Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:04 pm

Seeking the Truth about Ukraine
by Walter C. Uhler / February 19th, 2015

February 20, 2015, marks the one-year anniversary of the heinous slaughter of protesters and police by neo-Nazi snipers who transformed a relatively peaceful protest against Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, into a violent anti-Russia coup. To this day, the illegitimate regime ruling in Kiev has done virtually nothing to bring their sniper allies to justice.

Many political actors in the West, including the Obama administration’s CIA and State Department, as well as members of the European Union were accomplices in the anti-Russia coup. Foolishly, they supported a coup in Kiev that provoked anti-Kiev mobilizations among Russians living in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Thus they recklessly courted the civil war that ravages Ukraine today, as well as the justly deserved devastating defeats suffered by coup regime forces in Ilovaisk and Debaltseve.

Nevertheless, like thieves caught in broad daylight, the Obama administration, the EU, and NATO have attempted to deflect the blame on to Russia. Russophobes within the West’s think tanks and mainstream news media have embraced their lies. Thus, so has Boobus Americanus. Consequently, the civil war that now threatens to dismember Ukraine also threatens to spark World War III.

Why? Because, Russia’s TV news has been equally successful in convincing the overwhelming majority of Russians that the U.S. provoked regime change in Kiev in order to weaken Russian influence in the region. Consequently, support for President Putin and anti-American sentiment have grown enormously.

Sakwa_DVFortunately — for readers who suspect that the relentless Western demonization of Russia and its leader, President Vladimir Putin, is a crudely hysterical, self-serving cover for the relentless U.S., EU, and NATO expansion that, finally, has met its Waterloo in Ukraine — we now have Richard Sakwa’s detailed and thoughtful new book, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands.

According to Professor Sakwa, the crisis had its origins in: (1) “structural contradictions in the international system” (p. 5), and (2) “the profound tensions in the Ukrainian nation and state-building processes since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991” (p. 2). Russia has played a secondary role in both, but largely in reaction to steps taken in Washington, Brussels and Kiev.

Professor Sakwa correctly claims, “The groundwork of the Ukrainian conflict has been latent for at least two decades. It was laid by the asymmetrical end of the Cold War, in which one side declared victory while the other was certainly not ready to ‘embrace defeat’” (Ibid). He might have added that America’s declaration of victory, called “triumphalism,” is just another strain of our relentless and obnoxious boasting, called “American Exceptionalism,” which dates back, at least, to the post-Revolutionary War period. Then, victory over the British moved the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, to proclaim America to be “God’s New Israel” and to compare George Washington to “Joshua commanding the armies of the Children of Israel and leading them into the Promised Land.” (Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation, p. 10–11.)

Triumphalism, as politics, reared its ugly head when America’s conservatives, with the support of the military-industrial complex, attempted to credit President Reagan (especially his military buildup) for the collapse of the Soviet Union. The inconvenient fact that Reagan left office in January, 1989, while the collapse did not occur until almost three years later, in late December, 1991, did nothing to temper their claim. More difficult to gloss over, however, was the scathing criticism of Reagan made by conservatives, just as he was leaving office.

It was then that William Safire, Howard Phillips and George Will claimed that Reagan had been duped by Mikhail Gorbachev. Mr. Will, for example, went so far as to assert: “Reagan has accelerated the moral disarmament of the West – actual disarmament will follow – by elevating wishful thinking to the status of political philosophy” (See Francis Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, p. 467).

The triumphalists also needed to bury the contrary assertions made by Reagan’s own Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack F. Matlock. Ambassador Matlock denied that Reagan sought either the disintegration of Communist rule or the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But, the most fateful failure of the triumphalists, was their refusal to recognize, let alone credit, Mikhail Gorbachev for the conceptual breakthroughs that led to the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. For example, it was Gorbachev who advanced the concept of “mutual security.” His foreign policy advisor, Anatoly Chernyaev, explained “mutual security” as follows: “We are by no means talking about weakening our security. But at the same time we have to realize that if our proposals imply weakening U.S. security, then there won’t be any agreement.” (See Walter C. Uhler, “Gorbachev’s Revolution,” The Nation, Dec. 31, 2001, p. 44)

That conceptual failure had fateful policy implications for post-Cold War Europe. After all, when the West commenced its relentless expansion of the European Union and NATO, it dismissively lectured Russia that such expansion was no threat to Russia – even if the Russian leaders thought otherwise!

In addition to displaying insufferable arrogance, the West’s dismissive lectures demonstrated that the triumphalists were in no mood to operate according to Gorbachev’s concept of mutual security. They were still playing by zero-sum Cold War ground rules that, in their closed minds, had won the Cold War. But, by doing so, they virtually guaranteed that Russia eventually would reintroduce such Cold War ground rules as well.

It was President George H.W. Bush’s sense of triumph – as will be shown below — that compelled him to persuade West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to renege on his crucial promise to Mikhail Gorbachev: no eastward expansion of NATO. And it was the triumphalism of Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Richard Cheney, as well as his assistant, Paul Wolfowitz, that led to the promulgation of the infamous Defense Planning Guidance, which became known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.”

Writing in the September/October 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs, Mary Elise Sarrote noted that, at their meeting on February 10, 1990, Kohl assured Gorbachev that, in return for Moscow’s permission to begin the reunification of Germany, “naturally NATO could not expand its territory to the current territory of [East Germany].” “In parallel talks, [West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich] Genscher delivered the same message to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, saying, ‘for us, it stands firm: NATO will not expand itself to the East.’”

According to Professor Sarrote, “After hearing these repeated assurances, Gorbachev gave West Germany what Kohl later called ‘the green light.’” Kohl “held a press conference immediately to lock in his gain.” However, he did not mention the quid pro quo — no eastward expansion of NATO.

