and opposed the election fraud. Polish deputies to the European Parliament have called for giving Ukraine the prospect of future EU membership provided the country uniformed to democratic standards. Western EU members are however more reluctant with the idea of Ukrainian membership in the EU, which results in Polish media accusing them of being more interested in the integration process with Turkey and maintaining good relations with Russia. On November 25, former Ukrainian foreign minister and a close collaborator of Yushchenko, Borys Tarasyuk delivered a speech before the Polish Sejm, urging Poland not to recognize the election result and help solve the political crisis. On the same day former Polish President Lech Wałęsa went to Kyiv to publicly express his support for Viktor Yushchenko. He was later followed by a number of Polish MPs from different parties. On November 26 the President of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski arrived in Kyiv, followed on the same day by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Javier Solana and the Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus. United States The United States government also decided not to recognize the election, and expressed dissatisfaction with the results; the outgoing US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, unequivocally stated that the result announced could not be accepted as legitimate by the United States. President George W. Bush and various members of Congress made statements disclosing their concern over the legitimacy of the polling. Prominent former Cold War hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski cast the election as opposition to renewed Russian imperialism: U.S. Senators John McCain and Hillary Clinton jointly wrote a letter nominating Victor Yushchenko along with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination was unsuccessful. Russia and the CIS Russia's president, Vladimir Putin congratulated Viktor Yanukovych, which was followed shortly afterward by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, on his victory before election results were officially declared. CIS election observers praised the second round of the elections as "legitimate and of a nature that reflected democratic standards", a view in direct contradiction to other monitoring organizations such as the ENEMO, the Committee of Voters of Ukraine and the IEOM. Prominent hardliners in Russia cast the election as opposition to renewed Western imperialism. Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, for example, blames the West for interfering in the situation in Ukraine in the run-up to the October 31 presidential election: On November 28, Yury Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, gave