Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

[FourthBase]

a l'exemple de saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants

A revolution does not always have to embody some borderless utopian solidarity. Sometimes a revolution is just people saying GTFO to whatever body of politickers has been commandeering the ship without consent. Sometimes a true revolution is a counter-revolution. In this particular moment, in Kiev, who controls how much of what?

[AlicetheKurious]

It ain't over, till it's over.

[FourthBase]

Care to elaborate, Alice?

[Peachtree Pam]

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine ... 38232.html

Ukrainian Defense Ministry says that Russians have issued ultimatum

March 3, 7:07 p.m. -- Russian Black Sea Fleet Commander Aleksandr Vitko has delivered an ultimatum to the Ukrainian military in Crimea, Interfax-Ukraine reported, citing Ukraine's Defense Ministry. "If by 0500 tomorrow (March 4) they do not surrender, a real assault on the units and detachments of the armed forces of Ukraine will start across Crimea," the ministry said. Russian soldiers are are conveying this warning of the Russian Black Sea Fleet commander to Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea, the news agency reported. -- Anastasia Forina

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-mil ... in-crimea/

Clip ....Vladimir Anikin, a Russian defense ministry spokesman in Moscow, dismissed the report of a Russian ultimatum as nonsense but refused to elaborate.

In addition, Russia's Interfax news agency reported that Russian Black Sea fleet commanderAlexander Vitko had given Ukrainian forces until 5 a.m. (0300 GMT) Tuesday to surrender or face military assault, citing a source in the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

"If they do not surrender before 5 a.m. tomorrow, a real assault will be started against units and divisions of the armed forces across Crimea," the agency quoted the ministry source as saying.

....CBS News correspondent David Martin reports the biggest mystery to U.S. defense and intelligence officials is Russia's intentions with the estimated 15,000 troops it has already moved into Ukraine. U.S. officials haven't confirmed the latest 5 a.m. ultimatum, but they did say there have been similar ultimatums issued over the weekend, and nothing has happened when the deadlines have passed. There has so far not been any indication the Russians plan on occupying Ukrainian territory outside of Crimea, but Russian troops continue to flow in to the Black Sea peninsula.

Whether the ultimatums come to pass, Ukraine's military admitted Monday that pro-Russian troops have surrounded or taken over "practically all" its military facilities in Crimea - a move that Russia's foreign minister defended as a necessary protection for the ethnic Russians on the Black Sea peninsula.

"This is a question of defending our citizens and compatriots, ensuring human rights, especially the right to life," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in Geneva, where he was attending U.N. meetings.

There have been no reports, however, of any hostilities toward Russian-speaking in Ukraine during the country's four months of political upheaval.

Later, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied receiving an ultimatum, saying there have only been harassment and acts of intimidation by the Russian military. There was no immediate comment by the Black Sea Fleet. ....Clip

[Julian the Apostate]

So, not the fascists doing the invading right now?

no, different fascists. a stunning profusion of fascists. a veritable fascistic bouquet.

It's standard operating procedure for the Russians to label anyone who tries to throw off their yoke as "fascist". They also called the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956 fascist.

[The Consul]

I don't know, what should the rule be? Any country that devotes more than 5% of it's budget to "defense" and/or any state that jails disidents?

It reminds me of the old poem by W.H. Auden September 1, 1939

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police
We must love one another or die.

Seventy five years later, what have we learned?

[seemslikeadream]

Neocons Move to Exploit Ukraine Crisis
March 3, 2014

U.S. neocons are wasting little time in taking advantage of the Ukraine crisis that they helped to stoke, with former Reagan-Bush operative Elliott Abrams urging Congress to pass legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran, notes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

By Paul R. Pillar

The Crimean crisis has energized those who wallow in a conventional wisdom that, as Fareed Zakaria noted last week, had already become a familiar theme on the opinion pages. This is the theme that the United States is in retreat, that it is insufficiently assertive, and that this lack of assertiveness is having awful consequences around the world.

The crisis is tailor-made to encourage such wallowing, involving as it does a use of armed forces by the successor to the old Cold War adversary. So no time has been wasted by those who complain that soft U.S. policies have brought things in Ukraine to this juncture and who cry for more U.S. assertiveness in response, including saber-rattling with U.S. armed forces.

The conventional wisdom prospers, despite empirically mistaken aspects of it that Zakaria points out, partly because of the difference between punditry and incumbency and the related difference between posturing and policy-making.


Pundits can do grand hand-wringing about supposed decline without the hard labor of thinking through which specific alternative options really exist with regard to specific problems and what their specific results are likely to be. It prospers also because of conceptual sloppiness that, as Paul Saunders notes, tends to equate leadership with the use of military force.

Most fundamentally, this conventional wisdom is one manifestation of a longstanding American tendency to view international politics as a single global game that pits the United States against sundry bad guys. The bad guys have taken various identities — the Soviet Union and world communism for the most part during the Cold War, and more often Islamists of some stripe today — but the distinctions don’t seem to matter all that much if it is all seen as one big contest in which setbacks for one side somewhere on the global playing field mean that side is losing overall.

One of the major flaws in this perspective is that much of import that happens in the world, including much that is violent or disturbing, is not the work of the United States and is not within the power of the United States to prevent.

Another major flaw is that there is not nearly as much of a connection between what happens in a situation one place on the globe and how players assess credibility and motivations in a different situation someplace else. Governments simply do not gauge the credibility of other governments that way.

Much more important than any vague global reputation are the specific interests and options involved in whatever is the situation currently at hand. And so, regarding the Crimean situation, rather than calling for more saber-rattling as if it were some sort of general elixir that boosts U.S. influence worldwide, it is better to ask exactly how it would relate to any actual moves it would make sense — in our eyes, as well as Vladimir Putin’s — to take.

