A Crucial Choice for Ukraine
John McCain; Tuesday, October 19, 2004; Page A23, Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43718-2004Oct18.html

“One election this year will determine the political destiny of a vitally important country, define its international orientation and test its democratic credentials. I do not refer to the recent free elections in Afghanistan, or the elections next year in Iraq or even our own presidential race. All these are critical in their own right, but so is Ukraine's historic step on Oct. 31. When the Ukrainian people line up that day to select a new president, the world will be watching.” John McCain, Senator from Arizona, in an op-ed for the Washington Post reviews what he discovered during an August visit to Ukraine. “What I found was a sense that Ukraine was moving backward, not forward, on the road to democracy.” McCain writes of rigged and stolen elections, “balloting irregularities,” and politically-motivated attacks – physical and more subtly – on opposition candidates. Democracy, McCain suggests, is sliding backwards as an increasingly despotic Ukrainian regime struggles to maintain power over a populace which is filled with a desire for independence and a dream to one day join “the family of the free.” And with this loss of democracy, according to McCain, Ukraine may easily begin to tilt into Russia’s orbit at the cost of a significant loss to the democratic West and to the people of Ukraine.