A PREVENTIVE OPERATION:

HELP FOR THE ORANGE REVOLUTION FROM THE INSIDE
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/Guerillas Without Guns
Posted 4/23/07

Despite the little-seen bull import of Western assistance, most of the help for the Orange Revolution was provided from native Ukrainians and the wealthy Diaspora communities who donated money, space, supplies, time, and energy. As we’ve seen, municipal leaders like Kiev mayor Olmchenko were instrumental in allowing the protests to flourish. Others who sympathized with the movement pitched in by not doing things like cracking down. Petro Rondiak noted: “the riot cops were laughing at our jokes and I certainly doubt they would put up much resistance if...” The authorities simply refused to clamp down on their fellow citizens and all remained peaceful. As per Sharp’s strategy the protesters did what they could to co-opt the security forces, but in this case, for whatever reasons, the main effort behind this co-option came from within the security services themselves. And some of the assistance came just in time to prevent the Orange Revolution from turning red with blood.

The behind-the-scenes intrigue was well-related in an unprecedented January 2005 piece in the New York Times by Ukraine expert C.J. Chivers, who interviewed dozens of people involved, including ex-president Kuchma, to assemble his account. Chivers explains how Smeshko’s SBU and other Ukrainian security Agencies (collectively called siloviki) played an unusually powerful role throughout the Revolution – on behalf not of the government they worked for but of the opposition. Oleg Ribachuk, Yushchenko's chief of staff, called this siloviki support “a very important element” that aided their cause “professionally and systemically.” [2]

Opinions on motives differ – Yulia Tymoshenko felt the intelligence agencies were “hedging their bets” in a “complicated game.” But Ribachuk felt they were real allies who “risked their lives and careers” to help keep Yanukovych out of office. [3] They were reportedly motivated by personal aversion to serving a president Yanukovych, who was in his youth convicted of robbery and assault, besides his connection with corrupt businessmen, his unpopularity, and willingness to use fraud. Smeshko in particular reportedly loathed Yanukovych intensely. “They were doing this like a preventive operation,” Ribachuk said of the siloviki intervention. [4]

SBU Director Ihor Smeshko, back-channel ally of the Revolution

Long before the election, the siloviki and the opposition opened quiet lines of communication, including General Smeshko's assignment of an SBU general as secret liaison to Mr. Ribachuk. [5] Ribachuk said that he ultimately had several SBU contacts, with whom he met regularly. The officers leaked him documents and information from the offices of the President and Prime Minister, he said, and were sources for much of the material used in the opposition's media campaign. Particularly useful was the November 24 publication of a recording in which Yanukovych officials discuss exactly how the vote would be fixed: “we have agreed to a 3 to 3.5 percent difference in our favor. We are preparing a table. You will have it by fax.” General Smeshko refused to discuss the tapes in detail with Chivers. “Officially, the S.B.U. had nothing to do with the surveillance of Yanukovich campaign officials. Such taping would be illegal in this country without permission from the court. I will say nothing more.” [6]

After the November run-off fraud, The SBU leadership met at Smeshko’s office, and “contemplated a public resignation,” but as Chivers explains “decided to try steering the gathering forces from a clash, and to fight from within.” “Today we can save our faces or our epaulettes, or we can try to save our country," the spy chief was recalled as saying. [7] Chivers reported that at this time, late November, “General Smeshko agreed to provide [Yushchenko] eight specialists from the elite Alpha counterterrorism unit - a highly unusual step - and to arrange former SBU members to guard the campaign.” [8] It turns out this was agreed to in a secret meeting not three months after their last meeting on September 5, after which Yushchenko had “fallen ill” and essentially blamed Smeshko or his cronies for poisoning him. All indications are that Smeshko’s Alpha troops continued to protect Yushchenko’s campaign nonetheless, though from exactly whom is unclear.

The protection extended beyond the candidate himself and over the whole Revolution. As protests escalated, on the evening of November 28 over 10,000 troops from the Kuchma-allied Interior Ministry – 3,000 armed with guns, the rest with riot gear - were mobilized to Independence Square to put down the protests, by the order of their commander Lt. Gen. Sergei Popkov. [9] As the military convoy rolled into the night Kiev moved towards what Chivers called “a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war.” [10] But then the Siloviki stepped in. Oleksander Galaka, head of GRU (military intelligence) made calls to “prevent bloodshed.” Senior officials with the SBU learned of this mobilization and moved quickly to warn opposition leaders. SBU Director Ihor Smeshko claimed to have warned Popkov to pull back his troops, as has Maj. Gen. Vitaly Romachenko, the military counter-intelligence chief. [11] Popkov indeed pulled back and bloodshed – a Tiananmen Square in Europe - was narrowly averted.

