Some recent news about a Yanukovych-Tymoshenko alliance at:

LYING ABOUT RUSSIA
http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@25.DX2FhfPBLY3.4@.77480649/694

Also:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/11/18/002.html

Friday, November 18, 2005. Page 1.

Orange Believers Losing Faith

By Francesca Mereu
Staff Writer

Anatoly Medzyk / AP

Yushchenko giving a thumbs up while greeting supporters on Independence Square on Nov. 23, 2004, two days after a runoff election robbed him of victory.

KIEV -- One recent rainy day, Natalya Simonenko was suddenly overcome with nostalgia for the time she spent on Independence Square a year ago.

She opened the drawer where she kept last year's Orange Revolution memorabilia -- orange ribbons, a mug with President Viktor Yushchenko's portrait, an orange scarf, several orange flags and her favorite orange sweater -- and decided to throw them all into the trash.

"It was the right place for them, I felt relieved afterward. I couldn't even imagine myself throwing these things away before, but now ... " she said, her voice trailing off.

Simonenko, 26, a businesswoman from the Black Sea port of Odessa, was one of the many thousands of orange-clad people who last year crammed Kiev's central Independence Square to protest the fraudulent Nov. 21, 2004, runoff election that gave victory to then-Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. After two weeks of continuous protests -- often in freezing temperatures -- the election result was overturned, and in December Yushchenko was elected president in a rerun of the vote.

Like many participants in the protests, Simonenko hoped that Yushchenko would put an end to the cronyism and corruption under his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma.

But a year later, the mood of the participants in the Orange Revolution has switched from one of initial euphoria to deep disappointment, with many of those who took to the streets in protest now seeing no difference between the old and the new ruling elites.

And the team of Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, the hero and the heroine of Independence Square, are seen by many of their former supporters as failing to keep their promises.

Orange, the emblematic color of Yushchenko's supporters, is hardly seen on the streets of Kiev anymore, while opinion polls show that Ukrainians increasingly think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

"I was one of the few in Odessa to support Yushchenko; I traveled to Kiev to demonstrate," Simonenko said during a recent trip to the capital. "I used to argue with my family and my neighbors who supported Yanukovych. I wanted the country to change, but after a year I see that nothing has, corruption is still high, and the oligarchs are still running things."

In response to allegations of corruption within his inner circle, in September Yushchenko fired his government, including Tymoshenko, his prime minister, and his close ally Petro Poroshenko, head of the National Security and Defense Council, who was one of the main sponsors of his presidential campaign.

Yushchenko then struck an alliance with former opponent Yanukovych in an effort to secure the parliament's approval for his choice as prime minister, Russian-born technocrat Yuriy Yekhanurov.

Yekhanurov, who is close to Kuchma, was seen as a compromise candidate who could act as an intermediary between Yushchenko and the Dnipropetrovsk-based clan of Kuchma's son-in-law, oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. From 1994 to 1997 -- a time when several of the country's oligarchs made their fortunes -- Yekhanurov was responsible for overseeing the privatization of several large state enterprises.

Yanukovych is seen as representing the interests of the Donetsk clan, headed by Ukraine's richest man, Rynat Akhmetov. The Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk clans are among the several geographically defined oligarchic groups that during Kuchma's rule competed for control over the country's business and politics.

In their September pact, Yushchenko and Yanukovych agreed that there would no be prosecutions for electoral fraud from last year's elections, a move seen as a betrayal by those who helped Yushchenko to become president.

"The present authorities have failed to do anything 'orange people' would be proud of," said Pavlo Zubyuk, 23, a member of the Pora, or It's Time, youth group that organized many of last year's protests. "Even those who rigged the election results will not be punished. This is not what we were promised."

Since last December, Pora has split organizationally into two wings. One, known as the black Pora, has remained a pressure group, while the other, known as the yellow Pora, is running in next March's parliamentary elections as a political party.

On Sunday, Ukraine will mark the official anniversary of the Orange Revolution. As part of the celebrations, soup kitchens and a huge stage will be set up on Independence Square, just as they were during last year's street protests.

Despite her split with Yushchenko, Tymoshenko said that she would take part in the anniversary. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party, which is organizing the celebrations, said all those who supported his presidential campaign had been invited.

