Amazing that the election is five days away and we're sitting here in Istanbul, enjoying the luxury of not having to look at their idiotic campaign ads every step we make and not having to listen to their crap on Savik Shuster's show every night.

We do receive the most essential news from back home regularly, though: today, we've learned that they are still not cleaning away the snow in Kyiv, and yesterday we saw enough links to this FT editorial to make us click on it today and read it.

Below is the final paragraph:

[...] So, whom to back in Sunday’s first round and next month’s run-off? Given the candidates’ shortcomings, voters must focus on what is important. The key now is political stability. Only a stable Ukraine can achieve economic reform and recovery. Ms Tymoshenko is the polar opposite of a stabilising force. Mr Yanukovich, for all his manifest faults, may prove the lesser evil. Pity Ukraine that it has come to this.

My reaction to the piece is a sigh and an "oh..." - and then this: No way am I going to vote for "the lesser evil" - or for Yanukovych in any other disguise. The lesser evil always turns into the bigger evil in Ukraine, and Yanukovych sucks in general. And Tymoshenko, for all her faults, isn't Petro Symonenko, either - the way Symonenko was in 1999, that is, when so many people voted for Kuchma as "the lesser evil"...

It's hard to avoid mixing some unmixable things when using such a cursory approach to Ukrainian politics as mine is now: Kyiv used to be cleaner under Kuchma; Gongadze disappeared under Kuchma; Yushchenko has failed to solve the Gongadze case; streets might be cleaner under someone else than the current folks, but none of them are going to do anything about the Gongadze case.

Back to square one: whatever.

And I'm now late for breakfast, too: screw them all.