Is anyone seriously contemplating, in a sort of updated replay of 1853, the introduction of U.S. military forces in Crimea? If so, let us hope that sanity can be restored. If not, then how does any threatening gesture involving military force either help to deal with the problem in Ukraine or to enhance U.S. credibility anywhere else?

Also, rather than simply tallying every apparent advance by presumed foreign adversaries as if it were yardage gained in a football game, we need to ask what a particular move does to affect the adversary’s interests and, even more importantly, our own. This means asking, for example, as Jacob Heilbrunn does, what Putin actually would or would not be gaining if he were to make more of a military move into Ukraine.

The global, indiscriminate hard-line approach lends itself to exploitation for other purposes that also do not advance U.S. interests. The theme about American retreat is, of course, an old stand-by for politically attacking Barack Obama.

An example of another kind of exploitation is Elliott Abrams arguing that the Crimean crisis is somehow a reason for passing the Kirk-Menendez bill to slap more sanctions on Iran. Never mind that his argument shows no cognizance of what is most needed at this juncture to keep the Iranians negotiating seriously. In fact, never mind the argument at all, because it is delivered not to improve the chance of reaching an acceptable agreement with Iran but instead to prevent any such agreement.

Just savor the inventiveness necessary to contend that a proper response to a Russian military move in Crimea is to bash Iran with more sanctions. That makes about as much sense — unsurprisingly, given the neocon source — as saying that a proper response to a terrorist act by an Afghanistan-based group is to launch a war against Iraq.

Considering in tandem a Middle Eastern problem and a Russian military action in its own sphere of influence brings to mind one of the great historical instances of accidental simultaneity: in 1956, the Soviet quashing of the Hungarian revolt and the Israeli-Anglo-French invasion of Egypt. Zakaria mentions the latter of those two crises, in the course of admiring Dwight Eisenhower for wisely deflecting repeated calls, which sounded very similar to ones we hear today, for the United States to intervene hither and yon lest freedom retreat all over the world.

Indiscriminately assuming a hard-line posture is if anything even more unwise with the challenges of the moment than it would have been in the autumn of 1956. Russia has a more plausible claim to having a lasting and legitimate interest in Crimea than the Soviets ever did in Hungary.

And an Iran that is on track to negotiate a more normal and nuclear-weapons-free relationship with the rest of the world is much different from an Egyptian strongman who made a nuisance of himself by nationalizing canals.

[Handsome B. Wonderful]

My reaction to watching this unfold on CNN was: "Oh no, not another thing where we don't know the whole truth and the truth lies somewhere in the middle." Is the Ukraine president the rightful democratically elected leader? Is his replacement just another shill for the US? Did the US really back right wing Neo-Nazis to foment revolution in the Ukraine for corporate interests? What am I supposed to think of all this? A part of me just wants Russia to stand up to the US and tell 'em to back off. But I don't know the whole story or the issues involved. I guess only time will tell if this is a good or bad thing.

[seemslikeadream]

Did CNN mention NED?

Has the liberal media mention NED?

Has the conservative media mention NED?

Did they report this?


Last September, NED's longtime president, Carl Gershman, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to urge the U.S. government to push European "free trade" agreements on Ukraine and other former Soviet states and thus counter Moscow's efforts to maintain close relations with those countries. The ultimate goal, according to Gershman, was isolating and possibly toppling Putin in Russia with Ukraine the key piece on this global chessboard.


Meanwhile, the U.S. government appears nearly as divided as the Ukrainian people. While neocon holdovers in the State Department, particularly Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, helped instigate the crisis, President Obama has seen his collaboration with Putin to tamp down crises in Syria and Iran put at risk. That cooperation was already under attack from influential neocons at the Washington Post and other media outlets.

Then, last December, Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into the future that it deserves," meaning out of the Russian orbit and into a Western one.

On Jan. 28, Nuland spoke by phone to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt about how to manipulate Ukraine's tensions and who to elevate into the country's leadership. According to the conversation, which was intercepted and made public, Nuland ruled out one opposition figure, Vitali Klitschko, a popular former boxer, because he lacked experience.

[American Dream]

http://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/20 ... utins-war/

Ukrainians, Russians and Europeans against Putin’s war

Ukrainians, Russians and Europeans were on the streets today protesting against the Putin regime’s attack on Ukraine. It’s the only shaft of light I can see in a dark sky overshadowed by the danger of war, with 6000 Russian troops reportedly on Ukrainian territory in Crimea, some of them surrounding Ukrainian bases.

Russia

In Moscow, anti-war demonstrators were detained in large numbers. Each time protesters assembled on Manezhnaya square in the city centre, more were arrested. Novaya Gazeta, the liberal opposition paper, reported 265 arrests and counting just after 16.00 Moscow time.


Demonstration in Nikolaev.

Voices on the Russian radical left were unequivocal. “It is necessary to call a spade a spade: what’s happening in Crimea these days is a classic act of imperialist intervention on the part of the Russian state”, said the Open Left group in a statement published in English here.

“Maidan has opened the sluices of activity of the far-right thugs – and at the same time has spurred to political life great masses of people, who perhaps for the first time perceive that they themselves are capable of determining their fate. This range of possibilities has the potential to resolve itself both into progressive social changes, and into the victory of extreme reaction. But the final decision must, without doubt, be left to the people of Ukraine themselves”, Open Left wrote.

Ukraine

Large numbers joined demonstrations against the war not only in Kyiv but in all the large Russian-speaking cities in the east. Ukrainska Pravda reported a demonstration of 5-10,000 people against Putin’s aggression in Nikolaev, a predominantly Russian-speaking city in southern Ukraine. The report said that agricultural and public sector workers, students and the intelligentsia were all at the march.