The black Pora, however, said it would hold a separate demonstration to press Yushchenko to fulfill his election promises.

Last year Nadya Prudyak, 24, now a leading black Pora member, was one of those who slept out in the tents on the square.

She canvassed for Yushchenko at the city's universities -- a job that she said had now left a bad taste in her mouth.

"Much of the old system we were fighting has remained. We were fighting not because we liked Yushchenko but because we hoped for big political changes. We wanted to get rid of the players of Kuchma's era, but nothing has changed," she said.

Many former Orange Revolution supporters blame not only Yushchenko for dashing of their dreams -- they blame Tymoshenko's government too, for allowing inflation to rise and failing to maintain living standards.

The new government initially raised pensions and salaries, but Tymoshenko and Yushchenko fell out over how to deal with the thorny issue of the Kuchma-era privatizations, when insiders laid their hands on large chunks of state industry in cut-rate deals. Tymoshenko called for hundreds of deals to be annulled, but Yushchenko favored a softer approach.

Government interference in the economy was blamed for scaring off investors and prompting an increase in food and gas prices. The economy has grown by less than 4 percent this year -- a shocking decline from last year's 12 percent growth.

During last year's protests, Yulia Artushenko, 59, a resident of Ukrainka, a small town 40 kilometers outside Kiev, brought fresh pies she had baked to the people on Independence Square. Now, she said, her enthusiasm has "completely gone."

"I believed in that revolution so much," she said. "I really wanted to live in a new country, but the only things that have changed are that food prices have gone up and that it's more difficult for pensioners to live now."

Scandals surrounding Yushchenko's government have also played their part in turning his former supporters against him.

In one particularly high-profile case, the high-rolling lifestyle of Yushchenko's son Andriy came under scrutiny as many asked where a 19-year-old student had come by a $100,000 BMW, an expensive cell phone and money to spend in Kiev's most fashionable nightclubs.

The online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, which supported Yushchenko's election campaign, was the first to raise the issue. But at a news conference, Yushchenko angrily accused one of the newspaper's reporters of being on someone's payroll.

"This is not what we expected from Yushchenko," said the paper's chief editor, Alyona Prytula. "When he was running for president, he promised that he would make public the incomes of all his family, but we're still waiting for that."

Prytula founded the newspaper five years ago with investigative reporter Heorhiy Gongadze in an effort to expose corruption under Kuchma's regime. In November 2000, Gongadze's headless body was found outside Kiev, and Kuchma was accused of involvement in the killing. Kuchma has denied any wrongdoing.

Soon after Yushchenko was elected, he pledged to find and punish those responsible for Gongadze's murder, but it remains unsolved.

"Yushchenko gave his word that Heorhiy's killers would be found, but he hasn't been able to carry out his promise," Prytula said.

Now, she said, the newspaper has broken with Yushchenko and is in opposition again.

"I'm tired of leading the opposition media. What I want is to be part of the normal media in a normal country," Prytula said.

The only positive change under Yushchenko, she said, is that the press is free -- and that journalists are no longer afraid of being killed if they criticize the president.

The sense of disillusionment appears reflected in recent polls, such as one carried out last month of 2,100 people by the Ukrainian Institute of Social Research. It found that 20 percent of respondents planned to vote for Yanukovych's Regions Party in March's parliamentary elections, while 13.8 percent said they would vote for Tymoshenko's bloc and just 12.3 percent for Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party.

In Simonenko's hometown of Odessa, where most residents speak Russian as their first language and Yanukovych won about 70 percent of the vote in last year's elections, she said friends and neighbors now laugh at her for supporting the protests.

"They say, 'So, what happened with your beloved Yushchenko?' It's so disappointing," Simonenko said.

She said the upcoming elections left her cold.

"I don't even know whom to vote for," she said. "What choice is there anymore?"

***********

This has an indirect relationship with Ukraine:

BREWING A RUSSIAN BACKLASH
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/9295-28.cfm

The NSNU website at http://razom.org.ua/ua/news/7990/ has just announced that today's NSNU council meeting voted unanimously to reduce its presidium to only 7 members, a threefold decrease.

The presidium now comprises Roman Bezsmertnyi, Yuriy Yekhanurov, Boris Bespalyi, Ivan Vasynunyk, Mykola Katerynchuk, Mykola Martynenko and Pavlo Zhebrivskyi.

