Crisis in Ukraine

32 Comments

1. 

   seabe on February 28, 2014 at 5:16 pm

   This is an issue that I am totally ignorant about, and I can’t suss out bullshit from actual information. At least with Syria I had some knowledge, even if I didn’t trust many sources on the ground. This? Nothing. For now Mark Ames provided a good primer:

   a) One Orange Revolution leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, wound up turning against her partner Viktor Yushchenko and allying with Yanukovych to strip Yushchenko of presidential powers; later, Tymoshenko allied with the Kremlin against Yushchenko; now she’s free from jail and the presumptive leader of the anti-Yanukovych forces.

   b) The other Orange leader–the pro-EU, anti-Kremlin Viktor Yushchenko–wound up allying with pro-Kremlin Yanukovych to jail Yulia Tymoshenko.

   c) John McCain has been the big driving force for regime change against Yanukovych, but McCain’s 2008 campaign chief’s lobby firm, Davis Manafort, managed Yanukovych’s political campaigns and his lobbying efforts in the US.

   d) Anthony Podesta, brother of President Obama’s senior advisor John Podesta, is another Yanukovych lobbyist; John Podesta was the chief of Obama’s 2008 transition team.

   • 

     seabe on February 28, 2014 at 5:28 pm

     Also what you said to me about McCain at Monk’s totally reverberates with me now. We would be so fucked if he won.

     • 

       seabe on February 28, 2014 at 5:42 pm

       I mean really?

       “In response to reports of a Russian takeover in parts of Crimea, Arizona Senator John McCain declared Friday, “We are all Ukrainians,” before calling for swift U.S. economic aide to Ukraine, new moves to condemn Russia at the United Nations, sanctions against Russian officials and the installation of U.S. missiles in the nearby Czech Republic as a show of American regional strength.”

   • 

     Marie2 on February 28, 2014 at 7:21 pm

     Is there any way to construct a domestic storyline similar to the above?  Absent a parliament and with our winner take all elections and Presidential term limits, it’s probably not possible.

     But let’s say, Obama and Hillary Clinton teamed up to oust GWB.  Then once Obama was in power, Clinton teamed up with GWB to oust Obama.  With GWB back in power, Clinton teamed up with the Wall St. congressional lackeys that stripped GWB of all his imperial powers, impeached and convicted him, and installed Clinton.

     Then Obama and GWB teamed up with Wall St. and ousted and imprisoned Clinton.

     Meanwhile, Grennady Zyuganov has been urging Russians to prepare for war if GWB isn’t ousted or re-ousted in the USA and secretly funding the opposition to the tune of $5 billion dollars.  However, his campaign team also worked for Obama.  

     And Obama’s team also works for GWB.

      

     • 

       Marie2 on February 28, 2014 at 7:24 pm

       Neglected to add that GWB has gone into internal exile, and Clinton has been released from prison and is ready to lead the people.

     • 

       nalbar on February 28, 2014 at 7:42 pm

       I swear to the FSM you did a better job than anybody. I doubt the analogies are spot on, but you got the gist of it down pat.

       And that about sums it up.

       Except I need to add that McCain has to be the biggest asshat in the country. Where it approaches farce is his comments will get him on all the Sunday shows. Which is the point, I suppose.

       .

       • 

         Marie2 on February 28, 2014 at 8:27 pm

         Need to add protestors huddled in tents against the snow in the initial ousting of “GWB” and snipers picking off protestors in the second ouster of “GWB” and Nazi skinheads joining ranks to out “GWB.”

   • 

     Oui on March 1, 2014 at 2:14 am

     … this coup was a KGB conspiracy.

     Interesting, same topic in article authored by Valery Drotenko [Валерій Дротенко in Ukrainian] – Is bloody KGB plan of Ukraine’s collapse carried out?, dated 08.12.2013.

     Same story appeared in Ukrainian om 24-02-2014 after the black militia “sniper” attack on Instytutska Street.

