Nuland’s Mastery of Ukraine Propaganda
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | March 11, 2015
An early skill learned by Official Washington’s neoconservatives, when they were cutting their teeth inside the U.S. government in the 1980s, was how to frame their arguments in the most propagandistic way, so anyone who dared to disagree with any aspect of the presentation seemed unpatriotic or crazy.
During my years at The Associated Press and Newsweek, I dealt with a number of now prominent neocons who were just starting out and mastering these techniques at the knee of top CIA psychological warfare specialist Walter Raymond Jr., who had been transferred to President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff where Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces that pushed Reagan’s hard-line agenda in Central America and elsewhere. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Victory of ‘Perception Management.’”]
One of those quick learners was Robert Kagan, who was then a protégé of Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams. Kagan got his first big chance when he became director of the State Department’s public diplomacy office for Latin America, a key outlet for Raymond’s propaganda schemes.
Though always personable in his dealings with me, Kagan grew frustrated when I wouldn’t swallow the propaganda that I was being fed. At one point, Kagan warned me that I might have to be “controversialized,” i.e. targeted for public attack by Reagan’s right-wing media allies and anti-journalism attack groups, like Accuracy in Media, a process that did indeed occur.
Years later, Kagan emerged as one of America’s top neocons, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, which opened in 1998 to advocate for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, ultimately gaining the backing of a large swath of the U.S. national security establishment in support of that bloody endeavor.
Despite the Iraq disaster, Kagan continued to rise in influence, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a columnist at the Washington Post, and someone whose published criticism so alarmed President Barack Obama last year that he invited Kagan to a White House lunch. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Obama’s True Foreign Policy Weakness.”]
Kagan’s Wife’s Coup
But Kagan is perhaps best known these days as the husband of neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, one of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former advisers and a key architect of last year’s coup in Ukraine, a “regime change” that toppled an elected president and touched off a civil war, which now has become a proxy fight involving nuclear-armed United States and Russia.
In an interview last year with the New York Times, Nuland indicated that she shared her husband’s criticism of President Obama for his hesitancy to use American power more assertively. Referring to Kagan’s public attacks on Obama’s more restrained “realist” foreign policy, Nuland said, “suffice to say … that nothing goes out of the house that I don’t think is worthy of his talents. Let’s put it that way.”
But Nuland also seems to have mastered her husband’s skill with propaganda, presenting an extreme version of the situation in Ukraine, such that no one would dare quibble with the details. In prepared testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, Nuland even slipped in an accusation blaming Russia for the July 17 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 though the U.S. government has not presented any proof.
Nuland testified, “In eastern Ukraine, Russia and its separatist puppets unleashed unspeakable violence and pillage; MH-17 was shot down.”
Now, it’s true that if one parses Nuland’s testimony, she’s not exactly saying the Russians or the ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down the plane. There is a semi-colon between the “unspeakable violence and pillage” and the passive verb structure “MH-17 was shot down.” But anyone seeing her testimony would have understood that the Russians and their “puppets” shot down the plane, killing all 298 people onboard.
When I submitted a formal query to the State Department asking if Nuland’s testimony meant that the U.S. government had developed new evidence that the rebels shot down the plane and that the Russians shared complicity, I received no answer.
Perhaps significantly or perhaps not, Nuland presented similarly phrased testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday but made no reference to MH-17. So, I submitted a new inquiry asking whether the omission reflected second thoughts by Nuland about making the claim before the House. Again, I have not received a reply.
However, both of Nuland’s appearances place all the blame for the chaos in Ukraine on Russia, including the 6,000 or more deaths. Nuland offered not a single word of self-criticism about how she contributed to these violent events by encouraging last year’s coup, nor did she express the slightest concern about the actions of the coup regime in Kiev, including its dispatch of neo-Nazi militias to carry out “anti-terrorist” and “death squad” operations against ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Nuclear War and Clashing Ukraine Narratives.”]
Russia’s Fault
Everything was Russia’s fault – or as Nuland phrased it: “This manufactured conflict — controlled by the Kremlin; fueled by Russian tanks and heavy weapons; financed at Russian taxpayers’ expense — has cost the lives of more than 6,000 Ukrainians, but also of hundreds of young Russians sent to fight and die there by the Kremlin, in a war their government denies.”
Nuland was doing her husband proud. As every good propagandist knows, you don’t present events with any gray areas; your side is always perfect and the other side is the epitome of evil. And, today, Nuland faces almost no risk that some mainstream journalist will dare contradict this black-and-white storyline; they simply parrot it.
Besides heaping all the blame on the Russians, Nuland cited – in her Senate testimony – some of the new “reforms” that the Kiev authorities have just implemented as they build a “free-market state.” She said, “They made tough choices to reduce and cap pension benefits, increase work requirements and phase in a higher retirement age; … they passed laws cutting wasteful gas subsidies.”
In other words, many of the “free-market reforms” are aimed at making the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder – by cutting pensions, removing work protections, forcing people to work into their old age and making them pay more for heat during the winter.
Nuland also hailed some of the regime’s stated commitments to fighting corruption. But Kiev seems to have simply installed a new cast of bureaucrats looking to enrich themselves. For instance, Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko is an expatriate American who – before becoming an instant Ukrainian citizen last December – ran a U.S. taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine that was drained of money as she engaged in lucrative insider deals, which she has fought to keep secret. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]
Yet, none of these concerns were mentioned in Nuland’s propagandistic testimony to the House and Senate – not that any of the committee members or the mainstream press corps seemed to care that they were being spun and even misled. The hearings were mostly opportunities for members of Congress to engage in chest-beating as they demanded that President Obama send U.S. arms to Ukraine for a hot war with Russia.
Regarding the MH-17 disaster, one reason that I was inquisitive about Nuland’s insinuation in her House testimony that the Russians and the ethnic Russian rebels were responsible was that some U.S. intelligence analysts have reached a contrary conclusion, according to a source briefed on their findings. According to that information, the analysts found no proof that the Russians had delivered a BUK anti-aircraft system to the rebels and concluded that the attack was apparently carried out by a rogue element of the Ukrainian military.
After I published that account last summer, the Obama administration went silent about the MH-17 shoot-down, letting stand some initial speculation that had blamed the Russians and the rebels. In the nearly eight months since the tragedy, the U.S. government has failed to make public any intelligence information on the crash. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Danger of an MH-17 ‘Cold Case.’”]
So, Nuland may have been a bit duplicitous when she phrased her testimony so that anyone hearing it would jump to the conclusion that the Russians and the rebels were to blame. It’s true she didn’t exactly say so but she surely knew what impression she was leaving.
In that, Nuland appears to have taken a page from the playbook of her husband’s old mentor, Elliott Abrams, who provided misleading testimony to Congress on the Iran-Contra Affair in the 1980s – and even though he was convicted of that offense, Abrams was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush and thus was able to return to government last decade to oversee the selling of the Iraq War.
