by CKR
Colin Powell, Gerhard Schröder, and Jack Straw have all expressed concern about fraud in the Ukraine election and have called for solving the crisis by peaceful means. Lech Walesa is in Kiev to help mediate.
The blogs say that Russian troops are being brought into Ukraine and are in Kiev now to reinforce or take the place of Ukrainian police and army troops, many of whom are rumored to be loyal to Yukoshenko or unwilling to take action against fellow Ukrainians.
The demonstrators remain peaceful but determined. Vladimir Putin, who has now congratulated Yanukovich twice and who visited Ukraine during the campaign to support Yankovich, has warned that outsiders have no moral right to push the Ukraine into “mass mayhem.” Kuchma's government warns ominously of civil war.
The crisis proceeds much as the late struggles in the Soviet Baltic republics or last year’s revolution of the roses in Georgia did. The blog reports have the same exhilaration as the stories of Estonian independence.
The difference is between Mikhail Gorbachev and Vladimir Putin, between the Cold War and an uneasy War on Terror. Russia is not opposed to the West in the way the Soviet Union was, but in 1990, that relationship was improving. It’s now been rocky; the US has mostly been silent or approving of most of Russia’s recent actions, the EU more critical. Putin is practical and knows the world is watching. The good news is that he’s not talking about the demonstrators as terrorists.