There is not a chance that the police will start fighting corruption. That would require honest police, who do not exist at this stage in Ukraine. In the years since Ukraine won its independence several attempts to set up independent task forces on corruption have, and the progressing police corruption makes the establishment of another such task force increasingly unlikely. Such a force would have to be approved by parliament, which, being one hundred percent corrupt, does not want to set up an arm which could slap it. The judicial system, which is also thoroughly corrupt, would be loath to empower anti-corruption judges who might turn on their own. And the corrupt prosecution is similarly wary of fighting corruption.

A new generation of judges, police officers, and government officials all paid large bribes to get their jobs. A generation entered police, courts, tax administration, and other government offices for a single reason—to take bribes. And they are neither interested in nor capable of doing any other work, or working for any other reason.

The educational system is dead: for twenty years, universities have churned out unqualified graduates who got their diplomas by paying bribes to pass every exam. As Soviet-era professors have moved to Western universities for better pay, or left their posts because of their advanced age, there have been no replacements. The Russian kings, and Stalin after them, solved a similar problem by massively sending Russians abroad for education; upon their return, they taught others. Today this option is closed because foreign-educated Ukrainians have no reason to return to their country.

No change can come from the upper level. In Ukraine, leading presidential candidates spend one to two billion dollars for elections. Besides money, they need strong support from corrupt local businessmen and officials to forge election results and force private media to carry their ads and refuse their opponents’. Candidates thus have to pay back their sponsors, and sponsors will not align themselves with potentially honest candidates who might refuse to squander state resources for personal enrichment. Even if a decent person were to become the Ukrainian president, he could not possibly change the entrenched, corrupt, and inert system, certainly not by any liberal means. Peter the Great did not succeed against the Russian bureaucracy even by atrocious means.

Ukraine is currently embroiled in the same situation the Russians saw under Yeltsin: the oligarchy tears the country apart while a symbiotic alliance of criminal groups, unethical businessmen, and corrupt officials devours it from within. Unlike Russia, Ukraine cannot hope for a benevolent autocrat because its security services have been destroyed and its national mentality, unlike the Russian mentality, does not lend itself to orderly subjugation to authority. Ukraine lacks the natural resources that prop up the Russian economy, and only subsists by eating away Soviet-era industrial assets. Foreign companies will not invest significantly in Ukraine because of its corruption, criminality, and the utter unwillingness of its population to work hard. There is simply no reason to build factories in Ukraine rather than China, or—for the EU markets—Czech Republic.

Continued economic deterioration will spell the end of unified Ukraine because the relatively advanced East won’t have the money to bribe the pauperized and nationalistic West into accommodation. A nation of fifty million paupers is too big for Europe. Tensions will increase as southeastern Ukraine aligns itself with Russia. It is not unlikely that Poland and Romania might claim back their former territories that were annexed by Stalin’s empire, especially if the locals demand reunification. This is a possible scenario because Poland and Romania are EU members and offer better employment opportunities than western Ukraine.

In modern history, Ukrainian society has erupted about twice every century into brutal civil war. In a country which lacks political vents and means of adjustment to popular opinion, no other solution seems possible.

Ukraine shares many similarities to Israel. Both nations lacked statehood throughout their history until very recently. Both established their modern states by the grace of Western powers with Russia’s consent. Both tried to assimilate very different ethnic and religious groups, impose the use of a previously unused language, and overall create a national identity. Both countries perpetually confront their powerful neighbors, Russia and the Muslim world. Both are aliens: Ukraine is neither a Western nor an Eastern European country, and Israel is an odd entity in the Islamic Middle East. Both ostensibly enjoy US aid and protection, but suffer from being pawns in US global policy. America reasonably treats both as allies rather than friends, but Israel and Ukraine are only useful to America against its archenemy, Russia (and now, in Israel’s case, Iran and Syria). The US sets Ukraine against Russia and mortgages Israel for oil. In both countries, statistically minor American aid buys huge, disproportionate influence. In both countries, American PR consultants handle the elections and the US Embassy is the kingmaker.

