Kuchma-Putin-Yanukovych at Novo-Ogarevo residence 09-Oct-2004

By supporting Leonid Kuchma protégé Viktor Yanukovych in his bid for the Ukrainian presidency, you broadcast that you seek an alliance not with the Ukrainian people, but with the despots who rule them.

By allowing yourself to be photographed with a man implicated in the killing of journalist Heorhy Gongadze on your right, and with a man implicated in the killing of journalist Ihor Oleksandrov on your left, you show the Ukrainian people that you conspire to deny them a free press and to rule them with fear.

By flooding Ukraine with Kremlin campaign gurus and spin doctors, you disclose that you view the Ukrainian people as sheep fit to be herded into pens, whom it would be unproductive to attempt to enlighten with impartial information.

By collaborating in electoral fraud, you confess that you view democracy as something that to be tolerated needs to be subverted.  For example, with regard to your initial plan to set up 650 polling stations within Russia, Olga Dmitricheva explained that "An overwhelming majority of Ukrainians abroad would like to take part in the voting.  However, until the present, the Ukrainian government has made every effort to suppress their wish, until it got the idea to use this wish as a plausible excuse for falsification."

By hiring ten billboards and five screens (which in central Moscow are valued at $1,800 each per day) to promote the candidacy of Viktor Yanukovych, you signal to the world that Kremlin arrogance does not respect national boundaries.

By having a Moscow court issue an arrest warrant for opposition Member of Parliament Yulia Tymoshenko, along with a request to Interpol to place her on an international wanted list for declining to answer the Moscow summons, you demonstrate that Russian law serves the executive branch to achieve political ends, and you fail to foresee the day when the precedent you set will lead to the court in some foreign land issuing an arrest warrant against you for Kremlin crimes in Chechnya, and to a request to Interpol to place you on an international wanted list for declining to answer that country's summons.

By not demanding that Leonid Kuchma conduct a credible investigation of what appears to be the poisoning of opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko, you encourage suspicions that Russian chemical or biological warfare laboratories supplied the toxin by means of which Russian domination of Ukraine was to be extended.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian candidate for the Presidency Viktor Yanukovych at Kyiv military parade 28-Oct-2004, three days before Ukrainian presidential elections.

In these several ways, you win the loyalty of gangsters Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovych, while simultaneously rousing the indignation of the Ukrainian people.




Lubomyr Prytulak