In Dnipropetrovsk, a predominantly Russian-speaking industrial city, and Odessa, the predominantly Russian-speaking port city in southern Ukraine, several thousand people joined similar marches. There were demos in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhye – smaller than pro-Russian marches … but shamefully downplayed by western media reports.

In Kyiv, the radical left called for working-class solidarity against Putin’s militarism. “There’s no point in waiting for ‘rescue’ from Nato”, said a statement by the Autonomous Workers Union, published in English here. “The war can be averted only if proletarians of all countries, first and foremost Ukrainian and Russian, together make a stand against the criminal regime of Putin.”

Activists in eastern Ukraine

Messages from activists in social movements in eastern Ukraine painted a grim picture. My friend G., a trade union activist based in Dniprodzerzhinsk, emailed to say: “Most ordinary people are cautious or hostile to the [Ukrainian] nationalists, and so Euromaidan got very meagre support here. There have been many rallies here against the accession to power [in Ukraine] of ‘fascists’ and ‘nationalists’.

“But after Russia sent its forces into Crimea and threatened war – both sides appeared ready temporarily to drop their differences and defend Ukraine. The bottom line is that this conflict is starting to unite people. Those who openly support Russian intervention are not visible right now.

“On the other hand there is the threat of the right radicals coming to power. Yesterday many oligarchs were appointed to the governerships of eastern regions. [Among a string of new governors appointed, Igor Kolomoisky, the oil-to-telecoms billionaire was made governor of Dnipropetrovsk region and Sergei Taruta, the steel magnate, governor of Donetsk region.] And earlier on there were rumours that they are financing Euromaidan, supporting [the right wing populist party] Svoboda, for example. And now we are getting confirmation of that. But ordinary people, workers, have little to say about that.”

A radical left activist, D. from Dnipropetrovsk, emailed in a more pessimistic vein, quoting Pushkin: “The people were silent.” [The famous last line of the poem Boris Godunov – GL.] “That applies to workers whether young or old”, he said. The events around the Maidan demonstrations had a polarising effect. “Wide layers were seized by nationalism, Ukrainian or Russian. [...] That’s a catastrophe that could be compared to August 1914 [the outbreak of the first world war].

“Among socialists and anarchists there is a very pessimistic mood. Twenty five years of socialist propaganda from a wide range of left groups and ideas seems to have gone nowhere, disappeared like a puff of smoke. Of course, we didn’t have such great achievements before (in contrast to 1914). But what’s happening now gives the impression that all these decades of socialist work were for nothing, have produced no results.”

Despite his gloomy prognosis, D. added that, in respect of a possible incursion by the Russian army, “the indignation is overwhelming. In the last three or four days, since the beginning of the military activity in Crimea, I haven’t heard any other reaction.”

London

In London, home to the largest community of Russian migrants in western Europe, an anti-war demonstration at the Russian embassy was followed by action at Trafalgar Square, where Boris Johnson, the mayor of London was hosting a festival to mark Maslenitsa (the Russian equivalent of Shrove Tuesday).


Protest banner in Trafalgar Square today

A banner saying “No invasions! Stop repressions!” was hung over the balcony of the square. The demo organisers were aiming at the event’s Russian corporate sponsors – as they put it, “the largest oil polluter, Rosneft; the union busters Aeroflot; the hate mongering Russian state media and Kazmunaigaz, which was responsible for massacring Kazakh oil workers”.

Comments

Against what is Vladimir Putin directing this war? The story being told in the western media is that he seeks to undermine Ukraine’s new government – nationalist and right wing, with a neoliberal economist prime minister, and portfolios held mainly by members of Batkivshchina (Yulia Timoshenko’s right wing liberal party) and the extreme nationalist populists of Svoboda.

I don’t think this coalition, thrown together in the crisis that followed Yanukovich’s departure, is his main target. Rather, it is the mass movement that accompanied the Maidan protests, which brought ordinary Ukrainians into political and social action on a level unprecedented since the break-up of the Soviet Union. Above all, Putin fears the spread of protest, and popular participation, into Russia.

In a previous post, I wrote that “Russian support for separatism in eastern Ukraine, or even, in extremis, civil war” were not the most likely prospects. I was wrong. And now, although military action beyond Crimea is unlikely – or perhaps I mean “unthinkable” because the consequences would be so disastrous – it has to be acknowledged that Putin’s operation in Crimea could spin out of control.

I agree with the statement by Open Left in Russia, that the Crimean operation can not solve Putin’s basic problems. His regime is not built on strong foundations. Russia is slipping back into recession, its economy able to maintain its footing only thanks to high international oil prices.

In a discussion with British leftists about Ukraine yesterday, the opinion was voiced that “anti fascism”, meaning opposition to the new government in Ukraine, is the priority, and that it would be “no bad thing” if the Putin regime put arms in the hands of “anti fascist militia”.

But there are no “anti fascist militia”. The European left should not use this crisis to indulge its own fantasies.Yes, we in Europe should do everything we can to help Ukrainian socialists and trade union organisations who have come under attack from right-wing nationalists and fascists, as I argued in an earlier post. But there is no question about where the greatest threat is coming from to working-class solidarity, to social movements, and to the attempts of people in Ukraine and Russia to shape their own future … it comes from Putin’s militarism.

Let’s support the anti-war movement and independent working-class and social movements in Ukraine and Russia however we can.

GL, 2.3.14.