Next: Away From Russia

Sources:
[1] [1] Rondiak, Petro. “Kiev resident and supporter of the revolution: E-mail messages sent to friends abroad.” The Ukrainian Weekly, January 2, 2005, No. 1, Vol. LXXIII http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2005/010522.shtml
[2] – [11] Chivers, C.J. “Back Channels: A Crackdown Averted: How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path.” The New York Times. January 17, 2005. Accessed via: http://www.ukrainiantime.com/news.html

PORA! HIGH TIME FOR A REVOLUTION

THE WORD ON THE STREET IS “NOW!”
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without Guns
Posted 4/8/07

It should be no surprise that Ukrainian democracy guerillas looking to drift their country closer to Europe would want to tap into the well-established nexus of western-funded and native-organized revolutionary movements. Initially links between Otpor vets and a first wave of Ukrainian activists were established in 2003. [1] Just as Kmara picked up the methods and logo of Otpor in Belgrade in 2003, eighteen young Ukrainians made their own pilgrimage to that same Mecca of revolution in the spring of 2004. They met with Otpor leaders at a seminar in Novi Sad before returning home to put the valuable lessons to use.

Otpor even sent its own volunteers into Ukraine to work with the youth movement forming there. Indeed, two of the leaders from Belgrade, Aleksandar Maric, [2] and Marko Markovych [3] were turned away at the border when they attempted entry. (Markovych later applied for citizenship in Ukraine to work on revolution there full time) But others got in just fine when they were needed, and taught the Ukrainians what they knew. One of the Serbian trainers, Sinisa Sikman, later explained “we helped educate them on how to campaign, how to organize themselves, how to focus their message and energy and motivate voters.” [4]

Pora! Logo as pictured on their flag – note the absence of a fist.

The brave and optimistic young people who rose up in Ukraine chose as their obligatory one-word slogan Pora! (“It’s Time”). While Kmara in Georgia seems to have been created specifically for the 2003 anti-Shevy campaign, Pora was first formed in 2002 from the hard-core activists who had participated in “Ukraine Without Kuchma!” and other protest movements from as far back as 2000. [5]

There were actually two wings formed, Yellow Pora and Black Pora, with divided responsibilities. The yellow wing focused on candidates and political-level work, essentially a constituent party within the emerging “Freedom of Choice” coalition. [6] Black Pora made its first public moves in early 2004, posting fliers across the country in March calling on Ukrainians to remove “Kuchma-ism” from their minds. It was the kids of the black wing who linked up with Otpor in 2003, and it was they who more closely mimicked Otpor, keeping the decentralized structure, and focusing on branding activism and mobilizing the street protests.

While Pora drew great inspiration from Otpor, they chose not to directly mimic their iconography as Kmara had in Georgia. The Ukrainian activists instead developed their own images; their equivalent of the clenched fist was a ticking clock set at 11:45, incorporated as the “O” in the Cyrillic rendition of P-O-R-A. And they made excellent use of graphics, from the “Orange Sunrise” pyramid to ones with more aggressive imagery such as a giant boot crushing a cockroach. These were repeated ad infinitum on mass-produced t-shirts, posters, pamphlets, bumper stickers, etc.

Pora started to work “weeding out” corrupt officials; who was a weed and who a flower was sorted out by blacklists, compiled by both yellow and black wings. Yanukovych's Regions party cited these lists as reason enough for the Security Service to ban Pora as terrorists seeking another popular coup as had occurred in Georgia. [7] Indeed, Liberty Institute’s Givi Targamadze, along with several other Georgian parliamentarians visited Kiev and shared their knowledge and experience of civil disobedience with the newly created Pora. Targamadze allegedly used a televised interview in Ukraine to give activists specific instructions about things such as seizing strategically important buildings. [8] Kmara delegates were also allegedly involved in this trip, and Pora sent its own representatives to Tbilisi to learn more from Kmara members on their own turf.

