One side is the USA by any other name, the other is Putin. So the choice is simple: US style Liberty or KGB style liberty. Not sure there's much of a choice there.

check out the closest I know of to an imc style ukrainian news page in english, and get a bit of a deeper perspective...

You can find contacts for Central/Eastern European IMCs on

 http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Local/ImcCEEurope

IMC in Ukraine (at least, Kiev) exists. The volunteers there work
in a loose network with people in Moscow, St Petersburg and probably
now also Bielorussia. They chose to have the whole site together and
for simplicity (the important thing is to get the news circulating)
use the address:

 http://russia.indymedia.org

which should be interpreted as "Russian-language" Indymedia rather
than Indymedia Russia.

If you look carefully, or if you ask nicely, you'll probably find
some English language articles there.

Sorry for those people hoping to see this as a "people's revolution",
but it seems like it's more like a "Kerry people's revolution", with
the difference that people in the Ukraine are not aware that a fate
under one set of business mafia bosses will only be very marginally better
than under the other set.

USA has about the same imprisonment rate as Russia (700 per 100,000) -
either fate is pretty bad.

 http://www.elections-ua.org/publication6.html

People Influencing Presidential Elections in Ukraine. Who Are They?

22.09.2004
People Influencing Presidential Elections in Ukraine. Who Are They?

Written by Tetyana Pechonchik

Besides the candidates on the post of the President of Ukraine there are people who have direct influence on the results of the election campaign by virtue of their powerful financial resources, administrative influence or political relations. Who are they? We would like to tell you about the influencing surrounding of Victor Yanukovytch and Victor Yuschenko, two leaders of the presidential race according to the majority of sociological questioning in Ukraine.

The surrounding of one of the candidates, the operating Prime-Minister Victor Yanukovytch who is of Donetsk region origin is connected with so called "Donetsk group". At the moment some members of this Group hold such positions in Ukrainian Government as: the First Vice-Prime-Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Finances (Myckola Azarov), Vice-Minister of Energetic Complex (Vitaliy Gajduk), General Prosecutor of Ukraine (Gennadiy Vasyl'ev), Chairman of the Observant Board of the biggest communication operator in Ukraine "Ukrtelecom" (Sergiy Levochkin), the Head of the State Department of Punishment Execution (Volodymyr Levochkin), the Head of the State Property Fund (Michael Chechetov) and others.

The representatives of senior generation of "Donetsk group" as Yukhym Zvyagyl'sky, Valentine Landyk, Vladimir Boyko, Vladimir Scherban have lost their influence in the region and in the whole Ukraine. Young successful businessmen are holding the leading positions. One of them is unofficial leader of the Group, the President of one of the richest and the strongest football clubs in Ukraine "Shahter" ("Miner") - Rinat Ahmetov. Some western mass media name him the richest man in Ukraine. Polish magazine "Wpost" placed him on the sixth position in the list of the richest people in Central and Eastern Europe, estimating his capital in $ 1.7 billion. All his business is concentrated in the group of companies "System Capital Management".

"SCM" consists of enterprises directly incorporated in "Industrial Union of Donbass" and in its departments having a yearly income of $ 1.8 billion. Estimating the influence of this man, the internet site "UKRAINE.ru" wrote: "It is possible to compare Rinat Ahmetov with the Speaker of a Parliamentary Republic, with the first person in the country on whom depends practically everything (including the Premier who is appointed and taken off by a parliamentary majority).

Yanukovytch is supported by the brothers Andrey and Sergey Kluyev who form another group in Donetsk business controlling such enterprises as "Donbasscabel", "Donetscoke", Factory of colored metals processing in Artemovsk. Andrey Kluev has been a Vice-Prime-Minister of Ukraine for half a year already and the Head of Yanukovytch's election campaign.

Another industrial and financial group "Labour Ukraine" is giving the support to Viktor Yanukovych too. Its two leaders have close relations with the operating President Leonid Kuchma. This is his son-in-law Victor Pinchuk and his friend Andrey Derkach. The first is controlling Dnipropetrovsk region concentrating his activities in financial sector and in the sphere of providing. Polish magazine "Wpost" places Pinchuk on the 10th place in its list of the richest people in Central and Eastern Europe. Pinchuk is controlling industrial holding "Interpipe" (the income of $730 million), the second biggest bank of Ukraine "Private Bank" (assets costs of $800), Pipe factory in Nyzhnedniprovsk (the income of $ 250 million). The total income of Pinchuk makes some $ 1.3 billion.

"Labour Ukraine" is holding such positions as Vice-Premier on humanitarian issues (Dmitriy Tabachnik), the Minister of Transport of Ukraine (Georgiy Kyrpa) and the Chairman of National Bank of Ukraine (Sergey Tigipko). The latter is the Head of the Electoral Stuff of Victor Yanukovych. He is also controlling financial and industrial group "TAC". Sergey Tigipko was one of the founders of "Privat" group, the core of which is "Privat Bank". In the mid 90-ies "Privat Bank" was dealing for some time with the business interests of Ex-Prime-Minister Pavlo Lazarenko.

However, since Tigipko became the Vice-Prime-Minister in 1997 "Privat Bank" was keeping on distance from Pavlo Lazarenko. Soon the bank was dissociated from its father-founder Sergey Tigipko. At the moment the owners of this group are Gennadiy Bogolubov and Igor Kolomoyskiy. The both don't like to be at public and to give interviews to mass media.

Brothers Anatoliy and Igor Franchuk are playing for Yanukovych too. The both are very powerful persons in the Crimea. Anatoliy was the Prime-Minister of Crimea for 2 times and Igor was the son-in-law of the President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. Igor Franchuk is the Chairman of the "Chernomorneftegaz company" (BlackSeaOilGas), and the founder of "TEP-holding" which is engaged in the delivery of fuel resources. His father presides in the Observant Board of "CrimeaGas".