[kelley]

a l'exemple de saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants

A revolution does not always have to embody some borderless utopian solidarity. Sometimes a revolution is just people saying GTFO to whatever body of politickers has been commandeering the ship without consent. Sometimes a true revolution is a counter-revolution. In this particular moment, in Kiev, who controls how much of what?

http://nplusonemag.com/ukraine-s-politi ... inian-left


ALEXANDER PIVTORAK
Ukraine’s political breakdown and the crisis of the Ukrainian Left


This analysis of the Ukrainian situation by left-wing activist Alexander Pivtorak was written before the Yanukovych government fell. Nonetheless, we believe its questions—about the reasons for the shape and composition of Maidan, and what the attitude of the democratic left ought to be—remain relevant even as the people patrol the streets and start to build a new Ukraine.

Translated from the Russian by Katia Zorich and the Russia desk from hvylya.org.

Ukraine is not immune to global economical and political processes. In many ways its political crisis is very similar to the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, events in Greece, Turkey, Portugal, and Spain. As in a number of these, the causes of this political crisis were economic.

The situation in Ukraine has basically been like this since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The history of independent Ukraine knows several cases of economic crises transmuting into political ones. These include the “Ukraine without Kuchma” protests, “Rise up, Ukraine!,” the Orange Revolution, and the protests in Vradievka. Proximate causes would vary from the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze to the government-backed electoral fraud in favor of Yanukovych in 2004. The catalyst for the current crisis was the violent police dispersal of protesters demanding European integration on the night of November, 30, 2013.

There is a major difference between the mass anti-government and anti-oligarchic protests in Ukraine on the one hand and southern European countries on the other. If protests in the EU are lead by leftist organizations and activists—trade unions, anarchists, Trotskyists, and leftist communists—with Ukraine it is different. Here leadership has been taken by liberals and nationalists of various kinds, from groups like Udar and Batkivshchyna to Svoboda, the radical right-wing nationalist party, and Right Sector, which is an out and out Nazi group.

Why is this? Why is protest in Europe led by the left, and in Ukraine by the right? In our opinion, the primary causes are these:

1) Stalinism left a strong ideological mark on the Ukraine; its memory is still very much alive. To this day the majority of the population strongly associates Stalinism with socialism, primarily with a negative connotation.

2) It was the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) that initiated the transition from the welfare state of the Khrushchev-Breszhnev era to the neoliberal reforms of the early 1990s. And the first ones to take advantage of the state property privatization that accompanied the reforms were former members of the state administration, i.e. of the CPSU.

3) In the post-Soviet era, the Communist Party of Ukraine, led by Pyotr Symonenko, has been a fake opposition party for the past 20 years. It has prostituted and compromised the reputation of the communist movement in Ukraine, becoming, eventually, the de facto leftist wing of Yanukovich’s Party of Regions. Its VIP-communists live in chic mansions and drive Audies and Mercedes, asserting all the while that they keep a close watch on the interests of the working class.

Is it any wonder then that the nationalists gush into the streets, Lenin is knocked off his pedestal, and there are calls for banning the CPU, as a party, alongside the Party of Regions?

On January 16 the CPU and the Party of Regions passed a set of anti-protest ‘dictatorship laws’ that were to come into force in Kiev and other cities. This wasn’t just a political crisis anymore; what followed was a revolutionary situation with elements of civil war.

So, who’s fighting whom? Class analysis reveals that the struggle is between two major forces. On the one side, oligarchs presiding over financial and industrial monopolies, represented by Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. On the other side, the petty bourgeoisie and middle class, including intellectuals, students, and farmers. Their interests are represented by various groups led by Klitschko, Yatsenyuk, Tyahnybok, and others.

What do the oligarchs want? They want unlimited access to the power (and budget resources) that guarantee the security of their capital accumulation and surplus value. They also want to keep close ties with Russia and secure its support in repressing the opposition.

And what about the opposition—these decent citizens, artisans, small traders? They want equal rights and a fair game for everyone. They are fighting for democracy and the abolition of tyranny as the main strategy of corrupted authority and its police. One of their goals is to stop the oligarchs from oppressing small businesses. They want to build ties with the EU to have support in their struggle against the oligarchy, the Party of Regions, and, of course, President Yanukovych.

What about the working class? It seems to be left behind. There are no economic advantages for it either way; it doesn’t do the working class any good if the oligarchy remains dominant with the rest of the ruling class, or if the petty bourgeoisie takes over, or if Moscow or Brussels interfere. The Russian-speaking proletariat of southern Ukraine is under an economic knout. What they fear, in the event of a victory for the nationalist opposition, is that to this knout will be added one of Ukrainian nationalism.

Does this mean that the working class has no interest in the current situation? No, it doesn’t. A victory for Euromaidan would, clearly, be a breakthrough for the bourgeoisie. A victory of the oligarchy and the ruling class – or, really, a maintenance of their status quo – would mean a victory for reaction and a delaying of the inevitable.

In fact, the sooner Yanukovych and the ruling party are defeated and Ukraine becomes integrated into the economic and political structures of Europe, the sooner the majority of Ukraine’s working class, petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals will realize one thing: that the crux of the matter lies not in whether the authorities are good or bad, corrupt or honest; nor whether the dominant influence on the country comes from Moscow, Brussels, or even Washington; but in capitalism. It’s capitalism that ceaselessly creates vast wealth for some, and miserable poverty for others; uninterrupted labor for some, and unemployment for others; an endless choice of commodities for some, and an inability to pay for even small things for others; civilization over here, and barbarism over there; it is under capitalism that some become fabulous oligarchs and other become wage slaves, subject to abusive authority and the police state.

Everyone was affected by the crisis that followed the dispersal of Euromaidan’s young protesters by the Berkut riot police on November, 30. Not only the government, but leftists, too.

How should one feel about Maidan?

Should we support it, join the opposition, participate?

After all this movement is run by the ultra-right groups such as Svoboda and the Right Sector.

