Maidan 2 in the Making?

Unless it’s just another hoax, a number of telltale signs suggest that mass mobilization has begun.

Speaking at a press conference today, Yushchenko stated his willingness to take appropriate action to defend Ukrainians’ constitutional rights. A draft directive to dissolve parliament arrived at the Vice Speaker’s desk during an emergency session of the Anticrisis Coalition.

Reports began to emerge of train and busloads of Donetskites being shipped to Kyiv. Rounded up at their workplaces, they will provide ground support for the PRU’s Friday forum “A United Ukraine is Our Future” (read: no Coalition of ImpUnity, no future for Ukraine). This event is designed as a counterweight to the first meeting of the National Rescue Committee to be held on the same day. The opposition rally will be held on Saturday, the day the NSNU convention opens. Tymo cut her French trip short to take part in the events.

Is this the real thing or just an extreme point in Yu’s bargaining with Ya? Stay tuned and you’ll find out.

Coalition of National ImpUnity v. National RescYu Committee
Ya Paranoid About Lu; Ty Optimistic About Yu

A duel of press conferences held in rapid succession on Friday had Ukraine’s heavyweights speak their minds.

Yanukovych took pains to impress us with something so pompous that even shamans of “guided democracy” like Putin would puke at it. Speaking before an audience of some 579 accredited reporters, Yanukovych unveiled a smoking pot of plans that included the following:

• Keeping Lutsenko off the streets of Kyiv for the sake of “peace and stability”
• Rebranding the Anticrisis Coalition to that of National Unity (read: ImpUnity)
• Buying a 2/3 constitutional majority stake in the Rada (read: prostitutional majority)
• Using that majority to make Russian a second official language

Having digested the best of Donbas cuisine, we tuned our stomachs to a different set of ingredients. Tymo went about her business by:

• Appealing to the President’s better self and offering herself as an alter ego
• Citing legal technicalities for Yu to disband the Rada, adding that he has no other choice
• Maintaining a positive emphasis and rekindling the spirit of Maidan
• Announcing the re-establishment of Maidan’s National Rescue Committee

At a time when the Coalition of National ImpUnity puts talk shows off the air and disenfranchises millions of Ukrainians, the President has no right to be a bystander. This country is getting ripe for a rescue operation.

Ohryzko Rejected Again

As expected, the Anticrisis-controlled parliament turned down Yushchenko’s pick for Foreign Affairs Minister. Word of advice for Ohryzko: If you really want this job, take a crash course in unlearning Ukrainian.

Turncoats, Inc: Party-Shopping MPs Form Daughter Faction to Anticrisis Coalition

Apparent objective:

1. Act as a sponge for similar-minded MPs badly-needed by the Anticrisis Coalition to gain a supermajority (300 votes) with which to silence Yushchenko’s veto-making machine;
2. Maintain a pretense of acting independently.

Current membership list:

MP Inga Vershynina, former BYuT member
MP Maxym Lutsky, former BYuT member
MP Mykhailo Hladiy, former BYuT member
MP Mykhailo Zubets, former BYuT member
MP Olexander Borzykh, former BYuT member
MP Olexander Volkov, former NSNU member
MP Olexander Yedin, former BYuT member
MP Volodymyr Tolstenko, former BYuT member
MP Volodymyr Zaplatynsky, former NSNU member
MP Volodymyr Zubyk, former BYuT member

Ukrainian democracy has been suffering from post-election disenfranchisement for a long time. You come to the polls, you vote BYuT or NSNU, and the next thing you know a portion of people whom you voted into power to represent your interests is finding the grass to be greener on the other side.

Part of the blame goes to BYuT and NSNU. That’s what happens when you guys go selling parliamentary seats to gold-diggers. You can’t seriously expect more from people who can’t tell money-making from law-making. And so the never-ending story goes: “Money to get power, power to get money.”

Red Card for Rudkovsky
Transportation Minister Probed for Turkmenbashi 2-Bashing

Minister Mykola Rudkovsky, SPU, one of the founding fathers of the Anticrisis Coalition, stands accused of running a travel agency on the side. Las month, the agency sparked a diplomatic scandal between Kyiv and Ashabad when it hosted exiled Turkmen opposition leaders, or so they presented themselves.

In the middle of the night, Minister Rudkovsky called Ukrainian missions in Vienna and Varna, urging that visas be granted to the Turkmen by 5 am. The decision had been approved in the upper levels of government, he added.

What followed was a vain voyage of two former high-ranking Turkmen officials, Khudaiberdy Orazov and Nur-Mukhammed Hannamov, ex-Vice Premier and ex-Ambassador to Turkey, respectively. Their value offering: better access to Turkmen gas wells in exchange for some sort of support.

It’s no secret that experts see no challenger to Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, the heir apparent to the recently deceased Turkmenbashi. Therefore, the easy question is, what was Rudkovsky’s interest in all this and was it worth it? The tough one is, were those opposition guys the real McCoy and, if so, what matters more to Ukraine — taking care of number one or babysitting democracies yet to be born?

Whatever the answers, once the exiles showed up in Kyiv, the Turkmen Embassy lodged a sulfurous note of protest, informing the Ukrainian authorities that warrants for their arrest had been issued by Interpol.

After the visitors safely sneaked out of Ukraine, the scandal seemed to have died quietly. Until a Saturday piece in ZN shed light on the story. The article states that Rudkovsky’s travel business has incited the wrath of Yanukovych.

Rudkovsky is suing the author for defamation. He considers himself to be the target of a smear campaign of reprisals orchestrated by his former business partners, some of whom have found employment in the Secretariat of the President. He claims it all began with his bold decision to remove a score of state-owned enterprises from the privatization list.

The SBU and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have launched separate probes. Both the Ukrainian Ambassador in Vienna and the Consul General in Varna have been relieved of their duties for issuing visas in violation of procedure. Apparently, the spasmodic turf wars so symptomatic of our government’s chronic gold/gas rush have acquired a Turkmen dimension.