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Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
‘New IMF loan to Ukraine will go down the drain’
RT | March 11, 2015
President Poroshenko’s government is far more corrupt and less efficient than the previous one, according to Martin Sieff, columnist for the Baltimore Post-Examiner. It’s like a black hole, the more money you pour in the less you will have, he added.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to decide Wednesday whether to give a $17.5 billion bailout package to Ukraine. The Ukrainian parliament has already passed a series of austerity reforms to cut pensions and increase taxes in order to meet the creditors’ conditions, but more changes are going to be needed to gain this financial aid.
RT: About $4.6 billion in credit was extended to Ukraine in 2014, but its economic performance has scarcely improved. Does that mean the aid had no effect?
Martin Sieff: Pretty much yes, it does. It had the effect on keeping Ukraine afloat in the short-term. But this is an unconstitutional government in Ukraine which was really established by a violent coup in Kiev last year which has waged an aggressive war of repression against two secessionist provinces of its own country, which doesn’t have any real social contract with its own people. Its efforts to conscript large numbers of forces for the regular army have been met with peaceful but very clear resistance. This is a very weak disorganized government, it’s a black hole. The more money you pour in, the less effect you will have. You can keep it stable for a year or two but no longer than that.
RT: The IMF has agreed on a new $17.5 billion lifeline to Ukraine. Do you think that will be enough to stabilize the country’s economy even if fully implemented?
MS: The aid went at least in theory to what it was supposed to, but no doubt there was a great deal of corruption. It’s ironic that the government of President Yanukovich was accused of corruption and incompetence. This government is far more corrupt than the previous government was and it’s infinitely more incompetent. So simply money leaches away, but the real problem is the lack of credibility of governance. This government is even purging its civil service of anyone remotely accused or suspected of being efficient and loyal to President Yanukovich and his predecessors. You cannot have an efficient and credible government under these circumstances.
RT: The IMF is requesting a package of economic and political reforms to be carried out when providing financial assistance to any country. Are we seeing it carried out in Ukraine at least judging by its economic performance?
MS: No, no way. First of all, there is still unrest and violence in the two eastern provinces and spreading into other parts of the country. The security conflict and the conflict with Russia have to be settled first by this government. And they are not yet ready to settle it on terms that would be acceptable and reassuring to Moscow, but that has to be resolved first. Secondly, we saw even last year President Yanukovich broke off his negotiations with the EU, but he recognized that the terms under which the EU was ready to grant association to Ukraine would be disastrous and ruinous for the Ukrainian economy and the Ukrainian people. A year ago, the EU didn’t have the resources by itself to lift up even a peaceful Ukraine under democratically elected governance. The prospects of doing that now under President Poroshenko and his war-government, his war junta are very much less. So this would be $17 billion down the drain. You know they are all saying from Washington DC, I’m paraphrasing a little “$17 billion here, $17 billion there and soon you are talking about real money”.
RT: When signing the IMF program Ukraine makes certain financial obligations, do you think they could be committed at all in the current state of its economy or is it going to be a black hole of international aid?
MS: There is no question about that. This is very unwise economic policy that has a political motivation. The EU itself and the US government both plunged in recklessly to topple the Yanukovich government last year and to support President Poroshenko. And now we have the dominant mythology, the dominant narrative in Washington, and in Brussels, and in London is that this is “a stable democratic government which is being under threat from evil totalitarian forces to the East.” That is not the truth even remotely, but that is almost universally believed by policymakers in London and Washington and many of them in Brussels and therefore there is a political motivation to try and prop up Ukraine. But you can’t fix what’s already broken. You are pouring good money after bad. Ukraine’s problems first of all have to be solved in the security sphere then they have to be solved in the political sphere restoring the political amity and credibility and the incompetent but nevertheless stable civil service that existed until February 2014 a year ago. It was the EU and the US that broke Ukraine and they cannot fix it now by simply pouring money into a black hole.
European Commission chief wants to create EU army
Press TV – March 8, 2015
President of the European Commission (EC) Jean-Claude Juncker has called for the creation of a European Union army, amid tension with Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.
“Such an army would help us to build a common foreign and security policy, as well as jointly assume the responsibilities of Europe in the world,” said Juncker in an interview with German weekly Welt am Sonntag published on Sunday.
Juncker added that the formation of a European armed forces would signal to Moscow the political and economic union is “serious about upholding the values of the European Union.”
“A common European army would show the world that there will by no means be war once more amongst EU nations,” said Juncker.
According to the EC chief, an EU army could be used to “react credibly” to dangers facing one of the 28-member states or any of the bloc’s neighboring countries.
The German weekly reported that Juncker has backing in the German legislature, including chairman of Germany’s foreign affairs committee Norbert Rottgen, who said it is time to put such a proposal in action.
“The Europeans spend enormous sums of money for the military combined, much more than Russia,” said Rottgen, adding, “But our military capabilities remain an insufficient security policy as long as we maintain small national armies, which make and buy many parts of the same thing on a smaller scale.”
Former EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is set to present the findings of a report titled, More Union in European Defense. The report calls for a new European protection method, which would have “a political and military ability to autonomously conduct intervention operations beyond the EU’s borders.” The report also calls for the establishment of a military EU headquarters in the bloc’s de facto capital, Brussels.
According to the report, a common security policy would bring savings to the bloc’s member states, which altogether spends €190 billion annually to maintain 28 national armies, consisting of roughly 1.5 million service personnel.
The proposals to extend EU’s military capabilities come amid tensions between European countries and the US over the Ukrainian crisis. The Western governments accuse Russia of destabilizing Ukraine, an allegation which Moscow has repeatedly denied.
Meanwhile, NATO plans to expand its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the crisis in Ukraine and has held numerous war games over the past year. In 2014, NATO forces held some 200 military exercises, with the alliance’s General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg having promised that such drills would continue.
Moscow has repeatedly condemned NATO’s exercises and military buildup toward its borders.
The Male Nuland And The US’ Central Asian Strategy
By Andrew KORYBKO | Oriental Review | March 5, 2015
One of the most prominent Color Revolution experts in America’s coup d’état toolkit has been hurriedly recalled from retirement for immediate deployment to Kyrgyzstan. Richard Miles, the engineer of the first Color Revolution in Serbia and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, has been appointed as charge d’affaires in Kyrgyzstan until a new ambassador is confirmed by the Senate, because the former one, Pamela Spratlen, has been reassigned as the US Ambassador to Uzbekistan. While it is not known how long Miles will remain in Kyrgyzstan, which will be the Eurasian Union’s weakest economy when it joins in May of this year, ordinary citizens there already suspect that foul play is being planned against their country and have protested his arrival. Given that Miles’ track record of regime change makes him worthy of the ‘Male Nuland’ moniker, it’s appropriate to investigate what tricks the US may be up to in Central Asia, and how it may be trying to force the Ukrainian scenario onto Russia’s southern doorstep.
