Winners and Losers in Russia's Ukraine Coverage

"Orange revolution" or "outside interference?"

In the Western online media, the electoral standoff in Ukraine is often portrayed as a confrontation between democracy and authoritarianism. Between orange-clad supporters of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko and the political establishment behind Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. In Russian Web commentary, it is more often seen as a family squabble with unwelcome outside interference.

It's not often that pundits East and West agree about the ongoing power struggle in the Eastern European nation of 48 million people. Last week, Italy's La Republicca said civil war is a possibility. So did Russian parliament speaker Boris Gryzlov.

Rather, the Russian and Western commentators often talk right past each other. European and American commentators tend to see the pro-Western "values" of Ukrainian voters threatened by allegations of electoral fraud. Many Russian commentators feel such talk of values merely cloaks a Western attack on Russian "interests."

Of course, the Russian media are dominated, if not quite controlled by the Putin government. Television news is almost uniformly pro-government. The big wire services, Interfax (in English) and Itar-Tass (in English), dutifully report Putin's every statement. Only smaller circulation newspapers criticize the Russian leader.

But even the best of the Russian news sites, the Moscow-based MosNews.com (in English), exhibits Russia's superiority complex vis-à-vis Ukraine.

"Russians have a somewhat mocking, if not irritable, attitude" about Ukrainian nationalism, says reporter Maria Antonova.

"In any history book you will find that the roots of Russia are in Kievan Rus, an East Slavic state from the 8th to 12th century. Kievan Rus is the common heritage of modern Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, who have the common name of Rusy or Ruthenians. In fact, 'Ukraine' as a name has only been used since the 1840s, before the region was known as 'Little Rus,'" she writes.

Antonova's point: Average Russians are "not on the 'imperial' frontlines supporting [pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych, where most western media put them."

For most Russians, she says, "Ukrainians are friendly neighbors who dance, sing, and eat salo" (the national dish consisting of raw or cooked pig fat).

And so, in much Russian commentary, the "orange revolution" behind opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko cannot spring from the allegedly thin soil of Ukranian nationalism but must originate elsewhere, namely in the geopolitical designs of the U.S. government.

"We are seeing yet again the implementation of an American 'velvet revolution' plan," wrote Vyacheslav Nikonov last week in Rossiyskaya Gazeta (in Russian), the government's daily newspaper in Moscow. (The "Velvet Revolution" was the name adopted by the peaceful protesters who ousted the communist government of Czechoslovakia in 1989.)

The continuing street protests, Nikonov argued, are "a special operation to replace a regime that does not suit the United States, a process that had already been successfully tested in 'banana republics' and was then transferred to the countries of Eastern Europe and Georgia. . . . [D]iverse international structures and institutions have now been brought in to "unravel the knot.'"

The United States does not like Russia's increasingly friendly relations with Europe or the economic integration of the former Soviet republics, said Vyacheslav Kostikov in Moscow's Argumenty i Fakty (in Russian), a mass-circulation weekly. He described the events in Ukraine as "a planned strike against Russia" aimed at creating instability on its southern border. (The translations quoted here come from the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, an office of the Central Intelligence Agency, which distributes them publicly.)