Tens of thousands of opposition supporters have taken to the streets of Ukraine’s capital Kiev in protest against the presidential election results. They are convinced that they were rigged by the government to rob the pro-Western Viktor Yuschenko of victory. Their aim is to bring about another East European “velvet revolution”, like the ones that overthrew the communists in Czechoslovakia in 1989, Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000, and most recently, exactly a year ago, Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia.
The accusation against the ruling authorities that they fixed the vote so that the Moscow-leaning Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich would win, rings ominously true. That is not because the result is very different from the exit polls; that happens regularly elsewhere in elections that no one dreams of questioning. The damning verdict comes from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe which regularly monitors such elections. It has given the thumbs down to the Sunday’s second-round vote saying that the authorities failed to address the irregularities of the first round. They also have evidence of people being pressured to support Yanukovich.
But if the elections were not free and fair, that is no guarantee that Kiev 2004 is going to be another velvet revolution. In Prague, Belgrade and Tbilisi, the governments fell when confronted by massive people power because they had lost both the will to power and all contact with the people they governed. They collapsed not with a bang but a whimper. The same cannot be predicted for the authorities in Ukraine. The country is not united against the government. There is a split, and it is not new. Eastern Ukraine looks east, Western Ukraine looks west. In the east, Yanukovych and his campaign policy of closer ties with Russia are genuinely popular.
Secondly, the Ukrainian authorities are clearly ready for a fight. Moreover, they have a record of playing dirty: Three prominent journalists who criticized the regime died in mysterious circumstances; the death of at least one of them has been directly linked to former President Leonid Kuchma, with a tape recording of him ordering officials to get rid of the reporter.
The most important factor, however, in suspecting that Ukraine will be different from those other revolutions is Russia. Its support for Yanukovych will be total. President Putin wants to rebuild historic Russia — of the present Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine — not for nationalistic reasons but because together they are a key to making Russia a superpower again. But he is quite capable of using nationalism; and Kiev is central to Russian nationalism. It was the capital of the first Russian state.
The EU and the West will want to back the opposition, but will they do so if it means a direct confrontation with Moscow? Unlikely. Putin wants Ukraine. It is in his front yard. For the West, for the EU, it is at their remotest edges. The West will hope that people power wins in Kiev, but they will do nothing to help it.
