On Tuesday the 14th of December, I finally met, actually sat down and talked with, a Yanukovych supporter. As I've mentioned both in the journal, and in my story about a trip to the train station, doing so was not easy. The supporter in question is Alex, who you may recognize from the over-a-dozen comments he's put up on the site. To his credit it was him, not I, that offered to talk.

Now, right off the bat, I am going to have to make a qualification. At one place on this site, he has referred to himself as "Alex, Yanukovych supporter", but at another he has stated that "I am not as much supporting Yanukovych as voting against our so-called democrats [Yushchenko and Tymoshenko]." I still count this as a Yanukovych supporter, though, because the vast majority of them seem to be voting like him: against Yushchenko rather than for Yanukovych. For example, take these Cossack militia members and villagers from Crimea, who think Ukraine's future is not with Europe and Lenin is more alive than people living today. Or these Donesk protesters, who would  prefer secession to "that fascist Yushchenko".

Prior to meeting Alex, the only two Yanukovych supporters I'd met personally were the sweet grandma living in my building and the Yanukovych supporter walking by Tent City one day. Both thought Yushchenko was the Antichrist.

As a result, I expected the discussion to be odd but manageable. I had a sense of foreboding, stemming from the fact that I am the worst debater in the history of mankind, but I dismissed the feeling. Certainly I could at least remain calm and put forth a rational argument, right? Sadly, no.

***

When I met with Alex I found him to be a fresh faced young man, with the earnest expression and pleasant lilting accent that I associate with many of best college students at the Business Institute I taught at in Kherson. His wife came, too. She was an extremely slender woman with light-brown hair and a nice, if somewhat worried default expression. His mother-in-law came, too. She had the standard Ukrainian grandma build, and familiar kindly aggressive demeanor. The type of woman who will require that you put on a hat because she is worried you will become sick otherwise. Two friends of his came, too, but I hardly registered anything about them other than a dark haired student and a stocky working man. The most I heard from them was when I left to go home. They said thanks for coming and told me not to be too frustrated.

We met in a pizza place over pizza and a beer, because if you're going to get agitated, you might as well have pizza and beer.

"I do not think Yushchenko and Yanukovych are so clearly western and eastern if you look at their actual records," I lead off with, "It's more a question of one candidate working by democratic means, and the other acting like a strongman.

"Ah, so you consider Yushcheko a democrat then?" he responded.

"Uh, yeah, why not?"

"No, he is no democrat. He is an oligarch like all the others. He stole money all through his term as Prime Minister. When he was in charge of the National Bank, millions of dollars that was supposed to go to the IMF went missing, but do you hear about that now? No. People are just speaking from emotions, they do not wish to listen to reason.

"I've never heard of this IMF thing, I've asked you to show me it. Show me this article."

"You've never heard of it because you are not looking for the information. It is all available online."

"Then find it for me!" I snapped.

"I will," he said. [And he did. He gave me this, this, this and this connection to an IMF report. The report references a PricewaterhouseCoopers audit which is sadly no longer available. The IMF report and PWC audit agreed: the Ukrainian government misreported assets to the IMF, and consequently gathered a significant amount of money in 1997-98. This occurred during Yushchenko's term in charge of the National Bank. More than that I don't know, back to the the pizza, beer, and argument.]

"Yushchenko was also in the frontier guard during soviet times, and it is a proven fact that the frontier guard was directly under the supervision of the Ukrainian secret police."

"What? Yushchenko was not some government spy, he was a banker--ban-ker."

"He was also a leader in his branch of Komsomol (The Communist Youth League) when he was young, just like Tymoshenko, and I guarantee you that all the people who were Komsomol leaders in Soviet times became mafia leaders afterwards."

"What is this crap! The man was a banker!" I cried, unable to keep my composure.

"Look, I'm telling you this as someone who's lived his whole life and seen the transition after the fall of communism. Are you telling me I don't know my own country?"

"No, I'm going to tell you that you are wrong about this protest and wrong about Yushchenko."

