McCain and the Ukraine

Democracy Arsenal is blogging today about Rick Davis, one of Sen. John McCain’s campaign managers, and his ties to the pro-Kremlin Party of Regions in Ukraine led by Viktor Yanukovich. They refer to a new report from ABC which cites the McCain campaign’s efforts to deny a 2005 story that the Senator’s office had contacted Davis to ask that he stop “interfering” in regional policy. Moira Whelan comments: “My own anecdotal conversations with people who run in the Russia and Eastern Europe circles indicate that Rick Davis was a fixture and a well-known advocate for Yanukovich. What’s interesting was that Davis never filed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act that he did work for Yanukovich and today denied he ever did it. This story is going to be one to watch.” We have also followed the McCain-Russia story pretty closely, and find it quite ambiguous at present.