Poroshenko apparently decided not to join the presidium 'for technical reasons' - a very Ukrainian explanation. So..no Poroshenko, Tretyakov, Zhvaniya, or Zvarych.

The same website also announced that the NSNU council agreed almost unanimously to commence activation of talks with Yulia's party 'Bat'kivshchyna'. Only one person voted against.

Meanwhile 'Ukrainska Pravda' at http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2005/11/18/35788.htm reports that the council 'almost unanimously' supported an initiative to relieve Bezsmertynyi from his Vice PM position. He is 'on holiday' at the moment.

Some some good news then for OR supporters especially in the light of recent rather depressing [from their point of view] opinion polls.

It seems to me that the people of Ukraine need to realize that what was special about the OR wasn't the politicians they were trying to elect.

It was about the sense of community and growing nationalism within their country. It was about experiencing personal release from the doldrums that had long set in under communism.

I'd love to hear more about the growth of civil society in Ukraine. What about Church-State relations? There was a growth in ecumenism in Cherkassy, at least among the younger people. How has that been taking root?

We need to take a less state-centric view and pay more attention to other developments going on.

I'm also a little confused about Tymo's party, has she locked her party into an agreement with Yanu's party, and, if so, why is NSNU trying to commence talks with her party? Or is that why they're trying to commence talks with her party?

dlw

I don't really trust a Russian paper to be honest about how the Ukrainian's feel about the OR. I'm sure there is a lot of questioning now, but I doubt very few of them wish that it had not happened. It's more like they wish it'd been followed up with better leadership.

dlw

Maybe the poison in Yushchenko is affecting his judgement. He has no one to trust.
It takes many, many years before a true democracy takes hold and functions normally so patience is very much needed!
One cannot clean up all the corruption in one year!!
Too bad, but anyway you cut it, Ukraine is doomed!

Zerkalo Nedeli has a good piece on the web that's translated into English entitled "One Year after Maidan".

dlw

LEvko: good news from the NSNU. Hopefully this will lead to still other steps to push Poroshenko from the party.

dlw: You're right about that Zerkalo Nedeli article, it's quite good. It can be found here: http://www.mirror-weekly.com/nn/show/573/51852/

I'm afraid I know nothing about what is going on with the church presence in Ukraine. I generally concentrate on politics, and to get more, you would probably need to research statistics (maybe in Zerkalo Nedeli) on how the religious makeup of the country is changing, then supplement that with more discussion with believers. I haven't been able to keep up with even the handful of regular church-goers I interacted with in Kyiv.

Michael: The latest news you refer to is not news, it's a sideline chat at Guardian you take part in. Its focus is Russia, as is the focus of everything you write on. Any inclusion of Ukrainian details is tangential at best.

The Moscow Times article isn't bad, it just doesn't support any of your most important claims, either: that Yanukovych legitimately won, that protesters were bought off, that the West was controlling events...

We (other supporters and I) could have wished that the Orange Revolution had improved the government more. Some important gains have been made: a modest decrease in corruption and bureaucratic waste, greater press freedom, continued decline of the Communists and the happy collapse of the SDPU(u), increased social spending, greater democratic freedom which should make this election much cleaner, and a muber of others. (http://jamestown.org/edm/article.php?article_id=2370499)
The Yushchenko government has also failed to do some things, and made mistakes on others: poor economic policy, bringing Yanukovych back into the mainstream, allowing Poroshenko to aggregate power to himself, keeping Pyskun and doing nothing about Gongadze, and the general weakness of Yushchenko.

But what I find interesting is the alternatives the people mocking the woman in Crimea offer. There aren't any. It's not like even they think Yanukovych is a better alternative - one of the major mistakes of Yushchenko's government has been treating him like he was a legitimate politician. And more importantly, they're arguing that protesting against the falsified election wouldn't change anything, a defeatist non-argument reiterated by Mr. Uke from Canada's inevitable doom.

I say, as I have said before: the vote for Yushchenko was a vote for precedent more than President. Ukrainians overturned a clearly fraudulent election, and are now better able to hold politicians accountable than they were under Kuchma or would have been under Yanukovych. That's a very important victory. Roll on!

