That's good news, Walter - thanks for the update.
I suspect this means a landslide for Yushchenko. If he lives that long.
Well, as Ukrainians said in the life reportages, I just listened, the 'knew' this already.
Using here a quotation from the Guardian:
Quote:If anything, the release of the results only strengthened resolve for the upcoming campaign among the opposition, since they blame for the poisoning squarely on Yanukovych or his supporters.
Source
Interfax-Ukraine, btw, published the full English (!) report about the poisoning at 19:25 local time (=16:25 GMT).
This from Interfax Ukraine is about an hour old:
Quote:Austrian doctors say Yushchenko was poisoned
KYIV. Dec 11 (Interfax-Ukraine) - A Ukrainian parliamentary deputy cited the director of an Austrian clinic as expressing confidence on Saturday that Ukrainian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko's strange illness this autumn had been caused by an attempt to poison him with dioxin. Michael Zimpfer, director of the Rudolfinerhaus private clinic in Vienna, made his statement at a news conference, deputy Oleksandr Tretyakov, who is in the Austrian capital, told Interfax. In September, Yushchenko had tests on several occasions at Rudolfinerhaus after a sharp deterioration in his condition. This was followed by allegations that his illness had been caused by biological weapons. The Vienna clinic did not confirm this at that time but said his illness was abnormal. On October 22, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office denied the allegations and said an investigation launched by it had shown that Yushchenko's illness had been caused by a herpetic infection.
The Office quashed a criminal investigation it had launched. Ukraine's parliament appointed its own investigating commission but not all of its findings have been published yet.
Yushchenko is back in Vienna for one more blood test. Tretyakov said the doctors' conclusions about the use of dioxin were based on Yushchenko's latest blood tests. "Specialists at the clinic have sent the blood to various countries and have come to the same conclusion, that it was poisoning," the deputy said. "They are absolutely sure that its was dioxin poisoning, the dioxin content was less than 1 milligram," he said. He said that, at the beginning of his illness, Yushchenko had his liver enlarged seriously. Tretyakov said Yushchenko's Vienna doctor, Mykola Korpan, and the two chief Austrian liver and blood specialists were present at the news conference. "The doctors said that nothing is threatening his life as of this moment, his organs are more or less in order, and his liver is enlarged insignificantly," Tretyakov said. But he said Yushchenko would take a fairly lengthy treatment for his face skin condition. "But there is no need for any hospital treatment for this, and with a correct diet and correct treatment his face will normalize after a long period of time. But there will be something left behind, of course," Tretyakov said.
He said Yushchenko planned to return to Ukraine shortly.
This, also from Interfax Ukraine, is about a half hour newer (and totally predictable
):
Quote:Russian official says doubts Yushchenko was poisoned
MOSCOW. Dec 11 (Interfax) - A senior Russian medical official questioned allegations by Austrian physicians on Saturday that the sensational illness of Ukrainian opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was the result of dioxin poisoning.
"Dioxins do not belong to immediate effect poisons: poisoning develops for years and decades, and so it is impossible to get a dose of dioxin today and get poisoning tomorrow," Yury Ostapenko, head of the Toxicology Information Center of the Russian Health Ministry, told the Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy.
"It's true that was one of the first signs of dioxin poisoning is skin damage, but that is a very distinctive form of acne. Besides, the way of delivery of the poison to the planned victim is dubitable," Ostapenko said.
He supported the Austrian doctors' point that dioxin, if it was given to Yushchenko, "might have lasting effects on his health as those substances take a very long time to decompose."
"Dioxins are more an environmental than a toxicological problem. They are very tenacious substances, which are released in the course of industrial production, they build up in the air, water, food, and practically everyone has already received or may receive a dose of dioxin in any kind of situation," Ostapenko said.
Still haven't seen anything about it from
Kyiv Post's website though this from them is interesting:
Quote:Belarus opposition members stream to Kyiv protests
Dec 10, 11:01
(AP) - "Today Ukraine, tomorrow Belarus!" read the banner strung up this week in a tent camp for opposition protesters in Kyiv.
It's the sort of political statement that rattles backers of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, branded Europe's last dictator. It's especially troubling for them because it's a message coming from a number of Belarusian opposition leaders who have traveled here to watch Ukraine's popular revolt - and take notes on democracy in action.
"The Orange Revolution has reawakened hope in Belarusians and has colossal meaning for us," said Igor Stakh, a 23-year-old member of a Belarusian youth movement called Zubr, or Bison, whose tent sit among those from his young Ukrainian comrades.
