The tension mounts in Europe. America can be a first fruits nation to declare that God hears the cry of the righteous. Let's pray for these nations in a battle in the Europe area - 40/70 window.
Blessings,
Martha
From Global Harvest Ministries
Earlier this year I visited the nation of Ukraine for a meeting of apostolic leaders from across that region. (If you would like to review that trip report, you can go to http://www.glory-of-zion.org/outmail/KievReportOnline.htm). Ukraine just completed presidential elections, and the situation has become very tense over the potential of voter fraud. I encourage you to read the report we just received from key leaders in Ukraine and to pray for righteousness to be established in that nation.
Blessings,
Chuck D. Pierce
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Urgent Need for Prayer in Ukraine: Fraud charged in Presidential Election
Presidential elections were held yesterday (Sunday) in Ukraine. Exit polls showed the USA-and-Western-leaning Viktor Yushchenko in the lead by about 12% points. But official government results today are showing the Russian-leaning Viktor Yanukovich in the lead by 2-3%.
Yushchenko has charged Yanukovich (who is the favorite of current President Kuchma) with engineering a massive vote fraud that has resulted in a coup d’etat. Yushchenko is calling his supporters to organize passive resistance, including large scale demonstrations and protests. Some of his key supporters are calling for strikes to shut down the country.
Massive protests a few blocks from our home in Kiev
Only a few blocks away from our apartment and offices in Kiev is the center of the city, where more than one hundred thousand protesters at this moment have gathered at Independence Square.
The situation is volatile, and we are asking for your prayers. We believe the Lord wants to protect Ukraine from violence, alienation, and a fracture of the already somewhat fragile social, political, and economic structures.
The university/student political movement here last week announced they would organize massive protests, hoping for hundreds of thousands—up to half a million—protesters to gather in opposition to anticipated election irregularities and to call for intervention in favor of their favored candidate, Yushchenko. So we expect to see many more gathering.
Each side is villainizing the other, and in many ways it seems that each political party wants to destroy the other. This situation is not at all similar to the American two-party system where power routinely changes hands, and where the different parties and branches of government provide some short-term and long-term balance to each other.
The history of one-party communism has affected the development of democracy here. Politicians are inclined to make the most drastic charges against each other, and political means can be quite violent, brutal, dishonest, and manipulative.
Prayer Direction
Now that we live in Kiev, we can see that many believers are not sure how to understand, think and react in this situation. Please pray that the Lord will give his shalom and his wisdom, especially to the believers who are seeking the Lord in prayer and intercession, and that there would be an outpouring of the grace of the Lord upon this country.
We feel that Ukraine is one of God’s epicenters for the revival of the Jewish people and has the potential to be a great resource to help the Messianic movement grow and develop in many other countries too. Please pray that the Lord will lift up his hand to protect the Messianic movement in Ukraine, and to make sure that neither the country nor the Messianic movement here is paralyzed or brought into a period of stagnation.
If you would further updates, please reply to DL@DLShalom.com and include the subject: "Ukraine prayer update wanted".
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Received November 23, 2004 from Jonathan
Dear Dana
PRAISE GOD I am informed CHUCK PIERCE HAS NOW SENT OUT A WIDE SOS TO INTERCESSORS ABOUT UKRAINE.
The real genuine winner of The Presidential Contest in Ukraine walked into Parliament today and placed his hand on The Bible and declared himself President of Ukraine and appealed to God and the international community.
However, the army is backing the fraudulent winner... and threatening to put down the mass protest "firmly".
This man wants to kick The Bible out of Ukraine and officially reform The USSR and Cold War.
THE BBC says The country is on the brink of civil war! Millions are on the streets.
I am certain God's Perfect Plan is to keep Eastern Europe open until His Perfect Time...but His Will needs sufficient prayer from The Body of Christ.
In 1973 the famous intercessor Rees Howells' son heard God say tonight the devil will try to bring Armageddon forward...and hours later Israel was invaded. Christian prayer then brought at least another 30 years...millions saved worldwide.
In 1991 after Communism seemed to be finished, SUDDENLY Gorbochov was arrested in a coup which lasted 48 hours and was to their shame recognised by John Major Prime Minister of Britain and others... but Christian prayer empowered Yeltsin to stand up to the tanks. We have kept Eastern Europe open for at least 13 more years. The devil wants the curtain down now...IT IS NOT GOD'S
TIME...IT IS NOT YET HIS TIME.
JESUS BLESS UKRAINE !
God Bless,
LOVE,
Jonathan
~~~~~~~~~
From the New York Times
November 23, 2004
Premier Victor in
Ukraine
Vote; Abuses Are Seen
With more than 99 percent of ballots counted, the government tally gave Mr. Yanukovich 49.42 percent of the vote to 46.7 percent for Viktor A. Yushchenko, whose supporters turned out in the tens of thousands in Independence Square here, vowing not to move until results were reversed.
"To victory!" said Nina Kovalevskaya, 53, who stood in the cold Monday evening air. "To our victory!"
With the opposition filling the landmark square, an international election observer mission - from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Parliament, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Council of Europe - released a preliminary report that buoyed them, declaring that the election did not meet democratic standards.
The observers' findings were seconded by Senator Richard G. Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had led an American mission to Ukraine to urge the departing president, Leonid D. Kuchma, to organize fair elections.
"A concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities," the senator said Monday in Kiev.
At stake is not only the prize of the presidency of a nation of nearly 48 million, but also the direction of the overwhelmingly Slavic country during the next five-year presidential term. The outcome will decide whether Ukraine will draw closer to Russia, its historical and cultural partner, or move toward greater economic and military integration with the West.
