Julia on Russia

This--Kremlin Bureaucrats Lost Ukraine, But Russia Won--is interesting coming from the hardliner of the revolution. It's an interesting way to attempt to mollify Russia, something that needs to be done of course. Use the person who spit fire to do it and blame it on the political technologists, eastern speak for "spin doctors."

A quote:

I hear constantly that Russia lost the presidential election in Ukraine.

I do not agree with this at all. If we are talking about political spin doctors who are Russian citizens, then yes, they did lose the election. They never quite figured out the nature of Ukrainian statehood or the mentality of various groups within the Ukrainian electorate. If we are talking about a couple of Russian businessmen who pinned their hopes of taking part in the basically criminal crony privatization of Ukrainian companies on Yanukovych and invested lots of money in him, yes, they indeed lost the election. But if Yanukovych's sponsors had done some serious analysis at the right time, they would have understood that there are several reasons why this sort of leader was not what Ukraine needed and thus would never become president.

There's more of course.