The Male Nuland
Richard Miles has kept a relatively low profile throughout the years and hasn’t garnered the notoriety that his ideological protégé Nuland has, but this doesn’t mean that he’s any less dangerous for the countries he visits. In fact, since he’s the individual who spearheaded the Color Revolution tactic in the first place, he can even be referred to as a ‘proto Nuland’, owing to his ‘successes’ in Serbia and Georgia that helped make EuroMaidan possible in the first place. While he was no longer the American Ambassador to Yugoslavia when the 2000 Bulldozer Revolution overthrow Slobodan Milosevic, he certainly paved the way for its implementation during his work over the three years prior, including overseeing the NATO War on Serbia. As regards Georgia, he served as US Ambassador from 2002-2005 and repeated the Belgrade template in Tbilisi.
Afterwards, he became the Executive Director for the Open World Leadership Center for most of 2006, during which he fostered the creation of thousands of pro-American ‘leaders’ in the former Soviet Union. To Center’s own mission statement concisely describes the type of work that it does:
“Begun as a pilot program in 1999 and established as a permanent agency in late 2000, the Center conducts the first and only international exchange agency in the U.S. Legislative Branch and, as such, has enabled more than 17,000 current and future leaders from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan to meaningfully engage and interact with Members of Congress, Congressional staff, and thousands of other Americans, many of whom are the delegates’ direct professional counterparts.”
The above statement can be read as an admission that the Center’s purpose is to create pro-American proxies that can seamlessly interact with and do the bidding of their Washington patrons, thereby essentially making it an NGO front for the US intelligence community’s cultivation of Color Revolution assets. The organization doesn’t hide the fact that its purpose is to promote American interests and profit, brazenly bragging that:
“Open World offers an extraordinary “bang for the buck” in terms of efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and value. The Center boasts an overhead rate of about 7 percent, every grant contains cost-shared elements, and more than 75 percent of our appropriation is plowed back into the American economy every year. The Center might best be described as both a mini-stimulus plan as well as a true international exchange program.”
Bearing in mind Miles’ experience in running this Color Revolution recruitment front, as well as his contribution to managing two ‘successful’ regime change operations in Serbia and Georgia, he can easily be identified as one of the most dangerous people in the US deep state establishment, and the fact that he was recalled from retirement to urgently take the ‘temporary’ post in Kyrgyzstan during these tense geopolitical times must absolutely be seen as a warning about Washington’s nefarious intentions.
Uzbekistan’s Role In The US’ Central Asian Strategy
While Washington is poised to destabilize Kyrgyzstan, it’s showing strong signals that it’s ready to do the opposite in neighboring Uzbekistan, and has been reingratiating itself with Tashkent over the past couple of years in a bid to shore up what it intends to become its Lead From Behind proxy in the region.
Safeguarding The Strategist:
Before going into the specifics and forecast for this strategic partnership, it’s necessary to look at how the US’ latest ambassadorial arrangement is meant to facilitate all of this. Ambassador Pamela Spratlen’s reassignment from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan must be seen as something other than a simple diplomatic shuffle. Spratlen’s biography shows that she’s one of the US’ premier strategists for Central Asia, having previously held the posts of Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Astana, Director of Central Asian Affairs, and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central Asia, et al. Thus, given her importance in crafting the US’ regional strategy for Central Asia, it’s not likely that her handlers would allow such a valuable asset to sit smack dab in the middle of their next targeted state, considering that their hefty investment in her may go to waste if she’s killed or kidnapped in the proceeding violence that’s being planned. Such a mistake was made with Ambassador Christopher Stevens, one of the architects of the US-supported Libya-Syria terrorist nexus, and the US is keen to avoid having Spratlen meet an untimely end in such a shameful and embarrassing manner. Rather, seeing as how she’s a strategic specialist and not a tactical one like Miles, it’s more useful to place her in a safe location where she can supervise, assess, and direct events as they develop, hence why she’s been ordered to Tashkent.
The Lead From Behind Blueprint:
Spratlen’s diplomatic experience in handling Central Asian affairs makes her possibly the best candidate that the US can send to Uzbekistan to seal the deal on a strategic partnership. First things first, it’s worth noting that relations between Washington and Tashkent have been on the mend since the 2005 Andijan Incident led to the practical destruction of bilateral ties. In the years since, the US lifted its military embargo on the country and even bequeathed it with 308 Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles and 20 additional support vehicles from Afghanistan earlier this year, with Uzbekistan only paying the cost of transporting them. On the surface this may only seem to be a symbolic gift of friendship, but in reality, there’s a lot more to it. For instance, Uzbekistan will now be dependent on US-supplied parts and expertise for upkeep, thereby implicitly deepening the military-technical cooperation between the two countries. On top of that, it’s been noted that the MRAPs are largely ineffective in combating drug smuggling and terrorism, but acquire their real importance in crowd control. This factor becomes exceptionally important when one recognizes how close the country stands to the precipice of chaos, but for the time being, it doesn’t look like the US has the intention of stirring the bubbling pot of destabilization (which could still overflow regardless of American meddling), and instead is opting to reinforce the state for its own gain.
The US vision for Central Asia thus deserves further examination in order to figure out its true nature then, since it’s known that the US could easily instigate the creation of a Black Hole of Chaos in Uzbekistan by manipulating the many levers of destabilization there at any time that it sees fit. This would certainly carry with it immense strategic value for the US in its quest to cripple Russia, but it also has one major vulnerability, and it’s that Uzbekistan could receive Russian and Chinese assistance in combating the US-directed chaos and emerge from the crisis as a stronger and more closely integrated member of Eurasian integrational structures, beginning with the SCO and possibly even ending with integration into the Eurasian Union and reintegration into the CSTO. If Russia and China are successful in assisting Uzbekistan (and they’ve been already been expecting some vague form of regional destabilization after the 2014 NATO drawdown), then the end result would be the near-complete removal of American influence in Central Asia after the carnage has ended, meaning that non-West would be secured (despite at what may be devastating costs) in the face of the Reverse Brzezinski’s ultimate failure.
Overcoming The Competition With Russia:
Understanding that such a black hole gambit can be deployed at any time, the US seems to instead have chosen to fortify Uzbekistan as their Lead From Behind partner in the interim, with the hopes that the region’s largest military and population could project increased anti-Russian influence on all four of the other former Soviet republics that it abuts. As it stands, Uzbekistan is still formally opposed to any form of Russian-led integration, as President Islam Karimov said in January that his country will never join any “alliance similar to the U.S.S.R.”, and it even withdrew from the CSTO in 2012. Be that as it may,
Russia has been making strong strides in renewing its formerly close relations with the country. Putin visited Karimov in December and spoke about the mutual benefits of Eurasian integration, and announced that both sides had begun consultations on a possible deal between Uzbekistan and the Eurasian Union. To top it off, the Russian President even declared that Moscow would write off $890 million of Uzbekistan’s Soviet-era debt (with only $25 million of it still having to be paid), in what The Diplomat analyzed as demonstrating Russia’s commitment to strengthening ties with Tashkent.