     Who Were Snipers In Kiev Massacre – A CIA-Svoboda False Flag Op?

     Radio Free Europe published the black militia “snipers” video  on 20.02.2014 and UK newspaper The Guardian spliced both videos together for publication the same day. This was pure Western propaganda as the first video by rferl « RadioSvoboda.org » was taken during the riots in the night of 28/29 November 2013.

     Coverage here.

     Cross-posted from Moon of Alabama.

2. 

   Joelcr on February 28, 2014 at 5:45 pm

   John McCain did a hilarious impression of John McCain today.

3. 

   Steven D on February 28, 2014 at 5:50 pm

   CNN

   http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/28/world/europe/ukraine-politics/

   US Today

   http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/28/obama-ukraine-russia-crimea/5906695/

   NPR Blog

   http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/02/28/283811761/gunmen-take-over-crimean-airports-ukraine-b
   lames-russia

4. 

   mainsailset on February 28, 2014 at 6:03 pm

   One would expect Putin to move swiftly now that his hands are no longer tied by the Olympics. With the world intently watching his part of the world he must have been gritting his teeth.

   Now, he is making swift moves to ramp up exploitation of Ukraine’s vulnerability. I see over at TPM that there were 8 cargo planes arriving in the north, given permission to land and as men exited they replied to customs inspectors that they wouldn’t be needing their services. Not the comment of a force that is respectful of a sovereign nation.

   • 

     The Voice In The Wilderness on February 28, 2014 at 7:41 pm

     It is naked aggression. The Russian Empire/Soviet Union is being reconstructed. However, there is nothing we can do except go to war, which probably means nuclear war. I’m sure Putin is getting a belly laugh from Obama’s threats.

     • 

       TarheelDem on February 28, 2014 at 8:23 pm

       Russia has an agreement that lets it continue to use the Sevastapol military base in the Crimean region of Ukraine.   Russia sends troops to this base and starts conducting security patrols between this base and the airport in the capital of this region.  Any aircraft sent to the air base at Sevastapol will be reported as Russia sends aircraft and troops to Ukraine.  At worst Russia’s relationship to Crimea is like the US relationship to Guantanamo, a leased base situated in a hostile country.  Think we didn’t beef up our military presence in Gauntanamo during Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959 and afterward?

       Watch the way this is being reported.  A lot of the President’s and Kerry’s statements will be for domestic consumption to outflank McCain.  US security guarantees are not quite the “on demand” NATO guarantees that allow W to suck European nations into Afghanistan.  The US itself has committed itself to treat Ukraine like a NATO country per a 2008 law (passed by unanimous consent in the Senate btw) but that commitment is easily broken given the change of regime.

       There is some heavy duty domestic politics going on in this with the involvement of Nuland (and likely the CIA and US AID).

       Mark Ames of Pando is claiming that Pierre Omidyar was involved in the propaganda and is trolling Marcy Wheeler on Twitter about it.  That itself has an odd stench to it.  Keep watching that and the whole Pando/NSFW media empire.

       • 

         Marie2 on February 28, 2014 at 9:31 pm

         With this – “Mark Ames of Pando is claiming that Pierre Omidyar was involved in the propaganda and is trolling Marcy Wheeler on Twitter about it.” — might was well concede that it’s impossible for us to know what’s going on.

       • 

         seabe on February 28, 2014 at 9:46 pm

         Mark Ames of Pando is claiming that Pierre Omidyar was involved in the propaganda and is trolling Marcy Wheeler on Twitter about it.  That itself has an odd stench to it.  Keep watching that and the whole Pando/NSFW media empire.

         All I see that has an odd stench is Glenn trying to create a narrative. Most recently he clearly wanted to set the stage for immunizing himself and his colleagues from criticism by spreading distrust with his “they’re infiltrating websites!” article.

         • 

           TarheelDem on February 28, 2014 at 10:29 pm

           That article was backed up with an NSA document.