(The Soviet Union lost some 27,000,000 men, women and children before defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. By comparison, the U.S. lost some 400,000 during that war. Consequently, permitting the reunification of Germany in return for West Germany’s assurance of no NATO expansion eastward was an enormous concession by Gorbachev.)

Professor Sakwa believes, “There was no deal prohibiting NATO’s advance since it had appeared utter insanity even to conceive of such a thing” (p.45). But, I’m not so sure. After all, when Kohl met with Bush at Camp David on February 24-25, he was persuaded to back away from his informal agreement with Gorbachev. “Bush made his feelings about compromising with Moscow clear to Kohl: ‘To hell with that! We prevailed and they didn’t. We can’t let the Soviets clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.’” (See “A Broken Promise,” Foreign Affairs, p. 93-94 in print edition)

In May 1990, Gorbachev exposed the bad faith of the Americans and Germans, when he told Secretary of State James Baker: “You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities. Therefore, we propose to join NATO.” Baker refused. (Ibid. p. 95)

The worst consequence of arrogant American triumphalism in the first Bush administration was the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.” It came to light in early March 1992, when the New York Times reported the details of Paul Wolfowitz’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), which had been leaked to the newspaper. Mr. Wolfowitz urged that the United States “must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” In a word, Mr. Wolfowitz had drafted a plan for everlasting American global hegemony. According to Professor Sakwa, “this has been the strategy pursued by the U.S. since the fall of communism” (p. 211).

According to the Times, the DPG stipulated that “the United States should not contemplate any withdrawal of its nuclear-strike aircraft based in Europe and, in the event of a resurgent threat from Russia, ‘we should plan to defend against such a threat’ farther forward on the territories of Eastern Europe ‘should there be an Alliance decision to do so.’”

As the Times correctly notes: “This statement offers an explicit commitment to defend the former Warsaw Pact nations from Russia.” The DPG also suggested “that the United States could also consider extending to Eastern and Central European nations security commitments similar to those extended to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Arab states along the Persian Gulf. And to help stabilize the economies and democratic development in Eastern Europe, the draft calls on the European Community to offer memberships to Eastern European countries as soon as possible.” (See “U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals develop,” New York Times. ) Thus, the DPG proposed aggressive policies that would keep Russian from “even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”

Yet, the reality proved to be much more aggressive than Wolfowitz’s DPG. Taking advantage of a weakened, inward looking Russia, the Clinton administration urged Warsaw Pact nations to apply for membership in NATO. Thus, not only did aggressive NATO expansion occur long before Russia became a “resurgent threat,” aggressive NATO expansion actually provoked Russia into becoming a resurgent threat.

(The triumphalism of the Clinton administration was best expressed by a proponent of NATO expansion, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “[I]f we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and see further than other countries into the future…” (Sakwa, p. 227)).

In addition to NATO’s relentless territorial expansion came a second type of expansion that was totally consistent with Wolfowitz’s DPG. NATO expanded its strategic concept to include offensive war, not only in self-defense of member states that had been attacked, but also to guarantee European security and uphold democratic values within and beyond its borders. In fact, the new strategic concept was put into practice a month before it was announced, when, for the first time, NATO used military force against a sovereign state (Yugoslavia) that had not attacked a NATO member. Russians of every class and political persuasion were livid, but nobody in the West paid much attention.

Russia’s compassion and support for the U.S after al-Qaeda’s heinous attacks on 9/11 quickly evaporated when President George W. Bush authorized American troops to invade Iraq. Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz — the scoundrels behind the DPG — played critical roles in fostering the worst war crime of the 21st century. According to Professor Sakwa, “after the Iraq war of 2003 Russia became increasingly alienated and developed into what I call a ‘neo-revisionist’ power, setting the stage for the confrontation in Ukraine.” (p.30)

Also setting the stage for the confrontation in Ukraine was the further expansion of NATO. On March 29, 2004, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania Slovenia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Romania joined Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (which had been admitted in 1999) as members of NATO.

In 2005, after a protest against crooked elections in Ukraine resulted in the so-called Orange Revolution, the Bush administration hurriedly dispatched Daniel Fried, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs to the new government in Ukraine. According to WikiLeaks, Mr. Fried not only communicated the U.S. Government’s commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, but also “emphasized U.S. support for Ukraine’s NATO and Euro-Atlantic aspirations” (Sakwa, p.52-53). He emphasized America’s support for joining NATO, notwithstanding the fact that Ukrainians overwhelmingly opposed joining NATO.

On February 12, 2007, while the United States was still conducting its criminal assault on Iraq, President Putin aired his grievances about NATO expansion at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy. He said: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee’. Where are these guarantees?”

Clearly, Western aggression and double-dealing were on Putin’s mind – just as it had been on the mind of every Russian leader since Gorbachev. As the grievances mounted, yet another threat arose — the eastward expansion of an “Atlanticized” European Union. EU expansion was not an explicit threat to Russia, until the very day that the Treaty of Lisbon was signed, 13 December 2007. Why? Because, under the new treaty, all countries joining the EU must “align their defense and security policies with those of NATO” (Sakwa, p. 30).