In such a situation, it’s doubtful that Uzbekistan would turn against Russia on its own prerogative and agitate against Moscow’s interests in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. But still, Uzbekistan knows that it’s a battlefield in the ‘New Cold War’, and that it can play this role to its advantage to enact even greater concessions from both Washington and Moscow. One needs to keep in mind that the US wants to transform Uzbekistan into its Lead From Behind proxy for Central Asia (seeing as how it has the potential to become the regional powerhouse and counteract Russia’s Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik partners), but it can’t do this if Uzbekistan retains positive relations with Russia. Thus, it needs to make sure that Uzbekistan does not have a rapprochement with Russia that would endanger American interests (be it naturally occurring or as the result of Russian assistance in defending against an American-inspired chaotic subversion), hence why it aims to drive a militant wedge between Tashkent and Moscow in the same way as it has done between the latter and Kiev. This is precisely the reason why it wants to create a Black Hole of Chaos in Kyrgyzstan via yet another Color Revolution there, since the expected aftershocks (to be described in the follow-up article) run the high chance of being manipulated to the point where they can turn Uzbekistan and Russia into enemies, which would ‘naturally’ make Tashkent the US’ Lead From Behind proxy. Should this plan fail, then the US can always follow up with ‘Plan B’ and unleash uncontrollable chaos inside the country (as was described earlier).
The Central Asian Front
Strategic Theory:
The US’ primary goal in creating chaos in Central Asia is to split Russia’s focus in dealing with the Ukrainian Crisis and create a situation where its decision makers are unable to adequately protect the country’s entire periphery. This is envisioned as leading to the penetration of chaotic dynamics directly into the Russian Federation itself (be it from the west or the south), which could contribute to the realization of the ‘Eurasian Balkans’ end game of dividing the country into ethnic and regional fiefdoms and indefinitely prolonging the US’ unipolar moment. In order to get to such a grand finale, a series of steps must be taken in the countries around Russia to provoke such a scenario.
The unravelling of the Ukrainian state represents the theory’s application in Eastern Europe, the threat of a continuation war in Nagorno-Karabakh fulfills the Caucasus component of this idea, and the looming Kyrgyz catastrophe wraps up the Central Asian front for the US’ pan-Eurasian campaign against 
Russia. Each of these simmering conflicts has the potential to (re)explode at any time, and if they occur in near-simultaneity, then Russia will be hard-pressed to deal with them all, and may predictably fumble in its approach and create even larger openings for more chaos to rip through its borders.
Even if these aforementioned conflicts don’t break out concurrently, the fact that three massive vacuums of destabilization are sitting on the Russia’s doorsteps means that the threat always remains that one, two, or all of them can heat up sometime in the future. This accordingly leaves Russian decision makers continually on edge and siphons off strategic resources into crafting contingency measures against these probable scenarios that could be of more productive use elsewhere, such as in preparing foreign policy initiatives that could for once place the West on the strategic defensive (for example, protecting Macedonia and promoting the ‘New South Stream’).
The 21st-Century Reagan Doctrine:
All of the abovementioned strategic imperatives aren’t the realm of speculation, however, since then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton firmly declared in December 2012 that it will do whatever it can to sabotage Russian-led integration processes in the former Soviet sphere. Referring to the Eurasian Union, she said:
“There is a move to re-Sovietise the region, It’s not going to be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that, but let’s make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.”
This is none other than a 21st-century application of the Reagan Doctrine, whereby the US will now seek to aggressively roll back Russian influence in the Near Abroad instead of Soviet influence across the world. Seen through this context, the US’ integrated strategy in Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia makes more sense. Ukraine would have been the second-largest economy in the Eurasian Union and could have provided a valuable contribution to its overall strength, should the EuroMaidan Color Revolution not have derailed any realistic hopes for it joining in the near future. In the Caucasus, Eurasian Union-member Armenia is geographically cut off from the rest of its partners, being separated by EU-aspiring Georgia and hostile Azerbaijan. This lays the pretext for a coming EU-Eurasian Union crisis in the Caucasus, which could massively destabilize Russia regardless if a continuation war occurs in Nagorno-Karabakh or not.
Completing the encirclement, an outbreak of violence in Kyrgyzstan as a result of yet another Color Revolution there could lead to the formation of a terrorist hotspot inside the Eurasian Union’s newest member, as well as creating an almost irresistible temptation for Russia and the CSTO to fall for a disastrous Reverse Brzezinski intervention. In all three theaters, American foreign policy and regional meddling are the engines for destabilization, while Russia and the Eurasian Union are the ultimate targets, just as Hillary threatened they would be nearly three years ago. In the time since, Ukraine has fallen to Western domination and is rapidly being integrated into Shadow NATO, Nuland is conspiring to reignite the Nagorno-Karabakh war, and now the ‘Male Nuland’ is ready to wreak havoc in Kyrgyzstan, showing that the 21st-century Reagan Doctrine is in full swing.
Playing Chicken with Nuclear War
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | March 2, 2015
The United States and Russia still maintain vast nuclear arsenals of mutual assured destruction, putting the future of humanity in jeopardy every instant. But an unnerving nonchalance has settled over the American side which has become so casual about the risk of cataclysmic war that the West’s propaganda and passions now ignore Russian fears and sensitivities.
A swaggering goofiness has come to dominate how the United States reacts to Russia, with American politicians and journalists dashing off tweets and op-eds, rushing to judgment about the perfidy of Moscow’s leaders, blaming them for almost anything and everything.
These days, playing with nuclear fire is seen as a sign of seriousness and courage. Anyone who urges caution and suggests there might be two sides to the U.S.-Russia story is dismissed as a wimp or a stooge. A what-me-worry “group think” has taken hold across the U.S. ideological spectrum. Fretting about nuclear annihilation is so 1960s.
So, immediately after last Friday night’s murder of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, the West’s media began insinuating that Russian President Vladimir Putin was somehow responsible even though there was no evidence or logic connecting him to the shooting, just 100 meters from the Kremlin, probably the last place Russian authorities would pick for a hit.
But that didn’t stop the mainstream U.S. news media from casting blame on Putin. For instance, the New York Times published an op-ed by anti-Putin author Martha Gessen saying: “The scariest thing about the murder of Boris Nemtsov is that he himself did not scare anyone,” suggesting that his very irrelevance was part of a sinister political message.
Though no one outside the actual killers seems to know yet why Nemtsov was gunned down, Gessen took the case several steps further explaining how – while Putin probably didn’t finger Nemtsov for death – the Russian president was somehow still responsible. She wrote:
“In all likelihood no one in the Kremlin actually ordered the killing — and this is part of the reason Mr. Nemtsov’s murder marks the beginning of yet another new and frightening period in Russian history. The Kremlin has recently created a loose army of avengers who believe they are acting in the country’s best interests, without receiving any explicit instructions. Despite his lack of political clout, Mr. Nemtsov was a logical first target for this menacing force.”