The US Administration famously staged a Ukrainian “orange revolution” in 2004, pumping close to $2 billion into to Ukraine to oust pro-Russian presidential candidate Yanukovich (a convicted rapist and robber) and install the completely worthless Yuschenko (an ex-accountant from a state farm). Demonstrators paid $16 a day formed the core of anti-Yanukovich protests in Kiev, and Yuschenko eventually succeeded in the heavily rigged re-run of the elections. Since then, Yanukovich’s party overwhelmingly won the parliamentary elections and single-handedly formed the government, which stripped Yuschenko of power and his acolytes of profits in the thoroughly corrupt Ukrainian economy. On the advice of his American analysts, Yuschenko undertook a truly excellent feat: he dissolved the parliament and called for new elections. That move was superficially odd because Yuschenko’s party stood to lose many seats, owing to his unpopularity as president. But the trick worked brilliantly: Yuschenko and his tentative political partner Timoshenko (whose business empire collapsed under hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to Russia’s gas suppliers) rigged the elections to push the small Socialist Party below the 3 percent parliamentary threshold (the threshold is grossly unconstitutional, but who cares). The elections created a parliament in which no major party (Yanukovich’s or Timoshenko’s) can form a coalition government without Yuschenko’s small party. Now Yuschenko offers a coalition both to Yanukovich and Timoshenko, which is pretty unprincipled, but welcome to Ukraine. He plays them against each other and bargains for a disproportionate number of ministerial positions for his people. In Ukraine, participation in government means stealing a lot of money. Every party has on its list many businessmen who paid $4-6 million each to get into parliament and now need to recover that investment manifold. Any party excluded from the government coalition fails on its promises to such sponsors and will have a hard time raising cash for the next election. Both Yanukovich and Timoshenko strive therefore to form a government coalition and offer the best terms to Yuschenko, who has thus arranged good positions in the Ukrainian government for his associates, and ensured the accompanying corrupt profits.

The Ukrainian president—the US’ darling—promotes Petlyura for his non-existent role in building the Ukrainian state. The official historiography vaguely acknowledges pogroms during Petlyura’s reign but relegates them to mob activity even though a French criminal court in 1927 found Petlyura guilty of genocide.

Ukrainian historians call Bogdan Khmelnitsky, another butcher, the avenger of the oppressed Ukrainian population against Jewish tavernkeepers and tax farmers—as if hundreds of thousands of massacred Jewish peasants had anything to do with a few tax farmers.

The previous president, Kravchuk, even apologized (Oh, thank you, Mr. President!), and the dishonest and conformist rabbinical establishment lauded him. As if the Jews need an apology from non-apologetic Ukrainian murderers who name towns and streets after Khmelnistsky and Petlyura, study an anti-semitic pamphlet called the Orlyk constitution in school, and prefer to forget about the Trawniki, thousands of Ukrainian scum who manned the German extermination squads.

The American-leaning Ukrainian president cannot state publicly that he promotes Petlyura specifically because he slaughtered the Jews. So the official line is that Petlyura either did not know of the massacres or did not control his army. The former is completely implausible, the latter disqualifies Petlyura as a prominent state-builder—the very reason the Ukrainians promote him. The US installed the Ukrainian president Yuschenko and props his extremely unpopular regime, virulently anti-semitic even in generally anti-semitic Ukraine.

Israelis think the Americans are our allies and will help the Jews. Think again.

Slavs destroyed the Khazar Kingdom though assimilated much of its culture; the Russian language is heavily rooted in Hebrew.

In the 17th century, Bogdan Khmelnitsky’s hordes massacred between 100,000 and 250,000 Jews with a brutality unknown even at the time. Ukrainian historians claim his massacres were somehow related to alleged abuses of Jewish tax administrators and liquor sellers. Wow! As if most of them were Jewish, as if there were more than a few hundred Jews doing those jobs, as if the drunkard population resented tavern keepers. Jews were not tax farmers in scores of European countries, yet Christians killed them. Khmelnitsky is a hero of modern Ukraine, a country showered by US attention, welcomed by Israel, and aspiring to EU membership. Thousands of Ukrainians have received the government’s Bogdan Khmelnitsky medal. Schoolchildren learn from approving teachers of his struggle against the Jews who oppressed poor Ukrainian masses. In the 18th century, Pylyp Orlyk, Ukrainian warlord and a later convert to Islam, wrote a constitution. Ukrainian students now learn it as an early example of democratic liberalism. Indeed. I won’t repeat what the constitution says about the Jews.

Pogroms continued frequently, but tremendously increased in number and scope since the late 19th century. Liberation movement provoked politically motivated pogroms from 1905. Jews,who were banned from agriculture and did not join proletariat, became class enemies of Ukrainians – another good reason to kill us.