Yet, another provocation occurred at the Bucharest NATO summit in April 2008, when the military alliance recognized the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine to become its next members. According to Professor Sakwa, it took protests by Russia, as well as “the combined efforts by the French and Germans to dissuade President George W. Bush from starting the process of Ukrainian and Georgian accession then and there.” (p. 54-55)

Then, there was the provocation that began in May 2008, when Poland pressured the EU to develop the Eastern Partnership (EaP) program, which targeted six former Soviet states (including Ukraine) on the EU’s borders. Although the EaP “was not considered a step toward EU membership for its participating states, … [it] sought to create a comfort zone along the EU’s borders by tying these countries in to a Western orientation.” (Sakwa, p. 39)

According to Professor Sakwa, “The EaP was the brainchild of foreign minister Radoslaw (Radek) Sikorski,” – called “another East European fruitcake” by “one perceptive commentator” (Sakwa, p. 40) – but he then drafted in his Swedish counterpart Carl Bildt to give the idea greater heft in intra-EU negotiations.” (p. 39)

The EaP became the EU’s method of forcing states to choose between the West and Russia. According to Professor Sakwa, “Its partisans insisted on the sovereign right of those states to join the alliance system of their liking. The concept of ‘choice’ thus became deeply ideological and was used as a weapon against those who suggested that countries have histories and location, and that choices have to take into account the effect that they will have on others.” (p. 40)

(The concept of choice was meant to negate Russia’s national security claims to a sphere of influence in Ukraine. But, as noted scholar John Mearshreimer recently observed, “the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western hemisphere, much less on its borders” (Sakwa, p. 236, quoting from “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s fault,” Foreign Affairs, September-October 2014, p. 78))

Thus, “the EaP represented a qualitatively different level of interaction that effectively precluded closer integration in Eurasian projects, and indeed had a profound security dynamic that effectively rendered the EU as much of a threat in Russian perceptions as NATO.” (p. 41)

Many pundits in the West, including Tom Friedman and Trudy Rubin, have decried Russia’s decision to upset the world’s peaceful “end of history” liberal economic world order by resorting to such revolting twentieth-century geopolitical tactics as invading another country. Their views deserve contempt, not only because NATO’s expansion has been geopolitical from the start – as was the U.S. invasion of Iraq — but also because the EaP “had a profound geopolitical logic from the first” (Sakwa, p. 40). It is worth adding that, by precluding “closer integration in Eurasian projects,” the EaP violated the very principles of the liberal economic world order that advocates like Friedman and Rubin supposedly hold dear.

On top of all of these provocations came the provocation that finally incited a Russian military response – Georgia’s military invasion of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, in August 2008. Russia responded to Georgia’s attack by sending troops into South Ossetia, bombing Gori, occupying part of Georgia and recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It was a well-deserved humbling of Georgia’s reckless ruler, Mikheil Saakashvili, and a well-deserved smack across the collective faces of the U.S., the EU, and NATO.

Clearly, asserts Professor Sakwa, Russia’s counterattack in Georgia “was a response to the threat of NATO enlargement” (p. 40). Unfortunately, the Georgia crisis failed to make clear to everyone that Russia “is prepared to use force when its national interests are at stake” (Mikhail Margelov, quoted by Sakwa, p.5). Now, the world faces a possible World War III over Ukraine, because triumphalists in the West ignored Russia’s growing outrage over relentless and provocative eastward expansion by the EU and NATO.

In 1991, the U.S. commenced its investment in a democracy promotion program in Ukraine, which, according to obnoxious neocon Victoria Nuland, cost American taxpayers $5 billion by 2013. In 1992, as we have seen, Paul Wolfowitz drafted a Defense Planning Guidance that aimed at perpetual U.S. hegemony over the world.

In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski — who later became a foreign policy advisor to the Obama administration – had published a book titled The Grand Chessboard, which was “translated into Russian and is part of everyday political discussion” (Sakwa, p.215). According to Mr. Brzezinski, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.”

“However, if Moscow regains control over Ukraine, with its 52 million people and major resources as well as access to the Black Sea, Russia automatically again regains the wherewithal to become a powerful imperial state, spanning Europe and Asia” (See Chris Ernesto, “Brzezinski Mapped Out the Battle for Ukraine in 1997,” March 15, 2014, anti-war.com. )

Between 2004 and 2013, the EU spent 496 million euros, in order to subsidize Ukrainian “front groups” (Sakwa, p. 90). In September 2013, Carl Gershman, the president of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, declared that Ukraine represented “the biggest prize,” because it not only would cause Putin to lose the “near abroad,” but also might lead to the overthrow of Putin himself (Ibid, 74-75). In a word, the EU and the US had been waging a war against Russia by other than military means.

As Professor Sakwa put it, “The Ukrainian border at its closest is a mere 480 kilometers from Moscow and thus the whole issue assumed an existential character. Ukraine matters to Russia as an issue of survival, quite apart from a thousand years of shared history and civilization, whereas for Brussels or Washington it is just another country in the onward march of ‘the West’” (p. 75)

As should be clear, from the evidence presented above, Professor Sakwa devotes much attention to the “structural contradictions in the international system” that led to the “Ukraine crisis.” But, he also closely examines the role that the “Ukrainian crisis” played in the “Ukraine crisis.” The “Ukrainian crisis” is Professor Sakwa’s term for “the profound tensions in the Ukrainian nation and state-building processes since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, which now threaten the unity of the state itself” (p. ix).

He notes three distinct and irreconcilable social and political tendencies that have undermined the state-building processes in Ukraine — the Orange, Blue and Gold. The first, which he calls Orange and “monist,” is largely based in Galicia and western Ukraine. It is ultra-nationalistic and wallows in its victimization at the hands of Russians. It fosters support for nation-building by focusing its attention on an external evil that has kept Ukrainians down. Thus, it is virulently Russophobic. But, “externalization means that inadequate attention is devoted to finding negotiated domestic solutions to domestic problems” (p. 70).

The Orangists seek to create a culturally autonomous state for Ukrainians, largely by constructing myths about its history and by purging itself of the Russian language. For example, they demand that Holodomor be recognized as genocide, notwithstanding the fact that Stalin’s viciously engineered famine of 1932-33 “was not restricted to Ukraine alone, with millions dying in the Kuban and the lower Volga.” (p. 19) Worse, in 2010, the Orangists outraged much of the civilized world when it awarded the notorious Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, the title of “Hero of Ukraine” (p. 19).