Well-advised and eventually numbering in excess of 10,000 members, Pora used civil disobedience and Otpor-Kmara-style street theater tactics to agitate against Kuchma’s regime in Kiev and elsewhere. Ian Traynor noted “their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime.” Pora member Alina Shpak explained their approach; “we mocked the power as much as possible. You can't be afraid of someone you're laughing at.” [9] So they weren’t afraid of Kuchma’s designated successor, who was laughed at widely for the “egg incident;” on a September 24 visit to western Ukraine (Ivano-Frankivsk), an opposition activist threw an egg at Yanukovych in public. BBC News explained the victim “collapsed to the ground, groaning and clutching his chest. Initially hospitalised in intensive care, he recovered within hours and went on television to say he felt sorry for the ‘wayward’ youngster who had thrown the egg.” [10] Pora-types noted the loser-like behavior and took heart.

Not everyone was so daring, and as in Serbia, the young activists organized harmless, humorous street happenings. For example Pora dumped a mound of pumpkins in a Kiev street in a “Pumpkins for Yanukovych” action. This had the benefit of keeping to the orange color scheme decided on for the revolution, chosen for its cheerful vibrancy and its discernability from the traditional Ukrainian colors blue and yellow – taking the yellow and shifting it to orange, directly chromatically opposed to blue, the color of the governing party. But the main thing about pumpkins in Ukraine, and the point of the action, is the rural custom of a girl rejecting an inferior suitor by handing him one. It was an inderect, culturally appropriate, and pointed way of telling Kuchma he was out - the people had accepted a different husband.

Sources:
[1], [3], [5], [6]. [7] Kuzio, Taras. "Pora! takes two different paths." Eurasia DailyMonitor. February 2 2005.
http://www.jamestown.org/edm/article.php?volume_id=407&issue_id=3218&article_id=2369186
[2]. [4] Vasovic, Aleksandar. "At root of Ukraine's revolution, the disciplined crowd." San FranciscoGate. December 11 2004. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2004/12/11/international1342EST0526.DTL
[8] Anjaparidze, Zaal. "Georgian Advisers Stepping Forward in Bishkek." Eurasia Daily Monitor. Volume 2, Issue 59 (March 25, 2005) http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=407&issue_id=3276&article_id=2369483
[9] Traynor, Ian. "Young democracy guerrillas join forces: From Belgrade to Baku, activists gather to swap notes on how to topple dictators." The Guardian. June 6 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1499871,00.html
[10] Profile: Viktor Yanukovych Last Updated: Monday, 27 March 2006, 13:22 GMT 14:22 UK http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4038803.stm

UKRAINE: THE STATE OF PLAY IN 2004

Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without Guns
2/20/07

President Leonid Kuchma, isolated in November 2003

About a year after the rose Revolution in Georgia, the Otpor-Kmara template was again applied to great effect in the much larger and more vital former Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Here the nonviolent sniper sights were set on the corrupt, repressive, allegedly murderous government of Leonid Kuchma that – coincidentally, of course – was increasingly allied with Moscow. Kuchma was first elected to the Ukrainian Parliament in 1990, staking out a role in the Committee on Defense and State Security. After independence Kuchma was appointed Prime Minister in 1992, but resigned in late 1993 to run for the presidency on a platform of boosting the economy by restoring economic relations with Russia. Kuchma won the race in 1994 and soon signed a ‘Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership’ with Russia, and endorsed a new round of talks with the CIS. But he also arranged a $730 million loan from the Washington-based IMF, signed a special partnership agreement with NATO, and even raised the possibility of membership in the alliance, a pretty radical idea by Ukrainian standards. [1]

As for democratic procedure, as Canadian-Ukrainian journalist Taras Kuzio pointed out “under Kuchma, Ukraine never experienced free elections.” [2] After a scam re-election in 1999, serious problems for Kuchma’s regime began in November 2000. Opposition leader Oleksandr Moroz and others had accused President Kuchma of involvement in the abduction and killing of journalist Georgiy Gongadze, a prominent critic of the regime whose headless corpse was found in the woods after he went missing in September. The November release of incriminating recorded conversations, including an order from Kuchma’s own mouth to have Gongadze kidnapped, launched what came to be known as the “cassette scandal,” or “tapegate.”

Kuchma's former bodyguard was named as the source of the secret recordings, which Kuchma claimed were computer-generated forgeries. But his popularity at home and abroad sank as many others were convinced and as further revelations came from the tapes, if noticed a bit late. In 2002 Washington was alarmed to learn that the tapes also revealed an apparent transfer of a sophisticated Ukrainian defense system to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. [3] As a result, Kuchma was boycotted by the US and other Western governments for a time, and Ukraine turned increasingly to Russia for support, saying the country needed a “multivector” foreign policy that “balanced” Russian and Western interests with, hopefully, Ukraine’s own.

