As we’ve said, we don’t know much about what is happening in Ukraine. The conventional story line is plausible, but we can’t vouch for it. Reader Mike Kaye pointed out an alternative version of events by Srdja Trifkovic in Chronicles magazine. Trifkovic writes:
The media myth: An East European “pro-Western, reformist democrat” is cheated of a clear election victory by an old-timer commie apparatchik. A wave of popular protest may yet ensure another Triumph of Democracy a la Belgrade and Tbilisi, however.
The fact: neither the winner of the presidential election in the Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, nor his Western-supported ultranationalist rival Viktor Yushchenko, are “democrats” or “reformers” in any accepted sense. They differ, however, on the issue of the Ukrainian identity and destiny in what is a deeply divided country. Ukraine is like a large Montenegro, split between its Russian-leaning half (the south, the east) and a strongly nationalist west and north-west that defines its identity in an unyielding animosity to Moscow.
The prediction: “The West”
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