And if you think that Mostovaya is walking around in circles, being too abstract and relying on figures of speech too much, read this interview with Oleksandr Zinchenko (in Russian), the man who started it all, in the Ukrainian edition of Expert.

Again, here're some selections:

Your resignation has significantly altered the agenda for the upcoming parliamentary election in Ukraine...

Of course the country's political space will very soon be reformated quite seriously. Forces that for various reasons have not yet played a decisive role will come forward.

What forces? Where do you see them?

They are now diluted among the people and are hidden inside various structures. The configuration will change, the structure will be new. Migration from one camp to another will take place, an active mixing, and as a result, we'll have different structures participating in the election, in a different order. Besides, the constitutional reform makes the stakes greater. No one will be happy with a 12-15-percent victory. One can win big only as part of a big coalition now, no matter how complex and how incredible it may seem.

Today's challenge is the "second event." The first one was the democratic nature of the Nov.-Dec. election last year, the second is the upcoming election. These two events in a row are supposed to show whether the democratic process is winning in the country. Meanwhile, the situation is getting worse, the public expectations are not being fulfilled. A can with the contents that began to ferment will eventually blow up - it can't happen any other way. That's why it is necessary to create ways of letting this energy out. Letting out and structuring it. And people who are doing it systematically continue to hold leadning positions.

I wasn't really interested in the reaction of the official establishment to my resignation and the press conference. What really matters is the reaction of the internet forum communities, which the government cannot control. And that reaction was largely positive.

Maybe the people are expecting you to satisfy the public demand for coherent opposition?

I would like to re-profile this question: we are talking about a request for coherent oppostion. It is no longer a democratic protest, it is a democratic process: what's needed is the faithfullness to ideals plus professionalism. This issue of professionalism, of competent management hasn't been the focus of the Orange Revolution - the real issue then were the moral values.

[...]

I think a transformation of the active players will occur and they'll be refreshed by the forces that haven't been present in politics up until now. I expect the conglomerate of the People's Union "Our Ukraine" - which the administration tried to reformat - to either break up or start looking for a completely different role for itself. There isn't much to choose from: either radical changes in a very short period of time, or a totally doomed administrative model, yet another misstep. Also, doomed are those forces that try to appeal to the marginalized or lumpenized strata of society [...]. It's very dangerous in the long term because there'll be a shift in the economic accents. I think that parties like Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna will be changing ideologically and renewing themselves. I hope that the Pora movement will have an interesting project to offer. All of them will be looking for a new quality for themselves. Because it is very difficult to get results if you continue to work in the old ways, playing old politics - and everyone wants the result to be quite weighty. Interesting activities can be expected from the socialists and their leader Oleksandr Moroz. [...] Socialists had to take much effort to remain on their feet despite the government's offensive. And now they understand that it's time to move on and that a new idea is needed.

[...]

Blah-blah-blah. So much crap.

These people, they are so good at talking, no wonder the country is in ruins.

Also, this thing about "public demand for coherent opposition" - these folks have been so good at fucking everything up in the absense of the "coherent opposition" and without any external help, with just the "incoherent" clowns like Yanukovych, Vitrenko and Chornovil posing as opposition... So yeah, they probably do need a force a lot more serious than that, in order to be able to somehow justify the mistakes they keep making... I'm not sure what the public's got to do with it - but I may be wrong, of course...