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12/01/2004:
"Putin's Warning Appears Aimed for U.S."
MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday warned that Ukraine's crisis over last week's disputed presidential election must be solved without foreign pressure - even as European envoys returned to Kiev for a second round of mediation.While it was delivered in a phone call with the German chancellor, Putin's message appeared aimed more at the United States, seen by the Kremlin as behind a campaign to install Ukraine's pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko at the helm of the nation Russia has always regarded as its main satellite.
The former Soviet republic of 48 million has emerged at the center of arguably the biggest direct geopolitical confrontation between Moscow and the United States and its Western allies since the late 1980s, when Eastern Europe was still firmly in the embrace of the Communist empire but struggling to break out.
``Putin is being told by his advisers and allies that for a long time, the West has been actively interfering in Ukraine and Yushchenko as a politician is a purely American project,'' said Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of a leading Russian foreign affairs journal. ``He's told that the whole campaign is being run on ... mostly American, money, and if Yushchenko wins Ukraine will sharply change its political orientation - quickly joining NATO, trying to rupture its ties with Russia and so on.''
Full Article: netscape.cnn.com
Some 'opposition.' Yushchenko is the former head of the national bank. Nobody in the mainstream press mentions the larger American/European geo-political-economic-military interests in the country. And not a peep about the pipeline.