Dan

The link to the mentioned GUT International forum in question specifically deals with Ukraine.

Over 40% voted for Yanukovych, no ands, ifs or buts and according to poll data cited in a recent UPI article by Peter Lavelle - Yanukovych is far from down and out.

Previous posts and links support my view about the "so called orange revolution." One shared by a good many as well. I saw yesterday where even a BBC news anchor referred to it in the same manner.

By PETER LAVELLE


MOSCOW, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Ukrainians will elect a new parliament in
March and one-time prime minister and former presidential candidate
Viktor Yanukovych heads the political party leading the polls.


The "Orange Revolution" that delivered Viktor Yushchenko to the
presidency is in disarray, and has given Yanukovych an election
platform full of irony: Campaigning against the corruption and
incompetence of the ruling elite.


According to a recent public opinion poll conducted by the Razumkov
Center, Yanukovych's Party of the Regions tops voter preference for the
slated March 26 parliamentary election with 17.5 percent. The People's
Union-Our Ukraine electoral bloc that includes Yushchenko as its
honorary chairman is second with 13.5 percent and the Batkivshchina
(Fatherland) Party of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko close
behind at 12.4 percent.


Ukraine's other parties represented in parliament -- Communist Party of
Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine and the People's Party of
speaker of parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn -- polled above the necessary 3
percent to wins seats in the next legislature. Other polls put the
blocs that support Yushchenko and Tymoshenko in a dead heat or the
latter slightly ahead.


Topping the polls and connecting with the electorate have never been as
important for Ukraine's political parties. As part of the behind
closed-doors negotiations during last December's "Orange Revolution,"
Ukraine will, as of Jan. 1, change from being a semi-presidential
political system to one dominated by a parliamentary-presidential form
of government. With Yushchenko and Tymoshenko now political opponents,
Yanukovych seeks to take advantage of the split in the "orange"
coalition.


Parliament will determine who occupies government ministries and who
will be prime minister -- currently decisions made by the president.
The parliament also may be able to force the president to hand over
many of the powers that have slowly fallen to the presidency over the
years, though they legally belong to parliament or the prime minister.
There should be no doubt that that Yanukovych and his allies have been
patiently waiting for these changes


New parliamentary rules mandate the party that garners the most votes
will have the right to determine who will be named prime minister. This
may or may not happen if Yanukovych's Party of the Regions wins the
largest number of votes. Irrespective of the rule, Yanukovych is
angling to make a political come back with popular support.


In September, Yushchenko fired the entire Cabinet, replacing Prime
Minister Tymoshenko and his former comrade-in-arms with Dnipropetrovs'k
Gov. Yuri Yekhanurov. Yushchenko's government had been severely
criticized for not addressing what the "Orange Revolution" was supposed
to end: Endemic corruption and political favoritism. Yushchenko's chief
of staff, Olexander Zinchenko, who resigned and initiated the Cabinet
shake-up, has accused national security secretary Petro Poroshenko of
bribery, media intrusion and obstructing the justice system. Poroshenko
resigned, but remains a political insider Yushchenko appears unwilling
or unable to shake-off. This is Yushchenko's biggest problem,
Tymoshenko's issue to manipulate and Yanukovych's very passive message
to tell voters, "I told you so."


Yushchenko has shown himself to be an indecisive and incoherent
politician. Kiev's voters would probably consider his greatest
accomplishment to be ridding the city of its corrupt traffic cops, but
that was not what the "Orange Revolution" was all about. The "Orange
Revolution" was originally about Ukrainians demanding something be done
about the country's worst malady -- corruption in the political elite
as the result of a few oligarchs controlling the economy and state.


When she was prime minister, Tymoshenko played the anti-corruption and
nationalist card to the detriment of the economy. Her calls to revisit
thousands of privatization deals of state assets scared off foreign
investors and the dramatic increase of social payments stoked
inflation. During Tymoshenko's tenure in office, Ukraine's GDP annual
growth nose-dived from 12 percent to 4 percent.


