You're gonna be impotent! No, not you, Mr. President!
Iryna Lutsenko: I wish him...faithful friends. I wish him health. I wish him no harm. I think he’s a bighearted man...and...a strong man...uh...a man who achieved absolute power that we’re witnessing now in our country shouldn’t be vengeful. He should respect his enemies...or opponents.
Mustafa Nayem: How could this be that you’re greeting the current president in charge and yet you blamed Viktor Yushchenko for what happened to your husband? Mrs. Lutsenko: Uh...I don’t have it in me to greet him on this New Year. I...can’t...can’t be insincere here. I don’t have good words for him.
Nayem: But you do have them for Yanukovych? Mrs. Lutsenko: They’re not good. They’re neutral.
So it’s safewords for Yanukovych and badwords for Yushchenko?
Seriously, why blame Yushchenko? Don’t you guys deserve each other?
2005: Yushchenko becomes president, Lutsenko becomes minister; 2006-2007: Lutsenko goes on sabbatical; wireless story leaks out; 2007-2008: Lutsenko makes comeback, backs Tymoshenko; 2009:Fun in Frankfurt; Yanukovych-Tymoshenko coalition talks. Law-abiding citizens beaten, tortured and murdered by police: thousands High-profile criminals caught: um...1? Ihor Zvarych? 2010: Game over.
Quite a president we have now. Finally, somebody takes Yushchenko’s campaign promises a bit more seriously! “Bandits will sit in jail,” remember?
Makes you want to rehash your hubby's “one law for all” (“not just for me”) recipe, huh?
He had the Old Man (Yushchenko) wrapped around his finger and the Constitution under his thumb.
PM Yanukovych (2006): Constitutional reform has been finalized and now it’s already effective in our country. It’s been effective for...11 months now. And politicians’ efforts to take whatever steps toward the current Constitution — they...will not...have...legal consequences. [...] How come such great democrats want to rein...ruin their own decisions that they made in December 2004 and voted on in parliament in an omnibus bill? [...] We will defend it and we have every reason to do so — together with parliament — defend...rrr...first of all, the current Constitution...
Where one stands depends on where one sits, n'est-ce pas?
Ihor Indylo died one night shy of his 20th anniversary.
He and a friend had a little drink at the dorm in the evening. As the two parted, Ihor had an argument with an on-campus police officer and ended up escorted to the Shevchenko rayon police precinct.
Later in the evening, the faculty pleaded with the officer to let him out for the night. The officer declined, saying Ihor was misbehaving at the precinct and would be detained for three days.
As Channel 1+1 found out, ambulances had rushed to the precinct four times during the night but had refused to hospitalize Ihor. In the morning, the faculty called Ihor’s parents to tell them they could take their son’s body home.
The police side of the story: Dead-drunk and unruly, Ihor fell and hurt himself. Three times.
However, the autopsy report somewhat contradicts that account, Channel 1+1 says.
Shockingly, the autopsy had been performed before the parents learned of their son’s death. The pathologist wouldn’t allow them to fully examine his body.
Ihor’s relatives thought he had choked. “All this time we had this version that he choked,” says Ihor's mother as she fights back tears.She then reads from the autopsy report: “Brain hemorrhage, skull fracture, damage done as a result of impact with a blunt object.”
Police are now putting pressure on students to testify that Ihor had started a brawl and arrived at the precinct with his skull already fractured. (That’s what the students told Channel 1+1 in phone calls.)
The faculty says Ihor didn’t have drinking problems. An eye witness says Ihor looked fine as he stepped into the police car.
Yanukovych says he wants to know what happened as Shevchenko rayon police chiefs have been suspended in the ongoing probe.
I’ll tell you what happened, Mr. President. It’s “Ukraine for the People,” remember?
As long as the people of Ukraine don’t act like the people of France, Greece and Romania, you can sleep well.
A few more facts and figures. Ukraine employs a police force of 302,000 for a population of 45,905,300 (2010). By comparison, the U.S. employs a police force of 883,600 for a population of 305,529,237 (2009).
The SBU, our security service, totals 33,000. That’s the size of the FBI.
Size means security? Wrong. It means corruption, mismanagement and brutality.
This law enforcement culture had flourished under Kuchma and Yushchenko. (Anatoliy Mohyliov, the current minister of the interior, served as the Crimean police chief under Yushchenko. And boy did he police those Crimean Tatars.)
Upholding the law of the jungle requires a lot of people skills.
Do the math: The president of Poland used a medium-range Soviet Tu-154 made in 1990. By contrast, Yushchenko had inherited a fleet of six jets: from aging Soviet Tu’s and Il’s to a Ukrainian Аn-74TK-300VIP made in 2003.
In 2007, Yushchenko purchased a long-range Airbus A319 — complete with bars, bedrooms and showers — at an estimated taxpayer cost of $40-$60M. Meanwhile, Libya and the UAE ordered two medium-range An-74’s from Ukraine at a cost of $12M apiece.
(Nominal GDP per capita: Poland, $13K; Libya, $10K; UAE, $47K; Ukraine, $3K.)
