Leaders import peaceful ways of protest

UKRAINE: For Mr Viktor Yanukovich and his allies in Ukraine and the Kremlin, one banner rising above the sea of protesters in…

UKRAINE: For Mr Viktor Yanukovich and his allies in Ukraine and the Kremlin, one banner rising above the sea of protesters in Kiev carries a particularly ominous portent. Daniel McLaughlin reports.

The red and white flag adopted by Georgia after its "Rose Revolution" last November is fluttering among the orange worn and waved by supporters of challenger Mr Viktor Yushchenko, and raising their hopes of a repeat of events in Tbilisi.

Then, Mr Mikhail Saakashvili rode to the Georgian presidency on a wave of popular fury with the corrupt rule of Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, just as millions of Ukrainians now hope Mr Yushchenko will oust Mr Yanukovich and the ruling clan of the veteran outgoing president, Mr Leonid Kuchma.

Stoking the Ukrainian protests is the student movement Pora ("It is Time"), just as the Kmara ("Enough") group fanned the flames of peaceful revolution in Tbilisi.

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Behind them both stands Otpor ("Resistance"), the Serbian youth movement that was instrumental in toppling President Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000.

Thousands of Otpor activists were arrested, and many badly beaten, by Mr Milosevic's police, but its ultimate success brought it to the attention of potential revolutionaries worldwide.

"They saw what we did in Serbia and they contacted us for professional training," said Otpor member Mr Sinisa Sikman, who has trained protest leaders in Georgia, Belarus and, most recently, Ukraine.

"We helped educate them on how to campaign, how to organise themselves, how to focus their message and energy and motivate voters," he said of Pora. "They now seem well prepared, with substantial knowledge and creativity to get their message across."

One of his Serb colleagues, Mr Marko Markovich, is close to the heart of events in Kiev, much to the annoyance of Mr Kuchma's feared security police.

They stopped another Otpor leader at Kiev airport last month and deported him, at a time when dozens of Pora members were being arrested around the country, and state media was portraying them as violent militants.

Ukrainian and Russian media have labelled Otpor and their Pora protégés as Washington's puppets, funded by billionaire businessman and pro-democracy agitator Mr George Soros. But Mr Sikman and his comrades make no apologies for their campaign to export non-violent revolution.