So, rather than wait for actual evidence to emerge, the Times published Gessen’s conclusions and then let her spin off some even more speculative interpretations. Yet, basing speculation upon speculation is almost always a bad idea, assuming you care about fairness and accuracy.
Remember how after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, some terrorism “experts” not only jumped to the false conclusion that the attack was a case of Islamic terrorism but that Oklahoma was chosen to send a message to Americans that no part of the country was safe. But the terrorist turned out to be a white right-wing extremist lashing out at the federal government.
While surely hard-line Russian nationalists, who resented Nemtsov’s support for the U.S.-backed Ukrainian regime in Kiev, should be included on a list of early suspects, there are a number of other possibilities that investigators must also consider, including business enemies, jealous rivals and even adversaries within Russia’s splintered opposition – though that last one has become a target of particular ridicule in the West.
Yet, during my years at the Associated Press, one of my articles was about a CIA “psychological operations” manual which an agency contractor prepared for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noting the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a “martyr” for the cause. I’m in no way suggesting that such a motive was in play regarding Nemtsov’s slaying but it’s not as if this idea is entirely preposterous either.
My point is that even in this age of Twitter when everyone wants to broadcast his or her personal speculation about whodunit to every mystery, it would be wise for news organizations to resist the temptation. Surely, if parallel circumstances occurred inside the United States, such guess work would be rightly dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”
Nuclear Mischief
Plus, this latest rush to judgment isn’t about some relatively innocuous topic – like, say, how some footballs ended up under-inflated in an NFL game – this situation involves how the United States will deal with Russia, which possesses some 8,000 nuclear warheads — roughly the same size as the U.S. arsenal — while the two countries have around 1,800 missiles on high-alert, i.e., ready to launch at nearly a moment’s notice.
Over the weekend, I participated in a conference on nuclear dangers sponsored by the Helen Caldicott Foundation in New York City. On my Saturday afternoon panel was Seth Baum of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute who offered a sobering look at how the percentage chances of a nuclear war – though perhaps low at any given moment – add up over time to quite likely if not inevitable. He made the additional observation that those doomsday odds rise at times of high tensions between the United States and Russia.
As Baum noted, at such crisis moments, the people responsible for the U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons are more likely to read a possible computer glitch or some other false alarm as a genuine launch and are thus more likely to push their own nuclear button.
In other words, it makes good sense to avoid a replay of the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse by edging U.S. nuclear weapons up against Russia’s borders, especially when U.S. politicians and commentators are engaging in Cold War-style Russia-bashing. Baiting the Russian bear may seem like great fun to the tough-talking politicians in Washington or the editors of the New York Times and Washington Post but this hostile rhetoric could be taken more seriously in Moscow.
When I spoke to the nuclear conference, I noted how the U.S. media/political system had helped create just that sort of crisis in Ukraine, with every “important” person jumping in on the side of the Kiev coup-makers in February 2014 when they overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych.
Since then, nearly every detail of that conflict has been seen through the prism of “our side good/their side bad.” Facts that put “our side” in a negative light, such as the key role played by neo-Nazis and the Kiev regime’s brutal “anti-terrorism operation,” are downplayed or ignored.
Conversely, anything that makes the Ukrainians who are resisting Kiev’s authority look bad gets hyped and even invented, such as one New York Times’ lead story citing photos that supposedly proved Russian military involvement but quickly turned out to be fraudulent. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Retracts Russian Photo Scoop.”]
At pivotal moments in the crisis, such as the Feb. 20, 2014 sniper fire that killed both police and protesters and the July 17, 2014 shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 killing 298 passengers and crew, the U.S. political/media establishment has immediately pinned the blame on Yanukovych, the ethnic Russian rebels who are resisting his ouster, or Putin. Then, when evidence emerged going in the opposite direction — toward “our side” — a studied silence followed, allowing the earlier propaganda to stay in place as part of the preferred storyline.
A Pedestrian Dispute
One of the points of my talk was that the Ukrainian crisis emerged from a fairly pedestrian dispute, i.e., plans for expanding economic ties with the European Union while not destroying the historic business relationship with Russia. In November 2013, Yanukovych backed away from signing an EU association agreement when experts in Kiev announced that it would blow a $160 billion hole in Ukraine’s economy. He asked for more time.
But Yanukovych’s decision disappointed many western Ukrainians who favored the EU agreement. Tens of thousands poured into Kiev’s Maidan square to protest. The demonstrations then were seized upon by far-right Ukrainian political forces who have long detested the country’s ethnic Russians in the east and began dispatching organized “sotins” of 100 fighters each to begin firebombing police and seizing government buildings.
As the violence grew worse, U.S. neoconservatives also saw an opportunity, including Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, who told the protesters the United States was on their side, and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who passed out cookies to the protesters and plotted with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on who would become the new leaders of Ukraine. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.“]
Thus, a very manageable political problem in Ukraine was allowed to expand into a proxy war between nuclear-armed United States and Russia. Added to it were intense passions and extensive propaganda. In the West, the Ukraine crisis was presented as a morality play of people who “share our values” pitted against conniving Russians and their Hitler-like president Putin.
In Official Washington, anyone who dared suggest compromise was dismissed as a modern-day Neville Chamberlain practicing “appeasement.” Everyone “serious” was set on stopping Putin now by shipping sophisticated weapons to the Ukrainian government so it could do battle against “Russian aggression.”
The war fever was such that no one raised an eyebrow when Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko told Canada’s CBC Radio last month that the West should no longer fear fighting nuclear-armed Russia and that Ukraine wanted arms for a “full-scale war” against Moscow.
“Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine,” Prystaiko said. “However dangerous it sounds, we have to stop [Putin] somehow. For the sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the Ukrainians and Europe. … What we expect from the world is that the world will stiffen up in the spine a little.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine?”]
Instead of condemning Prystaiko’s recklessness, more U.S. officials began lining up in support of sending lethal military hardware to Ukraine so it could fight Russia, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who said he favored the idea though it might provoke a “negative reaction” from Moscow.
Russian Regime Change
Even President Barack Obama and other U.S. leaders who have yet to publicly endorse arming the Kiev coup-makers enjoy boasting about how much pain they are inflicting on the Russian economy and its government. In effect, there is a U.S. strategy of making the Russian economy “scream,” a first step toward a larger neocon goal to achieve “regime change” in Moscow.
Another point I made in my talk on Saturday was how the neocons are good at drafting “regime change” plans that sound great when discussed at a think tank or outlined on an op-ed page but often fail to survive in the real world, such as their 2003 plan for a smooth transition in Iraq to replace Saddam Hussein with someone of their choosing – except that it didn’t work out that way.
