Very belatedly, I've just noticed two translations of Yulia Tymoshenko's press conference transcript: one posted at Maidan, and another at ForUm.

I'm trying to read the transcript (in Ukrainian) of Yulia Tymoshenko's press conference on Inter Channel earlier tonight - but I doubt I'll make it to the end. Take her greeting, for example:

I've come to you, to the people who want to hear me, just me and not some texts, I've come here as if to my own family, to my mama, my daughter, just to tell you what's happened.

Isn't it enough that the conflict between Tymoshenko and Poroshenko has few real issues behind it and seems way too personal? It would've been as useless for the country if the two of them didn't hate each other but were madly in love. And now this family-mama-daughter crap...

More Yulia Tymoshenko searches (yesterday's are here)...

www.google.com/search?q=Yulia Tymoshenko ass

www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=timoshenko's golden braid

www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=where does evgenia tymoshenko get married

www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=timoshenko hair braid

ca.search.yahoo.com/search?p=yulia tymoshenko smoker

www.google.com/search?=yulia tymoshenko hairdo

search.yahoo.com/search?p=yulia tymoshenko heels dress

www.google.com/search?q=Yulia Tymoshenko nipple

www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Tymoshenko hairpiece

search.msn.com/spresults=grigyan

search.yahoo.com/search?p=yulia tymoshenko in pantyhose

search.yahoo.com/search?p=pictures of Yulia Tymoshenko legs

www.google.com/search?hl=yulia Tymoshenko childhood

No one comes to this blog looking for Yushchenko, Poroshenko, Yanukovych, Putin or Fradkov. I wonder why.

***

Update:

I'll keep updating this post, instead of creating new ones, as I stumble into more.

Another update:

Cool, the other side, Poroshenko, is finally getting some attention. Here's a recent search that landed someone on this blog - though the original search was for 'neeka's backlog' and I suspect this someone is just playing along:

www.google.co.uk/search?q=poroshenko fat bastard

According to Gazeta.ru (in Russian), some 55,000 people commit suicide in Russia every year.

Yesterday alone, ten people succeeded in killing themselves in Moscow. Sergei Yenikolopov, head of the clinical psychology department of the Russian Medical Sciences Academy's Center for Mental Health, doesn't see it as a trend, though:

The figure is accidental. [...] These people didn't kill themselves to protest the sacking of the Ukrainian government, did they? Of course, ten people a day isn't a norm for Moscow [...]. But I think that if you look at the monthly data, there's unlikely to be anything extraordinary.

They should've titled the piece something like this: "Doctor: Moscow Suicide Wave Not Caused by Ukrainian Political Crisis."

Sometime in 2002, I began reading forum posts at Yulia Tymoshenko's site, and it was there that I learned the term nashysty, which resembles the word 'Nazi' in Russian and Ukrainian, natsysty, and was used to describe not the pro-Putin youth movement "Nashi" but Victor Yushchenko's bloc "Nasha Ukraina" ("Our Ukraine"). Another word that I learned there was yushchenyata, a derivative from the Ukrainian word shchenyata ('puppies') and used to describe Yushchenko's supporters.

There was no love lost between the fans of Tymoshenko and Yushchenko.

I remember trying to get the other side of the story by visiting Victor Yushchenko's site, but it wasn't working well at the time, and I gave up.

From that time on, I sort of worried about the lack of unity in Ukrainian opposition, especially when, in late 2003, the Georgians managed to put their differences behind and won, while the Russians kept fighting and lost so badly that they barely exist anymore.

Tymoshenko and Yushchenko did join forces eventually and won, and now they've drifted apart again, and it feels so weird and so familiar... (Though this time, for some reason, it's Tymoshenko's site, not Yushchenko's, that's impossibly slow.)

Ten years ago, in spring 1995, my first journalistic mentor was working on a privatization story for the San Francisco Chronicle, and we spent what still seems like a month trying to arrange an interview at the State Property Fund, then headed by the acting prime minister Yuri Yekhanurov.

This is the only reason I know who Yekhanurov is.

I don't remember, of course, any of the story's details; all I remember are the extremely shabby offices and the Soviet atmosphere inside the State Property Fund building at Lesya Ukrainka Square, across the street from the Central Election Committee.

***

Here's what Dan McMinn of Orange Ukraine writes:

I know nothing about [Yekhanurov] as an individual, as yet, but his time in the SPF was categories by woefully poor economic performance. If the government hadn't committed itself to reprivatizing only recent bad deals, a number of Mr. Yekhanurov's privatizations might be under scrutiny. (and will be now, you can be sure) Yushchenko was in charge of the National Bank while Yekhanurov was at the SPF, so we can hope Yushchenko knows him well enough from those days to judge his character accurately.

