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As foreign leaders call to carefully congratulate Viktor Yanukovich on his electoral victory, Tymoshenko’s momentum is starting its fatal sputter: She promises to challenge election results in court while four thousand Yanukovich supporters rally outside the Ukrainian Central Election Commission.

We’ll miss you, Yulia.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

The Ukrainian Central Election Committee has counted 99.94% of the ballots and prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is down by almost 3.5%. The European Union has endorsed Sunday’s election, praising it for its “calm atmosphere,” “open campaign,” and the “genuine choice” presented to the voters. Yanukovich supporters partied in the streets on Monday as the international press crowned their man the presumptive winner.

What did Yulia do? She sulked through the day, remaining uncharacteristically silent before postponing and then canceling a press conference. It was a sign of scrambling. And then this morning, news leaked that, last night, in a closed-door meeting with her party members, Tymoshenko called for them to fight on, to contest ballots in the courts and to — oh geez — push for a third round of voting. “A third round is not actually stipulated in the law,” said a deputy head of Tymo’s party. “But it wasn’t stipulated in 2004 either,” she added, referring to the third round of voting that swept Yushchenko and Tymoshenko into power.

In 2004, the OSCE instantly reported that there was intimidation, multiple-voting and other violations at the polls. Given the unanimous endorsement of election observers this time around, given that her party members are publicly pleading with her to concede and go into the opposition (which, according to her advisers, she’s better at anyway) — given all this, asking for a third round just looks insane and undemocratic.

It’s also classic Tymoshenko.

After returning from Kiev in December, I wrote a profile of her for The New Republic in which I noted that Tymoshenko’s thirst for victory — and power — often blinds her.

Tymoshenko’s mania for quick victories, however, has often cost her, or her country, in the long run. Her constant back-biting with Yushchenko, for example, may have hurt his ratings, but it has dragged hers down as well. In November, she made a big show of fighting a swine flu epidemic that didn’t exist (the WHO said there was nothing unusual about Ukraine’s flu numbers). The spectacle briefly boosted her popularity but also triggered a dangerous hoarding of supplies. Within a month, Ukrainians had caught on to the game, costing Tymoshenko a dip in the polls…

If she wins, Tymoshenko’s presidency could also be hampered by the fact that, while she thrives on clashes with those she seeks to overtake, she often miscalculates once she’s on top. “She feels more comfortable in the opposition,” says her campaign adviser Taras Berezovets, “but she loves power.” Most notably, when Yushchenko called for new parliamentary elections in 2008, Tymoshenko blocked them in the courts in order to remain prime minister and refused, against the urgings of many in her party, to join the opposition. Then came the financial crisis, which slammed Ukraine especially hard. “If she had been in the opposition, she’d be the number one candidate right now, without a doubt,” says Fesenko of Kiev’s Center for Political Studies. “But she made the decision to get power and, as prime minister, ended up taking on all the responsibility for the crisis.”

A friend of mine once mocked Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential elections in the U.S., saying that she seemed like the type of woman who, at the age of 7, haggled and quibbled and cheated at Monopoly. Hillary, however, knew when to pack up the battle gear and get on board for the sake of the country. While she serves as a discreet and competent Secretary of State, observers of Ukrainian politics see a future in which Tymoshenko, back in the opposition, makes life hell for Yanukovich.

Because, to Tymoshenko, governance is a game, and the way to win is to haggle and quibble and cheat.

The economic crisis — or “kreezis” as it’s known here — smacked Russia upside the head in 2008, basically putting a minus sign in front of its stellar growth rates and threatening its position as a BRIC country.

But no matter. If you want to come visit Moscow, you’ll still be paying boom prices so high that, if you can afford them, you probably didn’t know there was a kreezis anyway.

How expensive are Moscow hotels? Moscow hotels are soooo expensive that at an average rate — I repeat: average — of $420 a night — wait let’s stop and breathe on that one for a minute. $420 per night. On average.

Okay, so not only does that figure put Moscow hotels at a full $70-a-night higher than those of Abu Dhabi, it puts Moscow, again, in first place.

And, with GDP growth at -7.5%, hotel prices obviously aren’t coming down this year either.

via Gazeta.ru

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The results are in, which means it’s time to get that Acme Wound Salt out.

Yulia Tymoshenko, the Joan-of-Arc-cum-Cruella-Deville of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution, is looking shit out of luck. At this writing, the Ukrainian Central Election Committee has counted 97.56% of the votes and she’s still behind to ex-con-villain-cum-comeback-kid Viktor Yanukovich. Not only is his 2.56% lead unlikely to turn inside-out and put Yulia in the president’s chair, but, with European observers reporting that the voting has been largely clean, it’s unlikely that she can contest the vote and look anywhere near sane — an image she has, of late, continued to undermine.