He also started referring to Russian as “an official language,” which was lucky news for Viktor Yanukovych, whom Kuchma appointed as Prime Minister in November 2002. Yanukovych hailed from Donetsk, the Russo-centered eastern capital of industry and was extremely unpopular in Kiev. Yanukovych was a criminal thug in his youth, accused of massive corruption in power, and while fluent in Russian, Yanukovych was considered clumsy with the Ukrainian language. The West’s planners frowned and turned back to their plan books.

Fashionista billionaire and sweetheart of the West Yulia Tymoshenko

In early 2004 Ukraine was set to join Russia’s United Economic Space along with neighboring Belarus. This prospect was blasted by rising Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko as “one free-trade deal that won’t free trade.” She warned “the treaty will only entrench post-communism's corrupt and criminal business practices, not increase trade or prosperity […] The proposed 'united economic space' will also have its own norms - the ways of the oligarch, the corrupt bureaucrat, the crony capitalist, and the politically motivated prosecutor.” [9]Ironically, she is generally classed as a crony capitalist (whose cronies were simply not in power at the moment) and among the wealthiest of Ukraine’s oligarchs. While unpopular with many of their citizens, the West, and the West’s political allies in Kiev, Kuchma and Yanukovych remained in power and fully capable of stealing elections. If only there were a way of preventing that…

In the context of a great game with Russia, the emphasis on Ukraine is understandable - it’s the biggest thing one can take from Russia besides Russia itself. It seems a stretch to even attempt such a move, but apparently the successes of Belgrade and Tbilisi had left some people feeling very cocky. One should not be surprised if the western planners would play this touchy game a bit more carefully than they did in Georgia. Indeed, promoter of “democratic transformations” Michael McFaul noted that “in the years leading up to the 2004 votes, American ambassadors in Ukraine insisted that no U.S. government money could be provided to any candidate.” Instead, McFaul explains, the US simply urged the Orange Revolution on from the sidelines as they chose their own leaders and their own direction. Directly U.S. sponsored education seminars for activists have not yet been reported to my knowledge. Richard Miles was not made ambassador there. But while the U.S. government and its linked NGOs emphatically deny that they were involved in any real way, the same thumbprints are all over this case.

LIKE A JOHN LE CARRE NOVEL: YUSH POISONED!

2004: THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE RUINED FACE
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without Guns
2/23/07

As Ukraine hovered with the two Viktors (opposition leader Yushchenko and PM Yanukovych) running neck and neck for the presidency in the Halloween 2004 election, things got spooky. On the night of September 5, the opposition front-runner attended a small private dinner meeting with senior Ukrainian officials, including Ihor Smeshko, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU, successor to the Ukrainian KGB). The meeting was held at the cottage of Volodymyr Satsyuk, recently resigned from the SBU to focus on his other job in Parliament. Yushchenko brought along none of his security detail, and in the end he brought along only his campaign manager David Zhvania, who had arranged the meeting. Yushchenko later explained that, for whatever reasons, this dinner was the only time he did not take security measures to test his food.

But Viktor's wife Kateryina, keen as she is, said that she tasted ‘a metallic-smelling medicine’ on her husband's lips after he returned home. Yushchenko went straight to bed and fell seriously ill by the next morning. He toughed it out for a few painful days before checking in at a private clinic on the 10th by which time the mysterious illness had reportedly caused severe internal problems and nerve paralysis on the left side of his face. As September wore on, his doctors were powerless to stop his face from erupting in a dense gray mask of Chloracne cysts. The results weren’t clear right away, but his doctors concluded he would live and should continue campaigning while they ran more tests.

The Rudolfinerhaus clinic Yushchenko checked into was in Vienna, Austria, and presided over by a Dr. Michael Zimpfer, who explained in December, nearly three months after the fact, “at the present stage, we are still investigating the hypothesis of poisoning. However, we have not found any indication that a chemical or biological substance has been employed.” Further complicating diagnosis was the four-day delay between the outbreak of the ailments and his arrival at the hospital, and Yushchenko’s early refusal to allow biopsies of his face (he didn’t want it wrapped in gauze while campaigning). RFE/RL confirmed that “Yushchenko, upon his release from the clinic, said the doctors' statements proved he had been intentionally poisoned. In fact, the Viennese doctors left this open as a possibility, but reached no definitive conclusions.” (emphasis mine)

Yushchenko soon after his alleged poisoning.