The Orange tendency also can be credited for ensuring that the 1996 constitution recognized Ukrainian as the sole national language and described Russian as the language of a national minority — notwithstanding the fact that 80% of Ukraine’s population uses Russian as its language of daily communication, and notwithstanding the fact that, according to 2012 data, “60 percent of newspapers, 83 percent of journals, 87 percent of books and 72 percent of television programs in Ukraine are in Russian” (p. 59) As one correspondent put it: “Is there any other country on earth where a language understood by 100% of the population is not a language of state?” (Sakwa, p. 149) Clearly, it was a move made by a people with a huge inferiority complex when it comes to Russian culture.

The Blue and “pluralist” tendency, like the Orange, has been “committed to the idea of a free and united Ukraine” (p. x). But, it “recognizes that the country’s various regions have different historical and cultural experiences, and that the modern Ukrainian state needs to acknowledge this diversity in a more capacious constitutional settlement” Unlike the Orange tendency, the Blue tendency insists that “Russian is recognized as the second state language and economic, social and even security links with Russia are maintained” (p. x)

Finally, Professor Sakwa describes the Gold tendency; the tendency of powerful and corrupt oligarchs to use their dominant political and economic power to create chaos, suck the lifeblood out of its people, and make a joke of Ukrainian democracy ever since the state achieved independence. As Professor Sakwa puts it, “While the two models of Ukrainian state development, the monist and pluralist, quarreled, the bureaucratic-oligarchic-plutocracy ran off with the cream” (p.60). In reality, Ukraine has been a basket-case since its independence.

“One hundred people control some 80-85 percent of Ukraine’s wealth” (p. 61). Name the oligarch. Whether it has been Kuchma, Yushchenko, Tymoshenko, Akhmetov, Taruta, Firtash, Poroshenko, Kolomoisky, Yanukovych or others, the oligarchs have alternately competed or cooperated with one another, through bribes and political favors, to make Ukraine one of the most corrupt countries in the world (See “Welcome to Ukraine: One of the ‘Biggest Kleptocracies in the World’.”).

As a consequence, Ukraine is one of two post-Soviet countries whose GDP has yet to reach its 1991 level. One person in three lives below the poverty line and, in 2014, inflation reached 20 percent. Unemployment in the first quarter of 2014 was 9.3 percent – and that was after milions of Ukrainians had left the country to seek work on the EU and Russia (Sakwa, p.72-73).

Professor Sakwa is correct to note that “endless oligarch war and self-enrichment of the elite” was accompanied by “declining living standards” and the “onset of ‘stealth authoritarianism’” (p. 73). He also is correct when he concludes that the rule of Viktor Yanukovych was the most corrupt, self-enriching and authoritarian of all of. “Crude methods of physical coercion were applied, of the sort that Yanukovych had long practiced in Donetsk but which were new to Ukraine as a whole, and exceeded anything in Putin’s Russia” (p. 74)

The fact that the EU and Russia found Yanukovych an acceptable partner with whom to do business, did not prevent “the growing gulf between an irresponsible elite and the mass of the people,” which “was the crucial precipitating factor for the protest movement from November 2013. The ‘European choice’” – made by the protesters after Yanukovych backed away from signing the Association Agreement on November 21st — “acted as the proxy for blocked domestic change” (Sakwa, p. 67).

Professor Sakwa credits neo-Nazi Right Sector (Pravy Sektor) for taking the lead in organizing the defense of Kiev’s Independence Square (known as Maidan) during the protest against Yanukovych’s decision to accept aid from Russia. He also credits Right Sector and neo-Nazi Svoboda for preventing the collapse of the revolt on the Maidan.

But, he blames Right Sector and Svoboda, among other protesters, for the sniper fire on February 20th that proved decisive in achieving the coup that took place two days later. He also blames the “high degree of U.S. meddling in Ukrainian affairs,” and notes that Victoria Nuland’s infamous “fuck the EU” actually referred to “the hesitancy of the EU to go along with American militancy on the Ukraine crisis” (p. 87).

Professor Sakwa makes mincemeat of the claims, made by members of the coup regime and its supporters in the West, that by fleeing from Kiev, President Yanukovych had, in effect, abdicated. In fact, at least four attempts to assassinate Yanukovych occurred after his security service deserted him. (p. 89)

Finding the counter-mobilizations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine to be as justified (or unjustified) as the one that occurred in Kiev, Professor Sakwa observes: “The forcible seizure of power by radical nationalists represented a breakdown of the constitutional order in Kiev; and if the constitutional order had been repudiated in the center, then on what basis could it be defended in the regions?” (p. 109)

Professor Sakwa also believes that Putin’s decision to annex Crimea was not part of a long-term plan to reconstitute the Soviet Union – as many fools in the West believe – but a “counter-coup” in response to the coup in Kiev. It proved to be enormously popular in Russia.

When attempting to assess what happened in eastern Ukraine, Sakwa concludes that “two elements developed in parallel: a genuine regional revolt adopting the tactics of the Maidan against the ‘Ukrainizing’ and anti-Russian policies pursued by the Kiev authorities; and the strategic political considerations of Moscow, which exploited the insurgency to exercise leverage against the Kiev government to achieve defined goals – above all a degree of regional devolution, initially called federalization – as well as to ensure that the strategic neutrality of the country was maintained” (p. 156). He adds that these goals might actually be in the best interests of Ukraine itself.

He reaches two conclusions about events in eastern Ukraine that this reviewer would dispute: (1) Russia probably supplied the SA-11 Buk missile-launcher that unintentionally shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and (2) Russia’s military had little to do with the devastating defeat that separatist forces inflicted on Kiev’s army at Ilovaisk. But, I’m in no better position to defend my conclusions than he.