Should we not support it and stay out of the fight?

After all we’re talking about thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands of people who occupied Maidan and the streets of Kiev and other cities, demanding an end to the symbiosis of the police state and criminal gangs of the government. They’re fighting for their essential rights and their freedom.

So should we support it? But Svoboda and the Right Sector define the situation as a nationalist revolution. Leftists are beaten up on Maidan, and those who beat them join in chanting: “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to its heroes!”, “Glory to the nation! Death to its enemies!”, “Ukraine above all else!”

So we shouldn’t support it? But what about the human dignity claimed by the participants of the Maidan movement, their fight for democracy, European values, civil rights, freedom and independence? The people out on Maidan feel that the EU flag is just as much their flag as the blue and yellow of Ukraine; the Maidan protesters want to see these flags together, because only then shall Ukraine finally prosper.

You’ll agree it’s confusing, and hard to make up your mind. Only the Stalinists seem to know exactly what to do: “no wonder there’s an openly fascist coup when the authorities are so lenient and submissive. The Nazis know an opportunity when they see one. Yanukovych needs to stop dilly-dallying, declare a state of emergency, get all those fuckers off Maidan, and put its leaders behind the bars for, say, 15 years, so others take the hint.”

As for us, we’re only certain of one thing: in order to pick sides we have to know exactly what we’re dealing with. The national liberation movement wants to turn Maidan into a nationalist revolution, Stalinists and Russian chauvinists see it as a fascist coup, and those who fight for democracy call it an overthrow of the oligarchy. The problem is, Maidan is like a magic cube that somehow includes all of these disparate groups and elements, which constantly move, change positions, and expose different patterns. One possible key to this puzzle could be placing it in a broader historical and international context.

So: Can the protests unfolding in Kyiv and other cities be called a nationalist revolution, as the right wing wants it to be? No, they can’t. The reason is that Ukraine was not a colony inside the USSR. This can be demonstrated by the fact that, twenty years into independence, Ukraine still hasn’t reached the same economic indicators as it enjoyed during Soviet times. And how can we talk about a revolution of national liberation when Ukraine is already an autonomous, independent country?

The era of national liberation movements ended shortly after World War II, when nearly all the former colonies achieved their independence. There have been some national liberation movements since then, but today’s Ukraine is definitely not one of them.

Could this be a fascist coup, then? Decide for yourself, but before you do that, take a look at the Maidan movement manifesto issued on December, 29 of 2013.1 Do those demands and goals seem fascist to you?

We don’t want to pretend like there are no nationalists, racists, and fascists on Maidan. There are, and their presence is strong; but, let’s be honest, this is no fascist coup. Ukraine’s ultra right groups wouldn’t have any objections to establishing a fascist dictatorship in Ukraine, liquidating the parliament, forcing Ukrainization on the Southeast, erecting monuments to Bandera, Shukhevych, Petliura and other leaders of the nationalist movement all over Crimea, Odessa, Donbas, the Donets Basin, and so on — if they only could. But they lack the strength to do this, and there are neither internal nor external causes for this scenario anyway. There might be a chance for the ultra-right if the EU were to fall apart, but so far it’s dealt with its problems somehow without any dramatic consequences, and even Greece is still a part of it.

Ukraine’s geographical location, trapped between the EU and Russia, would quite literally be the stumbling block for a fascist putsch. This scenario is reactionary and utopian, even more so than a successful socialist revolution, which some naïve quasi-communists and Stalinists still discuss as a possibility.

One is reminded of the old joke: A sign on an elephant’s cage in the zoo says he eats about 50 pounds of bread, 40 pounds of potatoes, 20 pounds of cabbage, 100 pounds of bananas, and so on. Amazed, a visitor asks the zoo keeper: “Would the elephant really eat all that?” “Oh, he’d have no problem eating it. But who’s going to give it to him?”

And so we reach the other option for what’s happening on Maidan: a national-democratic, anti-oligarchic revolution. Or, to put it more carefully, a national-democratic, petty bourgeois, anti-oligarchic mass movement.

We’ve already tackled the question of why it is that the situation has a clearly stronger nationalistic and patriotic character than a leftist and democratic one. But we should also explain why it’s become a confrontation of Western and Central Ukraine against the Southeast.

The southeastern part of Ukraine, the Russian-speaking part, is the land of heavy industry, with most of its products intended for the export market. Unlike Western Ukraine, it is highly urbanized; with the exception of Kyiv, every city in Ukraine with more than a million residents is in the Southeast. In addition, there are a handful of cities that would easily be considered regional centers in Western and Central parts of Ukraine, but that’s not the case in the Southeast. Makeevka has 356 thousands inhabitants, Mariupol 482 thousands, Krivyi Rih 659 thousands, Dneprodzerzhinsk 254 thousands, and Sevastopol 338 thousands.

Unlike the Southeast, Central and Western Ukraine is primarily a rural region with not much industry at all. Its population prefers Ukranian to Russian, and its small enterprises mostly cater to the local market.

The culture and mentality of people living in Central and Western Ukraine is still dominated by the village, not the city. They are very religious; the Church is a major part of Western Ukrainian life, whereas in the Southeast it has almost no significance at all. Finally, whereas patriotism characterizes the villages of Central and, particularly, Western Ukraine, the Southeast maintains an open, cosmopolitan attitude.

That explains why the current situation feels more like a movement of nationalists and patriots rather than that of national democrats against the oligarchs. Our nationalists are very similar to the Muslim Brotherhood of the Arab Spring, although the Brotherhood’s ideology was more conservative and reactionary than ours.

