Justin Raimondo: The End of the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine

Raimondo turns a rather jaundiced eye on several of the colour revolutions. As he points out to a considerable these were made in Washington revolutions and part of the Bush great leap forward for democracy aka as setting up pro-Western allies in various countries. In the Ukraine the main leader was Viktor Yuschenko. In the recent elections he polled around six per cent for president. He also touted a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was pro-Nazi as a hero! Yanukovich the pro-Russian candidate lost the election. He is now back with a vengeance after defeating another former Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko. However Tymoshenko had already parted ways with Yuschenko and turned more towards co-operation with Russia. However, she did still favor joining NATO. Given that the international observers have claimed that on the whole the elections were fair she may have difficulty trying to win in the streets. This is from antiwar.com.


The Orange Revolution, Peeled

The color revolutions revisited

by Justin Raimondo,
To recall the media hype that accompanied Ukraine’s "Orange Revolution" of 2004, which propelled Viktor Yushchenko, a former central banker and alleged liberal democrat, into power, is like remembering a fever-dream in the morning: the memory of the details are blurred, and all that really remains is the sense that something strenuous, and ultimately unreal, has been passed through. The disputed election of 2004 – eventually decided in Yushchenko’s favor on account of mass street protests – ended with the defeat of Viktor Yanukovich, the candidate of the Russian-speaking eastern section of the country – the man whose comeback in Sunday’s election represented a stunning repudiation of the Orange Revolution and the regime that was born in its wake. How that "revolution" came to be, and what it really represented, is about to undergo a major revision, one in striking contrast to the instant narrative provided by the Western media six years ago.

Back then, as Yushchenko faced off against Yanukovich, the Western mainstream media rolled out a narrative that fit neatly into US efforts to orchestrate the election in Yushchenko’s favor, a story line which depicted him as the victim of a KGB-inspired conspiracy, culminating in his alleged poisoning and facial disfigurement.

The cold war was back on again, and with a vengeance, even as some medical authorities questioned the somewhat exotic circumstances of his supposed poisoning. Yet the Western media didn’t let such bothersome details get in the way of their narrative’s flow, which streamed forth unrelentingly from major news organizations and was earnestly reported as fact. Yushchenko, we were told, was a "free market" democrat, one who would modernize his country and liberate it from the remaining shackles left over from the Soviet era. The "resurgent" Russians, with former KGB officer Vladimir Putin sitting in the Kremlin, had targeted the heroic Ukrainian patriot and pro-Western liberal, and Yushchenko’s martyrdom became the signal event that elevated him to power.

Today, the orange sheen of his revolution is long gone, as his regime turned out to be just as incompetent and rife with cronyism as his corrupt and venal predecessors, if not more so. A great deal of Western "aid" money disappeared down several rabbit holes. Worse, the economy was paralyzed by the imposition of price controls, and corrupted by brazen influence-peddling. Under Yushchenko’s power-sharing agreement with the volatile Yulia Tymoshenko, the "gas princess" and Amazonian oligarch, the country disintegrated, not only economically but socially as centrifugal forces of culture, language, and the weight of history were brought to bear on the unity of the country, and things began to come apart.

The radical decline of the economy and the ongoing scandals that became an everyday occurrence during Yushchenko’s administration led to the complete marginalization of the revered Orange Revolutionary: in the first round of the presidential election, he received a humiliating 5 percent of the vote. Out of the running, and without the need to pretend any longer, Yushchenko heaved a real bombshell into the political arena by honoring Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian nationalist and collaborator with the Nazis, as a "Hero of Ukraine,"

John Laughland had Yushchenko’s number right from the beginning, wondering in a piece for the Guardian why a swastika-bedecked Ukrainian neo-Nazi group was rallying for Yushchenko. Now we know.