Perhaps the greatest danger from the new neocon dream for “regime change” in Moscow is that whoever follows Putin might not be the pliable yes man that the neocons envision, but a fierce Russian nationalist who would suddenly have control of their nuclear launch codes and might decide that it’s time for the United States to make concessions or face annihilation.
Yet, what I find truly remarkable about the Ukraine crisis is that it was always relatively simple to resolve: Before the coup, Yanukovych agreed to reduced powers and early elections so he could be voted out of office. Then, either he or some new leadership could have crafted an economic arrangement that expanded ties to the EU while not severing them with Russia.
Even after the coup, the new regime could have negotiated a federalized system that granted more independence to the disenfranchised ethnic Russians of eastern Ukraine, rather than launch a brutal “anti-terrorist operation” against those resisting the new authorities. But Official Washington’s “group think” has been single-minded: only bellicose anti-Russian sentiments are permitted and no suggestions of accommodation are allowed.
Still, spending time this weekend with people like Helen Caldicott, an Australian who has committed much of her life to campaigning against nuclear weapons, reminded me that this devil-may-care attitude toward a showdown with Russia, which has gripped the U.S. political/media establishment, is not universal. Not everyone agrees with Official Washington’s nonchalance about playing a tough-guy game of nuclear chicken.
As part of the conference, Caldicott asked attendees to stay around for a late-afternoon showing of the 1959 movie, “On the Beach,” which tells the story of the last survivors from a nuclear war as they prepare to die when the radioactive cloud that has eliminated life everywhere else finally reaches Australia. A mystery in the movie is how the final war began, who started it and why – with the best guess being that some radar operator somewhere thought he saw something and someone reacted in haste.
Watching the movie reminded me that there was a time when Americans were serious about the existential threat from U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons, when there were films like “Dr. Strangelove,” “Fail Safe,” and “On the Beach.” Now, there’s a cavalier disinterest in those risks, a self-confidence that one can put his or her political or journalistic career first and just assume that some adult will step in before the worst happens.
Whether some adults show up to resolve the Ukraine crisis remains to be seen. It’s also unclear if U.S. pundits and pols can restrain themselves from more rushes to judgment, as in the case of Boris Nemtsov. But a first step might be for the New York Times and other “serious” news organizations to return to traditional standards of journalism and check out the facts before jumping to a conclusion.
~
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Ukraine Conscripts 800 Protesting Coal Miners from Western Region
By Oleg Tyshkevich | Vesti | March 2, 2015
The coal miners of Western Ukraine who threatened a large-scale rebellion due to the three- month delay of salaries are being inducted into the army.
800 rebellious miners received notices directly from military commissars who delivered them to the coal mines.
According to the deputy mayor of Novovolynsk, Eduard Savik, the notices were delivered to coal mines no. 1 and no. 9 in Novovolynsk, which the state is planning to close. That’s where the majority of rebellious miners is employed.
The miners blocked highways several times this winter to protest government policies which does not finance the mines, but instead wants to close them and is not even paying coal miners’ salaries.
Several hundred miners are planning to stage a protest in Kiev on March 3 to force the government to pay them.
“They are taking revenge for strikes—they decided to simply draft the rebels. Many of my comrades who were blocking highways and were preparing to picket the Ministry of Energy and the Cabinet of Ministers, received draft notices,” says Aleksey, a miner from Novovolynsk. “This is even worse than the 1990s. There was hunger, but there was no war. Now it’s total chaos.”
This article was translated by J.Hawk.
Washington supplying Kiev with satellite intelligence of conflict in east – report
RT | February 28, 2015
The US is supplying Kiev with spy satellite imagery of enemy positions in eastern Ukraine, but does so by deliberately reducing the quality, apparently so as not to anger Russia too much, according to The Wall Street Journal.
A debate has been on in the US for some time on whether the Obama administration should provide the Kiev government with actionable intelligence. As with providing “defensive” weapons, the disagreements are similar.
However, imagery reduced in quality has apparently been green-lighted, but only arriving to the Ukrainians 24 hours late at the least. This step is apparently to ensure the US isn’t in any way thought of as a participant in the conflict, the newspaper said, referencing its own sources.
Another reason for why the images are somewhat degraded is in the event of the photos accidentally ending up with the Russians, who as a result would learn more about American spy satellite capabilities.
Ukraine does not like the way things are at the moment, complaining that it hampers its efforts against what it calls Russia-backed troops.
“This assistance is not sufficient… We don’t have a day to wait for satellite images. The information should be real time,” Andriy Parubiy, first deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Rada told WSJ.
Moscow has repeatedly denied aiding the rebels.
Parubiy, on the other hand, adds that a deal is already in place with Canada to supply more real-time and more high-resolution data.
His concerns about timeliness and quality are shared by many within the American political elite, especially the famously anti-Russian Senator John McCain, who has been making claims of weapons support for the uprising from Russia.
Nonetheless, the White House has last year agreed to Kiev’s request for intelligence on east Ukraine, albeit after things are done to it. This also allegedly includes blacking out Russian territory.
These compromises are there allegedly to give the Ukrainians a better idea of what they’re dealing with at home, rather than what takes place a stone’s throw away on foreign soil.
Ukraine meanwhile continues to pressure the US for weapons as well, from radars to missiles to drones, but only getting so much, as it’s not a NATO member – unlike Russia’s other immediate neighbors Poland, Lithuania and Estonia, who have all got Javelin missiles.
Ukraine’s non-membership is thought to have led to a consensus among NATO members to hold off on supplying it with lethal aid, according to an unnamed military official.
READ MORE: US, UK meddling in OSCE’s mandate in Ukraine – Russia’s envoy to UN
Russian journalists detained in Kiev as Ukraine steps up censorship
RT | February 26, 2015
Four Russian journalists were detained in Ukraine and ordered to return back to Moscow. Three of them were stopped when filming a Right Sector rally. The Russian Foreign Ministry has expressed outrage at the incident, calling it a “provocation.”
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained Channel One journalists Elena Makarova and Sergey Korenev, and NTV’s Andrey Grigoryev, who were in Kiev at the time. The SBU indicated that they will all be deported back to Russia and banned from entering Ukraine for the next five years.
Grigoryev is already back in Moscow, NTV reported. “I got detained right in Kiev’s downtown area while filming the rally, which included ultra-nationalist Right Sector members, football fans, and others who disagree with the direction the current government is taking,” Grigoryev said. “A few of the rally participants approached me and asked for my ID. I told them I would show my identification only to police, which is where they escorted me to.”
“Nothing was recorded at the police station… It looked like the decision [to deport] was made ahead of time,” he said.
A video has emerged showing the moment the journalist was apprehended.
Makarova said that 10 people with Right Sector stickers approached her and the cameraman. The individuals showed her SBU identification. When she asked to see their badges again, she was told: “If we show you the IDs again, you will be liquidated.” When Makarova inquired as to what they meant by that, the group replied: “It is best you don’t know.” She was then separated from her cameraman Korenev.
