Paul Goble
Staunton, May 26 – The “most
significant result” of the Ukrainian presidential elections was not the
selection of Petro Poroshenko, his victory in the first round, or the defeat of
Yuliya Timoshenko but rather “the formal-legal death of the Putin myth about
the so-called ‘split’ of Ukraine into a West-Central and South-Eastern part,” Andrey Illarionov say.
As such, the Russian commentator
says,the vote effectively represents “the funeral of Putin’s plan for the
division of Ukraine, the final completion of the 20-year period of ‘Ukrainianization,
[and] an important stage on the path to the Westernization and Europeanization
of Ukraine” (echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/1327642-echo/).
In this Ukrainian election, in contrast
to earlier presidential votes there, the winner was not someone who won the
most votes in the west but lost the east or who won the east but lost the west.
“For the first time, the president of Ukraine was chosen by the votes of all
Ukraine, by the votes of the residents of all major Ukrainian macro-regions.”
Even more, Illarionov says, the three
trailing candidates received approximately the same level of support in the two
regions, something that represents “the absolute victory of the national choice
by Ukrainian citizens” of the entire country “of the western variant of
development of a united Ukraine.”
“In other words,” he continues, the Ukrainian election has led to the “total collapse of Putin’s plans”
for that country. Ukraine “did not
become Banderite or anti-Russian Federation or anti-Russian,” but that country,
and indeed “practically” all of it, however, “has become anti-Putin” and seeks “integration
in the western, that is, the contemporary world.”
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