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Moscow Times. 3 April 2002. Russia Counts Its Blessings in Ukraine. Excerpts. MOSCOW -- Russian observers agreed Tuesday that there was at least one bit of good news for Moscow in the radically changed Ukrainian parliament: Viktor Yushchenko's pro-Western party will not have a majority. With vote-counting nearly complete, Yushchenko's Our Ukraine looks set to have 110 of the 450 seats in the fractured parliament, followed by President Leonid Kuchma-backed For United Ukraine with 102 seats. The Communist Party is expected to end up with 66. "What is most important for me is that the right-wing bloc, which dreamed of gaining half of the seats, did not get it," Russian State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov said Tuesday. The problem for Russia in Ukrainian politics is that Ukrainian liberals are largely anti-Russian nationalists and those advocating good relations with Russia largely come from the Communist domain or the unpopular president's nomenklatura. As a result, the Kremlin supported Volodymir Lytvin's For United Ukraine and the Communists. President Vladimir Putin, who is popular in Ukraine, met with Lytvin and Communist leader Petro Simonenko in the Kremlin during the campaign -- giving them support "no money can buy," Kremlin-connected political analyst Sergei Markov said. "Yushchenko has been trying throughout these months to establish ties with the Kremlin to meet with Putin, [Prime Minister Mikhail] Kasyanov or [presidential chief of staff Alexander] Voloshin, and we discussed beginning a dialogue with Yushchenko," Markov said. "But each time we thought: Why talk to other people's puppet? We don't believe that Yushchenko will be able to fulfill even one of his promises." In the words of Markov and his colleague from the Kremlin-connected Efficient Policy Fund, Gleb Pavlovsky, who also played an active role in Ukraine's electoral campaign, Yushchenko's bloc was an "American project." Not of the White House or State Department, Markov said, but of "marginal" Russophobic lobbyists on Capitol Hill represented by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Senator Jesse Helms. Markov added that, as in the State Duma after the 1999 elections, the pro-president faction in the Rada will likely hold the key to many important decisions. "It may form a bloc with the Communists on foreign policy issues and with nationalists on economic reform," he said. Markov nonetheless remained hopeful that Yushchenko is not a certain presidential favorite. "He will become president only if others sit around doing nothing," Markov said. "Ukrainian presidents are made not in the west, but in the [more populated] east and south." --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