Even worse than what might be dug up about him is more general fact that he was yet another politician who spent years working for Kuchma. I can't think of a worse advertisement to Ukrainian voters, especially when more and more people have been saying "nothing's changed" in the polls.

I thought about that, too, in a slightly different context.

They all keep going back and forth, since 1991, and in addition to having been Kuchma's allies, many also used to be part of the Communist "élite." Tymoshenko was with Pavlo Lazarenko at some point; Khodorkovsky here in Russia was a deputy chief of a Young Communist League (Komsomol) Moscow district committee; Putin was a KGB spy; Yushchenko was Kuchma's prime minister - et cetera. There's no use pretending about anything here. Maybe one day the untainted Ukrainian Diaspora folks storm their historical motherland and take all the leading positions in the country, but this hasn't happened yet.

To be able to continue to take them more or less seriously, it's better to focus on what they've achieved recently - and that's why it's so sickening to suddenly hear Yushchenko's admission that they did little but bicker for the past eight months.

***

Here's what Tatyana Korobova says about Yekhanurov in Ukrainska Pravda (in Ukrainian):

[...]

The acting prime minister thinks that people should not be afraid of the word 'crisis' - after crisis, there's "catharsis and healing." Right, but only when they know what has to be cured and how. Otherwise, what follows is agony and death.

At Orange Ukraine, Dan McMinn has an entry on Zinchenko's resignation and another one on what followed, as well as a complete translation of Yushchenko's yesterday's address.

At Abdymok, a complete translation of Yushchenko's yesterday's address, and a slightly mock translation of a few paragraphs from an Ukrainska Pravda piece on Yulia Tymoshenko's last day and night as prime minister.

Via Abdymok, an editorial in the New York Times:

Ukraine's Orange Flame, Dimmed
Published: September 9, 2005

So ends the Orange Revolution, at least Act I. After months of increasingly nasty disputes, Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, fired his charismatic prime minister and nominated a caretaker to replace her. The fired prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, has said nothing - yet. But she will. Her fiery speeches and powerful presence were a major factor in the popular uprising that brought Mr. Yushchenko to power last fall, and she is certain to turn these weapons on the president and his new government, especially with elections for Parliament scheduled for March. All that is a serious blow to the hopes and expectations that had been raised for the future of Ukraine, and for reformers in Belarus and other former Soviet republics.

Perhaps the expectations were always unrealistic. People who unite to oust one government, as the Ukrainians did with huge demonstrations, do not necessarily agree on what the next one should be, and the alliance was always shaky between Mr. Yushchenko, a former prime minister and central banker, and Ms. Tymoshenko, who made a fortune in the gas business. Mr. Yushchenko and Ms. Tymoshenko squandered the momentum generated on Kiev's streets, struggling over control of lucrative industries, over relations with Russia and over how to cope with soaring energy prices. The impression was of a government with no focus.

On dismissing the government, Mr. Yushchenko declared that his one goal was to ensure stability. But the Ukrainian protesters wanted change. If Mr. Yushchenko hopes to salvage anything of their spirit, he needs to convince his country, and a very wary West, that he not only believes in democracy, free markets and the rule of law, but is also capable of leading Ukraine in that direction.

Here's how some people find this blog:

www.google.com/search?q=tymoshenko pictures

search.yahoo.com/search?p=Yulia Tymoshenko sexy

search.yahoo.com/search?p=yulia tymoshenko heels dress

www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=Tymoshenko whore

Today, there've been more searches like these than before.

What a day.

(More here.)

I've heard and read about this scenario more than once lately, but Andrei Chernikov, formerly the Kommersant's Ukraine correspondent, seems to have seen it coming a long time ago. Here's a quote from his May 23, 2005, Kommersant story on Yulia Tymoshenko's reasons to get sacked (via Andrei's LiveJournal, in Russian):

The premier's calculations are simple and understandable: prime ministers don't get to keep their chairs for a long time, while in the parliament one is guaranteed five years of political life. That's why Ms. Tymoshenko's goal isn't just to get herself into the parliament but to secure as many seats as possible for her bloc. This can be accomplished by leaving the post of the head of the government as a victim - humiliated and misunderstood (exactly how Mr. Yushchenko left his premier's post in the past), but loved by the people. And if the president does not sack the premier himself, then the current parliament - in which the opposition's strategy is based on criticising the government - will do it for him in February next year. In other words, Ms. Tymoshenko should leave either now or closer to the fall, so that she has enough time to carry out a full-fledged election campaign, without the distraction of having to overcome various crises.

No, we do care about what Poroshenko thinks of Tymoshenko, etc., even though it has little or nothing to do with our immediate realities.

