Ukraine Presidential Election

Does Viktor Yushchenko really want his country to be separated from Czechoslovakia? What would be the next logical step for an ideologue after breaking all records for the worst election race (a sharp drop in votes by 5%)? pushing Bush to market reforms), it’s not easy at night. But more on that later.

Hillary Clinton’s hysterical spirit seems to have taken hold of Yulia Tymoshenko in recent weeks. Tymoshenko threw everything except the shell at Yanukovych, who acted wisely not to fall for his bait. Now there are signs that the equivalent will be thrown into the kitchen sink if his opponent wins. Julia has expressed so much her desire for voter fraud (her people briefly checked the ballot before the judge announced her impeachment), that many of her supporters now expect her to contest the results regardless of what or the size of the loss.

Unlike Tymoshenko, Hillary Clinton was not one of the richest oligarchs in the country (Julia got rich on energy during Kuchma’s time) or already held an influential political position that could be used to destabilize the country if she lost (Hillary’s damage was mainly done by the Democratic Party). Although Yanukovych has a 10% advantage, it is probably a good victory. Ukrainians are too demoralized to organize a second Maidan, but this does not prevent Julia from destabilizing the country again. After all, it’s worked for her twice in the past, and she has the financial resources and government megaphone to stage strikes and mass rallies. Such mass protests in the western provinces are particularly alarming, as they can spiral out of control and lead to the withdrawal of power from Kiev.

Viktor Yanukovych remained surprisingly calm despite the preventive provocations. This is understandable, because if he responds with the same hysteria, bloodshed is possible in the coming months. EU and US special services should be cautious about the extent to which they are stepping up propaganda in support of Tymoshenko in the coming weeks, given that the EU already has enough forces with Greece and Spain. Washington’s intelligence has yet to recover from the humiliation in Georgia and Iran in recent years. A European country with a population of more than 40 million people, at the epicenter of depression and more ethnically/emotionally polarized than ever, is not the kind of toy one could play with, as it was in 2004. Of course, we can’t expect The British. The media, not to try to turn the world public opinion against Russia, even if the propaganda machines of the EU and the United States do not work at the same speed as with Iran last summer or with Ukraine in the last presidential elections.

Preventive attempts to destabilize are not limited to Tymoshenko. There are several factors that indicate that Yushchenko wants to divide the country now that the dream is dead (bringing Ukraine into the EU to finally create a tangible bloc of ‘new Europe’, with Poland still a prometheus and the Baltic states.

1) Has achieved real success in the past, when his responsibilities corresponded to the field of his knowledge (Baltic economic shock therapy, not management)

2) Feel the real popularity and excitement of rebel politics (the fact that Western intelligence services support him financially and in the information war zone does not remove the excitement that he must have experienced as the nominal head of the eventual victorious alliance)

3) It seems rather insensitive and emotionally insensitive even for a politician (he knew perfectly well that a huge multinational federal state of artificial and unconsolidated nationality would not succumb to economic shock therapy, as well as a relatively homogeneous small country such as Lithuania)

4) Experienced not only the current political power, but also international support from U.S. leaders, and briefly became a fan of propaganda in the deeply ideological Western media (which sometimes manages to turn entire countries into Potemkin villages)

In light of this, his decision to leave (to turn former rebel and Nazi accomplice Stepan Bandera into a national hero) has an ominous tone. Given that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians are now experiencing economic and political difficulties in the spirit of Weimar, every step should be taken to take steps that will reduce tensions and the possibility of violence. Instead, Yushchenko publicly equated the rule of the Soviet Union with nazi rule, glorifying the hero of secession at a time when the western Ukrainian provinces are experiencing a surge in popularity of hyper-nationalist fascist parties and often happily ethnically centered (such as the Ukrainian Union-Freedom). party and cryptocurrency). fascists who can easily belong to the ruling coalition, such as the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists).

“Note: such words should not be used lightly. This is the original nationalism of tribal origin observed in Germany at the turn of the 20th century. homogeneous people. The best example, of course, is the experience of Italians, Germans and Poles during the 1850-1950 period, which emphasized the unity of language for their new nations and retrospectively glorified semi-artificial past. The purity of race is not even a factor for the newly united people who lived on the plains, not on well-protected mountain peaks.

Some may argue that the people must first go through the linguistic phase of angry nationalist consolidation before moving on to more tolerant supranational consolidation. Since many ethnic groups in India/China/Russia actually missed the previous period, perhaps the right argument would be that people who are strong enough and/or aggressive enough that a nation state can quickly win in this period of consolidation. move on. In this case, Ukraine’s experience is qualitatively different from that of successful linguistic separatists in the Baltic States and still emerging separatist groups such as the Kurds. The separation of Ukrainian party leaders from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s was by no means the rigid monolinguistic separatism in which Bandera participated. In addition to adopting two languages and actively participating in many Ukrainian-Speaking, the divorce was a reactionary move by regional conservatives, who are less influenced by liberalism from Moscow. Peripheral regions such as Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Texas and Alaska tend to lag a decade or two behind the socio-economic development of former federal capitals. Things like industrialization, urbanization, perestroika were constantly postponed because they arrived in Ukraine after they arrived in Russia. As Texas shows us, resistance from political leaders who benefit from maintaining the old order is also slowing down. Separatism is a form of resistance, and the party leaders of Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan used it effectively. The linguistic purity of their regions was far from their thoughts and was used only as a cynical political tool.

So, today Kiev is Moscow of the 1990s. A strongman comes to Ukraine, and it is not yet known whether there will be one or more of them and whether there will be one or more Ukrainians in the coming years.