In seeking to explain the accord in U.S. politics that unites liberals and conservatives, Sakwa goes beyond kneejerk U.S. Russophobia, which he dates to the failed Polish uprising of 1830, and quotes David Bromwich, who observed: “The state apparatus which supports wars and the weapons industry for Republican yields welfare and expanded entitlements for Democrats” (p.226). Thus, for liberal universalists and geopolitical realists alike, the Ukrainian crisis of 2013 offered an opportunity to complete the ‘unfinished revolution’ of the Orange administration from 2004, pushing aside more cautious Europeans to consolidate U.S. hegemony (‘leadership’) and to punish Russia – for its temerity in upstaging the U. S. over the Syrian chemical weapons crisis in mid-2013, for giving refuge to the whistle-blower Edward Snowden…, and in general for its refusal to kowtow in the appropriate manner.”

When it all blew up in America’s face, the U.S. imposed sanctions, “the hubristic application of the instruments of hegemonic power” (p. 183). Noting Vice President Biden’s admission that the U.S. forced EU members to impose sanctions, he concludes that Europe demonstrated “it was incapable of mastering the very basic principle of modern statecraft – the independent solution of problems” (p. 204).

Professor Sakwa approvingly quotes Seumas Milne, who asserted: “It’s not necessary to have any sympathy for Putin’s oligarchic authoritarianism to recognize that Nato and the EU, not Russia, sparked this crisis – and that it’s the Western powers that are resisting a negotiated settlement that is the only way out, for fear of appearing weak” (p. 222 from “Far from keeping the peace, Nato is a constant threat to it,” The Guardian, 4 September 2014).

Unfortunately, that was not Professor Sakwa’s final word on the matter. On the penultimate page of his exceptionally judicious and comprehensive book, he proceeds to undermine virtually everything he said about the Wolfowitz Doctrine, America’s hegemonic war party, and the threat NATO posed to Russia by asserting: “Russia’s stance of resentment and self-exclusion… needs to be modified to encompass the fact that neither NATO nor the EU is systematically hostile to Russian’s interests” (p. 255). Say what?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby coffin_dodger » Sat Feb 21, 2015 1:28 pm

Wonderful double-speak from Ukie puppet:

Ukraine preparing for 'full-scale war,' says former envoy to Canada CBC News 21 Feb 2015

"Ukraine's deputy foreign minister says he is preparing for "full-scale war" against Russia and wants Canada to help by supplying lethal weapons and the training to use them."

"We would like Canada to send lethal weapons to Ukraine," he said. "Weapons to allow us to defend ourselves."

more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-preparing-for-full-scale-war-says-former-envoy-to-canada-1.2964887
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby American Dream » Sat Feb 21, 2015 5:46 pm

http://louisproyect.org/2015/02/20/germ ... th-russia/

German racists seek to build “anti-imperialist” bloc with Russia


Image

The magazine Compact represents Elsässer’s longstanding attempt to coalesce an “anti-imperialist” bloc around a phantasmal Paris-Berlin-Moscow axis to counter American hegemony. Nonetheless, since anti-Muslim racism serves at the moment as the point of convergence for these different forces, it makes sense to sketch the function of racist discourse directed at Muslims in Germany over the last few years.

Writing in 2007, the sociologist Georg Klauda noted that a specifically anti-Muslim racism in Germany remained confined primarily to the intelligentsia:

Islamophobia has, at least in this country, its relevance not as a mass phenomenon, but as an elite discourse, which, shared by considerable numbers of leftist, liberal, and conservative intelligentsia, makes possible the articulation of resentments against immigrants and anti-racists in a form which allows one to appear as a shining champion of the European enlightenment.


While this statement was undoubtedly true in the context it was written seven years ago, what Pegida represents is the transformation of anti-Muslim racism from an elite discourse into a mass phenomenon, something capable of mobilizing large demonstrations of more than 20,000 people.

Elsässer began publishing books and articles arguing for the constitution of a “Berlin-Paris-Moscow axis” in opposition to Washington. After a series of explicitly nationalist interventions got him booted, successively, from pretty much every major left-wing publication of note, Elsässer started Compact, thus creating a coherent ideological center for a new type of far-right politics: resolutely German nationalist, explicitly adopting traditional far-right tropes against “finance capital,” positing the formation of a “Eurasian” power axis as a counterpole to the United States, and resolutely anti-immigrant in terms of domestic policy while supporting “anti-imperialist” countries such as Iran or Syria abroad.

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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Nordic » Sat Feb 21, 2015 9:05 pm

Full scale war with Russia? Yeah, good luck with that. This idiot should be in the front of the front lines.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Searcher08 » Sat Feb 21, 2015 9:39 pm

Nordic » Sun Feb 22, 2015 1:05 am wrote:Full scale war with Russia? Yeah, good luck with that. This idiot should be in the front of the front lines.


That article reminds me of Zappa's comment that scientists have found the most abundant element in the world is not Hydrogen, but human stupidity.

As dumb as a sack of spanners.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby 8bitagent » Sun Feb 22, 2015 7:22 am

Remember! Russia is innocent and can do no wrong! Only Zionist/NATO/US/UK stooges would make up crazy slanderous claims against innocent Russia! ;)
"Do you know who I am? I am the arm, and I sound like this..."-man from another place, twin peaks fire walk with me
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Re: Russia's non invasion of Ukraine

Postby Sounder » Sun Feb 22, 2015 8:41 am

Remember! Russia is innocent and can do no wrong! Only Zionist/NATO/US/UK stooges would make up crazy slanderous claims against innocent Russia! ;)


:shrug: Sigh, here we go again, why all this, 'one side or the other' business?

Just look at the nature of AD's argumentation. He cannot very well root for imperialism, so the alternative is to associate anti-imperialists with some 'very bad people' TM.

News Flash, the imperialists in suits also have 'bad' people among their cohort, and they have access to lots more money to boot.