Yanukovych is sitting pretty and has good reason to do so. Waiting on
the sidelines and watching the former opposition -- now divided --
appeal to the electorate, Yanukovych is slowly consolidating his
support as the leader of the Regions of Ukraine party. He was partially
rehabilitated when Tymoshenko's government was dismissed and his
September "Memorandum of Understanding" with Yushchenko returned him to
public eye in a positive way and damaged Yushchenko's reputation among
his core supporters. Accusing both Tymoshenko and Yushchenko of running
a lawless government, many Ukrainians disappointed with the "Orange
Revolution" appear to be listening.

Dan, I understand that you have a hard enough time keeping up with the political developments in Ukraine. My point is that I think part of the problem is that we have state-centric focus. The precedent in the OR wasn't just about peaceful change of powers, it was also about a turning away from the anger and distrust of others that had onset from so many years of communist rule. It was about people smiling when someone looked them in the eye and being willing to help out strangers.

We can't let Viktor and Yuliya get away with casting the OR as if it were about them. It was about young people starting to care about more than just their professional career, to care more about the future of their country.

One of the most interesting tidbits from the article is the psychological profile of Yuschenko. It seems that the loss of his handsome figure may have taken a serious toll on his self-image and underly his unwillingness to engage himself in the more unpleasant aspects of his job. He's lost too much in romanticism, rather than dealing with the deteriorating situation for his party and his administration.

That's something we can't change, but I believe that we can hope and pray for change on that front.

dlw

dlw - I don't respond to all of your posts, man, but I just wanted to let you know that's because I often agree with you but have nothing to add. Here again, I agree that it wasn't about politicians so much as overturning the fraudulent election. I also hope people don't lose sight of that.

Michael: Ok, this time I've read the posting. Except the only people there are you and a guy who posts saying "I doughnut agree with you because your argument is full of holes." Other than him it's like 12 postings by you. And a couple of them are about how great the Guardian forums are. That's a little bit creepy, actually.

The stuff you've posted there, you've also posted here, so... not really anything new for me. Yes the Lavalle article is decent. I also have Google Alerts and have read it, as well as the other articles up there.

I agree with the doughnut guy. You're not going to convince me that the Orange Revolution was a fraud, Yanukovych won legitimately, Ukraine isn't really independent from Russia like Poland is, the British Helsinki Human Rights Group is a legitimate organization, or most anything else you've said here. Why do you even keep posting? What do you do besides post here?

The media generally focuses on conflict and disappointment rather than trends and long-term views. The problem is that analysts rely too often upon the Guardian, NYT, etc. to get their information. The job of an analyst is to look at long-term trends rather than whether
Natasha in Odessa is ridiculed for voting for Yushchenko. And analysis is not supposed to be clouded by personal political ideologies like "The OR was a CIA plot because I hate Bush," or "These articles against Yushchenko are wrong because the press is anti-Ukrainian," etc.

Look, those of us who lived in Ukraine during the OR understand the context in which events happened. We do not refer to it as a "so-called orange revolution" but a very real event with meaning. We know by reading pieces whether someone is writing out of context. The BBC calls it a "so-called revolution" for a different reason than RIA Novosti would.

Recent surveys (i.e. the poll discussed in Dzerkalo Tyzhdnia) shows that Ukrainians are dissapointed with Yu and Yulia. The Western media, the source of analysts' information, does not put this in context. The Ukrainian word used in the surveys is "rozcharuvannia" -- dis- enchanted - ment.

Lidia Wolanskyj wrote that: "Disenchantment is no more than a good dose of reality, a dropping of the blinders, the illusions that we ourselves invented. Once reality has been faced, there is a good chance that a normal relationship can develop if there is some goodwill on both sides."

This means that the participants of the OR after one year realized that they themselves must work to fix Ukraine's problems. This is difficult. Sadly, most Ukrainians are fatalists and believe, as Uke from Canada said, Ukraine is doomed. So much patience and hard work and after a year -- nothing! Taken out of context, Western "analysts" equate this as a failure of a "so-called revolution"

Michael: Yes, Ya won 40% of the vote. Those voters included communists, progressive socialists, many disinfranchised SPU voters, SPDU voters, etc. It is not accurate to assume that Party of Regions will garner 40% of the Rada in March.

C'mon now Dan.

That GUT International forum has many other contributors.

The British Helsinki Human Rights Organization is more credible than Freedom House.

Neo-Nazis and the very misinformed were among those who voted for Yushchenko.

