UKRAINE UPDATE: David Warren writes:

The damage that has been done to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, should not be overlooked. He invested more political capital than was wise by heavy-handedly supporting both President Kuchma in the Ukraine, and Alexandr Lukashenko, the authoritarian president-for-life of Belarus — the two “Little Russias” from the old Soviet Union.

Ukrainian events remind Russians of how much fraud was involved in their own last election.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: More on fraud here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Still more, with photos, here:

WHAT HAS MADE THE SITUATION an international crisis is the heavy-handed Russian interference in the election. Russia’s involvement is so beyond the pale that two former presidents who led revolutions against Soviet-installed puppet governments in their own nations–Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic and Lech Walesa from Poland–have waded in on the side of Yushchenko.

Havel sent a letter which was read by Yushchenko at an evening demonstration in which he urged Yushchenko and his followers to continue their fight. Walesa arrived in Kiev two days later to support Yushchenko. He spoke twice to the crowds at Independence Square. The situation reminded him “of the struggle that we carried on with Solidarity in the 1980s,” he said.

Read the whole thing.