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tarians. The Foundation’s observer teams were to be made up of former elected parliamentarians. Among other things, it was hoped that reports by these delega tions made up of former parliamentarians from the United States and Europe would have significant credibility with the governments of their respective countries and the European Union. By the time the Foundation was pulling to gether its sixth delegation, the one for the December 26 revote, I knew I had to be a part of the in-country effort. The previous delegations had reported the depth of the manipulation of the campaign laws and the es sential unfairness and corruption of both the campaign and, like other international observers groups, the sys temic corruption of the earlier votes. These reports, the influence they had on our government and governments in Europe as well as the extraordinary “Orange Revolution” combined to make it obvious that what was happening in Ukraine was historic and exciting. I did not want to be a bystander, no matter how active. Despite the date of the revote and all that Christmas with family means, the sixth Foundation delegation included 31 former Members of Congress and former members of the European Parliament. Some were repeaters who had been members of earlier teams and others were traveling to Ukraine for the first time. Our approach was to leverage our numbers by sending two-person delegations (with drivers and translators) into different oblasts. The Foundation had teams in Sumy, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Cher- kasy, Kirovohrad, Odesa, Kherson, Kyiv and Donetsk. The teams went to their assigned areas on Christmas Eve and used Christmas Day to travel throughout their regions, introducing themselves to election officials and the courts, connecting with other observers in the area, and making sure the local press knew that former United States senators and congressman and European parliamentarians would be moving throughout the area, stopping in unannounced throughout the day at polling stations and courtrooms and would be monitor ing the tabulation of votes. I was part of the two Foundation teams that traveled to Donetsk. Former Senator Joe Tydings (D- MD) and Jose Posada (Spain) were to monitor voting districts in Donetsk itself. Former Congressman Bob McEwen (R-Ohio) and I, with extraordinary support from Marta Pereyma, were to monitor election district 50 of Donetsk Oblast, “former” Prime Minister Yanukovych’s hometown Yenakiyeve as well as Ki- rovs’ke and Zhdanivka. When we left Kyiv for Donetsk I felt a bit like we were leaving for the “Dark Side.” We were travel ing to a region where, among other things, the sys temic corruption of the earlier voting rounds had re sulted in more votes for Mr. Yanukovych than there were registered voters, where voting on November 21 had jumped up by significant and suspicious percent ages over the vote counts in the first round. We would be traveling to the region where news continued to be tightly managed even after the Orange Revolution had made perhaps its biggest breakthrough and television channels started reporting more honestly and com pletely. The channels moving toward balanced and fair reporting suddenly were not part of the “packages” you could get in Donetsk. We would be traveling to a region where Mr. Yanukovych’s anti-Americanism had been in high gear. Setting aside specific political observations for a moment, arrival in Donetsk slapped me with staggering contrasts. Like Kyiv in 1990, passengers’ baggage at the Donetsk Airport followed the passen gers to the terminal on the equivalent of a farm cart towed by a tractor. At the terminal, passengers went out to the primitive cart to reclaim their possessions. Changes being made rapidly to the west were not ap parent in this—the home of Mr. Yanukovych’s “eco nomic miracle.” Impressions of Donetsk itself were based on limited sight-seeing. Bob McEwen, Marta and I spent almost all of our time outside the city. But the over whelming contrast between the city, the apartment houses and general condition of things and Rinat Ak hmetov’s Donbass Palace hotel presented visions of poverty vs. gross opulence that I have only seen in certain areas of Mexico and a few other impoverished countries. Oligarch Akhmetov’s hotel is without a doubt a legitimate Five Star hotel that can stand comparison to any facility in the world. From the Mercedes 600s parked conspicuously in front, to the powerful smell of fresh roses as you enter the hotel lobby, to the heated marble floors of the bathrooms, the Palace oozes posh. And the young oligarch himself goes in and out with a small platoon of bodyguards who could find an easy home on “The Sopranos.” But, if you turn around at the front door and look out to the city, the disparity of the economic miracle is overwhelming. This is even more so when you travel to Yenakiyeve. If you wish to take pictures of Yenakiyeve there is no need for color film. Black and white will do. It is a city of shades of grey—a central Soviet-style statue of a steelworker, dirty grey apartments, other dirty grey buildings, and a skyline made up of a dark and massive—truly massive—factory with countless smokestacks belching plumes of dark emissions 14 “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, СІЧЕНЬ 2005 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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