The many delicious layers of crazy have been thoroughly covered in this election, but the framework that makes the most sense anywhere other than Ukraine — and conveniently overlooks any, erm, nuance — is the West-versus-Russia one, and it goes something like this: In 2004, Russia rather overtly backed Viktor Yanukovich; he won in a rigged election until Victor Yushchenko and his braided sidekick Tymoshenko — the two darlings of the West — summoned thousands onto Kiev’s Independence Square (the Maidan) and won the day, wrenching Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit, validating democratic ideals, and, the West hoped, putting it squarely into the stiff-armed embrace of the Europeans. But! Yushchenko sucked as a president, Tymoshenko proved expert at making herself odious to just about everyone, and now Yanukovich is back, this time as a fairly-elected president — right? — promising warmer relations with its historical neighbor, Russia.

And because it’s not a geopolitical victory until you gloat and gloat some more we have this:

Today, the domain Maidan.ru is for sale on the Russian e-Bay analog, molotok.ru.

It is, let me emphasize, a Russian domain name, advertised as “a good address to start a revolutionary web portal.” Over the course of the day, a dozen bidders have driven the price up from $30 to almost $1,500.

But who, pray tell, is selling this thing? One Jason Foris, who has not sold or bought anything on molotok.ru in the last seven days or, probably, ever.

Because, you see, Foris is none other than a nom de guerre for Russian internet wunderkind Konstantin Rykov, who long ago got in bed with the Kremlin and never got out. Now he’s leaking this apparently spontaneous — and painfully obvious — Ukrainian-bound bird-flippage to Vesti, a Russian-owned TV channel, and hawking it up and down Twitter where, luckily, few seem to be buying the schtick. (That, or the schtick that proceeds from the sale should benefit the Yeltsin Fund, a lame attempt to join the 90’s-bashing so commonplace in official media these days.)

So, as if the Ukrainian elections weren’t crazy enough, Rykov arrives to pummel you over the head with his dance in the end zone: we won, he seems to be saying ever so subtly; we won and you, Ukraine, you and your Western ass-kissing and Orange Revolutions, YOU. LOST. “Eat it,” you can hear him saying, wiggling hither and thiter. “Eat. It.”

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I’ve just spent the last couple of days holed up inside Moscow’s World Trade Center for the Troika Dialog Russia 2010 Forum, an economic conference where I was surprised to hear some refreshing honesty from the Russian political elite who made appearances there.

Anatoly Chubais, who heads up the state nanotech corporation and was an influential reformer in the 1990s, said, “We have to admit that we have fallen very far behind.” And by “far” he means about 30 to 40 years. Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was equally harsh. “We need to change our behavior, drive safely and not, as is customary in Russia, haphazardly,” he said. He admitted, too, that the Russian bureaucracy — “an unfriendly administrative system” — is a stultifying force that even the elite has to do battle with, and that social protection is not a public good here. “Even if you have money, you have no sense that the security services will protect your rights,” he said.

Chubais and Shuvalov, two stalwart liberals, largely echoed the tough-love tone struck by President Medvedev in his “Go, Russia!” article in September as well as his address to the political elite two months later. So far, the changes this has produced are cosmetic and superficial, and it remains to be seen how much tough love will turn into concrete policy, but, at the very least, the honesty is extremely, extremely refreshing in a country whose approach to public relations has generally been of the hyper-sensitive and hyper-defensive variety.

Which brings me to my gym TV-watching.

The other day, I saw a commercial for the Sochi Olympics, which aren’t for another four years. It was, well, a rather excellent commercial for the very same reason: it was honest. Summoning up that good old wry Russian humor, the commercial conceded not only some of the more ridiculous aspects of Russian life but pointed out what is perhaps the most absurd part of the already much-criticized boondoggle that is Sochi 2014.

“We are a people of extremes,” the commercial intones, commenting that “we work hard to make our money in the north, and spend it with ease in the south.” The version I saw even makes fun of the 10-day New Year’s holiday that basically kills everyone’s January. “We even celebrate New Year’s for an entire month,” the voice over says — lovingly, mockingly — before admitting to the giant, muffled, white elephant in the room: “We host the Winter Olympics in a place where everyone spends their summers.”

Egads! They admitted it! And admitted that a Black Sea resort town doesn’t need the ski lifts and the ice rinks it will inherit once it’s done hosting the Winter Olympics. And! They even took the smart approach, embracing the mockery with almost as much pleasure as those of us who love Russia take in ribbing this absurd absurdistan.

I couldn’t find the gym version online, but here’s another, almost-as-good take.