I agree - that sounded rather an over-speculative comment to throw out. I'm not clear how any politician anywhere would be able to produce evidence that "facing a severe challenge, he would not have tried to falsify the poll." Possibly there may be some background information lying behind Jonathan Steele's remark about vote-fixing that might explain it. Like Wolfgang, I confess to not knowing much about Ukraine. Apart from the fact that they have some great music and dance traditions, which isn't immediately relevant. (That's even aside from tgecEurivuision Song Contest this year)

One big difference between Western Ukraine and Eastern is that much of the former was part of Poland between the World Wars, and is predominently (Uniate) Catholic. It was annexed by Stalin during the Nazi-Soviet Pact period, in 1939, and re-incorporated into Ukraine.

The only thing that does seem clear to me is that this is a lot more complicated than some reports have been indicating, and that this is a very dangerous situation. The example of what happened in Yugoslavia should be a warning to foreign politicians of the dangers of clumsy and simplistic meddling.