Weak Bushian bullshit 8bit, thanks. :yay :jumping:
All these things will continue as long as coercion remains a central element of our mentality.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Nordic » Sun Feb 22, 2015 3:19 pm

Agreed. Wtf, 8bit?
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Feb 22, 2015 7:19 pm

Scott Horton interviews Christian Stork

http://scotthorton.org/interviews/2015/02/17/21715-christian-stork/

2/17/15 Christian Stork
Christian Stork, a writer for WhoWhatWhy.org, unmasks the individuals in the military-industrial-congressional complex who stand to profit handsomely by arming Ukraine and starting another Cold War with Russia.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Nordic » Sun Feb 22, 2015 9:35 pm

Pepe Escobar:

http://russia-insider.com/en/politics_u ... 02/20/3718

The $17 billion IMF loan that was miraculously produced on the eve of Minsk 2.0 not only allows the oligarchs in Kiev to keep prosecuting – by proxy – an Empire of Chaos war against Russia. It came with a key conditionality; Ukraine must imperatively be ravaged by hardcore biotech farming. And what a fabulous agricultural prize; Ukraine is the world’s third largest exporter of corn, the fifth largest exporter of wheat, with a deep, rich, black soil where anything, literally, can grow. The winners, predictably, will be the usual corporate GMO suspects – from seed producers Monsanto and Dupont to farm equipment dealer, Deere.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 24, 2015 11:43 am

Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine?
February 23, 2015

Exclusive: A year after a U.S.-backed coup ousted Ukraine’s elected president, the new powers in Kiev are itching for a “full-scale war” with Russia — and want the West’s backing even if it could provoke a nuclear conflict, a Strangelovian madness that the U.S. media ignores, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

A senior Ukrainian official is urging the West to risk a nuclear conflagration in support of a “full-scale war” with Russia that he says authorities in Kiev are now seeking, another sign of the extremism that pervades the year-old, U.S.-backed regime in Kiev.

In a recent interview with Canada’s CBC Radio, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said, “Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine — we’ve lost so many people of ours, we’ve lost so much of our territory.”

Peter Sellers playing Dr. Strangelove as he struggles to control his right arm from making a Nazi salute.

Prystaiko added, “However dangerous it sounds, we have to stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin] somehow. For the sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the Ukrainians and Europe.” The deputy foreign minister announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons and training so the fight can be taken to Russia.

“What we expect from the world is that the world will stiffen up in the spine a little,” Prystaiko said.

Yet, what is perhaps most remarkable about Prystaiko’s “Dr. Strangelove” moment is that it produced almost no reaction in the West. You have a senior Ukrainian official saying that the world should risk nuclear war over a civil conflict in Ukraine between its west, which favors closer ties to Europe, and its east, which wants to maintain its historic relationship with Russia.

Why should such a pedestrian dispute justify the possibility of vaporizing millions of human beings and conceivably ending life on the planet? Yet, instead of working out a plan for a federalized structure in Ukraine or even allowing people in the east to vote on whether they want to remain under the control of the Kiev regime, the world is supposed to risk nuclear annihilation.

But therein lies one of the under-reported stories of the Ukraine crisis: There is a madness to the Kiev regime that the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs. Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we might also start questioning the “Russian aggression” mantra.

According to the Western “group think,” the post-coup Ukrainian government “shares our values” by favoring democracy and modernity, while the rebellious ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are “Moscow’s minions” representing dark forces of backwardness and violence, personified by Russia’s “irrational” President Putin. In this view, the conflict is a clash between the forces of good and evil where there is no space for compromise.

Yet, there is a craziness to this “group think” that is highlighted by Prystaiko’s comments. Not only does the Kiev regime display a cavalier attitude about dragging the world into a nuclear catastrophe but it also has deployed armed neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists to wage a dirty war in the east that has involved torture and death-squad activities.

Not Since Adolf Hitler

No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done so knowingly. Yet, across the West’s media/political spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up this reality, even to the point of ignoring facts that have been well established.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have spearheaded this journalistic malfeasance by putting on blinders so as not to see Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, such as when describing the key role played by the Azov battalion in the war against ethnic Russians in the east.

On Feb. 20, in a report from Mariupol, the Post cited the Azov battalion’s importance in defending the port city against a possible rebel offensive. Correspondent Karoun Demirjian wrote:

“Petro Guk, the commander of the Azov battalion’s reinforcement operations in Mariupol, said in an interview that the battalion is ‘getting ready for’ street-to-street combat in the city. The Azov battalion, now a regiment in the Ukrainian army, is known as one of the fiercest fighting forces­ in the pro-Kiev operation.

“But … it has pulled away from the front lines on a scheduled rest-and-retraining rotation, Guk said, leaving the Ukrainian army — a less capable force, in his opinion — in its place. His advice to residents of Mariupol is to get ready for the worst.

“‘If it is your home, you should be ready to fight for it, and accept that if the fight is for your home, you must defend it,’ he said, when asked whether residents should prepare to leave. Some are ready to heed that call, as a matter of patriotic duty.”

The Post’s stirring words fit with the Western media’s insistent narrative and its refusal to include meaningful background about the Azov battalion, which is known for marching under Nazi banners, displaying the Swastika and painting SS symbols on its helmets.

The New York Times filed a similarly disingenuous article from Mariupol on Feb. 11, depicting the ethnic Russian rebels as barbarians at the gate with the Azov battalion defending civilization. Though providing much color and detail – and quoting an Azov leader prominently – the Times left out the salient and well-known fact that the Azov battalion is composed of neo-Nazis.

But this inconvenient truth – that neo-Nazis have been central to Kiev’s “self-defense forces” from last February’s coup to the present – would disrupt the desired propaganda message to American readers. So the New York Times just ignores the Nazism and refers to Azov as a “volunteer unit.”