The embittered Yushchenko refused to endorse Tymoshenko, his former ally and co-leader of the Revolution, and instead urged his countrymen to cast their votes for "None of the Above," an option in Ukrainian elections and often an attractive one – and this time especially so, with a vote "against all" totaling some 6 percent. More than the difference between Yanukovich and the Gas Princess, who’s now gassing that perhaps the election was stolen and refuses to concede.

Timoshenko’s incendiary rhetoric and style were an important part of the Western narrative: a Ukrainian Joan of Arc, her long golden braid trailing Valkyrie-like down her neck, standing up against the Russian bear. As propaganda aimed at a Western audience, the imagery was priceless, but in the end it was the Ukrainians who paid the bill, and it was steep. Estrangement from Russia had deleterious economic effects, and a stand-off over gas prices led to shortages and widespread power outages during the bitter cold Ukrainian winter. Simultaneously, the imperious desire of the government to control prices led to food shortages, and neither Yushchenko nor Tymoshenko did anything to stop it: instead they fought incessantly, while the country went to pot, and the opposition gathered strength.

A major factor in Tymoshenko’s defeat, and one of the defining differences between the two camps, was the issue of NATO. Should Ukraine join? The gas princess said yes, while Yanukovich said nyet. Most Ukrainians went with Yanukovich on this one. The idea of becoming a pawn in a new version of cold war chess does not appeal to the average Ukrainian, even in the more Europeanized western section of the country.

This and the rapidly shrinking economy defeated the incumbent Tymoshenko, who nonetheless retains her office as Prime Minister until such time as Yanukovich musters a parliamentary majority and ousts her. New elections are scheduled, and yet you can count on Tymoshenko to gum up the works in a bitter struggle to retain some vestige of her former power. They won’t get her out of there except with a crowbar – and even that may fail, in the end, if she follows up on her promise to call her followers out into the streets.

The Orange Revolution’s ignominious degeneration and ultimate rejection by the Ukrainian people is yet another example of a media-driven narrative, one created by ideology and a selective perception of the facts, crashing on the rocks of reality. Just like the "liberation" of Iraq was supposed to be a "cakewalk" culminating in the spread of democracy throughout the region, the so-called color revolutions of the post-Soviet era, in some cases directly supported and funded by the US government, were held up as sterling examples of the same liberatory impulse supposedly generated by the Bushian foreign policy of perpetual war. The "global democratic revolution," as Bush dubbed it in a speech before the National Endowment for Democracy, was on the march.

Except it wasn’t. In every single case, first and foremost being Ukraine, these "revolutions" marched the affected countries off a cliff. In Georgia, the regime of Mikhail Saakashvili soon degenerated into a dictatorship, with the leader of the "Rose Revolution" accusing the opposition of high treason: there were riots in the streets as the "revolutionary" regime cracked down hard. The attempt to impose the same sort of "democracy" on Ukraine has now backfired, and the pattern has repeated itself in country after country: Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Serbia, in all these places the "revolution" was taken over by opportunists who used their "revolutionary" credentials to make dubious fortunes and set up a "pro-Western" clique of the racketeers they replaced.

Every single one of these "revolutions" had one thing in common: they had "made in Washington" written all over them. That’s why the revolutionary leaders betrayed their followers, and why, today, these countries lay in ruins. The US government couldn’t care less about "freedom" and, least of all, "democracy" – US officials and political players cynically used their Ukrainian proxies in a geopolitical power-play, with the real target being Vladimir Putin’s Russia. When Yushchenko’s usefulness ended, his Western patrons unceremoniously dropped him – and the country was left to fend for itself.

We called this scenario way back when the Orange Revolution was at its height, and Yushchenko was the apple of the Western media’s eye. It was clear, back then, that Yushchenko and his allies were hardly democrats, and that the whole poisoning drama was a good way to create a "hero" out of a man whose feet of clay were even then all too apparent.

