http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe...ons/index.html
Party of Regions is Yanukoviches party not Tymoshenkos, I used to think western media intentionaly misrepresented the facts, now I am starting to believe that they are just fing incompetent when it comes to eastern Europe (as I can’t see the benefit of this particular error).
But Anyway back in 2004, when Americans were celebrating the success of their little investment in Orange revolution, I said it would not last. And now I am here for the obligatory “I said so”. The second round didn’t really matter as both candidates were basically pro Russian, the only pro US candidate, the incumbent Victor Ushenko having finished the race in the first round with 5% of the votes (It was really kind of pathetic that he tried to sound confident of victory in the face of overwhelming reality, to his credit he managed to be quite active in the last weeks of his presidency, drafting plans to join NATO, declaring national holidays to celebrate the formation of Ukraines SS division and granting criminals national hero status, all of which obviously is going to be rolled back now).
Second round was really between two pro Russian candidates with a difference that one was consistently so, and the other adopted the stance because she is a self serving bitch that saw that she had to do an about face to keep it close.
It was always a matter of time as soon as money stopped flowing from US, Ukraine would turn to its traditional ally. Considering that it is pretty much the same people, I was in Kiev in October for a friend’s wedding this October and was pleasantly surprised that everyone spoke Russian, not Ukrainian from bank managers to border guards, and I don’t mean speaking Russian with tourists like me they spoke it between themselves.
Although personally I don’t particularly like Yanukovich he is not the smartest politician and not strong willed enough having let victory be stolen from him in 2004 elections. Hopefully in the next elections Tigipko will have enough support to be president, seeing as he is probably the most competent of the current batch.