Traveler, Writer, Aquarius, Peace Corps Volunteer
The evidence
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As I entered the bank, I felt the silent weight of fixed eyes fall on me. Hands in pockets, head forward, I strode directly through the front hallway, past the currency exchange kiosk on the right, and straight to the teller who specializes in our Peace Corps accounts. She took my bank book and informed me of my balance.
�How much?� she asked.
�All of it,� I replied.
It was then that I learned the Finance Ministry has imposed a $200 maximum withdrawal allowance on US dollars. They were worried about a run on the banks. She told me I could take $200 that day and come back the next for the rest of it. So I did all I could do, which was accept the situation, and walked with her over to the money window across from her seat in the main room.
The money window is about 16� x 12�, cut out against a backdrop of reflective material glued onto a broad glass wall, and is nestled into a small nook in a tight corner. That day it was surrounded by three men in Kevlar vests carrying pistols and money pouches, and three others with black fingers and tattooed hands looking irritated.
I stood there and waited, deflecting sideways glances, and in about two minutes it was my turn at the counter. I palmed the mystery woman behind the glass my passport, face down, hoping the gold crest wouldn�t show. When she returned my bank book with two $100 bills in it, I thrust the whole thing into my pocket and scurried out into the hallway and the money exchange kiosk.
Here, more of the same: a line of black clad surly-looking Ukrainian men. I got to the front, changed my dollars into hryvna, and bolted out, looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was behind me.
Welcome to life as an American in Donetsk.
Unless you�ve been completely out of the news loop for the past two weeks, you know that Ukraine is in the midst of a catastrophic political crisis that threatens to throw the country into civil war. On Sunday, November 21st, the country held an election between two Viktors, current Prime Minister Yanukovich, who represents the industrial and wealthier Eastern Ukraine and promotes strong ties to Russia, and previous Prime Minister Yushenko, who is the more agrarian West�s candidate, preaching reform and improved relations with Europe and America. Yanukovich was declared the winner, Yushenko cried foul, and hundreds of thousands flocked to Kyiv�s Independence Square to protest what they, and the international community, believed to be egregious vote rigging and overall malfeasance by the Yanukovich campaign. They claimed that the election was invalid, stolen from Yushenko, and vowed not to leave until justice was served and their man was named President.
Two weeks later, the situation on the surface appears to have slightly improved, though the gulf between East and West is growing deeper and more embittered by the day. The latest news, after the election was declared invalid and it was announced that a new election would be held on December 26th, is that Parliament sacked the Central Election Commission, appointing new members, and today approved a package amending the Constitution to turn Ukraine into a parliamentary-presidential state as of September 2005, effectively diluting the power of the presidency. That package also includes amendments to the law on presidential elections, specifically redefining the rules for absentee ballot voting, one of the main instruments in the alleged vote rigging. While protesters are still camped out on Independence Square, they agreed to remove the blockade on government buildings.
All of this has made a compelling story, full of passion and patriotism, a drama replete with all the trimmings: East vs. West, reformer vs. old guard, brother vs. brother, and of course, America vs. Russia. For anyone who thought the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, crumbling of the Soviet Union and independence of the Soviet satellites, think again. This is Cold War politicking at its best. And it�s through those eyes that you need to see and understand why this country is so bitterly divided.
The United States has made no secret of its desire for Ukraine to establish closer ties to the West and move farther away from its Soviet past. When I swore in almost exactly one year ago as a Peace Corps volunteer, US Ambassador John Herbst was clear about America�s agenda: spread democracy in an effort to prevent Ukraine from slipping into �rogue nation� status and falling back into the �imperial� sphere of the �Evil Empire.� It was imperative that Ukraine not become another Belarus with a corrupt dictatorial regime under the influence of Big Brother Russia.
Sound familiar? It should, since it�s been America�s patented approach to foreign policy since 1945. In the course of current events, how many times has George W. Bush emphasized the importance of giving the gift of democracy to the world�s oppressed, freeing the masses from their evil totalitarian leaders? In simple terms, by spreading the seed of democracy, he has offered, it will force all the non-democratic nations of the world to take notice and reform.
