The hollowing of a hero; Yushchenko of Ukraine

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Nina L. Khrushcheva - The New York Times Media Group
MOSCOW
Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko never fails to disappoint.
Of course, most successful revolutionaries are later regarded as disappointments, even failures, in one way or another. That's the nature of revolutionary euphoria once it deflates. Yet even in such company, Yushchenko stands out.
America, despairing of Yushchenko's endless dithering and willingness to compromise Ukraine's independence from Russia, abandoned its support for him over a year ago. Recently, the European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, in a brutal session with Yushchenko in Brussels, let him know that the EU, too, had had enough of his temporizing and political machinations.
Neither message, however, appears to have had any effect on Yushchenko, whose only concern nowadays is his own political survival. Thus, he is focused on reaching a deal with his former, pro-Russian opponents to secure a second term as Ukraine's president in 2010 rather than on opinion in the West or among his supporters.
Indeed, it now seems clear that Yushchenko was only a reluctant leader of a democratic revolution. From the moment of his victory in 2005, he sought to distance himself from those who supported him and, instead, to forge an alliance with those who opposed Ukraine's democratic and free-market transformation, preferring the crony capitalism that had developed since Ukraine gained its independence. Now he wants to formalize that alliance.
Yushchenko's plan is breathtakingly cynical. With his popularity ratings having plummeted to around 10 percent, he can no longer command the allegiance of the bulk of Our Ukraine, the party that he created but which now (thanks to his unpopularity) is reduced to junior partner status in the coalition government led by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
Instead of trying to recover support, Yushchenko and his coterie of advisers want to link the rump of Our Ukraine that they still control with the Orange Revolution's opponents, the Party of the Regions, which would then dump the unelectable Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine's erstwhile prime minister and Yushchenko's one-time nemesis, as its standard bearer.
Of course, there are problems with Yushchenko's plan. One big hurdle is his support for Ukraine's NATO membership, which he is hoping to push at the alliance's summit meeting in Bucharest next week.
Understanding that NATO is not popular in eastern Ukraine, the seat of support for the Party of the Regions, Yushchenko has been trying to force Tymoshenko, who has been more cautious about NATO because of its current unpopularity, to embrace NATO membership publicly.
Even in a normal democracy, politicians who switch parties are regarded with suspicion. Winston Churchill, for example, found ''crossing the aisle'' a hard act to shake off. Moreover, Yushchenko is no Churchill, and Ukraine is a very young democracy. To be sure, unlike Russia or other parts of the ex-Soviet Union, Ukraine has shown itself capable of handling the tumult of free and fair democratic elections. But is it really ready for the type of political summersault Yushchenko is preparing.

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