By the way, the investigation long promised by Yushchenko into his alleged poisoning was never concluded, and no one was ever accused of this alleged "crime" – an oversight that should point us in the direction of an alternative explanation for Yushchenko’s affliction, which is what we said in this space from the beginning. Because, you see, the whole Orange Revolution mystique was entirely a creation of the Western media, and a gigantic fraud from start to finish. As we re-examine the Orange Revolution, and the myth starts to unravel, everything about the Yushchenko mythos ought to be subjected to the most rigorous challenge – including the story of his alleged poisoning, which, as time goes on, seems ever more suspicious and downright dicey, just as we said from the get-go.

Yushchenko Orang Revolution figurehead concedes defeat in Ukraine

Interesting that this is covered in Pakistan but there is not much coverage in the mainstream western press. The two remaining front runners who will face a runoff election are both more pro-Russian. This is in effect the end of the Orange Revolution although as Yuschenko points out there is now a more democratic system in the Ukraine. However whoever wins the tilt of Ukrainian politics will now be more toward Russia than the West.

This is from thenews (Pakistan)

Yushchenko concedes defeat



Thursday, January 21, 2010
KIEV: President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday said he accepted defeat in Ukraine’s presidential elections but defiantly vowed to remain in politics as the next stage of the campaign heated up.

Yushchenko, the figurehead of the 2004 Orange Revolution, won just 5.45 per cent of the vote in the first round elections on Sunday amid widespread disappointment with his presidency.

But in a characteristically defiant statement, Yushchenko said that the holding of free elections, warmly praised by international observers, was in itself proof of the victory of the Orange Revolution. “As head of state, I accept the will of the people in the January 17 elections. The main thing is the elections were free, democratic and legal,” he told reporters in his first public comment after the vote.

“But national and state circumstances do not give me the moral right to leave political life,” he added.

Yushchenko had vowed to turn Ukraine into a prosperous nation anchored in the European Union and NATO but his ambitions were undermined by political infighting and a dire economic crisis.

Analysts also critisised the president — a passionate defender of Ukraine’s cultural heritage — for focusing on grandiose historical projects at the expense of concrete reform.

Yushchenko’s result left him in a lowly fifth place, behind frontrunners Viktor Yanukovich and Yulia Tymoshenko, who will now contest the run-off vote on February 7. Both are seen as more pro-Moscow than the incumbent president.

But after observers led by the OSCE praised the elections as of “high quality,” Yushchenko said the vote had set an “example” for the entire former Soviet Union.

The apparent success of the elections contrasted with the last polls in 2004 where mass rigging blamed on Yanukovich’s supporters prompted the peaceful protests of the Orange Revolution that swept the old order from power.

“The fact that the elections were free means that the Orange Revolution actually won and did not only win in word but also in deed,” Yushchenko said.

Ukrainian election will oust western backed president.

This seems to be a little covered victory for Russia over the West. No matter who wins it will be someone who wants better relations with Russia even if it is not the main Russian backed candidate. The western backed Yuschenko and hero of the Orange Revolution is polling at a disastrous 3 per cent. This is from the Globe and Mail (canada)


The Orange Revolution fades to black as Russia rises again in Ukraine .
DOUG SAUNDERS

KIEV —
.dsaunders@globeandmail.com

***

It was the handshake that sealed the end of a revolution.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the charismatic Ukrainian Prime Minister and a key figure in the 2004 Orange Revolution that set the country on a pro-European, anti-Russian course, sat down late last year with Vladimir Putin, who offered her a generous deal for sending Russia's natural gas through Ukraine's pipelines, paying 30 per cent more than previously.

She appeared on television warmly shaking hands with the Russian Prime Minister, in what is widely seen as Moscow's endorsement - some would say purchase - of her candidacy.

The image of the handshake is everywhere this week, as Ukrainians prepare to go to the polls Sunday in an election that seems poised to bring the Orange Revolution to a close.

It marks, for Ukraine, the return of Russia.

Viktor Yushchenko, the current President and hero of the 2004 democracy movement, is polling at about 3 per cent, abandoned by almost all voters. Under his watch, the country stagnated, its economy collapsed by 15 per cent, its balance sheet had to be bailed out with a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund, and corruption flourished.