But even with this lack of evidence, the medical team finally decided on a “descriptive diagnosis,” not to be taken as conclusive, that Yushchenko had suffered from severe, intentional dioxin poisoning, reportedly the second-highest dose on record. Dioxins are a class of pervasive industrial pollutants, and everybody has some dioxin in their systems. But Dr. Zimpfer said tests showed Yushchenko’s blood samples contained more than 1,000 times the normal amount of TCDD, a particularly toxic form.

These chemicals are not efficient killers; they cause cancer and predispose one to other ailments like diabetes – if they kill at all, it’s indirectly and after years. Only a few cases of acute poisoning are on record. One unsolved case from 1997 had five textile workers poisoned with a particularly strong isomer of dioxin; two fell gravely ill but neither died. This worst-case scenario happened, of all places, in Vienna - the very City Yushchenko would travel to for his diagnosis seven years later.

While the experts concur that dioxin usually takes weeks or months to show symptoms, Yushchenko fell ill the very morning after his September 5 dinner with Satsyuk and Smeshko. Campaign manager David Zhvania believed in the poisoning theory, and pointed the finger at President Kuchma or Russian elements working through organized crime figures. But he denied the “stupid theory” of a poisoning at the dinner he had arranged, citing a more probable poisoning while Yushchenko was in the Crimea (loaded with Russian mafia types) in late August. But Yush himself continued to favor the more dramatic and less logical story that implicated top leaders directly; in a 2005 interview with CNN, he was asked if he’s been poisoned at the Sept. 5 meeting. He replied “most likely.”

Dr. Zimpfer at the Rudolfinerhaus supported the theory as well; “we suspect involvement of an external party, but we cannot answer as to who cooked what or who was with him while he ate.” An excellent article by paleo-conservative writer Justin Raimondo sorts out the doctors at the center of this high-pressure situation; the widely-quoted Dr Zimpfer was the President of the clinic's Board of Supervisors, an administrative figurehead and not hands-on in the case. The chief medical doctor was named Lothar Wicke, and it as he who initially oversaw Yushchenko's treatment and held a press conference just after his patient's first visit. Before the international media, he accused unnamed individuals of spreading “medically falsified diagnoses concerning the condition of Mr. Yushchenko.”

Wicke never outright revealed who was telling what lies, but Zimpfer reportedly told him at one point “Yushchenko's people will not be happy and will take other measures.” An article from the UK Telegraph, one of the rare mentions in the Western media, claims that Wicke’s “life was threatened after he cast doubt on the diagnosis” and that “the clinic came under intense pressure from Mr Yushchenko's entourage to diagnose poisoning,” with or without evidence. As the pressure mounted, Wicke finally resigned his position on December 9, removing himself from the picture. The case was taken over by Dr. Nikolai Korpan, who was certain of a poisoning scenario; asked if the aim of the poisoning had been to kill the opposition candidate, Dr. Korpan snapped “yes, of course.” Raimondo clarifies that Korpan is “a surgeon, not a specialist, brought in by Yushchenko on the occasion of his first visit to Vienna.”

The Ukrainian authorities of course denied the charge that they had been involved in any poisoning. There is “no logic in such an accusation,” said Taras Chornovyl, Yanukovych's campaign manager. Other supporters voiced their own concerns. Stepan Havrysh, a political ally of Yanukovych said that while he pitied Yushchenko in his plight, “I'm afraid, two weeks before the vote, it's all political technologies.” This is a term usually reserved for public relations and election strategies. Others simply used the episode to taunt Yushchenko, speculating that his sudden disfigurement was from Herpes or some other disease a moral degenerate might pick up. Others have cited his long history with alcohol and food-triggered illness, and wondered if he didn’t drink too heavily and gorge himself on foods he knew would make him sick.