That said, I wonder what kind of coverage Channel 1 would come out with if one of our channels erred like this.
On January 29, 1918, 400 Ukrainian cadets defended Kyiv against 4,000 invading Bolshevik troops, as Bolshevik Russia sought to overthrow Ukraine’s independent government.
With Ukraine still part of the USSR, the move symbolized the Ukrainian resurgence (or rather its early perestroika-driven signs) after centuries of foreign domination.
If you’re looking for a parody of the Orange Revolution, look here.
They didn’t make it to Kyiv as grassroots protesters five years ago. Now they have their chance — as paid political tourists — outside the Central Election Commission building.
(The practice has gained currency since the decline of the Orange Revolution and has been employed by Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and Yanukovych alike.)
Some look joyful. Some look drunk. Some look stupid. Some blame Yanukovych for going unpaid for hours. Some huddle before the cameras to prevent the reporters from shooting the scene.
Medvedev: This time, Kyiv, we request That you pay us cash for gas Putin: Not those tangos-fandangos And unruly Yushchendogs 1:38-1:45
That’s as closely as I can poetically translate it.
Ющенками (plural declined form) is a portmanteau of Ющенко and щенок (Yushchenko and dog). Literally, щенок means a puppy, but when applied to humans it means a dog.
I first heard this portmanteau during the Orange Revolution, from an elderly Yanukovych supporter who kept screaming “Вы щен-ки! Вы щен-ки!” (“You’re dogs! You’re dogs!”) Vastly outnumbered, she faced a cheering crowd of “Ю-щен-ко! Ю-щен-ко!” (“Yu-shchen-ko! Yu-shchen-ko!”) supporters.
And guess what? Nobody laid a finger on her. Nobody swore at her. Meanwhile, Yanukovych would call Yushchenko supporters “kozly” (“jerks”) and “Orange rats.”
He wouldn’t apologize until the Orange Revolution hit him hard. When he did apologize, he justified himself with a neo-Biblical interpretation of the word kozly (literally, goats) as meaning traitors.
If you’re a sovereign nation that neighbors Russia, you can count on a biiiiig Christmas wish list!
Q: Who is our Russian candidate in...uh…the course of this presidential campaign in Ukraine, if anyone?
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: Ha...well...uh...it’s probably Viktor Andreyevich* Yushchenko, if we proceed from the notion that the bul...the bulk of...uh...my...uh...statements on the Ukrainian subject coming from me...from me were in connection with the actions of the incumbent president. On a serious note, Russia certainly doesn’t have and cannot have its own candidates there. Uh...Ukraine is a self-reliant state, a sovereign state, where the president will be determined by the people. And I’m confident that they are capable of sorting through both the political declarations and the course of the difficult political struggle that’s going on there — they almost have twenty candidates there, I think. In summary, the one thing I would very much want is that the next...president of Ukraine — and we naturally will accept any choice of the Ukrainian people (it’s evident, it’s a norm of international law) — would be inclined toward good, cordial — brotherly, if you will — relations with our country: uh...so that the Russian language would out of harm’s way, so that bilateral contacts would be allowed to develop, so that our joint economic projects would develop, so that there wouldn’t be this strange kind of yearning to dive into some foreign military bloc that...uh...will unnerve a large number of people. I’d want this kind of partnership. And I...I very much want — I’m pretty much counting on it — that the Ukrainians make the right choice.
*Patronymic transliterated from Russian
Indeed, for Russia, it’s a tough call.
Tymoshenko: supports Russia v. Georgia, consorts with Yanukovych, signs a whorrible gas deal, and giggles at Putin’s jokes.
Anyway, here’s the Kremlin's “right choice” in 2004.
Starring: Kuchma, Putin, Yanukovych (as Kuchma’s heir), Medvedev (as Putin’s chief of staff), and Medvedchuk (as Kuchma’s chief of staff). A friend of Medvedev, Medvedchuk now backs Tymoshenko.
As you can see, Medvedev doesn't always behave like an elitist. Unlike Putin.
Whether it’s Candyman or White Tigress, all is grist to the Kremlin mill in 2010.
Incumbent President Yushchenko: Obviously, I'll win. [applause] Obviously. And...and I want to explain why. Because there’s you. And there are millions of people like you — millions in this country — who understand why tomorrow, over Ukrainian soil, the sun should rise.
If you follow the sausage, you will lose both freedom and the sausage. If you follow freedom, you will gain both the sausage and independence.
In other words, he promises fishing rods to his voters so they can catch fish themselves. And then he turns a blind eye to a bunch of poachers who use fishnets, electroshockers and explosives.
It’s the same guy who takes the high moral road and talks patriotism every time somebody questions his behavior.
ATV Reporter: Viktor Andriyovych, could you...could you please tell us: Is this a working visit or a campaign event?
Incumbent President Yushchenko: A working visit.
ATV Reporter: With elements of campaigning?
Yushchenko: A working visit, young man. A working visit. You have a Ukrainian cap! A working visit.
ATV is the #1 Ukrainophobic channel in Ukraine. Everybody knows that. So when Yushchenko equates Tymoshenko with Yanukovych, how does he set himself apart?
