The confirmation by doctors in Vienna that Ukraine’s opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko had been poisoned came as a surprise. There was a belief that, like Moscow’s other former eastern European vassals, Ukraine had moved on from the bad old days of communist dictatorship and was progressing, albeit slowly, toward reform and freedom. After all, the Ukrainian government said it wanted to join NATO and, one day, the EU. Moreover, the government of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma had, at one stage, been actively courted and favored by Washington. Ukraine, however, is not the same as Poland, Bulgaria or Hungary. It has not embraced democracy or economic reform to anything like the extent that those three have. On the contrary, the Kuchma government has been regularly linked to corruption, repression, electoral fraud (and this was before the present election crisis) and politically motivated murder. Even so, many dismissed Yushchenko’s allegations as no more than cheap electioneering.
That said, there is no evidence as yet that the Ukrainian authorities themselves were behind this attempt at political assassination. While the old Moscow-trained secret nomenklatura are still in positions of power in Kiev and, doubtless, fear for their future under a pro-Western government, the attempted poisoning could just as well have been the work of the Russian FSB, successor to the KGB. Moscow does not want Yushchenko to win. The FSB have their experts. They taught the Bulgarians to kill Georgi Markov, the dissident murdered in London in 1978. He was poisoned by a ricin dart fired from an umbrella. The difference this time is that the poison administered to Yushchenko, dioxin, is cumulative. It requires several applications. Clearly, those who want him dead have been at this for some time and the would-be murderer is someone working close to him.
Now that the election results have been annulled, Ukrainians will go to the polls on Dec 26 for the re-run. Even without a sympathy vote, Yushchenko should win; he is 10 percentage points ahead in the opinion polls. That will not unfortunately solve the real crisis in Ukraine. It remains a polarized country, split between east and west, with conflicting loyalties, different cultures and different aspirations. Because of the split, Eastern Ukraine will vote solidly for Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Moscow candidate who originally claimed victory. The sad truth is that on the evidence so far, Yushchenko is not the man to heal the split. Passions run too deeply.
In the run-up to last month’s US presidential election, there was much talk about the US being polarized as never before. Ukraine exposes that view as nonsense. The US may be divided but it is not split; this is not 1861 with the nation heading into civil war. In Ukraine, the threat of secession by the east has already been made if Yushchenko wins.
The fresh poll will solve the short-term problem; it will not solve the far bigger, long-term one.
