Ukraine’s Stunning Election-Results

Eric Zuesse

If the new Ukrainian parliament fails to deliver an intensification of the ethnic-cleansing that is going on against the nation’s ethnic-Russian southeast, Ukrainians in the northeast will be sorely disappointed. Even before the February coup and the breakaway of Ukraine’s least-conservative region, which is the Donbass region in the southeast, Ukraine was the farthest-rightwing country in Europe and in the former Soviet Union; but the now rump (without Donbass) Ukraine has a political spectrum that ranges virtually exclusively from far right to extreme right – really off-the-map right.

Still, Ukraine’s parliamentary elections were a shocking upset victory for the “war” bloc of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk against President Petro Poroshenko’s earlier-favored “peace” bloc.

John Helmer, who is perhaps the best writer on Ukrainian public opinion concerning politics, observes that toward the end of the campaigning, Ukraine’s voters were evidently becoming more favorable toward racist-fascist or nazi war policies, so that Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s far-rightist (essentially nazi) parliamentary bloc ultimately received 22.2% of the nationwide (minus Novorossia — nonvoting) votes instead of the earlier-poll-projected 7%; and Petro Poroshenko’s merely rightist (essentially fascist) bloc won 21.8% instead of the earlier poll-projected 32%.

Clearly, the swing to the more-overt nazi position shouldn’t have come as any surprise, however. Public opinion was very fluid in an electorate that understands little else than that they hate the Government that they have. Turnout was very low.

On October 15th, Helmer bannered “Washington’s Latest Opinion Poll Reveals Ukrainian Majority Opinion in Favour of More Military Force,” and he showed polling-results in which Poroshenko had the highest voter-confidence, while the outright nazi politicians such as Igor Kolomoysky, Yulia Timoshenko, Dmytry Yarosh, and Arsen Avakov, polled in the bottom half. However, the nazis Oleh Tyaqnybok and Oleg Lyashko were in the top half, and the nazi Yatsenyuk himself was second only to the fascist Poroshenko. Furthermore, in the far west, 63% wanted “more military force” to be used than Poroshenko was using. In the far eastern districts that Kiev still controls, only around 40% did. Overall: “Apparently, a majority of 50% thinks there hasn’t been enough force [enough war].” Furthermore, of all social institutions, “Ukraine’s Military Forces” enjoyed the highest confidence, while the parliament and the local police were near the bottom.

Then, on October 29th, right after the vote-counting, Helmer headlined, “Ukrainian Democracy Produces Three Times the Yatsenyuk Votes” as compared to what was expected; and he reported that:

“With 98% of the ballots counted, the C[entral] E[lection] C[ommission] says Yatseniuk’s People’s Front has won 22.2%. Poroshenko’s bloc has received 21.8%. Comparing these results to polling published before the balloting commenced, Yatseniuk has roughly tripled the poll projections of between 5% and 8%. By contrast, Poroshenko has lost roughly ten percentage points or about a third of his 32% pre-election estimate. At the same time, voters who have been consistently giving Poroshenko 10% higher approval ratings than Yatseniuk appear to have reversed themselves.”

What happened is that more far-rightist voters than expected switched from other nazis to Yatsenyuk, as the leader of the “more war” bloc; so, that bloc won. “According to Nikolai Churilov of the Kiev-based Centre for Social and Marketing Research (SOCIS), … Yatseniuk was able to steal the war programme of the extreme right.”

The people in Donbass had already been expecting that the Ukrainian Government’s “die or leave” policy would be resumed against them in full force; but, now, it is clear that the farther away a Ukrainian is from that far-eastern region, the stronger is that Ukrainian’s desire to exterminate the people in Donbass but to keep their land.

Only in the mind of a nazi does it make sense to kill the people but retain the land on which those people live. “We want your land but we don’t want you — we hate you” isn’t only Obama’s Ukrainian policy; it’s the policy of most Ukrainians who live in Ukraine’s northeastern half.

In this sense, Obama knew what he was doing when he planned his February coup there.

Ukraine’s Stunning Election-Results was originally published on Washington's Blog

Read more about Ukraine’s Stunning Election-Results