Socialist Revolution of 1917 pulled down even the nominal legislative safeguards against murder of Jews. Ukrainian warlords fought each other, but agreed on one point – kill the Jews. Meet Simon Petlyura, another hero of modern Ukraine. The U.S.-supported Ukrainian president passed executive order that requires regional authorities to build monuments to Petlyura and name streets after him. Curiously, Ukraine signed the European Convention on the International Validity ofCriminal Judgments. In 1926, French court acquitted a Jew who killed Petlyura on the grounds unprecedented in modern justice – the Jew, the court decided, justly avenged his family murdered by Petlyura’s troops. Thus, the Ukrainian hero turns out a convicted mass murderer. Another 250 thousand Jews killed in the extermination campaign larger than any that took place before.

Then came the Nazis. Independent Ukraine took compensation from Germany for the murdered Jews. Germans, sure, organized the extermination, but Ukrainians have carried it out. Queasily hypocritical Ukrainian government holds annual memorial parties at Babyi Yar, a notorious site of mass murder. No one admits that the executioners were Ukrainians, or that the Ukrainians reported Jews to the Nazis and cheered when Jews were marched to death.

the government always sanctioned and often encouraged Ukrainian pogroms. In 1905, police disarmed Jewish self-defense units to clear the path for Ukrainian murderers into Jewish quarters. Current president and major leaders keep close friendship with virulently anti-Semitic Ukrainian nationalists. Jewish barons add to the popular hatred. Ukraine is a poor country, but they steal, cheat on taxes, privatize state assets for pennies, and push their way into parliament. Jewish mayors came to power in rigged elections, and extort enormous bribes from local entrepreneurs, embezzle, and oppress the people. Gentile officials do likewise, but Jews are more visible.

No hand combat training or light firearms will protect Ukrainian Jews. Poor fellows, why do they stay there for certain death?

America has the discouraging habit of involving itself in places it has not even the slightest clue about. The Middle East was it for decades, and now the Bush Administration has decided to meddle in Eastern Europe.

What the US strategic interests in that area are, I cannot imagine. Since Russia doesn’t need containing, why spend billions propping up regimes hostile to Russia and strengthen Russian nationalists fearful of Western expansion?

Anyway, last year the US funneled about a billion dollars into the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, the American inmates’ robe color. Vast numbers of demonstrators were hauled in from the provinces for $16 a day, and the locals joined the show to get free goodies, like food and coats.

America, as usual, propped one scoundrel up against another. The opposition was led by the pro-Russian prime minister, twice convicted of rape and robbery. The pro-American side naturally consisted of Ukrainian nationalists, largely anti-semites. Both sides forged elections in the regions they controlled, and the result of 46% for the pro-Russians was not unreasonable. The US officials just did not know that in non-democracies about a third of the people automatically vote for the ruling party, pro-Russian in this case. Anyway, the elected president (the one convicted of violent felonies) was displaced and the pro-American one installed.

Just over a year later, the ostensibly popular pro-American president’s party got a mere 16% of the vote in the parliamentary elections. The convict’s party got the majority. The good thing is that the elections restored the balance of power, tilting it a bit away from the Ukrainian nationalists. The bad thing, the continuing downward spiral of the Ukrainian economy that survives by amortizing old Soviet industrial assets, will surely bring about a crisis, and the Jews will be right there to kill, as always happens in the Ukraine.

America destabilizes the Middle East by forcing equally silly policies on Israel.

The United States replayed the scenario in Romania and the Ukraine. American involvement was meant to be highly visible. In both countries the US backed candidates adopted orange as their campaign color. Tons of orange coats and winter boots and . . . oranges, carefully prepared and exported to Romania and the Ukraine beforehand, show that the choice was not coincidental.

Foreign intervention is not necessarily detrimental to a country, though always insulting. The alternative to the American backed Yuschenko was the pro-Russian candidate Yanukovich, a twice-convicted felon who marked his short term as prime minister by knocking ministers’s teeth out and beating governors he found less than helpful. Closer ties with Russia—now ruled by a KGB foster child whose savagery has been demonstrated in Chechnya—are a dubious attraction for the Ukraine.

The wholesale condemnation of the elections by Western observers was orchestrated. The same watchdogs called the 2002 elections fair while local campaign managers who knew better grinned. Foreign observers, few of whom know Ukrainian or Russian, are useless. They do not understand the intricate technicalities of falsifying results which takes place largely outside the polling stations: forging the summaries that record vote counts, issuing fake voter registration documents, and hacking the computer system.

