Anders Aslund presented his disappointment in the Washington Post. The Swedish diplomat, who for a long time kept politically active in favor of the old Soviet bloc transformation into a capitalist paradise, yearns for his dream of a great liberal night in Ukraine. Some months after the orange «revolution», the expected balance had not yet been reached. The new steering team did not change the State structures, it instead put them to work for its exclusive benefit. Growth decreases whereas inflation is rocketing. However, such disappointment verges on naivety: even before the elections and the «revolution», we explained in these columns how the CIA had been manipulating the Ukrainian opposition in order to bring to power their own servants, not to improve one iota in that country, of course. Shut away in his primary anti-Russian ideals, Aslund found this, on the contrary, as a spontaneous popular movement and signed a letter of request against Vladimir Putin. Today, he realistically looks at the results but refuses to recognize his mistakes and prefers to believe that the promises were betrayed.

_On his part, in the SNG Gazette, Russian parliamentarian Viatcheslav Irgunov maintains that the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko duo is in full crisis. The single wish of the new Ukrainian leaders is to nationalize the properties of other oligarchs, to privatize them again, but this time for their own profit. The difficulty lies in the fact that they have already wolfed down almost all the pie and there is very little left to share.
In the same daily, Yuri Pomanenko, from the Kiev Global Strategies Institute, enjoys the schizophrenia of the leaders from Ukraine, Georgia and other winners of the colored revolutions that owe their power to the U.S. and plan something against Russia, but whose national interests lead them, in contrast, to get closer to Russia and against the United States. Probably it is this apparent contradiction, rather than the economic disappointment, which really explains Anders Aslund’s and his friends’ bitterness, a point of view that the new Ukrainian Transportation Minister Evgueni Chervonenko seems to bear out in Vremya Novostvey.

Against any expectations, Chervonenko is pleased about the rapprochement between Kiev and Moscow, and he says that these relationships enjoy better health today than they ever did. In other words, by manipulating the Ukrainian opposition to put a submissive government in power, Washington would have bet on some opportunists who, once reached their aim, would have disappointed their sponsors to take on again their national interests.

EuropaNova - an Euro-enthusiast association of young French leaders - shares its joy concerning the European Constitution with the readers of the Figaro. For this group, the principle of a Constitution for Europe is good in itself. It is, therefore, superfluous to set about discussing precisely its contents. We have to vote «yes» in the referendum. The problem is, as Argentinean jurist Alejandro Teitelbaum has shown in our columns, that this Constitution treaty is only a name and actually corresponds to the adaptation for 25 of a Free Trade Agreement derived from the WTO treaties.
Among the «no» supporters, former socialist Minister Laurent Fabius should resort to his educator’s qualities to convince the readers of Le Mondethat this is not racist to oppose the fact that rich countries may compete against poor countries. In the face of his speaking precautions, we can retrospectively assess up to what extent one part of the French leftwing has used and abused the term «racist» to discredit the National Front and to divide the rightwing and how upset they become when it comes to vote «no» together with the National Front. However, the «yes» supporters, on their part, are not in the least embarrassed to have to vote together with the Latvian presidency and their SS friends.
And what is more surprising, Mr. Fabius continues to denounce the secret measures, which, in his opinion, the «yes» supporters would like to implement after winning. Of course, the former Minister speaks of his rightwing opponents, but this is how he tries to get further away from his «economic liberal image» and slander his false friends of the Socialist Party.

Voltaire Network