           During the Occupy movement, it was clear that a contractor wannabe was trolling the Occupy movement and finally got traced to an erstwhile “security contractor”.

           The fact that intelligence services are trolling web sites and social media immunizes no one.  It turns the whole information environment into a hall of mirrors and makes it difficult to figure out both facts and policy.

           Don’t depend on the articles, and not just Greenwald’s but Gellmann’s, Ackerman’s and others.  Look at the documents that back up the articles.

         • 

           Marie2 on February 28, 2014 at 10:31 pm

           Not to interfere with your regular moment of hating Glenn, wouldn’t want to align myself with the “Pando” moneybags either (or interfere with the “New Look” and “Pando” feud).  Peter Thiel

           …
           Although a member of the Libertarian Party,[1] Thiel donates overwhelmingly more political contributions to Republicans.

           In December 2007, Thiel endorsed Ron Paul for President.[61] After Ron Paul failed to secure the Republican nomination for president, Thiel contributed to the John McCain/Sarah Palin presidential ticket of 2008.[62]

           In 2010, Thiel supported Meg Whitman, who as CEO of eBay had purchased PayPal from Thiel and his co-founders and investors, in her unsuccessful bid for the governorship of California. He contributed the maximum allowable $25,900 to the Whitman campaign.[63]
           …After Ron Paul again failed to secure the Republican nomination for president, Thiel contributed to the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan presidential ticket of 2012.
           …

       • 

         TarheelDem on February 28, 2014 at 10:23 pm

         My quick research has come up with the fact that Omidyar Network Fund as part of a government transparency effort bankrolled a group in Ukraine called New Citizen with some relation to US AID.  The support that Omidyar Network provided was media personnel, as best pico at Daily Kos could translate from the document that Mark Ames  posted.  For anyone who reads Russian(Ukrainian?) New Citizen has a web site in Cyrillic.

         Mark Ames is implying but not documenting clearly that Omidyar was part of the propaganda softening up for a US-motivated coup in Ukraine.  And that Marcy Wheeler (and Greenwald) are somehow tainted for working for Omidyar in their reporting on NSA.  It has the journalistic feel of a hit job on First Look from a potential major competitor Pando/NSFW.

         • 

           The Voice In The Wilderness on March 1, 2014 at 6:16 pm

           You deny longstanding hatred of Ukrainians for Russians?

5. 

   Oui on February 28, 2014 at 6:11 pm

   .
   I’ve been covering the Ukrainian issue for awhile. The neo-hawks in the White House pushed the envelop too far as I predicted. Especially the incident with the leaked phone conversation between Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland and US Ambassador Pryatt was a last warning from Russia’s Putin. In the Olympic Spirit, all hostilities should be put on hold. The US and Western allies increased their hostilities during the past month. See links to my diaries below.

   Re: Ukraine “making history” II

   US does not need approval to wage war, neither does Putin’s Russia. As the Cuban crisis showed, stationing missiles on one’s doorstep threatens the existence of a world power. Cuba belonged to the hemisphere of the US, same with Ukraine for Russia today. Putin will engage politically and retake the Crimean peninsula, and rightly so.  

   ○ Miscalculation May Lead to A New Crimean War
   ○ Who Were Snipers In Kiev Massacre – A CIA-Svoboda False Flag Op?
   ○ US Security Adviser Rice Threatens Russia’s Putin
   ○ Ukraine’s Holodomor of 1933 and the Maidan Revolution
   ○ Ukraine: Extremists Reject EU Deal, Demand Violent Overthrow
   ○ Regime Change In Ukraine – Who Bugged Nuland, an Embarrassment

6. 

   Oui on February 28, 2014 at 6:14 pm

   .

