Mobilizing

It seems that the Russian government has decided to openly intervene in the Ukrainian election. A RIAN report explains:

2004-11-12 14:48
PUTIN, KUCHMA AND YANUKOVICH TO DISCUSS WAYS OF MOBILIZING ELECTORAL RESOURCES

MOSCOW, Nov 12 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the Crimea (a Ukrainian autonomy) and his meeting with Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma came as a surprise. Unofficial sources told Kommersant that Ukraine's Prime Minister and a presidential candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, would join them. The formal reason is the opening of a ferry route between Russia's Krasnodar territory and the Crimea.

After the results of the first round of the elections were declared, it became clear that the pro-Russian Mr. Yanukovich might lose the election. Now Moscow's priority is to mobilize the pro-Russian electorate in the second round, the newspaper reports. Gleb Pavlovsky, one of the leading ideologists of Mr. Yanukovich's election campaign, has noted, "In the first round, 4% of the vote may have been rigged in favor of Yushchenko." He referred to opinion polls conducted by the Public Opinion Fund on November 2-7 when 36% supported Mr. Yanukovich and only 33% - Mr. Yushchenko (the official results of the voting were 39.87% for Mr. Yushchenko and 39.32% for Mr. Yanukovich).

And the mobilizing doesn't stop there:

To motivate Mr. Yanukovich's electorate, Russia will advise using Russian-speaking organizations and communities of Ukraine, including moves to step up work with the Russian-speaking diaspora in Trans-Karpatia, Mr. Yushchenko's electoral stronghold. This requires, the newspaper continues, a series of measures in the days remaining before the second round, in particular, adopting laws to raise the status of the Russian language.

The get-together of Kuchma, Putin and Yanukovich is already underway, and the ferry trip has now been completed. According to RIAN the respective transport ministers "gave a green light to the first Krym-Kavkaz railway ferry."

All of which makes one wonder: are we likely to see similar tactics adopted by Russia with regard to elections in the Baltic states - especially Estonia and Latvia - before long?


(Hat tip: Marius)