This is very cool: Top officials in Ukraine's equivalent of the KGB, charged with suppressing the pro-Yushchenko movement, protect and support it instead.

The support did not start with the protests. Long before the election, the siloviki and the opposition opened quiet lines of communication, including General Smeshko's assignment last summer of an S.B.U. general as secret liaison to Mr. Ribachuk.

. . . Whether the collaboration was a convergence of political aims, or a pragmatic understanding by the siloviki that Mr. Yushchenko's prospects were rising, is subject to dispute. Yulia Tymoshenko, another of Mr. Yushchenko's closest allies, said many S.B.U. officials, including General Smeshko, merely hedged their bets. "This was a very complicated game," she said. Mr. Ribachuk saw it differently. "They are clearly our supporters," he said. "They risked their lives and careers."

The officers themselves express several motivations. One, said Lt. Gen. Igor Drizhchany, who runs the S.B.U.'s legal department, was simple. "At all times we talked of our desire to prevent the shedding of blood," he said.

But there are also signs that among some officers a desire to block Mr. Yanukovich was authentic. Having been prime minister for two years, Mr. Yanukovich was well known. Several S.B.U. officers said the premier, who was once convicted of robbery and assault and has close links to the corrupt eastern businessmen who have acquired much of Ukraine's material wealth, was a man they preferred not to serve, especially if he were to take office by fraud.

S.B.U. officials and Mr. Ribachuk also said that roughly a week before the Nov. 21 election, General Smeshko was disgusted enough after a personal meeting with Mr. Yanukovich that he sought to resign, and vowed never to work for the premier.

Andrew Stuttaford in the Corner:

On this Martin Luther King day, it�s worth remembering another campaigner for human rights also butchered for his bravery.

On January17th, 1945, sixty years ago today, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Jews in wartime Budapest, was arrested by the Soviets, and, like so many other millions, disappeared into the darkness of Stalin�s system. He almost certainly perished in prison there during the late 1940s.

The site of his grave remains unknown. His courage does not.

Another event of January 17th that should not be forgotten.

John Kerry continues to show what a clueless classless asshole he is by using MLK Day as a handy vehicle to bash Bush.

A roundup of MLK Day musings.

A long meditation on King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."