Following in the footsteps of Georgia, or Belarus?

The Messenger, Georgia
Nov 26 2004

As the first anniversary of the Rose Revolution passes, a situation
with many parallels to Georgia’s is developing in Ukraine. A liberal,
pro-Western leader with the backing of the majority of the population
loses the presidential election to the Moscow-backed prime minister
amid cries of election falsification. Thousands of people take to the
streets to protest the apparent electoral fraud, and the situation is
balanced on a knife-edge, between peaceful resolution and civil war,
and between Russia and the West.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian Central Election Committee announced the
official results of Sunday’s presidential election, giving pro-Moscow
prime minister Victor Yanukovych 49.46 and opposition leader Victor
Yushchenko 46.61 percent of the vote. However, Yushchenko points to
what he describes as widespread election violations in claiming that
he won the election, his arguments echoed by election observers and
supported by exit polls, which according to The Moscow Times give
Yushchenko 54 percent of the vote compared with 43 for Yanukovych.

The international community has responded in markedly different ways
to the election results. While President Vladimir Putin of Russia
congratulated Yanukovych on his victory even before the results were
announced; in Washington U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said
the United States would not accept the official result, adding that
“there will be consequences” for Ukraine. EU President Jose Manuel
Barroso echoed Powell’s comments, adding that the EU would “make our
position clear” with Putin at an EU-Russia summit on Thursday.

While there are many parallels with the situation in Georgia
twelve months ago, there are several differences, differences
which make the possibility of violence a more real threat. For one,
although Yushchenko appears to have the backing of the majority of
the electorate, Yanukovych also has a great deal of support: across
the whole of Eastern Ukraine the largely Russian-speaking population
support the prime minister’s pro-Moscow politics. Furthermore, Russia
is less prepared to see a pro-Western president in Ukraine, which
is a much larger country, and of greater strategic importance, given
that it stands between Russia and the European Union, than Georgia.

Given the importance of Ukraine, the current developments will have an
enormous influence both on Europe and post-Soviet space. A pro-Russian
president of Ukraine will strengthen President Putin’s position in
the region, while a pro-Western president, with opinions and aims not
dissimilar to Mikheil Saakashvili’s, will inevitably provide Georgia
with a natural ally. Ukraine has historically been a good friend of
Georgia (it was the only country to provide Georgia with aircraft
to ferry refugees out of Abkhazia during the Georgian-Abkhaz war)
and there are huge prospects of collaboration should their internal
and foreign policy priorities coincide.

The president is aware of this, and although in an interview on Tuesday
he said that he as president should maintain neutrality no matter what
his opinions, earlier in the day at the opening of Sameba Cathedral,
the president congratulated the people of Ukraine in their own language
(he speaks fluent Ukrainian from his student days in the country)
and wished them a happy future.

As Saakashvili also noted, some supporters of Yushchenko were
carrying Georgian flags, a sign that the Rose Revolution has set a
precedent of peaceful overthrow of corrupt regimes that they hope to
follow. Indeed, last November’s events in Tbilisi were very significant
for all post-Soviet countries, providing a possible answer to the
questions of what the opposition should do when the state authorities
manipulate election results, and how can the opposition force the
state authorities to retreat and give up.

However, there is no certainty that a Ukrainian ‘Chestnut Revolution’
will follow Georgia’s ‘Rose.’ After all, looking at other post-Soviet
countries, we can see that the same scenario did not happen in
neighboring Armenia, while in Belarus the issue was not even on the
agenda. The President of Kyrgyzstan Askara Kaev even dedicated a
whole book to formulating and defending against the threat posed by
the Georgian Rose Revolution for other post-Soviet countries.

Whether a chestnut revolution brings Yushchenko to power or not remains
to be seen. There is a real possibility that the opposition protests
could lead eventually to open conflict between the sides, which would
be a disaster for the country. As with Georgia, the eventual outcome
may depend more on the role played by external forces – by Russia
and the West.

It is precisely these external forces that are at the root of the
conflict, which is all about, in the end, whether Ukraine is to be
come an authoritarian, Russia-orientated country like Lukashenko’s
Belarus, or whether it is to tread the path, as Georgia hopes to do,
towards democracy and European integration.