KATHY’S DREAM, KATHY’S CLOWN
It was in 1983 in Paris that I met my first Russian dissidents. They were rabidly Anti-Communist and passionately argued for freedom and democracy for Russia. Impressed, I nonetheless put them to the test. “What about the other internal colonies of the Soviet Union?” I asked. “I take it that you all advocate freedom and democracy for, say, Ukraine, as well, right?”
My inquiry went through them like a jolt of angry electricity. “Ukraine is a part of Russia!” they exploded. “Ukraine has been a part of Russia for centuries! Ukraine will always be a part of Russia!” I couldn’t resist smiling and informing them: “Not for long…”
I subsequently made a number of trips into Soviet Ukraine in the 1980s to meet with the leaders of Rukh, the emerging democracy-resistance movement — Mykhailo Horyn in Lviv and Vyacheslav Chornovil in Kiev. These meetings were arranged by a dynamic young Ukrainian-American lady in the Human Rights section of the State Department named Kathy Chumachenko.
Kathy and I long conspired on how to achieve freedom for Ukraine. There were very few folks in Washington back then, even within the Reagan Adminsitration, who gave any chance that Ukraine would someday slip loose of Moscow’s clutches. It was the dream of Kathy’s life and I knew it could be real.
Kathy’s dream was half-realized when the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine declared independence in December of 1991. Half-realized because her country continued to be torn apart by Moscow’s meddling, squabbles between Rukh factions, domination of the Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) by Communists, and one economic fiasco after another. Holding an MBA from the University of Chicago, the fount of free market economics, Kathy moved to Ukraine, set up the KPMG office in Kiev, and trained Ukrainians on modern business practices.
In 1993, Kathy met a young Rukh leader who was working for Ukraine’s newly-formed National Bank. They shared the same vision of a truly liberated Ukraine, a pro-capitalist economically flourishing real democracy, a pro-West member of NATO and the European Union. They also fell hopelessly in love. And so Kathy married Viktor Yushchenko, the man who was elected President of Ukraine on November 21st.
Except of course, that the totally corrupt outgoing government of Leonid Kuchma, with the full cooperation of the Kremlin stuffed the ballot boxes – over one million phony votes in Donetsk and Luhansk regions alone – and stole the election.
The stakes in Ukraine are immense. Larger than France with almost 50 million people, Ukraine is the lynchpin for all of Eastern Europe. It is here where the recreation of the Russian Empire will die or be born anew. If the election fraud is allowed to stand, Putin’s Kremlin will begin an inexorable process of re-incorporating Ukraine within Russia, followed by Georgia (now led by pro-American Mikheil Saakashvili), the “Stans” of Central Asia, then the Baltics.
It is in Ukraine where the line must be drawn against Russian corruption and imperialism. Naturally the US State Department has been thoroughly clueless as always. “We’ve got be flexible,” the Foggies (inhabitants of Foggy Bottom) will bleat when you bug them about their standing up for honest elections. Yes, the best way to be flexible is not to have a spine.
The Foggies have known for six months now of Putin’s plan to rig Ukraine’s elections, just as they have known for years about the extent of the Kuchma government’s massive corruption, arms-trafficking, and money laundering. They did as little about the former as the latter. Condi Rice’s National Security Council is much better. The Russian and East European experts at the NSC have been helping Yushchenko’s people in various ways
This, plus the gigantic pro-Yushchenko protests now underway, have now stiffened State’s spine, with Colin Powell stating the US “cannot accept” the election results. Amidst all of this, however, there is a drama playing out starring the world’s most famous idiot savant, George Soros. A megalomaniacal fool with an uncanny genius for currency trading, Soros hates Vladimir Putin almost as much as he hates George Bush. So he thought he could get back at both of them by attempting to bribe Viktor and Kathy (she now uses the Ukrainian version of her name, Kateryna) Yushchenko.
Soros gave the Yushchenko campaign millions of dollars on the condition that once elected, Yushchenko will pull Ukraine’s troops out of Iraq and internationally embarrass President Bush. Kathy batted those big blue eyes of hers and assured Soros of course her husband would – which he then publicly pledged to do. Crazy George has gotten suckered once again. Kathy and her husband, you see, never committed to a strict timetable for Ukrainian troop withdrawal from Iraq. So sure, they’ll come back to Ukraine… sometime, maybe in say, 2006.
Thanks for your help, George. Run along now and take all your agents with you whom you thought would control Ukraine’s economy and trade. Have a nice day…
That’s how George Soros is Kathy’s Clown.
And that’s why I’m optimistic on Ukraine. Putin and Kuchma never expected anything like the hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets of Kiev – and throughout the whole country. You’d expect them in western Ukraine, places like Lviv and Ivano-Frankovsk where the Ukraine independence movement started. But there’s even massed demos in eastern Ukraine populated by ethnic Russians, such as in Kharkiv. When folks in the east are so fed up with the corruption they side with Ukrainian nationalists, you know the Kremlin’s attempt to regain Ukraine is doomed.
It won’t be long before Kathy’s dream will be fulfilled, and that beautiful believer in a free Ukraine I met over twenty years ago will be Ukraine’s First Lady.