During the interrogations, she was asked what channel she was with and then told that her station “posed a threat to [Ukraine]” and that she would be deported.
Also on Wednesday, another NTV reporter, Inna Osipova, was refused entry into Ukraine after arriving at Kiev’s airport. She was asked a lot of questions about the purpose of her trip during customs control and was eventually told “the reason for her trip could not be proven.” Her passport was confiscated and she is currently stuck inside the airport.
’Ukraine’s actions are a provocation’
The Russian Foreign Ministry described the detention as “a provocation towards Russian journalists, and a violation of Ukraine’s obligations to guarantee the safety of journalist.”
“We demand that our journalists be immediately released and the hunt for representatives of the Russian media be halted,” the ministry added. “We expect corresponding reaction from specialized international organizations, primarily OSCE Representative on the Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatovic, to new unlawful acts by the Ukrainian authorities.”
The incident comes after the SBU issued recommendations to strip more than 100 Russian media outlets of accreditation on February 21. Earlier in the month, 239 Ukrainian lawmakers voted in favor of suspending Russian journalists’ accreditation until the conflict in eastern Ukraine ends.
The list includes TASS, Rossiya Segodnya, and all Russian TV channels except Dozhd, according to government spokesperson Yelena Gitlyanskaya.
‘Silencing opposing voices’
Ukraine is justifying its actions by citing new legislation, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island Nicolai Petro told RT. “It’s an attempt to achieve total information control – the ability to exclude all dissident voices, partly in Ukraine, from getting through to Ukrainian citizens.”
Ukraine is taking censorship to a whole new level, Petro explained. “In the West, the wartime precedent is that censorship can only occur in situations which directly involve military operations. The Ukrainian government is going far beyond that – to essentially silence opposition voices which are being silenced at home and use the Russian media to get back inside the country.”
The response in the West is likely to be “very muted,” the professor noted, “because this is an issue they would prefer not to deal with.”
But such attempts are usually not very successful. “The politicians tend to underestimate the ability of people to go around the restrictions to get information from a wide variety of sources. These attempts are ultimately bound to fail,” Petro said.
In addition to limiting freedom of expression inside Ukraine, Kiev announced this week that it is joining the information war by creating an ‘online army,’ according to the Information Policy Ministry.
Read more: Ukraine’s Security Service detains Russian journalists in Kiev, deny entry for 5 years
OSCE neglects its mandate in Ukraine – Moscow
RT | February 25, 2015
The OSCE monitoring mission in Ukraine is not fulfilling its mandate to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire, Moscow charges. The monitors complain that they can’t verify withdrawal of weapons without additional data.
In its latest report, the mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said its monitors are unable to verify the withdrawal until both Kiev and the rebels provide comprehensive “inventories, withdrawal routes and concentration points” for their respective arsenals.
The rebels say they have sent an inventory to the OSCE and that the observers are rejecting invitations to witness the actual movements of the weapons.
“Every day they have new conditions to put forward. For instance, [on Thursday] they demanded a concrete route for the artillery. Well, that heavy hardware doesn’t travel on the roads, but OSCE monitors wouldn’t care to go into the fields,” complained Eduard Basurin, a rebel spokesman.
The official added that the anti-government forces are not rejecting the OSCE’s role in tackling the withdrawal and that they want an increased presence of the monitors on the ground.
“We believe the OSCE’s role is crucial. Once again we confirm that we are interested in OSCE presence at all weapons-withdrawal events. The OSCE must be present to monitor the withdrawal of the weapons by both sides,” Basurin said.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow regretted that the monitoring mission “showed a lack of proper effort to execute the functions entrusted to it” and avoids monitoring the withdrawal of weapons.
The OSCE confirmed that the number of reported violations of the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine has decreased. It added that a joint group of military monitors, which includes representatives from Ukraine, the rebel forces and Russia, provided a map of the conflict zone with “a definite line of contact agreed upon by all,” which can be viewed as a step forward in ending the violence.
Most complaints filed lately came from villages near Donetsk airport and the town of Shyrokoye, some 25km east of Mariupol, said the report.
The continued violence close to Mariupol, a large port under government control, is arguably the greatest danger to the fragile truce in Ukraine. Kiev accuses its opponents of preparing a full-scale invasion of the city, an accusation the rebels deny.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned on Wednesday that an attack on Mariupol would derail the entire peace process and demanded that Moscow prevent it.
“We’ve told the Russians clearly that if there was a separatist attack in the direction of Mariupol things would be drastically altered, including in terms of sanctions,” Fabius said in an interview with France Info radio station.
He also commented on UK’s plan to send military instructors to train Ukrainian troops, a step that’s escalating tension between Russia and the West over Ukraine.
“The Britons, who are not part of the discussions, have taken a hardline stance on the situation,” Fabius said in reference to British PM David Cameron’s Tuesday announcement. “We have also taken a firm position, but are pushing for the de-escalation of the conflict.”
France, along with Germany, was a major driving European power involved in brokering the Minsk peace deal in mid-February. Meanwhile in Britain and the US a large number of officials advocate for providing military aid to Kiev, which they say would serve as deterrent to Russia.
Moscow says the proposed inflow of weapons and the unwillingness of Kiev’s foreign sponsors to put pressure on them and make them hold fire only aggravates the situation.
Britain’s decision to send troops to Ukraine was hailed on Wednesday by Polish President Bronisław Komorowski, who said it was a step in the right direction and that Poland is keeping its own options open to help Kiev.
Germany said it is not planning to send troops or sell weapons to Kiev.
Read mor:
US arming Kiev would ‘explode’ situation in E. Ukraine – Russian Foreign Ministry
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Vladimir Putin: NATO already supplying weapons to Ukraine, Kiev defeated by Novorossia
Press statement following Russian-Hungarian talks and answers to journalists’ questions
February 17, 2015 – Budapest
[…]
QUESTION: Mr President, what is your assessment of the situation now that two days have passed since the Minsk agreement on a ceasefire took effect? Things do not seem to be going so smoothly, especially when you look at what is happening in Debaltsevo. There, at any rate, there is no ceasefire in place.
VLADIMIR PUTIN: First of all, we place great importance on the agreements reached in Minsk. Perhaps not everyone has noticed this yet, but what is particularly important in these agreements is that the authorities in Kiev are essentially agreeing to carry out far-reaching constitutional reform in order to satisfy demands for independence – call it what you will, decentralisation, autonomy or federalisation – in different parts of the country. This is a very important and very significant decision on the part of Ukraine’s authorities.
But there is another side involved too, and if the Donbass region’s representatives have agreed to take part in this reform, this means that we are seeing some support for progress along this road of developing Ukraine’s statehood.
Of course, the quicker everything is done to end hostilities and withdraw military equipment, the quicker this will put in place the real conditions needed for a political settlement to really go ahead.
