Kyrgyzstan’s interim president Kurmanbek Bakiyev got directions on democracy on Thursday from Ukraine and Georgia — two other ex-Soviet states where revolts also threw off autocratic regimes — and from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The pointers came in successive meetings with visiting OSCE Chairman Dimitrij Rupel and then the Ukrainian and Georgian foreign ministers, all of whom said they stood ready to help Kyrgyzstan in the wake of last week’s overthrow of the Soviet-era regime of Askar Akayev. Rupel, who is also Slovenia’s foreign minister, told the Kyrgyz news agency AKI-press that “the OSCE, the European Union, Russia and the United States can help Kyrgyzstan make sure law and order are respected, in particular during this period of transition.”

The OSCE chairman added: “Without outside aid, the perspective of rapid and relatively painless development appears uncertain.” Georgian Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili told reporters that she and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Boris Tarasyuk “have not come here to Kyrgyzstan as revolution exporters” but to offer assistance in the run-up to new presidential elections called for June 26. “Georgia and Ukraina [sic] are ready to help restore stability to Kyrgyzstan,” she said. Tarasyuk said his country “is ready to send a group of constitutional law and electoral experts if needed.” ~The News

The prominent involvement of the Ukrainian and Georgian governments, as well as the OSCE, in the immediate aftermath of the ousting of the legitimate Kyrgyz government (which, by all local legal standards, it was) appears as nothing so much as a concerted effort of a sort of democratist Comintern to direct and control “the revolution” in its newest satellite. That the Ukrainian and Georgian ministers felt compelled to deny this role should tell us that they understand what their involvement looks like. They are at pains to make it appear as anything else, perhaps because they are themselves acutely sensitive to charges that their “revolutions” were hardly native in origin.