In the remake of the 1969 heist flick The Italian Job, there is a scene where Charlie Croker is talking to Skinny Pete (played by rapper Gawtti aka King Folsom) about a group of Ukrainian gangsters/garbagemen. Skinny Pete tells Charlie that he has learned that one must "never mess with Mother Nature, mothers-in-law and mother-freakin' Ukrainians." I like that exchange because when I was growing up I used to hear similar things said about Hungarians and it instilled in me a certain pride in my heritage. I was thinking about this today while I was looking through the latest on Ukraine.
Former Ukraine President recently spoke to UNIAN in what is billed as his first post-revolution interview. Ukrayinska Pravda (Georgiy Gongadze's online mag) described him as looking "shabby." Much of what he is trying to do is rehabilitate himself; he openly refers to the Orange Revolution, going so far to state that, "the fact that the Orange Revolution took place also
proves that we are different, because many people started to think not
solely about the daily bread, but about something more global." He is implying here that his deft handling of the Ukraine economy actually enabled the Orange Revolution. I don't know if there is a word in Ukrainian or Russian for chutzpah, but if there is, it should be used to describe Kuchma.
He also boasts about his foreign policy acumen, although we aren't treated to an explanation of how Ukrainian nukes ended up in China and Iran, which is now denying that nuclear warheads were ever delivered from Ukraine. No third party country was mentioned. What we do get is some interesting not-so veiled threats to the new government of Viktor Yushchenko:
The Gongadze case became too loud all over the world, so Yushchenko's burning desire to put an end to it is quite explicable. I do not exclude that my other fantastic talks with Victor Yushchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko , Plyushch and many other politicians could be printed equally well and then used against the present authority.
He's basically offering a hypothesis on why we haven't heard much of the tapes yet. And he directly, for him, denies any Russian role in Gongadze's murder:
I don't believe in the Russian special services as well as in the American services. They were not related to this on the first stage. But then the whole world wanted to make use of it. I said that we had to follow that path; we had to sound off, to cover ourselves in mud and tell all the possible lies to the whole world.
Last week the former president denied that he was looking to get back into politics which seems like a wise decision. He has established a "Ukraine" fund a looks to profit from his years at the top of Ukraine's government. For her part, PM Yulia Tymoshenko says that the government will go after Ukraine's oligarchs:
"A congress of all Ukraine's oligarchs is being planned for April 13 under the code name 'Assembly of Ukrainian Metallurgists.' We are perfectly aware that nearly all of the Ukrainian metallurgical complex belongs to five families as a result of work done by [former] president [Leonid] Kuchma. An attempt will be made there to break the government's decision to raise freight transportation charges for Ukrainian Railways by 50%," Tymoshenko said.
Meanwhile, Donetsk regional chairman Borys Kolesnykov has been arrested for "attempted extortion of the property of another person with a threat of murder." So says the office of Prosecutor General Pyskun, a former Kuchma apparatchik. Donetsk was the scene of some of the most fervent pro-Russia, anti-Yushchenko activity. This is a risky move as former PM and election loser Viktor Yanukovych has said publicly that his detention would "mobilize the opposition" to the government in that region. Today, he warned that if what he terms a witch-hunt is not ended, the country could see another revolution.
Ukrainian ex-presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovich on Monday made a call to preserve civic peace in Ukraine. He addressed an open letter to “the high-level group of participants in round-table conferences for the settlement of the political crisis in Ukraine during the presidential elections”. He asks the mediators “to use their lofty prestige to prevent the threat of another confrontation being provoked by ill-considered actions of official Kiev in matters of domestic policy.”
“Terror against political opponents of the present authorities has started in Ukraine. People are not just fired. They are branded almost enemies of the people. They are denied any prospect to be full-fledged members of society,” Yanukovich writes.
He warns of the threat of “a new crisis that is in the offing because of the policy of the new authorities.” The author asserts that “people who are not to the government’s liking are blacklisted, attempts are made to close TV channels the authorities cannot control.”
On Friday, about 2000 supporters of Yanukovych and Kolesnykov rallied in Kyiv calling for Kolesnykov's release from another charge of embezzling shares of an unnamed Donetsk-based company. Interior Minister Yuri Lutsenko had said earlier that he was ready to go after more "well known people in Ukraine."
Tymoshenko and Yushchenko are in a tough spot here. They want to attract more and better business while going after corrupt business practices left over from the previous regime. New, legitimate businesses should welcome the investigations but the government can't appear to be supporting government ownership of industry. Kuchma is already making accusations that the country is slipping back into socialism.
Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski is welcoming Yushchenko to his country and offering to support Ukraine's bid for EU membership but says that it cold take a lot longer than Yushchenko would like.
Warsaw has been consistently in favor of Ukraine's EU membership, but the EU has not talked about beginning negotiations yet. Poland and nine other mostly former communist nations joined the EU last May.
Poland has been by far the country's strongest advocate in the EU, said Valeriy Chaly, an analyst at the Razumkov Center in Kyiv.
"Today Poland is Ukraine's only strategic partner," he told The Associated Press.
Kwasniewski also promised to back Kyiv's efforts to have the EU ease visa requirements for Ukrainian students, scientist and doctors. Yushchenko has been pushing for reforms in recent meetings with European leaders.
And lastly, it's nice when you see something you've written about appear in a major newspaper, even if it's not your writing. From today's Seattle Times:
"There is an Orange spirit in Russia," said Andrei Sidelnikov, the young head of the new Russian youth group Pora! (It's Time!), which took its name from the young activists at the heart of the street protests late last year that ultimately brought Viktor Yushchenko to power in Ukraine.
"We are living through a new era of street politics. Our young people are becoming more and more active. ... They might explode when they can't take it any longer."
Sidelnikov's assessment, delivered at a Moscow news conference last week, would have seemed ludicrous a few months ago. But following the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the government of President Vladimir Putin was unexpectedly shaken by thousands of retirees who took to the streets to protest cuts in their benefits. They were joined by the youth wings of opposition political parties.
The government quickly backed down and the challenge dissipated, but the fear or expectation of radical change has lingered.
"If we do not manage to consolidate the elites, Russia may disappear as one state," Dmitri Medvedev, the Kremlin chief of staff, said last week in a rare interview with the Russian magazine Ekspert. "The breakup of the Soviet Union will look like child's play compared to a government collapse in modern Russia."
Now, where have I heard that before?
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