How things have changed. The People Power colour revolutions have spluttered and now faded away as reality starts to bite, as it becomes increasingly apparent that people are not easily duped by pie-in-the-sky promises and crucially, as it becomes blatantly obvious that each nation occupies a cultural space that has to be respected.
It therefore comes as no surprise that Viktor Yanukovych has won the Ukrainian Presidential election against Yulia Tymoshenko. And even less of a surprise that the darling of the West, the pock-marked face of the Orange Revolution, outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko is a political nobody in no-man’s land. The Ukrainians did not want to join NATO, the Ukrainians did not want to be colonised by the European Union. They want jobs, they want schools, they want hospitals, they want to eat.
The first results from exit polls would indicate a clear victory for Viktor Yanukovych with around 49.42% of the vote, with Yulia Timoshenko garnering around 44.46%, a lead of five points.
Will we once again witness a sea of protesters in Independence Square, Kiev, chanting “Razom nas bahato! Nas ne podolaty!” (Together we are many! We cannot be defeated!), as was the case in November 2004? In a word, no. Independence Square is empty, the Orange revolution has run out of steam; in fact it never came to the boil.
Why? Because it never amounted to anything more than hype created by meddlesome Western influences which wanted Ukraine in NATO. Ukraine and the Ukrainians were used by the arms lobby and Yushchenko was the pawn, the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
President Viktor Yushchenko stepped on thin ice the final days of the campaign: He named a controversial nationalist a "Hero of Ukraine." Only after collecting a humiliating 5% of the vote in the first round of the elections did he make his declaration. In Ukraine's most avidly Western-leaning, anti-Russian city, news that the rare honor had been bestowed on Stepan Bandera was met with jubilation. Disgust and dismay swept the Russian-speaking provinces, where Bandera is remembered for what he really was: a Nazi collaborator.
In a letter to Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, the Simon Wiesenthal Center expressed "deepest revulsion" over the decision to honor Bandera, "who collaborated with the Nazis at the beginning of World War II, and whose followers were linked to the murders of thousands of Jews and others."
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