Last night, my friend didn't bother to send me the other text on Ukrainian election that the Spectator published alongside John Laughland's piece. And I didn't bother to explore the Spectator site further. Well, today I have, and found a story that more or less balances off what Laughland has written - Yearning to Breathe Free, by Radek Sikorski.

I'm sort of glad I didn't see it yesterday because maybe it would've made me too shy to send the letter to the editor - and I'm very happy I did.

Anyway, here's a bit from Sikorski's piece that sounds like a reply to Laughland:

Some people have become so blinded by anti-Americanism that they assume that whatever Uncle Sam backs must be a bad thing. In this twisted logic, if the US Congress passes a ‘Belorus Democracy Act’ or helps the struggling Ukrainian independent media, that is interference, but when Russia pulls out the stops for Yanukovych, that’s just good old Slavic solidarity. In fact we Slavs no more wish to live in kleptocracies, or be ‘disappeared’ by our governments, than people elsewhere.