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The Endgame

This was written by the BBC on Nov. 25:

The political crisis in Ukraine looks as though it will head towards one of three outcomes.

1: The government candidate for president, Viktor Yanukovich (who has been declared the election winner) will back down in the face of large scale protests and accusations of fraud.

2: The opposition supporters, who've been on the streets to back their man, Viktor Yushchenko, will grow tired and dispirited and will melt away.

3: There will be a violent confrontation.

Mr Yushchenko is certainly trying to keep up the pressure. He's called for a general strike starting today. The extent to which that strike call is heeded and could well give us a clue as to how things will unfold. From Kiev here's our correspondent, Sarah Rainsford. First Broadcast 25th November 2004

#1 has not happened, but if the Supreme Court declares the election invalid it won't matter. The question is whether or not Pres. Kuchma will back down. My mother-in-law Valentina believes he will, if some small scale of violence breaks out. She says he is not as hard a man as Putin. She thinks he will not risk war to keep the capital. He could flee to Kharkiv and set up an independent state there.

#2 has not happened. Igor says it will never happen under any circumstances. Valentina says it should happen if violence breaks out. She says avoiding a second, completely new election is not worth war. She says she can live with Yushchenko out of and Kuchma's second choice winning a second election. I'm sure Igor doesn't agree. Come to think of it, I'm not sure Lena (my wife) does either. Care to comment?

#3 can be avoided if #1 or #2 happens, or if Yushchenko takes control of Kiev and the eastern republics secede and the Yanukovich people go there, and Putin is willing to live with this. Kiev's city council supports Yushchenko, so this is a possibility. It is possible he could take power peacefully by just forcing Kuchma out (and Kuchma agrees to leave). It is possible, but is it likely? Remember Chechnya. Yushchenko has promised to take all measures short of violence to win.

If there is violence or a war, what should NATO's response be? Do we let Russia control Ukraine as the price of peace? I predict that would be the UN's position. It was the position taken for the Warsaw pact countries, like Czech. If the Cold War was worth fighting, is this? Could it escalate into WW3? Is world war unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances? Is Bush capable of thinking about this clearly? Is Rumsfeld? I don't pretend to have the answers to these questions. But the questions must be posed.

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