No matter the truth, Orange revolution supporters and Pora-types were sure the corrupt regime had tried to silence their leader. “Everybody knew he was poisoned so we didn't really need official tests,” said Anatoly Klotchyk, with all his nineteen years of wisdom to draw on. Likewise, the western media primarily took the word from the Vienna clinic that implicated Yanukovych or his Russian backers. The UK paper The Observer in December uncritically quoted an official in the Yushchenko camp that the poisoning was “clearly planned by professionals, perhaps former employees of the KGB.” Yushchenko “has confronted the disease in a fighting spirit,” the Observer article noted, “appearing during the mass protests without cosmetics to tell them that his scarred face was that of the dirty politics of Ukraine.” He went further than simple metaphor on Sept. 21; standing before the assembled Ukrainian Rada, he told the nation’s lawmakers through his cyst-covered face “do not ask who is next. Every one of us will be the next.”

Yet at the same time he wanted no immediate investigation into who poisoned him - and had hit-listed the entire parliament - until after the December election. “I don't want this factor to influence the election in some way – either as a plus or a minus,” he told the press. “This question will require a great deal of time and serious investigation. Let us do it after the election – today is not the moment.” The government’s investigation went ahead anyway, but a New York Times piece by C.J. Chivers from late 2004 noted “a chief obstacle has been Mr. Yushchenko himself, who has used the poisoning almost as a theme in his campaign, but has not fully cooperated with the authorities, even as the trail of his would-be assassin grows cold.” He was “busy with his campaign,” and besides, as campaign manager Zhvaniya explained, they had no faith that the official investigation would be anything other than a whitewash that would conceal the involvement of the authorities and their Russian backers.

Jane’s Intelligence Digest summarized the downside of the episode for Moscow-Washington relations. When coupled with other, known, Russian involvement in Uraine’s politics, news of the poisoning was “likely to lead to a reassessment of Western foreign policy towards Putin's increasingly authoritarian Russia.” The Observer compared this bizarre cloak-and-dagger episode to the “Cold War world of a John le Carré novel.” For those unfamiliar, a John le Carré novel is a fiction, penned in the west, crafted to glamorize a great Anglo-American struggle against Russia. It should be taken as no small irony that Kuchma’s or Moscow’s alleged choice to try to poison the opposition leader into submission should have caused such a reverse effect, giving him a projected ten-point boost to 60% projected vote, according to one Ukrainian analyst, who summed up “if we suppose this was organized by the authorities, who wished to disfigure [Yushchenko], then they lost.” He survived the attempt, unembarrassed and just as ambitious as ever. “Everything is going well,” he told supporters, wrapped in an orange scarf as he returned to campaigning. “I plan to live for a long time and I plan to live happily. I am getting better health every day.” And soon, of course, he would be President of Ukraine.


Sources:
- “Probing the Plot to Poison Ukraine's Yushchenko.” St. Petersburg Times. Issue #1044(10), Tuesday, February 15, 2005. http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=2747
- Chivers, C.J. “A Dinner in Ukraine Made for Agatha Christie.” New York Times. December 20 2004.
- Yushchenko's Poisoning: The Background” Jane's Intelligence Digest. January 21, 2005. Added January 27 2005 to http://eng.maidanua.org/static/emai/1106783418.html
- Associated Press. “Doctors seek cause of Yushchenko illness.” USA Today. December 8 2004. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-12-08-austria-yuschenko_x.htm
- Bransten, Jeremy. Ukraine: Doctors Debate Whether Opposition Leader Was Poisoned. RFE/RL. September 24, 2004. http://rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/09/6346bded-0125-4d10-a4ee-296efffb6eba.html
- Schechner, Sam. "What Is Dioxin, Anyway?" Slate. December 13, 2004. http://www.slate.com/id/2110979/
- Loof, Susanna. “Ukrainian Presidential Candidate Viktor Yushchenko Poisoned With Dioxin.” Associated press. December 11 2004. http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2004/Ukrainian-Yushchenko-Dioxin11dec04.htm
- Raimondo, Justin. "The Yushchenko 'Poison Plot' Fraud: He's poisoning Ukrainian politics with lies." Antiwar.com. December 15, 2004. http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=4164
- Pancevski, Bojan. "I received death threats, says doctor who denied that Ukrainian leader was poisoned." Telegraph. March 27 2005. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/27/wukr27.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/03/27/ixportal.html
- Stoyanova-Yerburgh, Zornitsa. “Who Poisoned Yushchenko?” Worldpress.org. December 13 2004. http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/1995.cfm
- Nagle, Chad. “Booze, Salo and Mare's Milk... Did Yushchenko Poison Himself?” Counterpunch. December 20 2004. http://www.counterpunch.org/nagle12202004.html