There’s something else here. Maidan would be an exact replica of the reactionary movement of the Muslim Brotherhood if everything could be brought down to the simple antitheses we’ve been discussing: urban versus rural, heavy industry versus small enterprises, big business versus the petty bourgeoisie, Russian versus Ukrainian, atheists versus the Church, the Communist Party of Ukraine versus Svodoba, and so on.

But that’s not how it is. The thing is, in their fight against a corrupt government and its oligarchs, the middle class, the bourgeoisie, the intellectuals, the students, the peasants, the migrant workers and the proletariat from Western and Central Ukraine are appealing to an even more powerful bourgeoisie and to a super-state that is, unlike Ukraine, a subject, rather than an object, of world-historical processes.

I’m talking, of course, of the EU. Ukraine borders with Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west, and it’s no wonder the vicinity and attraction to the bigger power and stronger democracy of the EU is so attractive.

Euromaidan is nationalist and patriotic only in its form. In its actual content, it’s a progressive bourgeois, not to say internationalist, movement aimed at integration.

In politics, one should never judge a book by its cover. For example, the CP led by Pyotr Symonenko call themselves communist revolutionaries when in fact they are conservatives, followers of capitalism in Ukraine and Russia. In the same way, the bourgeois democratic revolutionaries led by Tyahnybok call themselves reactionary nationalists and followers of an outmoded patriotism.

As Marx wrote, «Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. In like manner, the beginner who has learned a new language always translates it back into his mother tongue, but he assimilates the spirit of the new language and expresses himself freely in it only when he moves in it without recalling the old and when he forgets his native tongue».

The events of 2013 and 2014 are no exception from this pattern of historical irony: what’s being executed goes contrary to what’s being planned, and the realization of the plan does not match its goals.

The mass movement of the French Revolution was a fight for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, but what its participants really accomplished was replacing one set of exploiters with another. In the same way the Stalinist bureaucracy promoted collectivization and industrialization as clearing a ground for socialism, but instead those policies created the initial primitive capital accumulation that set the stage for state capitalism in the USSR.

In the same way our patriots wholeheartedly believe that Euromaidan is a national liberationist revolution, when in fact what they’re really fighting for is Ukraine’s subjugation and the loss of its independence.

It’s best not to interrupt them. The concept of the nation-state as a world-historical subject has become outdated, in Europe and everywhere else. Belief in it will bring nothing but oblivion for those who choose it, be it the Party of Regions, the Communist Party of Ukraine, or the Right Sector.

Global bourgeois ideologists have a deeper and and clearer understanding of the Maidan movement and events in Ukraine than the leaders of the movement and the petty bourgeois themselves. The famous American political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski said the following recently in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda: « We shouldn’t deal with the Ukrainian problem as an anti-Russian problem. From a historical perspective, it’s better to look at the latest events in Ukraine as the start of a long process which will lead not only to the broadening of Europe, not only to Ukrainian inclusion, but also to Russian inclusion. <..> And the strategic vision of the West should be: ‘We want Ukraine to be in Europe, but not as a weapon against Russia, but as the beginning of a process that eventually will include Russia.’».

Most of Ukraine’s leftists are very concerned with their insignificance and lack of authority in the current situation, as well as in general. We should admit it: our status hasn’t changed much since the left was crushed and defeated by the Stalinists in the 1930s.

The current crisis in Ukraine is a very good chance to come to some conclusions about our situation, to be realistic and see where we are and what our potential is.

And that shall be our advantage. We are not going to see our illusions shattered like those participants of the Maidan movement who genuinely believe in the possibility of building an autonomous nation state with fair trade and incorruptible parliamentary democracy next to such gigantic capitalist conglomerations as the EU and the Customes Union. What bitter disappointment awaits them once they realize that no state that wants to protect the welfare of its citizens will be able to survive in a world where Chinese merchandise sets low prices for everything, including labor.

Our advantage on the left is that, unlike the ideologists, leaders, and participants of Maidan, we already know that. Our goal is to convert this advantage into a strong organizational potential, using the stirred enthusiasm, the people, the energy of Euromaidan. We have to realize that a socialist Ukraine is not possible without the combined efforts of the proletariat in Europe, Ukraine, and Russia. There will be no socialism without this union.

And so I say: Glory to Ukraine!

[kelley]

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb14/Ukraine2-14.html


Of Two Minds
Charles Hugh Smith

Ukraine: A Deep State Analysis (February 27, 2014)

Some preliminary thoughts on a complex situation.

It doesn't take any special insight into the situation in Ukraine to conclude that no one narrative illuminates all the dynamics. Various contesting Grand Narratives have emerged in the media--neofascist coup, rampant corruption, east versus west, to name a few--but these only describe a few of the regional fault lines and complexities.

At my request, correspondent A.C. offered a preliminary Deep State analysis of the situation. A.C.'s perspective is informed by decades of experience in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltic region.

I recently discussed the Deep State in The Dollar and the Deep State, and offered this definition by Mike Lofgren:

The term “Deep State” was coined in Turkey and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary and organized crime.

The Deep State is a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the nation without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.

I describe the U.S. Deep State as the National Security State which enables a vast Imperial structure that incorporates hard and soft power--military, diplomatic, intelligence, finance, commercial, energy, media, higher education--in a system of global domination and influence.

One key feature of the Deep State everywhere is that it makes decisions behind closed doors and the surface government simply ratifies and implements the decisions. I have covered various aspects of geopolitics and the Deep State for years, for example:

The Great Game: Geopolitics and Oil (October 19, 2010)

The Banality of Evil and Imperial Over-Reach (December 14, 2010)

Speaking of Iraq--let's start with the obvious Deep State agenda in Ukraine: energy. Nations with a strategic "vital interest" in the region's energy mix include Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Germany (and the rest of the Europen Union, which currently depends on natural gas piped through Ukraine from Russia), Romania and (of course) the United States, which maintains a strategic interest in every square meter of the planet (including the seas and ice caps).

