The U.S. Mainstream Media Redoes Ukraine’s and Yanukovich’s Font Color

ANALYSIS

by Gordon Hahn

As Ukranians went to the polls this month to elect their president in a runoff vote between the iron lady of the 2004 Orange ‘revolution’, Yulia Timoshenko, and her opponent then and now former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the U.S. mainstream media desperately tried to re-position itself in anticipation of Yanukovich’s victory.  A case in point is the Wall Street Journal, which on January 27 printed an article by Matthew Kaminski, a member of its editorial board.  According to the earlier view of both Kaminski and the WSJ, Ukraine like Georgia is a beacon of democracy in the “inhospitable terrain” of “an authoritarian wilderness” stretching “from Belarus to the Caucasus and Central Asia” (Matthew Kaminski, “Ukraine Needs the West's Support - A European democracy sits uncomfortably close to Russia,” Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2010). 

However, as it became clear that Yanukovich would win his runoff with Timoshenko, the Wall Street Journal backslid on its previously unqualified support for Ukraine as a beacon of democracy.  In an article published by the WP on the very day of the second round vote by the paper’s Russia reporter Philip P. Pan (who has produced some good, objective articles on Russia), Ukraine is slated as “vulnerable to an authoritarian comeback similar to the one mounted by Vladimir Putin in Russia” (Philip P. Pan, “Drop in U.S. aid hits democracy efforts in Ukraine, which heads to polls today,” Washington Post, 7 November 2010, p. A17).  Pan and the Post cite Samuel Charap to note Ukraine’s growing similarity with the nasty bear: “There are some eerie echoes of public opinion in Russia a decade ago… Ukrainians are overwhelmingly disillusioned. They're losing faith in democracy.”  To drive home the point, public opinion poll findings of the kind that have existed for years are suddenly allowed to appear in print to show Ukrainians as anything but the inveterate democrats they were made out to be when anti-Russian politicians took over the country: “Polls in Ukraine, a nation of 46 million strategically located on the Black Sea between Russia and the West, show deep frustration with democracy, with less than a third of respondents expressing approval of the transition to a multiparty system after the fall of the Soviet Union. Less than half say Sunday's vote will be fair, and nearly three-quarters say Ukraine is headed toward instability and chaos.”  With both candidates expressing support for improved relations with Russia, the Post and Pan describe them, including the West’s former darling, the orange lady of democracy Tymoshenko, as “having autocratic tendencies.”  The discredited outgoing president of orange Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, is quoted sngling out Tymoshenko as a “potential tyrant.”

Also, Pan and the Post suddenly acknowledge that “U.S. money had helped make the Orange Revolution possible” and “develop the network of grass-roots groups that later emerged at the forefront of the protest movement.”  This fact had previously been denied by such supporters of the Orange ‘revolution, which had to be seen as a purely indigenous affair, while the U.S. mainstream media’s charged at the same time that it was Russia which has interfered most in Ukrainian politics then and now.

In sum, Ukraine’s elections now are portrayed as likely to be unfair and Ukrainians as anti-democratic now that they are voting against the Orange ‘revolution’ and for better relations with Russia.  One can expect that this view of Ukraine and Ukrainians will be purveyed more frequently and fervently as Kiev mends its relationship with Moscow, and calls will increase for increased funding for the opposition.

The Wall Street Journal took a somewhat different tack in an article published the day after the runoff vote’s exit polls and early results showed Yanukovich would win.  It published an article written by Adrian Karatnycky, an inveterate anti-Russian polemicist, a senior fellow at the pro-NATO expansion Atlantic Council, and former Director of Freedom House in a period when that institution repeatedly gave Russian much lower ratings for the level of democracy than were warranted (Adrian Karatnycky, “Re-Introducing Viktor Yanukovich,” Wall Street Journal Europe, 8 February 2020).  Now that Yanukovich had effectively won and Karatnycky saw signs the new Ukrainian president would be less pro-Russian than he once feared, he dutifully rediscovers him and ‘re-introduces’ readers to him.  Now portrayed as a relative good guy, he, his Party of the Regions, and allied oligarchs are rehabilitated in Soviet fashion.  Yanukovich and his party are described as having undergone a “political transformation”: “Mr. Yanukovych and other Regions leaders have become public personalities irrespective of some rough edges, and have accustomed themselves and found success in the democratic rules of the game.”  His allies among Ukraine’s oligarchs have suddenly become more transparent in their business affairs.  No charges are made anymore that Yanukovich tried to steal the 2004 election that led to the Orange ‘revolution’, and instead that election is described as having been “marred” but by whom Karatnycky does not say.  A WP editorial published a few days later took a similar line as this WSJ article took (“Did Ukraine's presidential election reverse its ‘color revolution’?”, Washington Post, 9 February 2010).

Again, one can expect that as Yanukovich gets too close to Russia, the oligarchs will suddenly have become corrupt robber barons and Yanukovich and his party will undergo a new transformation into russified tyrants, dragging Ukraine back to the future under the bear’s knout and the evil empire.

The Economist issued an editorial with a less sanguine view of the prospects of Yanukovich keeping Moscow at arm’s length, predicting Kiev’s relations with the Kremlin “will improve” (“Orange Squashed,” The Economist.com, 8 February 2010).  Thus, Yanukovich was referred to as ““tongue-tied and hard-fisted” and “the villan of the Orange Revolution.”

The New York Times published an article by Brookings Institution senior fellow and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer who proposed making it clear that if Yanukovich gets close to Moscow, then “Ukraine fatigue in the West will grow.”  The suggestion appeared to be that under such circumstances the West ought not support Ukraine as it deals with a crippling economic crisis and debt, forcing Moscow to tackle that issue and isolating both countries rather than partnering with both to work on reforming Ukraine’s energy sector and resolving the country’s debt problems (Steven Pifer, “Curing ‘Ukraine Fatigue’,” New York Times, 10 February 2010).

In sum, all the main U.S. mainstream print media outlets adopted a position towards a Ukraine under Yanukovich largely based on their perceptions of the likelihood he will seek rapprochement with Moscow, rather than his commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and economic reforms.