And it's not just Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north. Liberal leaders and opposition activists from Russia have also been spotted at the tent camps and on the podium beside opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko as he fought to annul the fraud-ridden Nov. 21 presidential runoff. Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that outsiders stop meddling in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic ...
The following AP-news got quite different (=negative, critizising) headlines in other countries and different papers:
Quote:$65 million in U.S. money aided Ukraine political groups
American officials deny activity amounts to interfering in vote
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Saturday, December 11, 2004
WASHINGTON
The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating that he won last month's disputed runoff election.
U.S. officials say that the activities don't amount to interference in Ukraine's election, as Russian President Vladimir Putin alleges, but are part of the $1 billion that the State Department spends each year trying to build democracy worldwide.
No U.S. money was sent directly to Ukrainian political parties, the officials say. In most cases, it was funneled through organizations like the Eurasia Foundation or through groups aligned with Republicans and Democrats that organized election training, with human-rights forums or with independent news outlets.
But officials acknowledge that some of the money helped train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government candidate.
For example, one group that got grants through U.S.-financed foundations is the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, whose Web site has a link to Yushchenko's home page under the heading "partners." Another project financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development brought an official with the Center for Political and Legal Reforms to Washington last year for a three-week training session on political advocacy.
"There's this myth that the Americans go into a country and, presto, you get a revolution," said Lorne Craner, a former State Department official who heads the International Republican Institute, which got $25.9 million last year to encourage democracy in Ukraine and more than 50 other countries.
"It's not the case that Americans can get 2 million people to turn out on the streets. The people themselves decide to do that," Craner said.
The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said, "There's accountability in place. We make sure that money is being used for the purposes for which it's assigned or designated."
Since the Ukrainian Supreme Court invalidated the results of the Nov. 21 presidential runoff, Russia and the United States have traded charges of interference. A new election is scheduled for Dec. 26.
Opposition leaders, international monitors and Bush's election envoy to Ukraine have said that major fraud marred the runoff between Yushchenko and current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, who was declared the winner.
Yushchenko is friendlier toward Europe and the United States than Yanukovych, who has Putin's support as well as backing from the current Ukrainian government of President Leonid Kuchma. Putin applauded Yanukovych during state visits to Ukraine within a week of both the Oct. 31 election and the Nov. 21 runoff.
Yushchenko's backers say that Russian support for Yanukovych goes beyond Putin's praise and includes millions of dollars in campaign funding and other assistance. Putin has said that Russia has acted "absolutely correctly" with regard to Ukraine.
Documents and interviews provide a glimpse into how U.S. money was spent inside Ukraine.
"Our money doesn't go to candidates. It goes to the process, the institutions that it takes to run a free and fair election," said Richard Boucher, the spokesman for the State Department.
The exit poll, paid for by the embassies of the United States and seven other nations as well as four international foundations, said that Yushchenko won the Nov. 21 vote by 54 percent to 43 percent. Yanukovych and his supporters say that the exit poll was skewed.
The four foundations involved included three financed by the U.S. government: The National Endowment for Democracy, which gets its money directly from Congress; the Eurasia Foundation, which gets money from the State Department; and the Renaissance Foundation, part of a network of charities financed by billionaire George Soros that gets money from the State Department. Other countries involved included Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.
Grants from groups financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development also went to the International Center for Policy Studies, a research group that includes Yushchenko on its supervisory board. However, the board also includes several current or former advisers to Kuchma.
Source
As a few of you have notice, I really really want something to happen in Belarus. My optimism may be going up a tiny notch from cautious.
I recently (today) read an article that reveals the US has funnelled large sums to the Opposition in Ukraine.
Wonder how the world will spin this...?
Also, finally the dioxin poisoning story breaks. The doctors confirmed it. Pretty damn weird and Soviet-sounding to me. Who was the guy who was poisoned by being stuck by the tip of an umbrella...? A journalist? I watched a segment about it over a year ago. Did anyone see it?
Anyway. They say Yuschenko will never look the same again.
Lash wrote:Who was the guy who was poisoned by being stuck by the tip of an umbrella...? A journalist? I watched a segment about it over a year ago. Did anyone see it?
Bulgarian. Georgi Markov, journalist and writer. Famous case. He was murdered in 1978 in London, where he went to live after defecting from Communist Bulgaria nine years before - by a killer armed with a 'poisoned umbrella'.
EDIT: Googled up a
BBC link that adds:
Quote:In 1992, General Vladimir Todorov, the former Bulgarian intelligence chief, was sentenced to 16 months in jail for destroying 10 volumes of material relating to Markov's death.