I quoted P. J. O'Rourke a year or so ago, and here's this 1991 quote again:

Nina took me to talk with the leaders of the TV-station protest. This was one of five or six political interviews that I did while I was in the Soviet Union - with Ukrainian Nationalists, Ukrainian non-Nationalists, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, anti-Gamsakhurdian Georgians, pro-Gamsakhurdian Georgians and some people I don't know who they were.

I can tell you what they all had to say, if you like, I mean if you're having trouble getting to sleep or something. I would ask them what their group advocated, and they would say, "Democracy must be defended." I would ask, "How do you propose to do this?" They would say, "There must be a structure of democracy in our society." I would ask, "What are your specific proposals?" They would say, "We must build democratic institutions." I would ask, "By what means?" They would say, "Building democratic institutions is necessary so that there is a structure of democracy in our society at all levels." And by this time I'd be yelling, "BUT WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO??!! And they would say, "Democracy must be defended."

The Soviets were firmly rooted in the abstract, had both their feet planted on the air. It was impossible to get them to understand that government isn't a philosophical concept, it's a utility, a service industry - a way to get roads built and have Iraqis killed. [...]

After New Orleans, this thing about the Iraqis AND the roads sounds somewhat unrealistic, but he wrote it such a long time ago...

Here's my translation of parts of Yushchenko's today's address:

[...]

I knew there were certain misunderstandings between these people. I was sure, though, that these were just episodes typical of anyone and especially such interesting and extraordinary people. I was sure the every great person had problems.

I thought these problems were temporary. I hoped that if everyone started doing his/her job, they wouldn't have time left for conspiring against one another, for PR or anti-PR between certain political forces of the united coalition. Those were my hopes.

[...]

But as time went by, I was witnessing more and more how these institutions were getting involved first in confrontations and then in serious conflicts. There were mutual backstage intrigues, which were beginning to spread onto the foundations of the state policy.

[...]

I was sure that my friends, who were enjoying the unique trust of the people and the unseen authority, could use the resources in their work in a unique way. I was also positive that people holding such high positions were aware of their responsibility to the state, and I thought that they were obliged to hear one another and be able to compromise - that was their responsibility.

The president isn't supposed to be a nanny for them, someone to help them make up after a fight. But I'll be honest and admit that I was doing it eagerly, because I understood that this was the issue of great importance. I felt bad about wasting my time on things that weren't constructive. But that was the reality.

[...]

For eight months the president of Ukraine was a peacekeeper between these institutions. I rarely spoke about it in public. I thought of it as the karma I had to carry on my shoulders. Meanwhile, Ukraine was falling behind, economically and otherwise. I think that members of my team listened to the president but didn't hear him.

[...]

I'm sure this has to stop. I see how some government officials have become so preoccupied with this PR that they don't have enough time anymore for a productive conversation. They do not imagine life without TV cameras anymore. I've always been and will always remain a supporter of the government's openness to the public, [...] but this has to occur after the work has been completed. We should not drag the country into dangerous promises and dangerous populism.

[...]

***

On the one hand, it seems like such a justified thing to do, to fire them all in order to stop the in-fighting. And it seems so noble of Yushchenko to talk about it openly. This isn't too relevant, but I can't help comparing our situation to that in Russia: Yeltsin's frequent changes of prime ministers in the 1990s seemed nothing but senile, and Putin is only now beginning to deal with those who deserve it - the Navy guy Kuroyedov, fired five years after the Kursk submarine disaster, and now Patrushev, head of the FSB, may finally be questioned, a year after Beslan and three years after Nord-Ost... So yeah, in a way, we seem to be doing much better than Russia.

But on the other hand, why would anyone outside Lipki be interested in what Poroshenko thinks of Tymoshenko and vice versa? Yushchenko does admit that he had to babysit them from the very start, forgetting about the economy and other important matters - but why would anyone believe that everything is going to straighten out now, after he's been forced to say it all out loud?

It's very disappointing, all of it.

Just got back home and don't really know what to say. I'm not good at commenting shit like this, pure politics.

Everyone's either fired or has resigned.

Zinchenko, Poroshenko, Tymoshenko, Tomenko - so many Ukrainian names, it's making even me dizzy.

Unlike the traffic police whim a while ago, this is supposed to be big deal.

Scott at Foreign Notes has been posting some updates.

More later, after I've done some reading on the bedlam.

Pictures from St. Pete are up at my photo page.

- Day One - Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005 (51 photos):


("the orthodox cross is everywhere!!")






- Day Two - Monday, Sept. 5, 2005 (18 photos):




- Day Three - Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005 (21 photos):


("GIBDD [traffic police] - my love")