Ukraine's Orange Revolution

Adrian Karatnycky

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2005

Summary:  The electoral triumph of opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko and the victory of the Ukrainian people over their country's corrupt leadership represent a new landmark in the postcommunist history of eastern Europe, a seismic shift Westward in the geopolitics of the region. But what will come next for the new president--and the rest of the former Soviet Union?

Adrian Karatnycky is Counselor and Senior Scholar at Freedom House.

Nongovernmental groups were quick to complain. "It's the biggest election fraud in Ukraine's history," declared the nonpartisan Committee of Voters of Ukraine, which had deployed more than 10,000 monitors to observe the runoff. According to the group, 85,000 local government officials helped perpetrate the fraud, and at least 2.8 million ballots were rigged in favor of Yanukovich. Claims of massive voter fraud were also bolstered by an unlikely source: Ukraine's Security Service (SBU). In the days before and after the runoff vote, a high-ranking SBU official had kept in regular contact with Oleh Rybachuk, Yushchenko's chief of staff. SBU operatives had been cooperating with the Yushchenko camp since the first round of elections, regularly reporting on possible security threats and dirty tricks.

SBU wiretaps provided crucial evidence of the government's chicanery, including late-night manipulation of data in the CEC's computer server. In one taped conversation, an hour before the inflated turnout was announced, Viktor Medvedchuk, the head of President Leonid Kuchma's staff, talked to Yuri Levenets, a Yanukovich campaign operative, about CEC Chairman Serhiy Kivalov:

Levenets: Greetings on democracy's holiday!

Medvedchuk: The same to you, Yura. [Kivalov] is panicking. He says he's not getting anything.

Levenets: He can't be getting anything. The lads are finishing up now; he'll have it all momentarily--literally in 15-20 minutes.

Levenets: No, it's all fine. He can't have anything right now. He doesn't have any information at all over there. It's all under my control.

According to the telephone intercepts, the fraud involved some of the country's highest officials. In addition to Medvedchuk and Kivalov, the conspiracy included Eduard Prutnik, a key aide to Yanukovich, Serhiy Lyovochkin, the president's first assistant, and Serhiy Klyuyev, a major fundraiser for the Yanukovich campaign whose brother was the deputy prime minister responsible for Ukraine's lucrative energy sector.

RED-HANDED

Why did Ukraine's ruling elite resort to brazen fraud to preserve its power? The answer is corruption. In December 1991, Ukraine proclaimed its independence, precipitating the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Former Communist Party officials, recast as national patriots, led the new state. In the first years of independence, corruption became widespread--but remained minor compared to the rampant criminality that spread during the mid-1990s.