#37 - JRL 2006-181 - JRL Home
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006
From: "Valerio Fabbri" <valeriofabbri@gmail.com>
Subject: Ukraine

I want to give my contribution to the debate around the new Ukrainian coalitional government. Probably I am late, but it's worth throwing my ideas into it.

I am an Italian free lance, for as much as it is considered free lancing in here. I have been writing about post Soviet politics for roughly 2 and a half years. I was in Kiev for the election, after having spent a fair time in Moscow, and I sent my contributes from both capitals. I was convinced to write because I had the possibility to have a talk-interview with the Ukrainian ambassador to Italy ( a close aid of Yushenko's while the president was leading the Central Bank) the day after Yanukhovich was appointed prime ministe. Needless to say, it was as interesting as predictable, other than some things off records. I was surprised to see his appraisal of Yanukhovich, who apparently has paid too high a political token for his closeness to Kuchma. There wouldn't be another good explanation. However, I simply want to report you a question to which he replied in a evasive way: can the Russian 'sovereign democracy' ideology somehow replace the democratic dream that we, the West, wanted to bring there? Can this be a model for Central Asia? Especially after Putin's joke at the G8 about Iraqi democracy, I would seriously consider this option. As you and many other readers I am on holiday, so I apologise in advance if this question has already been raised. I only skimmed a couple of articles about Ukrainian coalitional government effect in Central Asia, but I haven't thouroughly read articles about this topic: sovereign democracy as a replacement to Western way of democracy.

Best regards,
Valerio Fabbri
MA candidate, Paul H. Nitze, Johns Hopkins University - Bologna and Washington, DC campuses.