"You will not convince me that Yushchenko is less of a monster than Yanukovych. You will say that Yanukovych is mafia, and I will say yes, of course. But Yushchenko is more so than he."

"What? You're telling me that Yushchenko and Tymoshenko are just as bad as he, when he was a damn rapist?"

"Rape, huh, and caught under the Soviet system, which you then trust very well? They caught Yanukovych and put him in prison, but for what Yushchenko and Tymoshenko did, they never caught. Do you know he got two years for rape? Doesn't that seem a little... light, to you?

"Short. Yeah, so?"

"The usual term for rape was fifteen years, but he got only two, that's not a normal rape case, and definitely not normal under the Soviets. This does not sound like a rape case."

"What? Are you trying to convince me he was a political prisoner or something?"

"No, I am telling you the case was questionable, and all the Yushchenko supporters trumpet it like it was so important, when Yushchenko was stealing money and gathering his own mafia. Now he is much worse, because he has gathered people out on the street by pretending to be a new savior."

"People came out to protest against an election that was a fraud."

"For a spontaneous protest, right? Well, if this protest was spontaneous, who cleaned up the streets? Who paid for the tents, and the food, and the radio station and the portable toilets that people were using? All this was planned at set up by Yushchenko's campaign, and by Pora, an activist group which is paid for by the West and the US."

"But they didn't buy people to come here, the people just came!"

"Yes, of course, and what did they find when they came here: military tents, and food cooking units and heaters and a more. That wasn't just there, no, this was planned."

"This democracy you're talking about is also only for only one side," his wife interjected, "you are only allowed to express one point of view in Kyiv today. If you think otherwise, you're just supposed to keep quiet."

"What do you mean?" I said. "Just look, the opposition has just had a protest here which attracted over a million people, hundreds of thousands over 17 days and not one incidence of violence, the police say the crime rate dropped 30%."

"People are afraid to speak up."

"Oh, c'mon," I said, flustered, "not one incident. They had them in Donetsk..."

"One incident I know personally. My friend put a blue ribbon on her car a few days ago, when she got back she found all the windows and the headlights smashed. Is that what you call the democratic process," she said.

"Well I didn't know that," I said. "But still, no beatings, no killings..."

"Well, of course, no beatings..." said Alex, before I cut him off.

"Yanukovych supporters did that," I said.

"No, what are you talking about?" said his wife.

"Luhansk. A huge group of Yanukovych supporters beat up a bunch of Yushchenko supporters, and then there was a Canadian that got beaten up in Donetsk I think.

"I've never heard of this, where did you find this information?"

"In news articles!"

"Please find them for us."

"Fine!" [They are here, here, and here for Luhansk. The Donetsk articles I read from Kyiv Post and Jane's Intelligence Digest, both subscriber only, find an extract at bottom of page]

At this point Alex's mother-in-law weighed in. "I want to tell you the reasons why I will not be voting for Yushchenko," she said, "In 1998 [when Yushchenko was PM] they cut off all the gas and heat to our apartment in the Donetsk region. Imagine that! They cut off our gas and heat in the middle of winter..."

"Why is this Yushchenko's fault, do you think he just pocketed the money?"

"Wait," she said, "in contrast, when Yanukovych became Prime Minister, one thing he did was start paying back those energy debts from the regional budget, getting our gas back on. Which one helped us? Who do you think I will vote for?"

"KrivorizhStal. That's it, KrivorizhStal. The biggest, most profitable steel mill in the country and it was sold off to Yanukovych's buddy Akhmetov in a totally corrupt bargain."

"Well what about Odesa and KirovogradOblEnerho, two local energy distributors that were privatized under Tymoshenko?" said Alex's wife. "They were sold for the amortization value. Just the amortization value, that's pennies, do you call that a fair privatization?"

"I don't know. What were they worth? Lots of things after the collapse were worth nothing, the infrastructure was all collapsed and crumbling."