I'm interested in the subject matter which is why I participate here.

Okay?

Michael,

Don't believe the hype. Connecting neo-nazis and Yushchenko is classic of propaganda drummed up by the Yanukovych campaign (Read A. Wilson's Virtual Politics or L. Pavliuk's forthcoming article in Canadian Slavonic Papers for more info). Sadly, westerners like Jonathan Steele fell for it.

I lived in western Ukraine -- the "heart of Ukrainian nationalism" during the elections. I did not see one neo-Nazi march. UNA-UNSO (I guess that is the group to which you are referring) is a fringe political party, like the Green or Libertarian parties in the U.S. If you actually talked to Ukrainians, they will tell you that fringe groups do not represent the vast majority of Ukrainians' political views.

Your logic sounds like this in the American context: Anarchists march at anti-war protest rallies in the U.S. Many of these people voted against Bush in the 2004 elections. So John Kerry is a radical left winger who wants to bring down the government. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

It's cool that you are interested in the subject matter discussed. But as far as misinformation goes, those of us who speak Ukrainian and Russian fluently have less problems sifting through the bullshit than those who rely on the Guardian or Washington Post or Freedom House or BHHRO to get information about Ukraine.

I'd never heard of BHHRO, so I looked them up. I consider myself pretty objective, but BHHRO is way off the charts. "Credibility" apparently means agreement with an organization's ideology.

Leopolis: As usual, I agree with you on 95% of stuff. I tend to lean too heavily on English-language sources because I run short on time otherwise. (I read Russian only slowly)

Kudos to you for researching the BHHRG. As LEvko has pointed out, they sent only 4 observers (compared to 1600 in the OSCE group) but despite that, and the fact that they are a joke among western non-profits, they are one of the three pillars of Michael's view on the OR. The other two are the CIS observation team and and one member of an obscure Jewish observer mission.

Michael: Commenting in general is ok. But your habit of grouping together maybe three sentences like: "all the stuff you say is spin", "my sources are far more credible than yours", and "the BHHRG is a more credible source than the OSCE" and leaving them there without any supporting evidence is annoying in the extreme. You've said at least 15 times that the OSCE is a biased source and the only think you have so far defended yourself with is that Taras Kuzio joined the team, and he wore an orange scarf in an interview first.

It's a waste of my time to go through and comment all your naked assertions, (never mind that you comment more than all the other commenters on the site combined). To be honest, I'm wondering how much of my space and time I'd like to allow you to waste because you are at least polite to my other posters and to me.

Dan:

Likewise with the idea of "Soviet nostalgic" southern and eastern Ukraine.

Their kinship with Russia goes back for a period longer than Communism's criminal legacy. I know more than my shart of anti-Communist Russians, Ukrainians and Jews from Odessa, Crimea, Kharkov and Kiev who preferred Ya over Yu.

The BHHRG is more believable than FH. The latter received CIA funding during the Cold War, when it used McCarthyite tactics in disparaging the anti-war movement of the 19 sixties. To my knowledge, FH has never criticized the bigoted legacy of the Captive Nations Committee and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.

Do you subscribe to Johnson's Russia List (there's a good amount of Ukrainian news and commentary in it)? Foreign Minister Lavrov detailed the biased manner of the OSCE.

If I ever land a strategic media position dealing with the former USSR, I'll be sure to keep you in mind. I go after the other side because they're the ones often dominating the scene. I have full confidence in my ability to support my contentions. You're not dealing with someone who only hangs out with his own flock. No challenge in that scenario.

Michael: I don't subscribe to any Russia-focused news. Not my deal.

Going to the Russian Foreign Minister for a balanced view of the OSCE is idiocy. Try going to a respected (this discounts BHHRG, who is your only source) non-profit or non-partisan group in any of the *developed* democracies in the OSCE for a decent description.

What source do you have that states that Freedom House was guided by the CIA?

Dan:

But the Polish foreign minister should be more trusted?

BS!

I know FM Lavrov to be an earnest sort who tells it like it is.

To not be so Russia focused is to not understand a good portion of Ukraine.

FH themselves have admitted this past, while claiming it no longer exists. I recall Karatnycky saying as much.

Michael: Recall, recall, when you have a link, let me know.