It's not much of a stretch to say that Russia's fiscal health and geopolitical influence are based on hydrocarbons--specifically gas and oil delivered to other nations for cash and/or political favors.

The maturation of fracking technologies have led to the exploration of western Ukraine, Poland and Romania by super-major oil companies such as Chevron: Where We Operate - Chevron

Chevron holds four shale concessions in Poland—Frampol, Grabowiec, Krasnik and Zwierzyniec—which total approximately one million acres. In the Grabowiec concession, drilling of the first well was completed in March 2012, followed by a diagnostic fracture integrity test in December 2012. A first well also was drilled in the Frampol concession in 2012. In the Zwierzyniec concession, drilling began in December 2012. Continued exploration drilling is planned for 2013.

Chevron holds more than 2 million acres in Romania, including a 1.6-million-acre concession in the Barlad Shale. We plan to drill an exploration well in 2013. We hold three additional concession agreements covering 670,000 acres in southeast Romania. Acquisition of 2-D seismic data across these concessions is expected to begin in 2013.

Chevron successfully bid for the right to exclusively negotiate with the government of Ukraine for the Oleska Block. The company is expected to operate and hold a 50 percent interest in the 1.6 million-acre concession.

Ukraine holds promise for shale gas despite uncertainty

The development of gas fields in these regions poses a direct competitive threat to the near-monopoly currently held by the Russian national oil company, Gazprom. This sets up a scramble for energy, where western Ukraine, Poland, Romania and the EU have powerful financial incentives to develop energy sources outside of Russian control, while Russia has an incentive to secure energy resources and assets in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

Here is A.C.'s outline of some of the key dynamics:

This gas pipeline map graphically illustrates Gazprom's real problem. A major competing gas field is appearing literally underneath a major existing east-west gas pipeline running into central Europe. Drill wells and immediately begin selling to Germany and other existing Gazprom customers. And also undercut Gazprom's pricing by a touch.

The extent to which US-based multinational oil and gas firms are directly displacing Russian enterprises in supplying the EU is remarkable. Chevron and Exxon are very prominent in the emerging offshore and shale plays.

I think the imminent threat of Ukrainian shale gas development is a factor in forcing Putin's hand over the EU trade deal. Putin's regional Great Power ambitions are backed entirely by strong arm hydrocarbon diplomacy. Putin's domestic political position equally rests on stable and elevated hydrocarbon prices to fund the state budget.

He has no revolutionary ideology with mass appeal in religion, politics or economics. Nor does he possess a large internationally recognized sphere of dominance like Stalin obtained at Yalta in 1945.

Nor does he have a large land army with which to intimidate and subdue neighboring states. He's only managed to convert a portion of the shrunken Army to "kontraktniki" (well-paid professional volunteers). These guys are the ones suppressing the Muslim insurgents in the Caucasus. If Putin attempted to openly intervene in the Ukraine with the available and virtually untrained conscript military forces it would produce a political explosion in Russia's own internal politics. This is addition to the surge of Ukrainian nationalist opposition that would ensue.

Putin's risk arises not just from the example being set for Russian domestic opponents. If Putin is seen to be responsible for alienating and finally "losing" the Ukraine he'll find himself in trouble with the Russian Deep State.

What's Happening in Kiev Right Now Is Vladimir Putin's Worst Nightmare (New Republic)

Will Ukraine Break Apart (New Yorker)

As this piece notes, modern Ukraine in its present form is an artifact of the 1945 Yalta Conference and the post World War II order. Just like Yugoslavia. Unfortunately for all concerned, this latent instability is now compounded by a happenstance of geology and the recent maturation of the technology for exploiting shale gas reserves. Adjoining neighbors like Poland now have motives that were missing when the Ukraine was a poor and primarily agrarian land.

The gas pipeline map shows the major incentives and rational objectives of a partition strategy from Putin's perspective. He can't stop development in Polish Lublin or near Lviv. He at least needs to keep control of infrastructure in the eastern Ukraine. Offshore Black Sea oil and gas tract concessions are also at stake.

This suggests that the interests of all parties align in supporting a de facto partition rather than a civil war in Ukraine in which neither side could establish stable, long-term control of the other.

I asked A.C. for his view of the U.S. Deep State's goals in the region.

The short two-part answer is:

1. Frustrate Moscow's ambitions to dominate Eurasia. The operative strategic analyses employed are MacKinder's World-Island Theory as subsequently and heavily modified by modern hydro-carbon fuel economics: The Geographical Pivot of History.

2. Continue to improve the EU's Central European position with respect to its hydrocarbon fuel supplies. The Neocons were already deeply worried about the growth of NATO dependence on Gazprom and the eastern pipelines in the mid-1980s. This has been on their radar for decades.

The overall objective is to destroy Putin's capacity to set marginal natural gas prices in Europe. If pipelines under the Baltic and Black Seas are feasible so are pipelines under the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa to France, and from the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean to Greece and southeastern Europe. Add some LPG terminals and European shale gas operations and this is achieved.

There may be a third goal in trying to set an example for domestic Russian opponents, which exist in great numbers. I think it's more likely the Russian Federation's Deep State will find another leader first.

Thank you, A.C., for your perspective on this complex, fast-evolving situation. Sometimes strategic goals can be met not by establishing overt control (i.e. becoming a target) but by indirectly thwarting the goals of competing Deep States.

[pepsified thinker]

I hear there's a secret plan to support resistance by Ukraine high school students operating as secret 'Wolverine' groups. So this whole thing? Actually not a big deal--just gotta give 'em some time to take down Putin. Or the U.S.. Or whoever is/is behind the 'bad guys' in this scenario.