Also, Viktor Yanukovych hopes for the support from the leadership of the United Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (SDPU), which has a lot of key posts in the Ukrainian government under its control. First of all, it is the posts of the head of the Presidential Administration (held by Viktor Medvedchuk), the Minister of Education and Science (Vasyl Kremen), and the Minister of Labor and Social Policy (Mykhailo Papiyev). Among other members of the United Social Democratic Party, there are at least five regional governors, about 150 district governors, and over 7,000 chairmen of village councils.

According to the above-mentioned Polish magazine Wpost, the leader of the Ukrainian United Social Democrats, Viktor Medvedchuk, ranks eighteenth among the richest people of Eastern and Central Europe. His annual income is estimated at $800,000. During privatization the Medvedchuk-controlled Slavutych concern managed to get in possession of enterprises working in such sectors as power engineering, metallurgy, oil processing, and machine building. This concern controls the Savings Bank of Ukraine - the legal successor of the Savings Bank of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, whose assets are now estimated at $560 million; the Ukrainian Credit Bank ($100 million in assets), and the Dynamo Kyiv soccer club.

The entourage of the presidential candidate, former prime minister, Viktor Yuschenko, includes representative of several business oligarchic groups, too. First of all, it is financial-industrial associations, which are controlled by parliament deputies Petro Poroshenko, Yuliya Tymoshenko, Yevhen Chervonenko, Mykola Martynenko, and David Zhvaniya.

Being one of Viktor Yuschenko's closest allies, Mr. Poroshenko holds the office of the chairman the Budget Committee of the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] and controls almost all the social-political and financial-economic areas of the Vinnytsia region. His Ukrprominvest Concern owns a confectionary network with factories in Kyiv and regional centers, as well as a number of other factories and facilities of the food industry.

In addition, Mr. Poroshenko controls the Lutsk car assembly plant in the Volyn region. He is the chairman of the observation panels of the Leninska Kuznya shipyards and of the Mriya bank. Initially, Poroshenko was a member of the SDPU's faction in the parliament; however, in early 2000 he quit it and created his own left-centrist faction Solidarity and the namesake Solidarity Party.

In the fall of 2000, the Poroshenko-led Solidarity Party joined the Party of Regions, after which Mr. Poroshenko became the co-chairman of that political party. However, in December 2001, in the view of upcoming 2002 parliamentary elections, Petro Poroshenko announced that he decided to quit the Party of Regions of Ukraine and join the Viktor Yuschenko-led Our Ukraine coalition, after which he was appointed the head of its election headquarters. Since then, the business and political interests of Viktor Yuschenko and Petro Poroshenko have been continuously intersecting.

Among others, Viktor Yuschenko's allies include Yuliya Tymoshenko. At present, she is the leader of a bloc of political parties called "The Yuliya Tymoshenko Bloc." She was the first deputy Prime Minister in Viktor Yuschenko's government and earlier she was an ally of another Ukrainian prime minister, Pavlo Lazarenko, who was accused of corruption and had to run away to the United States.

Yuliya Tymoshenko decided not to run for president. Now she is rarely seen on television and in newspaper publications even though one year ago she was taking thousands-strong actions of protests to the streets for the purpose of disrupting President Leonid Kuchma's regime. Ms. Tymoshenko's business activities are mostly related to the distribution of Russian and Turkmen oil in Ukraine.

Yuliya Tymoshenko has built up her career under the direct patronage of the former Prime Minister, Pavlo Lazarenko. From 1991 to 1995, she was director general of the Ukrainian Petrol Corporation, which was supplying oil products to the agricultural sector of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Later she was the president of one of the largest Ukrainian corporations - the United Energy Systems of Ukraine.

Her political career was just as steep: from a parliament deputy since 1996 to the deputy Prime Minister from 1999 to 2001. Over that span of time, Yuliya Tymoshenko was in charge of the fuel and energy sector of Ukraine.

In 2000, Yuliya Tymoshenko was actively involved in the promotion of the scandals regarding the disappearance of an opposition journalist, Georgiy Gongadze, and the publication of secret recordings of Leonid Kuchma's conversations in his office, which had been made by his bodyguard, SBU officer Melnychenko. In the course of the two scandals mentioned above, Yuliya Tymoshenko was accused by the authorities of numerous violations and abuse of power during her time as president of the United Energy Systems, in particular, of giving bribes to the former prime minister and so on.

In connection with this, on February 13, 2001 Yuliya Tymoshenko was arrested and then relieved of her post as deputy Prime Minister. Later on, the Supreme Court ruled out that her arrest was illegitimate and she was set free. After those events, Yuliya Tymoshenko turned into a leader of the implacable opposition to the president of Ukraine, demanding his resignation.

The business of Yevhen Chervonenko, the former chairman of the State Reserves Committee of Ukraine, is mainly related to the Orlan concern, which he founded himself. Orlan is among the leading producers of non-alcoholic beverages and one of the leading freight operators in Ukraine.

According to Ukrainian analysts, the Zhvaniya-Martynenko-Morozov financial-industrial group is weakly structured and is in the phase of formation. Each of its members has got its own business. David Zhvaniya owns the Brinkford concern. Mykola Martynenko's business interests mostly lie in the power sector; he is the first deputy chairman of the Parliament's Committee for Fuel and Energy Complex, Nuclear Power Engineering, and Nuclear Safety. Oleksandr Morozov, another ally of Viktor Yuschenko's, has strong feet in insurance business, heading one of the biggest insurance companies in Ukraine - the European Insurance Alliance.

© Copyright 2004 Youth Center for Policy and Information
Designed by Queo