And it�s this very policy that America has created, maintained, espoused, and enacted that�s gotten it in its current mess of shit. With Afghanistan, you can argue that the regime-toppling was a direct response to 9/11 (except that Bin Ladin is Saudi and well, um, who helped put the Taliban in power in the first place?) With Iraq, the plan was in the works long before Bush and 9/11, but there�s no doubt that 9/11 was the catalyst to make Saddam-ousting the administration�s top priority. Unfortunately, what we have seen from the events of the past two years, not all of the oppressed people of Iraq wanted America�s help. In fact, not everybody hated life under Saddam, despite the cold hard reality of his despotism. And worst of all, most of the world views �Bush�s War� not as a gift of freedom, but as a blatant grab for oil, contracts, and a foothold for America to control in the Middle East.
So now in Ukraine, with America giving millions of dollars to Viktor Yushenko�s campaign and �the West� (spearheaded by America and American NGOs, including George Soros) meticulously monitoring the elections, with all the international press showing non-stop footage of Kyiv and �the revolution,� you can begin to understand why the Russian-sympathizing East is not only incredulous at American motives, but furious that America has played a role in the elections at all.
When I tell friends and students that when I was in America over Thanksgiving the Ukrainian election was the top story, I get few smiles. One student asked me why, when she watches BBC and Euronews, is all the coverage only of Yushenko and Kyiv? Good question. You see, I said, it�s not that the Western media has an agenda. Our press isn�t controlled by the government. But the media is a business, and of course they�re going to cover the story as they see it. If there are a hundred thousand protesters representing the reform candidate, rallying on Independence Square in the country�s capital and claiming that the current leadership engaged in blatant fraud in order to win the election, and only one thousand people rallying for an hour or two in a city an overnight train ride away for the man accused of fraud, where do you think the press will be? The news is coming out of Kyiv, not Donetsk.
Is it just news as business? Is it propaganda? It might be somewhere in between. But one thing is for certain, it�s not balanced, and that adds fuel to the fire, especially when Europe and America have lambasted Ukraine for its lack of free press and lack of equal coverage for both candidates. Yet with the Western press, unlike the press in Ukraine, it�s not done on purpose. They just don�t realize the inherent bias. Like Bernard Goldberg asserted in his book Bias, the problem is that the news has become so editorial that it doesn�t even see the unevenness in its reporting.
But that is just one issue. When talking to people in Donetsk about the election, the main complaint is that they feel the election was stolen from them by Yushenko and Western interests. In their opinion, they went to the polls, voted, won, and then had their victory unfairly stripped. Here is where the debate really begins:
But Yanukovich Cheated
According to international observers, there were eleven thousand some-odd voting violations or irregularities in the election. As far as I can tell, every one of these has been attributed to the Yanukovich side. From ballot-stuffing to illegally invalidating thousands of Yushenko votes, the reports poured in. The Donetsk response? You�re going to tell us that Yushenko, who used to be Prime Minister and knows all the tricks of the trade, did absolutely nothing illegal too? How is it possible that the alleged voter turnout in Lviv, the cradle of Western Ukrainian independence, was somewhere around one hundred percent when forty percent of the registered voters live or work in other countries? To people here, if there was cheating (and there certainly was cheating), it went both ways, and only one person is getting blamed. Why? Because the world doesn�t want to see a strong Russia.
Criminal Ties
Much has been made over the course of the election that Yanukovich was a convicted rapist who spent time in prison for assault as well, only to have his record expunged during his ascent up the political ladder. It�s widely believed that he is a pawn of Russia and the Eastern Ukrainian big industry oligarchs, whose only job is to keep laws ambiguous and money trails hidden. However, in the East, people recall that Yushenko, as a wealthy banker during the Ukrainian gold rush following independence in the early �90s, stole millions from the country and hid it in offshore accounts. They claim that he is a pawn of Western interests and oligarchs and simply another side of the same coin, one that will result in a worse life for the people of Donetsk.
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