Mr. Yanukovich is the personally selected successor of Mr. Kuchma, a former Soviet technocrat who ruled the country in a centralized fashion for 10 years, amid sometimes tense relations with Washington and allegations of corruption and abuse of power.
The prime minister has vowed to continue on Mr. Kuchma's course, and to steer the county closer to Moscow. The Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, telephoned Mr. Yanukovich on Monday from an official visit to Brazil to congratulate him, according to Interfax.
Mr. Yushchenko, himself a former prime minister, has described the incumbent bloc of state power as crooked and hidebound, and pledged to maintain ties with Russia while encouraging business and expanding Ukraine's relationship westward into Europe.
His support in the capital, and among young voters, is palpably high. His campaign - deprived of equal media coverage and pressured by the resources of the Ukrainian state, according to the reports of international observers - has adopted the tactics of the underdog.
The victory for the prime minister, by a margin of nearly 3 percentage points, that was given in official results diverged sharply from a range of surveys of voters at polling places that gave the opposition as much as an 11-point lead. Opposition organizers pushed for protest and mass action.
Mr. Yushchenko, addressing the public, began a multipronged effort to block Mr. Yanukovich's claim on office. He urged his supporters to remain united and in the streets, and called for an urgent session of Parliament to review extensive allegations of state manipulation of the election, and for the judiciary to investigate documented complaints.
"We express no confidence in the Central Election Commission because of its being a passive, or maybe a too active, participant in falsifications," he said.
Yulia Tymoshenko, a member of Parliament and one of Mr. Yushchenko's most visible supporters, called for a general strike.
Still, even while Mr. Yushchenko supporters tried to force a political confrontation, the state maintained a position of official calm. It appeared to have the upper hand through the crucial first day. The prime minister's once-crowded campaign headquarters declared victory and closed down before lunch.
"We won, and we are going to sleep," said Gennady P. Korz, a senior campaign spokesman.
And while the demonstration grew, the police presence in the capital remained light. State security agencies did release a joint statement saying they were on high alert.
The findings of the international election mission included abuse of state resources in favor of the prime minister; the addition of about 5 percent of new voters to the rolls on election day; pressure on students to vote for the state's choice; pressure on state workers to turn over absentee ballot forms for presumptive use by someone else; widespread abuse of absentee voters, including some who were bused from region to region; the blocking of poll workers; suspiciously, even fantastically, high turnouts in regions that supported the prime minister; inaccurate voter lists and overt bias of state-financed news media.
Marek Siwiec, head of the delegation from the European Parliament, said certain electoral abuses "cast a shadow over the genuineness of the election."
Other prominent Western observers were unsparing in their criticism of the state's conduct of the election.
"Fundamental flaws in Ukraine's presidential election process subverted its legitimacy," the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, sponsored by the Democratic Party in the United States, declared in its preliminary report. The institute, which had an observer mission in Ukraine, cited "systematic intimidation, overt manipulation and blatant fraud" that were "designed to achieve a specific outcome irrespective of the will of the people."
Many of the same criticisms had been levied against that state during the first round of presidential elections three weeks ago. Mr. Yushchenko narrowly won that round among a field of 24, leading to the two-candidate runoff on Sunday. Because the result on Monday conforms to the state's wish, few expected a significant presidential review.
Even stronger criticism came from the Dutch foreign minister, Bernard Bot, whose country holds the European Union presidency. "We don't accept these results. We think they are fraudulent," he said at a news briefing, Reuters reported. Mr. Bot said that each of the union's members would call in the Ukrainian ambassadors to their countries to express concern, and that the election would be discussed at a European Union-Russia summit meeting in The Hague on Thursday.
Dr. Charles Tannock, a British member of the European Parliament, said the conduct of the election was less what he expected from Ukraine than from Turkmenistan, an authoritarian state.
He then worried aloud that what seemed to be the election's illegitimacy might serve to split Ukraine into a north and west supporting Mr. Yushchenko, and a region in the east supporting the prime minister. There were hints of this by nightfall, as Mr. Yushchenko claimed the support of at least four Ukrainian cities, including the city council in Kiev, which rejected the election results.
As the anxious rally continued through Sunday night to Monday morning, then through Monday, at times the crowd chanted, "Freedom cannot be stopped!"
There were signs of careful planning and organization, which suggested the protesters were prepared for a long standoff. Within minutes of the opposition leaders' speeches in the morning, for example, young men set up rows of new tents in the crowd.
Food quickly appeared, as did blankets, foam mattresses, hats and winter coats. As the work continued, posters were taped to the tents and to some of the protesters' winter coats. They were messages to the police. "Don't shoot!" they read.
One detail was meant to lift the protesters' spirits.
Throughout the rally, young men had been waving white-and-red Georgian flags among the sea of orange banners, a not-so-subtle reminder of the so-called rose revolution of a year ago, when Mikhail Saakashvili deposed President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia, another Soviet-era leader, in a bloodless coup.
Mr. Saakashvili was elected to the presidency by a landslide, and has made pushing his country westward and fighting corruption principal elements of his policy. Some in the crowd on Monday spoke openly of the Georgian model of shrugging off a tired state. But they discussed these hopes in a more difficult setting.
Mr. Kuchma and his supporters have pointedly said there will be no revolution here, and some differences were clear. The Ukrainian economy is stronger than Georgia's, as are its security agencies. Moreover, Ukraine is culturally far more closely bound to Moscow than Georgia had been.
Mr. Yanukovich's supporters predicted that they would weather the demonstrations, and said they planned to have an inauguration next month.