Yet, this glaring omission is prima facie proof of journalistic bias. There’s no way that the editors of the Post and Times don’t know that the presence of neo-Nazis is newsworthy. Indeed, there’s a powerful irony in this portrayal of Nazis as the bulwark of Western civilization against the Russian hordes from the East. It was, after all, the Russians who broke the back of Nazism in World War II as Hitler sought to subjugate Europe and destroy Western civilization as we know it.

That the Nazis are now being depicted as defenders of Western ideals has to be the ultimate man-bites-dog story. But it goes essentially unreported in the New York Times and Washington Post as does the inconvenient presence of other Nazis holding prominent positions in the post-coup regime, including Andriy Parubiy, who was the military commander of the Maidan protests and served as the first national security chief of the Kiev regime. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass.”]

The Nazi Reality

Regarding the Azov battalion, the Post and Times have sought to bury the Nazi reality, but both have also acknowledged it in passing. For instance, on Aug. 10, 2014, a Times’ article mentioned the neo-Nazi nature of the Azov battalion in the last three paragraphs of a lengthy story on another topic.

“The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat,” the Times reported.

“Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brownshirts.”]

Similarly, the Post published a lead story last Sept. 12 describing the Azov battalion in flattering terms, saving for the last three paragraphs the problematic reality that the fighters are fond of displaying the Swastika:

“In one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above his bed. But Kirt [a platoon leader] … dismissed questions of ideology, saying that the volunteers — many of them still teenagers — embrace symbols and espouse extremist notions as part of some kind of ‘romantic’ idea.”

Other news organizations have been more forthright about this Nazi reality. For instance, the conservative London Telegraph published an article by correspondent Tom Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down Europe’s spine.

“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are officially under the control of the interior ministry but their financing is murky, their training inadequate and their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites.”

Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph reported that some of the fighters doubted the Holocaust, expressed admiration for Hitler and acknowledged that they are indeed Nazis.

Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”

The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to fight.

Azov fighters even emblazon the Swastika and the SS insignia on their helmets. NBC News reported: “Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past … when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.”

Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine's Azov battalion. (As filmed by
Nazi symbols on helmets worn by members of Ukraine’s Azov battalion. (As filmed by a Norwegian film crew and shown on German TV.)
But it’s now clear that far-right extremism is not limited to the militias sent to kill ethnic Russians in the east or to the presence of a few neo-Nazi officials who were rewarded for their roles in last February’s coup. The fanaticism is present at the center of the Kiev regime, including its deputy foreign minister who speaks casually about a “full-scale war” with nuclear-armed Russia.

An Orwellian World

In a “normal world,” U.S. and European journalists would explain to their readers how insane all this is; how a dispute over the pace for implementing a European association agreement while also maintaining some economic ties with Russia could have been worked out within the Ukrainian political system, that it was not grounds for a U.S.-backed “regime change” last February, let alone a civil war, and surely not nuclear war.

But these are clearly not normal times. To a degree that I have not seen in my 37 years covering Washington, there is a totalitarian quality to the West’s current “group think” about Ukraine with virtually no one who “matters” deviating from the black-and-white depiction of good guys in Kiev vs. bad guys in Donetsk and Moscow.

And, if you want to see how the “objective” New York Times dealt with demonstrations in Moscow and other Russian cities protesting last year’s coup against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, read Sunday’s dispatch by the Times’ neocon national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon, best known as the lead writer with Judith Miller on the infamous “aluminum tube” story in 2002, helping to set the stage for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Here’s how Gordon explained the weekend’s anti-coup protests: “The official narrative as reported by state-run television in Russia, and thus accepted by most Russians, is that the uprising in Ukraine last year was an American-engineered coup, aided by Ukrainian Nazis, and fomented to overthrow Mr. Yanukovych, a pro-Russian president.”

In other words, the Russians are being brainwashed while the readers of the New York Times are getting their information from an independent news source that would never be caught uncritically distributing government propaganda, another example of the upside-down Orwellian world that Americans now live in. [See, for example, “NYT Retracts Russian Photo Scoop.”]

In our land of the free, there is no “official narrative” and the U.S. government would never stoop to propaganda. Everyone just happily marches in lockstep behind the conventional wisdom of a faultless Kiev regime that “shares our values” and can do no wrong — while ignoring the brutality and madness of coup leaders who deploy Nazis and invite a nuclear holocaust for the world.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Mar 22, 2015 12:09 pm

How Violence in Ukraine Could Lead to Nuclear Disaster

Posted on Mar 21, 2015

By Stanley Heller

Do you know about the maps that traumatized the baby-boom generation? In the ’50s and ’60s, the civil defense authorities in the United States made maps showing the effect of a nuclear bomb blast on a city. In the illustrations, there would be a central core representing the incineration zone and then ever-widening circles representing the total destruction of buildings, the partial destruction of them, the fireball radius, the radiation radius and so on. The point was to encourage you to build nuclear shelters in your basement.

In the Internet Age, you can go one better. Alex Wellerstein, assistant professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology, has developed an interactive Web page called Nukemap. It’s a tool that allows you to simulate the detonation of 31 different nuclear bombs over a Google Map of New York, Tehran, Moscow or even your hometown. You get to see the concentric circles and to estimate the number of dead and injured.

When you do the simulation for a faraway city, it’s kind of interesting. When you detonate over your hometown, well, it’s chilling, and that’s the whole point.

Wellerstein spoke recently in New York at “The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction,” a conference organized by Helen Caldicott, the doctor who gave up her practice to warn the world about nuclear war and radiation. Wellerstein wants to bring home the horror of nuclear war by personalizing it. He said during his talk, “I wanted people to have a way of understanding what nuclear weapons can do that could be personalized to them.”

I bring this up because, for the first time in decades, U.S. and Russian military forces are nose to nose. Late last month in Estonia, U.S. combat vehicles paraded 300 yards from the Russian border. Some U.S. policy experts, like the Cold War diplomat Henry Kissinger, want NATO forces to flex their muscles as a warning to Putin.