"These were just local distributors, they still had the networks, they didn't own any factories, they were still worth something. No, she didn't sell them for just the amortization value, she sold them higher and just pocketed the rest."

"And another thing," said his mother-in-law, "when Yushchenko was in charge the 'guest workers' forced into slave labor under the Nazis, they might have gotten their reimbursement in the center, but the ones outside of Kyiv, they got nothing. Those people had suffered terribly and Yushchenko did nothing...

"But what about Yanukovych?" I said.

"Please let me finish," said his mom. "Yushchenko also wanted to make Donbas into another Chernobyl. He wanted to ship all the nuclear waste from Western Europe here, he made a deal with them to dispose of all that nuclear waste in Donbas [the Donetsk/Luhansk area]."

"That was why he was fired as PM," said Alex. "He and the whole Cabinet were fired by Kuchma for trying that."

"I remember," said his mother-in-law, "the trains of toxic waste came right up to the border of Ukraine, and Kuchma said, "I don't know anything about this, and he fired Yushchenko and all the Cabinet. So I would never vote for Yushchenko. Even if Yanukovych were five times worse I would never vote for Yushchenko.

I sat there trying to think of what Yanukovych would look like if he were five times worse, trying and failing. Eventually I calmed down and asked Alex another question.

"Ok, on my site you agreed that the results of the election were fraudulent, but you said it wasn't worth what all the people were out there protesting about. Is that true?"

"Well the results were fraudulent..."

"And that means the wrong man won," I interjected.

"Well, that's not certain."

"What? But the exit polls, they caught Yanukovych cheating."

"Yushchenko got 80-90% in the west, just like Yanukovych got in the east, but people don't think that's suspicious. His side cheated, too, it's just that Yanukovych's supporters haven't been taking them to court like they have been doing to the Yanukovych supporters, and you don't see anything because you only get one side."

"But they tried in the OSCE and they said it was baseless..."

"And the exit polls are all bought. Russia has its interest and its exit polls and the US has its."

"What is this about the US!" I said, losing the last of my composure, "The US didn't know shit about Ukraine until the protests, we just don't have the attention to spend on Ukraine.

"Well maybe that's true, maybe certain people do think Ukraine is too important, that it should be important to America..."

"No, no, no! It's not about Ukraine. Ukraine is important, ask Poland. This is the US, we don't have enough attention for Ukraine. We didn't even know where it was, we knew about it like we knew about the Philippians, it was a country far away. We couldn't have been controlling this."

"But if Yanukovych is Russia's man, and Yushchenko has no one, how did he defeat Yanukovych? Do you think it was because of the will of the people, no! Do you think college kids sitting in the streets were able to get Yushchenko's way in Parliament? No, he needed a strong fist. That is how people win in the Ukrainian government; we have never had any history of democracy. In the last election I voted for Yushchenko, but I will not be in this election, and you cannot say it is because I was paid."

"Your problem," he continued, "is you think this is a choice between an oligarch and a democrat, but it is just between two oligarchs; only one says he is good. And you go and show only one side of the situation, you never show the other side."

"That's because there is not other side!" I screamed. And at that point Alex had to translate for his companions, and so I got a few seconds to try to get a hold of myself. It was enough that I was able to at least ask the next question in a controlled tone.

"Ok," I said, "so then, you say there is only one way to gain power in Ukraine--to have a stronger fist, but then, Ukraine would never be able to have... then it would have to always be evil."

"Excuse me?"

"Then nobody could win the government in Ukraine without being, evil. Is that true?"

"Well, yes."

I don't remember much else besides that. We finished our beers and went home.

["UKRAINE: BEHIND THE CRISIS"
Jane's Intelligence Digest, UK, Friday, December 3, 2004
...There has already been open intimidation of foreign election observers. On 29 November, a gang of thugs attacked a long-term observer deployed by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and a Canadian citizen working for the John Howard Society, a non-governmental organization working in Luhansk, leaving the latter in a coma...]