As Kiev prepares for massive civil disobedience in what looks like an election stolen by the pro-Russian Yanukovych, there’s a useful piece at TCS clarifying why this election is so significant:
Why the attention to Ukraine? Because it is the main domino of the former Soviet Union. Just as Ukraine’s referendum vote to leave Moscow’s side signaled the final breakup of the USSR in 1991, a falsified vote in favor of Moscow’s candidate on Sunday can now significantly reconstitute it.
The risk of a stolen election is real and grave — the ruling party engaged in a great deal of fraud and violent voter intimidation in the first round of voting Oct. 31. And if the ruling proto-communists succeed in rubbing out the will of voters to elect the opposition candidate on Sunday, then Russia will be free to reassert its authoritarian control in the ex-Soviet space. Ukraine, whose links to the West are still nascent, will fall back into Moscow’s grip just as tiny Belarus already has, as wobbly Kazakhstan almost has, and as violence-wracked Georgia risks doing.
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