Voters seem poised to give the greatest share of first-round votes either to Viktor Yanukovich, the Moscow-backed leader who was driven from office in the 2004 protests against his fraudulent election, or to Ms. Tymoshenko. Both have pledged to build relations with Moscow and to abandon plans to bring Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

"We are witnessing a mass disappointment and irritation with the results of the Orange Revolution," says Fesenko Volodymyr, director of Kiev's Center for Political Studies. "Voters are more willing to ask questions now. They are more pragmatic, because they have been humbled, and it is no longer a simple decision between the East and the West."

The courtship of Moscow's largesse is no longer, for many mainstream Ukrainians, a sign of capitulation to a menacing former imperial master, a country that owned and controlled Ukraine for a century.

Almost immediately after the Orange Revolution protests brought Mr. Yushchenko to office in early 2005 amid promises to reform the economy and join NATO and the European Union, Moscow began to punish Ukraine.

Europe was terrified by Ukraine-Russia "gas wars" in 2006 and early 2009. Ukraine's pipelines carry much of Europe's natural gas supply from Russia, and in both those years, Russia refused to pay Ukraine the price it wanted for carriage. In the winter of 2006, a chunk of Europe went without heat for days.

Mr. Putin's deal with Ms. Tymoshenko was an apparent signal that the gas wars would end under her leadership.

Mr. Yushchenko, sidelined by the deal, issued dark warnings that his two opponents are part of a Kremlin plot. "Tymoshenko and Yanukovich are the finest representatives of a single Kremlin coalition," he told voters in Lviv, in Ukraine's European-minded west.

Ms. Tymoshenko explained her apparent abandonment of Orange Revolution polarities as a matter of pragmatism. "We are destined to have Russia as a neighbour," she wrote in a magazine article. "So it is up to us, as well as Russia's leaders, to create mutually beneficial relations between our nations."

Voters certainly seemed to embrace this, giving her a sharp increase in support after the deal. But her handling of the economy as Prime Minister, during which the international credit crisis devastated Ukraine and effectively bankrupted the government, have punished her, giving Mr. Yanukovich a slightly stronger lead.

It might seem that Ukrainians are shifting their loyalties back eastward after a disillusioning five-year experiment in Europeanism. Attempts at NATO membership brought only fury from Russia. Investment, when it did materialize, was short lived.

The European Union has essentially abandoned Ukraine, building tough border defences on its Polish flank and failing to allow Ukraine onto the bottom rungs of the membership process - even though this accession process has brought political and economic stability to Croatia and Serbia under similar circumstances.

As much as this appears to be a shift of loyalties, the reality is far more complex: Ukraine can no longer be described as a bifurcated country, and politics is no longer a stark east-or-west decision.

While eastern Ukrainians, who speak Russian, still tend to sympathize with Moscow and western Ukrainians are far more European-minded, central Ukrainians, who make up the largest population bloc, are increasingly willing to accept a closer relationship with Moscow, in part because the experience of Western co-operation has offered them so little.

But they aren't willing to give up the nationalist reforms of 2004, which outlawed the Russian language from schools and television. And none of the candidates, even Mr. Yanukovich, has dared touch these changes in campaigns.

Nor do they seem likely to interfere with the impressive media freedoms and protest movement rights that have developed during the past five years, making Ukraine one of the most free and open places among former Soviet states.

And Ms. Tymoshenko, while moving closer to Moscow, has vowed to push harder for an EU position and to fight for improved trade relations with the West. Western diplomats believe that she is sincere in this, and that, paradoxically, the pro-Moscow candidates may be the ones with the political leverage and negotiating skills to give Ukraine an opening to Europe.

"For the past five years, we have seen Ukraine butting its head up against a wall," one seasoned European diplomat said. "If the more Russian-minded candidates win, they seem able to execute something more like a judo move that will use Moscow to push Ukraine to the West."