As for military operations, I want to say that we have noted overall a substantial drop in activity. But let me note too that last time, when President Poroshenko decided to resume military operations and then stop them, it was not possible to do this immediately. What we do see now though is a clear and big decrease in the amount of shooting and exchange of hostilities along the entire battle line.
Yes, clashes are still taking place around Debaltsevo. But there too the scale and intensity of operations is less than it was before. What is happening there was not unexpected. According to our information, a group of Ukrainian troops were already surrounded there before the meeting in Minsk last week. I spoke about this at the meeting in Minsk. I said that the surrounded troops would try to break out of the encirclement and there would be attempts from the outside too to break through, and the militia, who had got the Ukrainian troops surrounded, would resist these attempts and try to keep the encirclement in place, and this would inevitably lead to further clashes. Another attempt to break through was made this morning, I don’t know what the media have been saying, I have not managed to follow all of the news, but I know that at ten o’clock this morning the Ukrainian armed forces made another attempt to break open the encirclement. It was unsuccessful in the end.
I hope very much that the people responsible in the Ukrainian government will not prevent Ukrainian servicemen from laying down their arms. If they cannot or will not take this important decision and give this order, they should at least not prosecute those who are ready to lay down their arms in order to save their own and others’ lives. At the same time, I hope that militia representatives and the authorities in the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic will not detain these people and will not prevent them from freely leaving the conflict zone and encirclement and returning to their families.
QUESTION (translated from Russian): Mr President, from your words I understand that when the Minsk agreement was signed, and when you took part in the talks, you knew that the ceasefire would not take effect from exactly the moment planned. In other words, it was to be expected that some clashes would continue.
Do you think these clashes will end soon? Are you optimistic about the chances for a lasting ceasefire, or are you a pessimist, because if military clashes do intensify there, the United States could start supplying arms to Ukraine. How you would respond to this, what would Russia do?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: Concerning possible arms supplies to Ukraine, for a start, according to our information, arms supplies are already taking place. There is nothing so unusual about this situation.
Second, I firmly believe that no matter who and which type of weapons are involved, it is never a good thing to supply arms to a conflict zone, but in this particular case, no matter who sends them and what kind of arms are involved, the number of victims might rise of course, but the result would be the same as what we see today.
This would be inevitable because I believe that the vast majority of Ukrainian servicemen do not want to take part in a fratricidal war, even more so far from their own homes, and the Donbass militia has strong motivation to fight for and protect their families.
After all, let me remind you once again that what is happening now is linked to one thing only, namely, to the fact that the government in Kiev decided for a third time to resume military action and use the armed forces. This decision was first taken by Mr Turchinov, who issued the order to carry out what he called an antiterrorist operation. President Poroshenko then decided to resume the military operations, and now this is happening for the third time.
There will be no end to this if the people making the decisions do not realise that there is no hope of resolving the problem through military means. It can be settled only through peaceful means, only through reaching an agreement with this part of their country and guaranteeing these people’s lawful rights and interests.
Let me say that the agreement reached in Minsk offers an opportunity for this to happen. In this respect, I want to note the big role that the French President and the German Federal Chancellor played in reaching a compromise. I think that a compromise solution has been found and could be cemented by a resolution from the UN Security Council. Russia, as you know, has already put forward this initiative. If this happens, the Minsk Agreement would gain the status of international law. If not, it is already a good enough document that should be implemented in full. I am more of an optimist than a pessimist.
Let me say again that the situation is relatively quiet along the whole battle line now. We need to settle the problem of the group that has been surrounded. Our common task is to save the lives of the people trapped in this encirclement and ensure that this issue does not worsen relations between the authorities in Kiev and the Donbass militia.
It is never easy to lose of course and is always a misfortune for the losing side, especially when you lose to people who were yesterday working down in the mines or driving tractors. But life is life and it has to continue. I don’t think we should get too obsessed about these things.
As I said, we need to concentrate on resolving the main task, which is to save the lives of the people there now and enable them to return to their families, and we need to implement in full the plan agreed to in Minsk. I am sure that this is possible. There is no other road to take.
Interventionism Kills: Post-Coup Ukraine One Year Later
By Ron Paul | February 22, 2015
It was one year ago last weekend that a violent coup overthrew the legally elected government of Ukraine. That coup was not only supported by US and EU governments — much of it was actually planned by them. Looking back at the events that led to the overthrow it is clear that without foreign intervention Ukraine would not be in its current, seemingly hopeless situation.
By the end of 2013, Ukraine’s economy was in ruins. The government was desperate for an economic bailout and then-president Yanukovych first looked west to the US and EU before deciding to accept an offer of help from Russia. Residents of south and east Ukraine, who largely speak Russian and trade extensively with Russia were pleased with the decision. West Ukrainians who identify with Poland and Europe began to protest. Ukraine is a deeply divided country and the president came from the eastern region.
At this point the conflict was just another chapter in Ukraine’s difficult post-Soviet history. There was bound to be some discontent over the decision, but if there had been no foreign intervention in support of the protests you would likely not be reading this column today. The problem may well have solved itself in due time rather than escalated into a full-out civil war. But the interventionists in the US and EU won out again, and their interventionist project has been a disaster.
The protests at the end of 2013 grew more dramatic and violent and soon a steady stream of US and EU politicians were openly participating, as protesters called for the overthrow of the Ukrainian government. Senator John McCain made several visits to Kiev and even addressed the crowd to encourage them.
Imagine if a foreign leader like Putin or Assad came to Washington to encourage protesters to overthrow the Obama Administration!
As we soon found out from a leaked telephone call, the US ambassador in Kiev and Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, were making detailed plans for a new government in Kiev after the legal government was overthrown with their assistance.
The protests continued to grow but finally on February 20th of last year a European delegation brokered a compromise that included early elections and several other concessions from Yanukovych. It appeared disaster had been averted, but suddenly that night some of the most violent groups, which had been close to the US, carried out the coup and Yanukovych fled the country.
When the east refused to recognize the new government as legitimate and held a referendum to secede from the west, Kiev sent in tanks to force them to submit. Rather than accept the will of those seeking independence from what they viewed as an illegitimate government put in place by foreigners, the Obama administration decided to blame it all on the Russians and began imposing sanctions!
That war launched by Kiev has lasted until the present, with a ceasefire this month brokered by the Germans and French finally offering some hope for an end to the killing. More than 5,000 have been killed and many of those were civilians bombed in their cities by Kiev.
What if John McCain had stayed home and worried about his constituents in Arizona instead of non-constituents 6,000 miles away? What if the other US and EU politicians had done the same? What if Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt had focused on actual diplomacy instead of regime change?
If they had done so, there is a good chance many if not all of those who have been killed in the violence would still be alive today. Interventionism kills.
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From the Archives
World War II Didn’t End The Great Depression
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | April 4, 2024
A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
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