MAKING SENSE OUT OF UKRAINE (2)

“A Moscow-Jewish mafia” rules Ukraine and that “Germans, Kikes and other scum” want to “take away our Ukrainian state.”- Oleh Tyahnybok

by Barry Grossman*

Pictures and video footage taken of Sen. John McCain during his visit to the Ukraine in December 2013 in which he is seen with Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the provisional Prime Minister installed after the Putsch, along with Oleh Tyahnybok of the “neo-Nazi” Svoboda party, hardly give pundits suspicious of the US role in events reason to be optimistic. 

Oleh Tyahnybok, has been quoted as saying a “Moscow-Jewish mafia” rules Ukraine and that “Germans, Kikes and other scum” want to “take away our Ukrainian state.” Based on past experience, it is reasonable to presume that these public appearances by US politicians and official are barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what was done clandestinely to support the Orange Revolution and more recently the Putsch.  

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland Kagan also made public appearances in support of anti-government protests in Kiev prior to the Putsch. Pictures of her grandstanding along with leaked recording of her telephone conversation with the U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine in which she appears to be deciding two weeks before Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s post-Putsch appointment as Prime Minister that he will receive the post, provide a sound foundation for speculation about the US role in overthrowing Yanukovych. 

Following her photo ops in the Ukraine, Nuland made what  is reported by Counterpunch as “an an eight minute, 46 second speech at the National Press Club sponsored by the US-Ukraine Foundation, Chevron, and [the] Ukraine-in-Washington Lobby Group, [in which she] boasted that Washington has spent $5 billion to foment agitation to bring Ukraine into the EU. Once captured by the EU, Ukraine will be “helped” by the West acting through the IMF. Nuland, of course, presented the IMF as Ukraine’s rescuer, not as the iron hand of the West that will squeeze all life out of Ukraine’s struggling economy.”

The leaked recording of Nuland’s conversation with US Ambassador Pyatt includes the following casual remarks:

Nuland “I don’t think Klitsch [Vitali Klitschko] should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea. . . .

Pyatt: The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, Svoboda party, Senator McCain’s Nazi friend] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

Nuland: I think Yats [Arseniy Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy … what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.”

Pyatt: “I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?”

Two weeks later Nuland’s preferred man became Prime Minister!

Bizarrely, the US State Department has gone so far as to complain that Russia has improperly disseminated recordings of the call while Germany’s Angela Merkel has denounced comments made by Nuland during the recorded conversation in which Nuland condemned the EU.” “Certainly we think this is a new low in Russian tradecraft in terms of publicizing and posting this,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki in the daily press briefing. “I don’t have any other independent details about the origin of the YouTube video.” The state department has said Ms Nuland “of course has apologised” after being in contact with her “EU counterparts”.

On January 15 2014, Nuland made a formal submission on the Ukraine to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in her capacity as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, stating:

“Why does the United States have an interest in how this turns out?   Because [our]  principles and values are the cornerstone of all free democracies, and America supports them in every country on the planet.   Countries that live freely and independently and respect the rule of law are more stable and make better partners for the United States.  The Euromaidan protestors – students, workers, pensioners, priests, entrepreneurs, business moguls and popstars — are all calling for the same basic rights we hold dear here in the United States.  They want to live in a country where their government truly represents the wishes of the people and where they can safely exercise their rights without the fear of oppression. . . . The use of violence and acts of repression carried out by government security forces and their surrogates have compelled us to make clear publicly and privately to the government of Ukraine that we will consider a broad range of tools at our disposal if those in positions of authority in Ukraine employ or encourage violence against their own citizens.”

US plays key role in engineering Yanukovych overthrow

The without a hint of irony or embarrassment and only one month before her leaked phone call with the USA Ambassador, Nuland went on to say:   

“Looking forward, the US will work hard to support a free and fair election in 2015.”

Nuland’s husband Robert Kagan is a leading Washington NeoCon.  Robert Kagan,  is a foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institute., a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He been a foreign policy advisor to several U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as to Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State under President Obama.

