Russia and the CIS News Digest
Brzezinski Elaborates His New 'Domino Theory'
The American Enterprise Institute held a hastily planned morning seminar Nov. 25 on the situation in Ukraine. AEI'S Pole-in-residence, Radek Sikorski, moderated. Also attending was the political counselor at the Ukrainian embassy, one of the members of Ukraine's diplomatic corps who has protested the Ukrainian Central Election Commission's awarding of victory to Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych in the Nov. 21 Presidential election run-off.
In the audience was the bizarre former U.S. National Security Advisor (under President Jimmy Carter) Zbigniew Brzezinski, who during the question-and-answer period spoke even more bluntly than did Daniel Fried, senior director for Europe at the National Security Council. "We are at a historic moment," Brzezinski said. "We see now a combination of Ukrainian nationalism with Ukrainian democracy. We must give our support to President-elect [opposition leader Victor] Yushchenko. The scale of the fraud indicates that he is the victor." Brzezinski went on to say that "Clarity is essential, especially clarity about the consequences of possible action by the Ukrainian government. But we should have both negative and positive options both vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia."
"We can't exclude Russia from the equation," Brzezinski said. "If democracy succeeds in Ukraine, then Russia must move toward the West." He called for offering inducements to [outgoing President Leonid] Kuchma, including providing safety for him and his family and for their financial holdings! "We must make clear that the 'Lukashenka choice' is not open to him, he said, in reference to the President of Belarus, who won an electoral referendum allowing him to stand for a third term. Brzezinski also wanted to warn Kuchma that if he didn't agree to Western demands, he faced the danger of a revolt on the model of Michael Saakashvili's "rose revolution" in Georgia last year, or even the fate of Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed. The inducements were necessary, Brzezinski went on, because just putting pressure on Kuchma might simply push Ukraine more tightly in the Russian camp.
But the warnings must also be issued to Russia. "Any reprisals against Ukraine must also have consequences for U.S.-Russia relations. "If Ukraine chooses the 'Lukashenka model,' we cannot let Russia off the hook," Brzezinski growled.
Brzezinski's son Ian, Assistant Secretary of Defense responsible for NATO affairs (since 2001), was very active in earlier attempts to convince Ukraine to join NATO, an offer which Kuchma chose to ignore.
In a Nov. 26 interview with the German business daily Handelsblatt, Zbigniew Brzezinski called on Europe to freeze its relations with Russia, consider throwing the Russians out of the Group of Eight, and support freezing Ukrainian bank accounts abroadall in order to force Yushchenko into office in Kiev. If Europe were to do this, it would slash its oil and natural gas supplies by 30% and 25%, respectively. About 85% of natural gas deliveries from Russia to Western Europe is delivered by pipelines that cross Ukraine.
LaRouche: No Foreign Intervention in Ukraine!
Foreign powers should not now be intervening in Ukraine, warned former U.S. Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, in a discussion with colleagues on Nov. 25. LaRouche pointed out that the internal crisis, unfolding in Ukraine, was quite predictable. But it's not something that anybody from the outside should be meddling in. Ukraine has a very complicated history, noted LaRouche, in view of which the latest posturing of Zbigniew Brzezinski reveals the latter to be "a typical gibbering idiot, who, if he knows anything about the region, is lying."
Historically, LaRouche said, "the Ukrainian issue is in part the Polish issue. I guess Brzezinski never heard of Taras Bulba!"the Ukrainian Cossack leader, famous from Nikolai Gogol's novella Taras Bulba, who was known for brutally destroying the forces, settlements, and persons of the Polish szlachta (aristocracy) that ruled what is now western Ukraine, in the 16th-17th centuries.
Some people, said LaRouche, are trying to distract and divert from the collapse of the U.S. dollar, by talking about a Ukraine crisis.
Huge Demonstrations May Force Ukraine Re-Run of Elections
Tens of thousands of supporters of Ukrainian opposition candidate Victor Yushchenko, the former Prime Minister and Central Bank chief, took to the streets of Kiev in a pre-planned action on Nov. 22, the day after his Presidential election run-off with Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych produced very close results. The preliminary tally was confirmed as final by the Central Election Commission on Nov. 24: 49.6% for Yanukovych to 46.6% for Yushchenko. Yanukovych claimed victory, but was unable to stop the demonstrations or Yushchenko's challenge to the results. Yushchenko claims that up to 3 million Yanukovych votes were fabricated.
