"There was fraud but it was his fault"

The new head of Yanukovych's campaign, a Taras Chornovil--the others have bailed on him fast-- made the following interesting statement today:

"All the falsifications in the election were sanctioned by Kuchma and he ... used administrative resources to discredit Yanukovych," Chornovil said.

So there was fraud but it wasn't our fault. An interesting admission, if I may say so myself. He admits the fraud but denies that it was Yanukovych behind it.

Yanukovych did not know "anything about election falsifications," Chornovil told
The Associated Press.

Makes you kinda wonder though how they would know there was fraud. I guess maybe they would say they heard it when we did as it was presented to the Supreme Court? But how would they know that Kuchma was behind it?

I guess they have to admit the fraud. That is probably a strategic necessity. But it is hard to think that the hand-picked successor to Kuchma, the one who had the support of not only Kuchma but also of Kuchma's government, not to mention many local officials, did not know what was going on. And all of this makes it sound as if he were out of government at the time. But he was the Prime Minister during the time the fraud was being committed, a fraud, by the way, that was to his advantage almost exclusively. (The "almost" is there because Kuchma was working his own sort of scheme with the selection of Yanukovych. But the benefit to Kuchma was indirect.) So what he wants people to believe is that he was Kuchma's man, was the Prime Minister and in charge of parts of the government--a government which supported him against Yuschenko-- that he was the prime beneficiary of the fraud in the election, but he knew nothing about it. And, it was Kuchma's fault anyway.

Not a very smart position, I'm afraid.

UPDATE: Thinking about this some more, they are probably only trying to give what we would call their base a reason to believe Yanukovych. And that would be a part of the base only because I think there are sizeable portions of it that just do not care. He’s their man and that’s that. But there might be some who are wobbly and so they make the argument: “I didn’t do it, knew nothing about it and that evil man Kuchma was the one behind it. He even tried to discredit me with the whole thing.” Kuchma isn’t liked all that much anyway by anybody so transfer the whole thing onto him. It sounds like something he could do anyway. Shores up the wobblies.