The only universal violation the observers reported was Yanukovich’s massive advertising through the government-controlled media. But Yuschenko enjoyed similar large-scale free promotion much longer, during all his years as head of the Central Bank from 1993 to 1999 and then as prime minister until 2001.

The Ukrainian Supreme Court decision annulling the vote should be taken with reservations. The court violated the principle of the separation of judicial and legislative powers by requiring the legislature to pass amendments to existing laws making the judiciary-mandated re-vote possible. Intimidated by crowds assembled around the court building, the notoriously corrupt justices had little choice but to give in. They proved as ready on this occasion to yield to threats as they usually do to bribes.

In an extraordinary démarche, the United States refused to recognize Yanukovich, the newly elected Ukrainian president. This was only to be expected after Madeleine Albright told the New York Times in March 2004 that the Ukrainian vote was certain to be rigged and that the perpetrators (presumably only those favoring Yanukovich) would risk having their foreign bank accounts frozen. The righteous itch of the US administration is a bit odd, because the elections were not exceptionally flawed in light of recent Ukrainian history. The United States government hailed the no less rigged Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 2002, but then the Yuschenko faction fetched victory. With the American presidential vote stained by redistricting abuse and outright fraud, who would expect very honest balloting in the thoroughly corrupt Ukraine? Both candidates seem to have adjusted the figures in the regions they controlled: the almost 100% vote for Yuschenko in Western Ukraine is as doubtful as is Yanukovich’s similar result in the East. When a month of active campaigning brought Yuschenko new supporters and cost Yanukovich some, the vote difference of only 8% between the contenders shows that they were close in the annulled run-off.

Yuschenko’s camp includes high-level bureaucrats accused and even charged with corruption, oligarchs profiting from insider privatization deals and right-wing radicals often compared to Nazis. During their years in power, Yuschenko and his allies conducted about the same economic policy as Yanukovich, and their parliamentary faction seconded most his moves.

Both camps overspent the allowed campaign limit dozens of times over, estimates running from one to two billion dollars.

The facts outlined above show that American involvement has little to do with promoting democracy. Rather the support was directed to an imperfect candidate whose major platform difference from the other also imperfect candidate was further distancing from Russia toward America. The United States government’s naïveté is puzzling. Just after the contested run-off, at the height of American support, Yuschenko’s parliamentary faction voted to pull the Ukrainian contingent out of Iraq: a reasonable measure to be sure, but hardly in sync with Bush’s expectations. Further disappointment followed when Yuschenko scheduled an official trip to Russia almost immediately after his inauguration. The White House shows ignorance of local realities by expecting the Ukraine to drift away from Russia, the only country willing to give it virtually free oil and gas, critical for its industry and the relief of its pauperized population.

The delusions of the Bush Administration should be of concern not only to American taxpayers. The winners of such elections take American support as license to suppress their opponents. Not so independent prosecutors have already charged many members of the defeated Yanukovich camp with criminal offenses, including calls for splitting the Ukraine up into autonomous districts. Here lies perhaps the biggest problem, since the United States is obsessed with preserving borders, erroneously believing that breaking a country up into more states means destabilization. The American refusal to cooperate in the disintegration of Yugoslavia led to ethnic conflicts of the kind that loom now in the Ukraine, where the vehemently nationalist Ukrainian West confronts the strongly pro-Russian East. Multicultural democracy works in societies such as Switzerland or (more or less) Belgium, which learned toleration painfully, or America, which went through the melting-pot stage. Yugoslavia, the Ukraine, and Russia, where totalitarian power has historically quelled ethnic resentment, have had no opportunity to learn ethnic and political tolerance. The 44% pro-Russian Yanukovich voters would hardly accept the extreme nationalists prominent in Yuschenko’s entourage as partners. Regional autonomy, if not complete dissolution of this artificially huge country, is the most practical solution, but both the White House and the Ukrainian ultranationalists whom it shores up oppose that sensible measure.

There is little doubt that an increasingly imperialist Russia will exploit the tension between East and West Ukraine. High-ranking Russian politicians are already calling for autonomy in pro-Russian Eastern Ukraine. The worst thing the Bush administration could do is to give unreserved backing to a nationalist government bent on quashing even discussion of autonomous regions. Given the historical record which shows that the American government props up any client regime so long as it remains receptive to United States corporate interests, there is little hope for a peaceful adjustment of territorial issues in the Ukraine.