Yushchenko's supporters had been primed for action by the early circulation of results of exit polls, conducted by foreign NGO-trained activists, showing Yushchenko ahead. Late on Nov. 23, with some 200,000 people backing Yushchenko in Kiev's Independence Square, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma called for roundtable talks on the crisis. That morning, Speaker of the Supreme Rada (Parliament) Volodymyr Lytvyn had taken the chair to preside over a session of the Rada, but there lacked a quorum. With only the deputies from Yushchenko's "Our Ukraine" party and its allies present, Lytvyn declared there could not be a session and left the hall. Yushchenko then came to the rostrum, put his hand on a Bible and recited the Presidential oath. Addressing the crowd outside, Yushchenko then announced he would form a Council for the Defense of the Constitution, and called on all government agencies, including law enforcement and the armed forces, to support him as President.
On Nov. 24, Yushchenko said that the only negotiations he would enter into, would be on the subject of a transfer of power to himself, or re-running the second round of the election with tighter anti-fraud monitoring. He announced the creation of a Committee for National Salvation and the beginning of a political strike to force annulment of the first election results. Socialist Party leader Alexander Moroz, who had endorsed Yushchenko in the second round, said that the strike aimed to stop transport, and close factories and schools.
On Nov. 25, Ukraine's Supreme Court barred publication of the disputed election returns as final, pending its review of Yushchenko's formal complaints, on Nov. 29. A number of Ukrainian institutions, including a large part of the diplomatic corps and two members of the CEC, expressed support for Yushchenko's challenge.
On Nov. 24, Kuchma invoked the image of the brutal Soviet Civil War of 1917-1921, after the Bolshevik Revolution, saying that something like that "could well become a reality at the present time." He also condemned "world community" interference in Ukrainian affairs. On Nov. 26, however, Kuchma chaired talks between Yanukovych and Yushchenko, with the participation of a large number of foreign mediators, invited by Kuchma: European Union foreign policy and security official Javier Solana, OSCE Secretary General Jan Kubis, Speaker of the Russian Duma Boris Gryzlov, Polish President Kwasniewski, and Lithuanian President Adamkus. After the first day of those talks, and as of a Nov. 27 Supreme Rada non-binding vote of no confidence in the CEC, agreement on holding the second round a second time appeared closer.
Media coverage of these events has been highly tendentious, one way or the other. Pro-Yushchenko reporting in the West portrays a "Chestnut Revolution," about to sweep Ukraine "into Europe" and "uphold democracy." Many of the 5,000 foreign official observers, including Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind) and numerous Europeans, were swift to declare the elections fraud-ridden. Meanwhile, most Russian media portray Yushchenko and his supporters as irresponsible radicals who are trying to overturn the election and/or split the country.
Besides this "Yushchenko = western democracy/Yanukovych = Russian stooge" caricature of the array of forces, what is ominous in the post-election situation in Ukraine is the East/West divide. Yanukovych won overwhelmingly in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. Yushchenko carried the westernmost cities, as well as Kiev. By Nov. 24, six city councils in western Ukraine, plus the capital city Kiev, had passed resolutions in which they refused to recognize a Yanukovych victory. The regional assembly in Lviv voted a motion of defiance against the Kiev-appointed governor of the region, and designated in his place a member of the opposition. From the other end of the country, a report circulated on Nov. 26, that the legislature in Lugansk Region had resolved to form a Southeast Ukrainian Autonomous Republic. Oleg Sidorenko, head of this legislative assembly, denied this was the case, but confirmed that the body had set up a working group to create tax, payments, banking, and financial agencies in Ukraine's southeast regions, in case the central government remained blockaded by the Yushchenko forces.
The passions on both sides run high under the often desperate conditions of life in a Ukraine that today suffers terribly from the devastation inflicted by the International Monetary Fund and related foreign financiers during the first wave of "liberal reforms" after the Soviet Union broke up. The industrial economy was shattered, its remains left under the control of criminalized clans. Ukraine has the highest rates of HIV infection and human trafficking, of all the countries in the region.
EU, Russia Disagree on Ukraine; Both Call for Non-Violence
At the Nov. 25 EU-Russia summit in The Hague, differences were visible in the assessment of the situation in Ukraine. Current EU chairman, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Balkenende, said that the EU cannot accept the ruling of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission, which declared Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych the winner of the Presidential election.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that it was the sovereign right of Ukrainian institutions to determine whether elections were unfair or not, and that the matter should be in the hands of the Ukrainian President and Supreme Court alone. Putin agreed with the Europeans, that whichever format for the solution of the crisis were chosen now, it should be based on strict non-violence.
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