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This is supposedly all about Ukraine. “We,” the West, have to defend against the horror coming out of the East. Wait! Wasn’t “communism” the problem, that thing that wanted to conquer the world? The Soviet Union is long gone. What the heck is NATO doing? Why does it still exist? Why did it move east? Didn’t Reagan promise Gorbachev that, if the Soviets allowed Germany to become unified, NATO would not expand “one inch to the east”?

The U.S. power elite is fresh from disasters stretching from Iraq to Libya, but it hasn’t the slightest hesitation about launching a new adventure. There’s not a bit of reflection or soul-searching over the thousands of dead American soldiers, let alone the mountains of dead Arabs who perished for imperial dreams. The politicians? Can you name one who has spoken out against getting involved in Ukraine? Why aren’t they daunted that this time they’re going up against a nuclear power?

The billionaire investor George Soros and the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy (who beat the drums for the Libyan revolution) joined together in January for a New York Times op-ed headlined “Save Ukraine.” Ukraine will “defend itself militarily,” they said—though this was before the disaster at Debaltseve—but it needs the West’s “generous” support. The country is a valiant “participatory democracy” that needs $15 billion right away and a “commitment” for more.

Retired General Wesley Clark then dropped the other shoe: weapons. He wrote last month in USA Today that we are facing “Russian aggression” in Ukraine and that, unless Putin pulls back from the region (including from Crimea), the U.S. should send the Kiev forces “all the arms they need.” He says that he’s been to Ukraine six times and that he’s sure “they will fight hard.”

But there is one big, unaddressed problem with such a hard fight. The Ukraine is home to the Chernobyl reactor—whose core exploded in 1986 and which must be buried under a concrete sarcophagus and watched indefinitely. The old sarcophagus must be replaced by next year. It cannot wait out a war.

Also, as Helen Caldicott told me in an interview for my video series “The Struggle,” there are also 15 working reactors in Ukraine. If a missile accidentally hit one or if electricity was cut off from one by fighting, the result is likely to be catastrophic.
My late father was born in the western region of Ukraine, but, luckily, he and his immediate family left before World War I—before Stalin’s famine wiped out millions and before the Nazis and local collaborators exterminated all the Jews they could find. But I don’t have any special knowledge about Ukraine—just what I read.

As best I can figure out, it’s oligarchs all around: two groups in Ukraine; Putin and his pals in Russia; and the wishes of our dear U.S. 1 percent. There are also fascists and Nazis all around. During the mass movement in the Maidan, Kiev’s central square, last year, Ukrainian fascists attacked every socialist and anarchist group and drove them away. Fascist parties are now part of the Ukrainian government. There’s even a battalion, called the Azov, that’s filled with neo-Nazis who are quite open about their admiration for Hitler.

On the other hand, the separatists got their start from the biggest oligarch in the Eastern Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov. For a while, the Donetsk People’s Republic was led by a man who called himself Strelkov. Believe it or not, he is a Russian monarchist who thinks the Bolsheviks are still running Russia. (There are some convincing arguments that the people running the Donetsk People’s Republic are mostly a mix of police and street criminals.) There are also plenty of Russian soldiers inside the breakaway parts of the Eastern Ukraine. The Russian government says the soldiers are just “volunteers” whom it cannot control. Give me a break. As for Russia itself, what can you say? It’s ruled with an iron hand by Putin who is anti-gay, anti-Chechen, pro-Netanyahu and supportive of the Egyptian coup.

Many on the Left are wrongly calling what happened on the Kiev Maidan last year a “fascist coup.” The facts are different. Years of free market reforms in Ukraine lead to permanent depression. Corruption at the top was legendary. Huge crowds of people put up with freezing temperatures in the Maidan for months last winter demanding change, but the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, gave them only bullets. An agreement was hammered out by the West and the leading Ukrainian parties (including fascists) that would have let Yanukovych remain in power for 10 months until a new election.

Yet when the agreement was announced, it was spontaneously rejected by the crowd in the Maidan. At that point, the Ukrainian government ran away. What took place was a popular rebellion (admittedly encouraged by U.S. money).

Semifree elections brought forth a right-wing, austerity-obsessed government that took foolish anti-Russian-language measures and gave separatists and Putin excuses to incite and supply the rebellion. Like most governments, the Ukrainian one thought brutality was the answer, and it began bombarding cities.

In the final analysis, there are no good guys here. Progressive groups are more or less underground in Russia and Ukraine. Clearly, Ukraine will not be helped by the West’s performing its usual magic. If in doubt, take a look at Libya and Syria.

One of the posts that I hold is secretary of the organization Promoting Enduring Peace, which conducts peace education and advocacy. We got our start at the height of the Cold War when people actually would voice approval of nuclear war under the slogan “Better Dead Than Red.” PEP spoke out against the Cold War frenzy and brought people on tours of the Soviet Union so that they could find things out for themselves.

Here’s a recent electronic petition that the group is sponsoring. It’s called “No U.S. Weapons to Ukraine—Stay Out of the Fighting.”

The petition simply reads:

Don’t send weapons to the Ukraine and start down the path to another war. The U.S. government should stay out of the conflict. No threats, no advisers, no weapons and no soldiers.

Hopefully you can join in the petition and encourage peace, labor and environmental groups to work together to keep the United States out of a new, bloody morass.

Stanley Heller is host of the online video news program “The Struggle” (http://www.TheStruggle.org) and the secretary of Promoting Enduring Peace (http://www.pepeace.org). Contact him at mail@thestruggle.org.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Byrne » Sun Mar 29, 2015 4:33 pm

Sahra Wagenknecht, responds to the Policy Statement by Chancellor Angela Merkel, June 4, 2014:

(English subtitles - worth a watch)
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jun 15, 2015 11:50 am

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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