Originally appeared in German at Neo Presse. Translated by Thomas Trautzsch

The elections in local communities in Ukraine (except the "separatist" Donbass Region), which took place on October 25th provide a good opportunity for a health and reality check of the democracy in this country. The expected has happened - the deeply unpopular governing alliance of President Petro Poroshenko actually suffered a humiliating defeat.

Prime Minister Arsenij Yatsenyuk, whose popularity polls are below 20% did make a clever chess move when he overtly rejected participation in the local elections. It is perfectly clear that the Ukrainian government in Kiev, which was brought into power by the West, is not capable of gaining traction and remains deeply unpopular.

Put in simple words, a corrupt, decrepit government of oligarchs installed by oligarchs did replace a previous corrupt and decrepit regime of oligarchs. The conditions for Russia to conduct a "color revolution" in Kiev would be there, if Moscow wanted it. But the (post-soviet) Russia is not in the regime change and "colour revolution" business and leaves this monopoly to the United States of America.

The surprising part of last Sunday's election in Ukraine is the fact that the alliance of the former president Victor Yanukovich (which was toppled by a western-backed coup in february last year) could hold on to its base in the south and east. A particularly embarrassing rebuff for the ruling government in Kiev, especially for Poroshenko's compatriot Mikhail Saakashvili (another descendant of another colour revolution), who lost the election in the southern harbor city of Odessa. The elections in the southern harbour town Mariupol were cancelled due to inappropriate conditions.

All in all, Ukraine remains divided into two almost equally sized parts - the western and central regions, which are pro-West and the eastern and southern regions, which are pro-Russian. Twenty months after the colour revolution nothing much has changed - except that the West has installed its government, which is anti-Russian. This is a dubious success and it begs the question of the necessity of the USA-backed coup d'Etat in February of last year. Expressed in a different way, all this destruction and the chaos could have been avoided for Ukraine, if there would have been a constitutional transition of power, as it was agreed upon with Yanukovich, by which there would have been new elections - instead of a putsch by the USA and her allies.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine is such a hopeless case today, that the IMF came under pressure to change his credit policy in order to loan money to the country, even though Kiev does not serve its outstanding credit debt toward Russia.

There is no doubt that Moscow is looking at this with a deja-vu feeling. Moscow is seeing that the West is holding a can of worms in its hands and that the West said goodbye to the IMF credit standards. This was also deliberately ignored by the local elections on Sunday. Ironically, it could be the best from Europe's standpoint under the circumstances, if Russia could be persuaded to reach out her helping hand in order to repair the broken spine of Ukraine. This is indeed the core of what Germany's vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel told President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday.

Hopefully, some day around the year of 2020, there will be an act of reconciliation with then Ex-President Barack Obama. Hopefully, he will make a statement on CNN about his serious mistakes and his catastrophic failure by not standing up to the neo-conservatives in his government, who pushed him to follow their sectarian agenda toward Russia. Indeed it should not be a weak apology, like the one of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which he recently issued relating to the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003. The destruction of Iraq was a horrible war crime - and it was no small mistake to invade a sovereign country and kill more than quarter a million people in a pre-planned act of barbarism.