These facts do nothing to engender confidence in the US position and everything to create speculation that, as has happened so many times before since WWII, the US in fact may have played a key role in engineering the overthrow of Yanukovych. The appearance of impropriety in this regard is hardly less damaging to the US position than any impropriety which may  actually have taken place. I would suggest that based on its historical record of similar fact crimes, the burden of proof is on the US. 

Certainly, the apparent US role behind the scenes in the events that toppled Yanukovych is not without precedent and bears some resemblance to US support for foreign, terrorist elements fighting in Syria to unseat President Bashar Assad by force. That said, the US seems to have learned from its experience in Syria and is this time moving more quickly to distance itself from these far right elements in the Ukraine.

What we see over and over again is the largely corporatized US security apparatus or, if you like, the present manifestation of what President Eisenhower first  described as the military-industrial complex, introducing destructive elements into targeted nations which are calculated to dismantle the political status quo while creating other long term problems which eventually can be used to justify further intervention to advance  long term US policy which invariably lays the foundations for a full corporate takeover of the targeted nation’s resources, finances, economic policies and markets.

In any case, before the putsch in Kiev, Putin had already angered Western policy makers and strategists by staking out a self-interested position in Syria which played no small part in stalling the US led Syria Project. At the same time Russia, which had long been concerned about US efforts to encroach on Russia’s sphere of influence in nations comprising the former Soviet Territories, understandably became alarmed when the Yanukovych government was illegally toppled by Putschists rather than by election. Bearing in mind how the US reacted to the Cuban Missile Crises, clearly it should understand the validity of Russia’s position. 

In response to the Putsch, Russia quickly moved to secure its interests in the Crimea by organizing a hasty referendum which it is reported saw Crimeans overwhelmingly vote to secede from the Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation.  So, to return to the question at hand: Did Atlantic world interests, both private and public, conduct themselves improperly and pursue an illegitimate policy in the Ukraine?

Looked at through US eyes, they would certainly respond with a resounding no and argue that any steps taken to support the toppling of Yanukovych was justified by a variation on the failed state argument. On the other hand, if looked at from Russia’s perspective, the US by supporting and perhaps even orchestrating an illegal Putsch in a sovereign state with close historic ties to Russia, undoubtedly did what it would never tolerate if done by Russia in any nation falling with the US sphere of influence. Considered objectively, Russia’ allegation of improper and illegal US conduct is highly compelling.

The case against the US becomes all the more compelling when we start to deconstruct the position promulgated publicly through the CFR. In that regard, there two subjects often broached in their literature. The first takes special note of the unacceptably high pension costs associated with the aging Ukraine population and thereby hints at an agenda promulgated by lending institutions and the IMF. It is not surprising that according to press reports, one of the first reform initiatives that followed the Putsch was plans to slash public pensions.

The second point which recurs in the literature asserts that it is unacceptable to have a corrupt government at the helm of a near failed state which is geographically pivotal to the orderly delivery of oil and gas to Europe. What these concerns suggest is that there is a great deal more to US concerns about the Ukraine than rampant corruption, oligarchy and wealth disparity. 

Media Reporting:

Sadly,  the continuing political machinations in the Ukraine are be touted by both mainstream pundits and the alternative press as a basis for making various unfounded bellicose predictions ranging from the inevitability of thermonuclear war to the alleged certainty that Russia will move aggressively to reassert territorial control over various other form Soviet Territories. Meanwhile, the mainstream press has failed entirely to present a balanced view of events and is clear again acting as the propaganda arm of the political staus quo.

The putsch government has been doing its very best to disgrace itself with internal conflict and threats against Russian speaking Ukrainians but the related events have been largely ignored by mainstream US media. The leaked recordings of Tymoshenko’s phone call in which she talks to her political ally Shufrych about massacring Russians, the leaked recording of Nuland’s conversation with US Ambassador Pyatt in which she seems to hand pick Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister, the dismissal of Acting Defense Minister Tenyukh’s and the murder of far-right political leader  Oleksandr Muzychko, were at best glossed over by the mainstream media which has also mostly blacked out the ongoing chaos after the putsch.