   What’s happening in Crimea – LIVE! [Russian] [English via Google]

   In Crimea, the confrontation between the supporters of the current central government and pro-Russian organizations in Ukraine, which it does not recognize the autonomy and require adherence to Russia.  Yesterday morning, a group of unidentified armed with rifles and machine guns seized the building of the Verkhovna Rada of the Crimea and the Council of Ministers of autonomy.

    « click for info Berkut in Crimea

   19:31 Russian Consulate General in Simferopol ordered to take action to start issuing Russian passports to the staff of “Berkut”.  This is stated in a statement posted Friday evening on page Foreign Ministry to Facebook.

   ○ Armed men tried to capture the airfield in Novofedorovka
   ○ BBC: Duma to fast-track new laws to ease annexation Ukrainian territory [Disclaimer for veracity of BBC report – western propaganda ;-)]

7. 

   Oui on February 28, 2014 at 6:22 pm

   .
   This post explains the friends of Senator ‘Clueless’ McCain – McCaine and Ukraine Protest Slogan ‘Beat the Zhids.

   Stepan Bandera – Hero or Nazi Sympathizer

   On January 22, 2010 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko honored Stepan Bandera by posthumously bestowing on him the state honor, “Hero of Ukraine.”  The Soviet KGB assassinated Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist-in-exile, in 1959.  Many Ukrainians, including Ukrainian émigré groups in Canada, pressed Yushchenko to grant the honor, which, according to one statement, “would restore justice and truth about the Bandera and the…struggle for liberation that he headed.”  To this day, many Ukrainians view Bandera as a martyred freedom fighter.

   As an uncompromising leader of the militant, terrorist branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Bandera became a Nazi collaborator who lived with his deputies under German protection after World War II began.  In preparation for the attack on the USSR, the Nazis recruited Bandera’s followers to act as Ukrainian-speaking policemen and to serve in two Ukrainian volunteer army battalions.  By working with the Nazis, Bandera hoped to free Ukraine from Soviet rule and establish his own government there.  An independent Ukraine, Bandera promised, would remain friendly to Germany.

   Historian Karel Berkhoff, among others, has shown that Bandera, his deputies, and the Nazis shared a key obsession, namely the notion that the Jews in Ukraine were behind Communism and Stalinist imperialism and must be destroyed.  “The Jews of the Soviet Union,” read a Banderist statement, “are the most loyal supporters of the Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.”  When the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941 and captured the East Galician capital of Lvov [Lviv in Ukrainian], Bandera’s lieutenants issued a declaration of independence in his name.  They further promised to work closely with Hitler, then helped to launch a pogrom that killed four thousand Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons ranging from guns to metal poles.  “We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,” a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

   The Germans intended to keep Ukraine for themselves.  They arrested Bandera for his intransigence on the issue of independence, but released him in 1944 when it appeared that his popularity with Ukrainians might help stem the Soviet advance.  But whatever their disappointment with the Germans, the Banderists never disagreed with their Jewish policy in Ukraine, which eventually killed over 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews.

   This is a truth that many in Ukraine, particularly in its western parts, deny.  In his book Erased (2007), Omer Bartov discusses the large bronze statue of Bandera that stands in a park in the east Galician town of Drohobych, most of whose 15,000 Jews were murdered.  The park stands on the site of the town’s former Jewish ghetto, but there is not so much as a plaque in the park to memorialize the Jewish dead.  This and other examples like it make a condemnation of Yushchenko’s step necessary.

    « click for story

   Lenin beheaded, Bandera erected - Ukraine returning to pre-WWII fascist era collaborating with the West,

   But the rest of the story, much of which is revealed in CIA records released in 2007, reveals irony in Yushchenko’s award.  After the war Bandera lived in Munich.  British intelligence used him to help run agents into Ukraine to gather intelligence and to help the Ukrainian underground against the Soviets.  The CIA used some of Bandera’s former cronies for similar reasons, but never used Bandera himself, owing to Bandera’s infatuation with his own legend.  “Bandera,” said one CIA report from 1948, “is by nature a political intransigent of great personal ambition [who] has…opposed all political organizations in the emigration which favor a representative form of government in the Ukraine, as opposed to a mono-party, OUN/Bandera regime.”

