Democracy for Ukraine

WE DON'T YET know how Ukraine's political crisis will end. But one welcome result is already clear: The attempt by the Ukrainian government and its backers in Moscow to install an authoritarian regime like that of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been decisively rebuffed by the people of Ukraine. Despite the government's brazenly unfair campaign, a majority of Ukrainians voted for the leader of the opposition, Victor Yushchenko; when authorities then tried to steal the election, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Kiev, the capital, igniting what has become a popular -- and so far peaceful -- revolution. As in previous pro-democracy revolts in eastern and southern Europe, the state's instruments of authority have crumbled. Ukrainian police and security forces have sided with the demonstrators; journalists in state-controlled media have rebelled and insisted on reporting the truth; and the once reliably pro-government parliament has passed resolutions repudiating the election results and, yesterday, removing the government's would-be president from his current post of prime minister.

It appears doubtful that official candidate Viktor Yanukovych will be able to take office, even if a pending Supreme Court decision on the election's validity goes his way. So the vital question for Ukraine, and for the foreign mediators who have arrived in Kiev, is how a new president will be chosen. There is one right answer to that question: a new, genuinely democratic election. Such an election not only offers a peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis but would confirm that this strategic country of nearly 50 million people, and the European continent around it, will be undivided and free.

The real struggle in Ukraine is not about geopolitical orientation; it is about democracy. Regardless of who becomes the country's president, Ukraine will need and will seek out close relations with both Russia and the West. But will Ukraine welcome a free press and independent courts, respect civil liberties and choose its governments in free and fair votes? The orange-bedecked protesters camping in the snows of Kiev do so because they want those freedoms, not because they hate Russia or love the United States. Putin, who insists on portraying the conflict in anachronistic East-West terms, does so because he seeks to install in Ukraine an authoritarian political system like the one he is constructing in Moscow. To him, liberal democracy is synonymous with Western influence; he seeks to create a contrasting bloc of non-democratic countries in Europe that Russia would dominate. This crude neo-imperialism grossly violates the post-Cold War ideal of a Europe "whole and free," one to which three U.S. presidents, beginning with the first President Bush, have committed themselves.

The Bush administration has been backing a democratic solution in Ukraine while trying to ignore the Russian issue. President Bush has endorsed Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski's mission to Kiev; he is seeking to broker an agreement on new elections. It's not yet clear, however, that European mediators or Ukraine's pro-democracy forces will succeed; the government still seeks to wear down the opposition or win its agreement to twisted "compromise" schemes. Mr. Putin, who massively intervened on behalf of Mr. Yanukovych and proclaimed him the new president even before the official, fraudulent vote count was complete, now absurdly denounces "foreign pressure" in Ukraine. In the past week German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has twice argued the case for Ukrainian democracy to Mr. Putin; Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said while standing next to Mr. Bush on Tuesday that "elections within Ukraine have got to be free from outside influence, and that includes Russia." That Mr. Bush has not said such words to his friend Vladimir only makes him look weak -- and raises the risk that Ukraine's democratic revolution will yet be turned back.