Instead of reporting on the unfolding situation objectively, Reuters chose to skew the picture presented to the public by reporting that

“A prominent Russian politician . . . proposed dividing Ukraine along the lines of an infamous Nazi-Soviet pact and suggested that regions in Western Ukraine hold referendums on breaking away from Kiev.  In a letter sent to the governments of Poland, Romania and Hungary, Vladimir Zhirinovsky also suggested those countries hold referendums on incorporating the regions into their territory.”

For its part, CNN has recently run with a story in which Andrew C. Kuchins (director and senior fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.) proclaimed: “Obama is now making Jimmy Carter look like Attila the Hun with a series of empty threats and “too little, too late” punitive measures against Putin’s Russia. I have no doubt that there is nothing Vladimir Putin would rather do than delegitimize the post-Cold War order, expose the Trans-Atlantic partnership as a sham and deeply degrade U.S. leadership in the world A Russian strike, either after a manufactured provocation or without one, into eastern Ukraine, is inevitable. Putin smells blood in the water, and nothing we have said or done will deter him. Economic measures alone are insufficient.”

On the other hand, some commentators in the alternate press have not exercised much restraint in making what are considered by many to bellicose claims and predictions.  Without citing sources, Christof Lehmann, editor of internet based NSNBC International has recently been widely reported in the alternate press as saying:

“In the early 1980s, a European top NATO admiral said that American colleagues at the Pentagon had told him, unequivocally, that the US and UK would not hesitate in creating a new European war if the situation ever arose that Europe and Russia, then the USSR, were to develop close relations.”

 Citing Lehmann, Finian Cunningham has written for various alternative media outlets that:

“[T]he US is prepared to plunge Europe into a war with Russia in order for Washington to preserve its hegemony over the transatlantic axis. The key issues are the prevention of Russia and Europe developing closer trade and political ties – stemming primarily from a vast trade in energy fuels; and, secondly, the survival of the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

While these claims are not beyond the realm of possibility and are no doubt made in good faith, they have not been established or even attributed. Apart from that, the way in which they have been wielded overlooks the fact that there has never been a shortage of Generals from the lunatic fringe who will speak out of turn. We all remember former General Alexander Haig making such a blunder as Reagan’s Secretary of State when, in the immediate aftermath of the 1981 Hinkley assassination attempt, he stated to the press “I am in control here” despite being well down the pecking order of those who would take over as acting President should the attempt have succeeded.

Meanwhile Washington quickly rushed to impose a range of economic sanctions on Russia and members of Putin’s inner circle in what commentator Eric Margolis has recently likened to “the US sanctions imposed on Japan in 1941 led Tokyo to attack the Western powers.”

The short answer is that economic realities suggest any sanctions against Russia as opposed to members of  Putin’s  inner circle will do more harm to the US and Europe than they will ever do to Russia.

That the US/Eurozone position in the Ukraine and other former Soviet territories comprising Russia’s sphere of influence is based on pragmatic self-interest, advanced improperly and calculated to disadvantage Russia can hardly be serious disputed.  But what of Putin and Russia’s adventure in Crimea? (T/BG/E01)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)

 

*Barry Grossman is an international lawyer. He received a B.Comm. from the University of Calgary in 1984 and  his LLB from York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School in 1987. After working as a litigator at a major commercial law firm in Toronto, he moved to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Law in 1988. He later worked for several years as a litigation consultant to the national Australian firm of Freehill, Hollingdale & Page before later taking up a full time lectureship at Monash University’s Faculty of Law. Mr. Grossman has written extensively on various legal subject and is a frequent commentator on political affairs. He is often interviewed by Press TV. He resided in Indonesia since 1999. This article was written for the Indonesian based international news service, Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as requested by MINA Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Syarif Hidayat.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of MINA.