UKRAINE’S FATE AND THE BRZEZINSKIS FLANKING IT

A FAMILY PROJECT
Adam Larson
Caustic Logic / Guerillas Without guns
posted 2/17/07
last edited: 2/27/07

In the context of a great game with Russia, the emphasis on Ukraine is understandable - it had been the 2nd most powerful Republic in the USSR and its agricultural heartland. It is the birthplace of the Kievan Rus, the original Slavic culture that Russians trace their own culture back to. It is home to about 10 million ethnic Russians, roughly 20 percent of the entire population there, shares hundreds of miles of common border with Russia, and provides a historically useful buffer space from European invasions, which seem to occur every so often. It has absorbed Napoleonic and Nazi assaults, massive famine, and the Chernobyl disaster and continues to be one of Russia’s biggest trading partners and the place most Russian gas pipelines to Europe run through. Clearly, Ukraine as a geopolitical prize is epic; it’s the biggest thing one can take from Russia besides Russia itself. It seems a stretch to even attempt such a move, but apparently the successes of Belgrade and Tbilisi had left some people feeling very cocky.

American designs on securing Ukraine in the Western camp go back at least to 1997, when Zbigniew Brzezinski, in his book The Grand Chessboard, described Ukraine as one of five key “geopolitical pivots” for control of Eurasia (the others being Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, and South Korea). Furthermore, the CFR heavyweight pointed to Ukraine as the final target in extending the “democratic bridgehead” - the contiguous chain of pro-West Democracies like France and Poland - across Europe and right to Russia’s doorstep. An article in Foreign Relations (the official publication of the CFR) explained that this was targeted against Russia: “[T]he heart of the book is the ambitious strategy it prescribes for extending the Euro-Atlantic community eastward to Ukraine and lending vigorous support to the newly independent republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus, part and parcel of what might be termed a strategy of “tough love” for the Russians” Even the magazine noted a bit too much tough in the love: “Brzezinski's test of what constitutes legitimate Russian interests is so stringent that even a democratic Russia is likely to fail it.”

And this tough love ran in the family, with Brzezinski’s son Ian having been an advisor to the newly-independent Ukrainian parliament (director of international security policy at the Council of Advisers) from 1993-94, while also serving as Executive Director of the CSIS American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee. Note that Brzezinski’s tenure ended in the same year Kuchma came to power and turned the country east. Ian has since then continued lobbying from the outside to bring Ukraine into the EU-NATO fold. “Ukraine should be a central component of the West's strategy for Europe.” the younger Brzezinski explained to congress in 1999. But before the adoption could be completed:

“Ukraine will have to make, on its own, the difficult internal decisions necessary to overcome its economic stagnation, its rampant corruption, and its polarized politics. […] After a decade of billions of dollars of Western assistance, the initiative must now come foremost from a Ukraine characterized by aggressive reform.”

Ian was appointed shortly after 9/11 to be the Pentagon’s representative to its European NATO partners and a pivotal part of the decision of who will join next. But his hopes of internal reform started to seem less likely as 2004 dawned with President Kuchma and the PM set to take his place disinterested in such changes and steadily gravitating to the East and Moscow’s sphere.

This is where Viktor Yushchenko, Pora!, dioxin, and the Orange Revolution come in.
After coming to power in Kiev, Yuschchenko played well to Western audiences from day one. When he made his first visit to Washington in early April 2005, he gave a rousing speech to the assembled Congress, receiving a standing ovation as the hero of the Orange Revolution, a white Nelson Mandela who had suffered poisoning, not prison. It is relatively rare, and usually considered a high honor, for a foreign leader to be invited to address a joint session of Congress. CNN ran live coverage, and was sure to have Mark Brzezinski - Ian’s brother – present for analysis. The onetime director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs for the National Security Council and foreign policy advisor to the John Kerry presidential campaign was hopeful that Yushchenko could “show the Ukrainian people that he can not only talk the talk, but walk the walk in terms of essential transformations within Ukraine.”

On a working visit to Poland at the end of August, a still faintly scarred Yushchenko had a photo taken with Ian and Mark’s father, the exalted Zbigniew Brzezinski in the land of his birth. They clasped hands and gazed smilingly at each other as NDI’s Madeleine Albright looked on with a grin. The “democratic bridgehead” had been extended as Zbig had prescribed eight years earlier, and he seemed very happy about the whole affair. The decade-running family project had yielded tangible gains, but the situtaion would soon complicate and the smiles would fade.