   About the author: Norman J.W. Goda is Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida. His most recent book is Tales from Spandau: Nazi Criminals and the Cold War (2007), and is co-author of US Intelligence and the Nazis (2005).

    « click for info

   A well known historical fact about Nazi collaborator Pieter Menten in East Galicia. He was unmasked by journalist Hans Knoop and his trial in The Hague brought many facts about local pogroms and executions of the Jewish population. The Ukrainians in Lviv played a major role of collaboration with the Nazis. The defense attorney Van Heijningen was well known to me. There was major media coverage of Pieter Menten’s trial in The Hague.

8. 

   shan on February 28, 2014 at 6:22 pm

   This is an European problem.  We do not need to complicate our negotiations with Iran with a Ukraine/Russia political crisis.  I think Merkel needs to step and show the world she knows how to do something besides austerity.

   • 

     nalbar on February 28, 2014 at 9:15 pm

     Yes, because just what Europe needs and wants right now is the Germans strutting their stuff, particularly Merkal, who has never shown a deft touch with furriners.

     • 

       hawesg on February 28, 2014 at 10:22 pm

       This is France’s moment.  Not Germany’s.  France has more connections in the East.

9. 

   Neildsmith on February 28, 2014 at 6:27 pm

   Once again, the warmonger / interventionist constituency is agitating and saber rattling about some damn thing half way around the world that no American has any interest in.  Let’s just get it over with and send the troops to be killed in another conflict no one cares about.  One of these days young Americans will wake up to the fact that joining the military is akin to joining a street gang and isn’t worth the risk.  So bring on another bloody war!  We must protect the right wing fascists in Ukraine from the right wing fascists in Russia.  

   Just remember that the great Target Stores data breach of 2013 was facilitated and exploited by our good friends in Ukraine.  The whole damn country is a corrupt cesspool completely unworthy of any US effort.

   America first.  Ukraine… pretty much last.

10. 

    Oui on February 28, 2014 at 6:39 pm

    .
    Obama Plans for complete US Withdrawal from Afghanistan in December

    Obama’s words: “This will cost Russia dearly.” Is the transport of military goods planned through Taliban territory of Pakistan or was Obama relying on transport through Russia?

    What about the Geneva II talks and a political setlement for Syria? For the crucial Iranian nuclear negotiations, US and the West needed a good relationship with Russia. Secretary Kerry relied on an outstanding relationship with FM Lavrov. The relationship is pretty frosty .. it’s all Snowden’s fault.

    What a mess created by CIA and Vicky Nuland.

11. 

    TarheelDem on February 28, 2014 at 6:48 pm

    So now that we have the official Presidential chest-beating speech to appease the McCain-niks, what exactly is the US going to do?  My guess is that nothing happens unless Russia does something in parts of Ukraine that have less than 50% ethnic Russians.

    What should happen will not.  Immediate firing of Victoria Nuland and discrediting of the the entire Kagan Klan.

    • 

      TarheelDem on February 28, 2014 at 6:49 pm

      Not to mention a full audit of the CIA’s role in the #OccupyMaidan movement.

12. 

    Arthur Gilroy on February 28, 2014 at 8:29 pm

    Obama’s “threat.”

                                                 Why I oughta…!!!

    

    But he won’t.

    He can’t.

    Just the ol’ nose twist.

    Stooge America

    Sad shit.

    AG

13. 

    Geov Parrish on February 28, 2014 at 11:31 pm

    John McCain’s personal anthem.

    That’s Barack, down in the mosh pit.

14. 

    janicket on March 2, 2014 at 10:14 am

    Commentary from Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station; a sensible take that will, of course, be ignored by any politician or pundit in search of a stick with which to flail away:

    https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/642284039140336?stream_ref=10