in Donetsk told Associated Press on polling day: "The time has come for a white-and-blue revolution".

In the 1990s, when Yushchenko was head of the Ukrainian Central Bank, and then prime minister, he was held responsible for mine closures in the east that caused massive unemployment.

Yushchenko's victory in the election was, at about 8 per cent, substantially narrower than the exit polls had suggested. In fact, the exit polls were "wrong" by a similar percentage that caused such an outcry after the November ballot, when they were cited as evidence that Yanukovich's official victory must be fraudulent. The exit poll was funded by the embassies of the United States and seven other countries, along with four international foundations, three of which receive US government funding.

It was revealed in December that the Bush administration has funded political organisations in Ukraine to the tune of at least $65 million in the past two years. None of this money goes directly to political parties, it appears, but US officials acknowledge that it aided Yushchenko. On the other hand, reports suggest that up to $300 million went from Russia to Yanukovich, largely via oil and gas companies based in Russia and eastern Ukraine.

US money funneled through a Republican Party-linked group, the International Republican Institute, was used to bring Viktor Yushchenko to the US in February 2003 to meet vice-president Dick Cheney and other officials.

The US is also involved in broader ideological "education" in Ukraine. For example, the US Agency for International Development, funds the Centre for Ukrainian Reform Education, which uses the media to push for pro-market and pro-privatisation policies. It sponsors advertising, as well as workshops and clubs for journalists.

The international support for Yushchenko only grew in size and profile after the coverage of the November run-off. American lawyer Chris Nagle, who lives in Kiev, wrote on the Counterpunch website before the latest election that domestic institutions in Ukraine had also "effectively lined up behind the 'Orange Revolution'". The array of forces led Nagle to dub Yanukovich the real "underdog" in the election.

Mark Almond, a lecturer in modern history at Oriel College, Oxford, wrote on Znet that events in Ukraine had to be seen as part of "America's drive to dominate the old Soviet Union", a gamble "to seize the highest-value chips on the table before China and India join the game". Russia faces losing access to Black Sea naval bases, and "Russian oil and gas export routes will have to pass an American stranglehold".

It's no wonder Colin Powell congratulated Ukrainians "for the courage they displayed in standing up for their democratic rights".