[smiths]

We’re now witnessing the consequences of how grossly both Russia and the West have overplayed their hands in Ukraine. It is urgently necessary that both should find ways of withdrawing from some of the positions that they have taken. Otherwise, the result could very easily be civil war, Russian invasion, the partition of Ukraine, and a conflict that will haunt Europe for generations to come ...

Over the past year, both Russia and the European Union tried to force Ukraine to make a clear choice between them—and the entirely predictable result has been to tear the country apart. Russia attempted to draw Ukraine into the Eurasian Customs Union by offering a massive financial bailout and heavily subsidized gas supplies. The European Union then tried to block this by offering an association agreement, though (initially) with no major financial aid attached. Neither Russia nor the EU made any serious effort to talk to each other about whether a compromise might be reached that would allow Ukraine somehow to combine the two agreements, to avoid having to choose sides ...

The West has stood by in silence while the rump parliament in Kiev abolished the official status of Russian and other minority languages, and members of the new government threatened publicly to ban the main parties that supported Yanukovych—an effort that would effectively disenfranchise around a third of the population.

After years of demanding that successive Ukrainian governments undertake painful reforms in order to draw nearer to the West, the West is now in a paradoxical position: If it wishes to save the new government from a Russian-backed counter-revolution, it will have to forget about any reforms that will alienate ordinary people, and instead give huge sums in aid with no strings attached. The EU has allowed the demonstrators in Kiev to believe that their actions have brought Ukraine closer to EU membership—but, if anything, this is now even further away than it was before the revolution.

In these circumstances, it is essential that both the West and Russia act with caution ...

The real and urgent issue now is what happens across the eastern and southern Ukraine, and it is essential that neither side initiates the use of force there. Any move by the new Ukrainian government or nationalist militias to overthrow elected local authorities and suppress anti-government demonstrations in these regions is likely to provoke a Russian military intervention. Any Russian military intervention in turn will compel the Ukrainian government and army (or at least its more nationalist factions) to fight.

The West must therefore urge restraint—not only from Moscow, but from Kiev as well. Any aid to the government in Kiev should be made strictly conditional on measures to reassure the Russian-speaking populations of the east and south of the country: respect for elected local authorities; restoration of the official status of minority languages; and above all, no use of force in those regions. In the longer run, the only way to keep Ukraine together may be the introduction of a new federal constitution with much greater powers for the different regions.

http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2014/ ... eas/nexus/

[seemslikeadream]

675,000 Ukrainians pour into Russia as ‘humanitarian crisis’ looms
Published time: March 02, 2014 13:18
Edited time: March 03, 2014 04:17 Get short URL
Pro-Russian protesters wave a Russian flag and hold a sign (C) reading "Our brothers are in Russia, we are slaves in Europe" during a rally in front of the regional administration building in the industrial Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 1, 2014. (AFP Photo)Pro-Russian protesters wave a Russian flag and hold a sign (C) reading "Our brothers are in Russia, we are slaves in Europe" during a rally in front of the regional administration building in the industrial Ukrainian city of Donetsk on March 1, 2014. (AFP Photo)

An estimated 675,000 Ukrainians left for Russia in January and February, fearing the “revolutionary chaos” brewing in Ukraine, Russia's Federal Border Guard Service said. Officials fear a growing humanitarian crisis.

On Sunday, the border guard service said Russian authorities have identified definite signs that a “humanitarian catastrophe” is brewing in Ukraine.

“In just the past two months (January-February) of this year…675,000 Ukrainian citizens have entered Russian territory,” Itar-Tass news agency cited the service as saying.

"If 'revolutionary chaos' in Ukraine continues, hundreds of thousands of refugees will flow into bordering Russian regions," the statement read.

Ukrainians have long formed a large presence in Russia. According to the official 2010 census, 1.9 million Ukrainians were officially living in Russia, although the head of the Federal Migration Service put that figure as high as 3.5 million one year before. While those migrants were often prompted by economic concerns, political turmoil has spiked the recent rise in Ukrainians attempting to leave the country.

On Saturday, Russian migration authorities reported that 143,000 requests for asylum had been sent to Russia within a two-week period. Russian officials have promised to expedite the processing of those requests.

“Tragic events in Ukraine have caused a sharp spike in requests coming from this country seeking asylum in Russia,” said the chief of the FMS’s citizenship desk, Valentina Kazakova. “We monitor figures daily and they are far from comforting. Over the last two weeks of February, some 143,000 people applied.”

Kazakova said most requests come from the areas bordering Russia, and especially from Ukraine’s south.

“People are lost, scared and depressed,” she said. “There are many requests from law enforcement services, state officials as they are wary of possible lynching on behalf of radicalized armed groups.”

A week after the government of Viktor Yanukovich was toppled by violent street protests, fears of deepening political and social strife have been particularly acute in Ukraine’s country's pro-Russian east and south.

Soon after Yanukovich opted to flee the country in what he branded as an extremist coup, a newly reconfigured parliament did away with a 2012 law on minority languages which permitted the use of two official languages in regions where the size of an ethnic minority exceeds 10 percent.

Apart from the Russian-majority regions affected by this law, Hungarian, Moldovan and Romanian also lost their status as official languages in several towns in Western Ukraine.

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Ukrainian deputies were wrong to cancel the law, while European parliamentarians urged the new government to respect the rights of minorities in Ukraine, including the right to use Russian and other minority languages.

Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, was far more damning in his criticism.

“The attack on the Russian language in Ukraine is a brutal violation of ethnic minority rights,” he tweeted.

Out of some 45 million people living in Ukraine, according to the 2013 census, some 7.6 million are ethnic Russians. Leaders of several predominately Russian-speaking regions have said they will take contr