A second person suspected of destroying documents committed suicide, while a Bulgarian spy who was believed to be involved in the assassination died in a car accident.
Markov was an acclaimed novelist and playwright in Bulgaria prior to his defection to the West in 1969.
He was particularly known for his harsh criticism of the autocratic rule of the then communist leader, Todor Zhivkov, and his broadcasts were seen as providing inspiration to the dissident movement in Bulgaria.
Walter Hinteler wrote:Well, as Ukrainians said in the life reportages, I just listened, the 'knew' this already.
Problem is, the country's so divided and the media have been so unreliable for so long, the third to a half of the Ukrainians who are on Yanukovich's side will probably simply not believe it, even if the Ukrainian stations do cover it.
Concerning the money -- I have no doubt that it will be used for all its worth by Yushchenko's opponents -- but it's not news, is it? And hardly scandalous, IMO ... the EU, too, has been funding pro-democracy groups across Eastern Europe ... In one of the articles I posted earlier, the National Democratic Institute was mentioned as funder, and I'm sure the Socialist International, the Liberal International and individual political parties in Europe (for example through their organisations for international contacts and research) all fund civil society groups and even actual political parties in Eastern Europe as well, by helping them organise seminars, trainings or meetings to increase co-operation ... Right on, I say.
Perhaps it'll even infuse a bit of realism back home in the West again, when it comes to one's enemy image of the opposition - I mean, it's interesting to read in Walters article above that Soros and the Bush admin have been funding the same groups, isn't it? That's hardly news either, but for some Americans still a surprise I'm sure ... It's pretty standard though. Left and right here are left and right, but when they go east to find partners, they often find themselves roughly all on the same side, confronted with a nationalist/neo-communist coalition on the other side that all of them would prefer out ...
For example, I remember how right after 1989, when all the Dutch parties (like the German etc ones) went to establish some first contacts, they all took their turn visiting Hungary too. To everyone's surprise (not least the Hungarians' themselves), the Alliance of Free Democrats was asked by both the right-wing liberals, the Democrats and the Labour Party to become their partner ... ;-). (I dunno who they ended up with exactly, actually, just that they're now in the Liberal International and that the Labour Party in the late 90s finally resigned itself to co-operating with reformed ex-communists instead.)
I would prefer the US stayed out of this, for many reasons. The main one being: should Yushchenko win the next election, that the independence of the country not be in question, nor interfered with. Also, that there not be an expectation "return favours" owed by the Ukranians, whether it be to the US, or any other country.
Good point, msolga, about the expectations of reciprocity.
At the company Christmas party last night, I spent some time speaking with P. He arrived in Canada from Ukraine exactly one year ago yesterday. He'll be going back later this month, to be part of the group of election observers being sent by Canada. I made him promise that he'd keep us up to date on what's happening there.
Lash wrote:I recently (today) read an article that reveals the US has funnelled large sums to the Opposition in Ukraine.
Wonder how the world will spin this...?
Yes, two posts above your response :wink:
Och. I guess there's no hiding now. I rarely read long cut and pastes. Doesn't stop me from posting them once in a while...
Anyway, it seems we have a huge fund for promoting democracies--and have been using it for quite a long time. I was unaware of it. I guess this is the source of the money going to Iran's students, possibly Chinese dissidents, obviously the EE's... I like the idea. < a smile >
If ya can't come right out and beat 'em, buy 'em some enemies, eh?
nimh wrote:
Perhaps it'll even infuse a bit of realism back home in the West again, when it comes to one's enemy image of the opposition - I mean, it's interesting to read in Walters article above that Soros and the Bush admin have been funding the same groups, isn't it? That's hardly news either, but for some Americans still a surprise I'm sure ... It's pretty standard though. Left and right here are left and right, but when they go east to find partners, they often find themselves roughly all on the same side, confronted with a nationalist/neo-communist coalition on the other side that all of them would prefer out ...
Worth focussing on - I think it's probably why you don't hear too much fussing about the funding from people in the U.S. Everybody understands way way way down deep (but doesn't like to come out and say) that they're all actually on the same side, politically. Perhaps facing the centre bar from slightly different angles, but from the same side.
Financial & organisational support and enticement are a good alternative to military force when one wants authoritarian regimes abroad to be tackled some way or other ...
Lord knows the EU has used it to all its might, supporting democratic-minded civil society groups and withholding support from governments until certain conditions were fulfilled ...
