It seems now that the turbulences in the Ukraine are not protests, riots, or a “color revolution”, but a longtime plotted and by Western agents supported fascist coup. What takes place at present is vandalism and looting, the disintegration of a dysfunctional political system, and the overthrow of a corrupt and rightfully loathed political caste.
It is not clear yet if the fascist coup will succeed or if the remaining and still intact forces of the old political system can regain control. The Bercut riot police force is disbanded, some police departments have openly joined the fascist groups, and the army seems to be paralyzed.
In the first part I concluded, that most of the Maidan crowd are unemployed men, but I have to amend the analysis by naming two other constituencies. The bigger one consists of the poor and less well educated farmers, who normally would work on the fields but in winter have enough time at hand, the smaller one are workers in seasonal jobs like construction and tourism.
The Ukraine used to be among the richest Soviet republics and the country is still one of the worlds leading exporters of wheat and coarse grains (barley, rye, oats, corn/maize), but its economy has been declining for years and currently is pretty much in ruins because after becoming independent most state owned businesses were quickly privatized and the profits disappeared in Swiss bank accounts. The country is essentially in the hands of various oligarchs, just like Russia in the 1990s, only worse. The oligarchs own the media, the courts, the police, the banks, and pretty everything else.
The political system is ripe with corruption, cronyism, and mismanagement. The majority of Ukrainian politicians are for sale to the highest bidder.
This is the outcome of a rushed conversion from a state economy to a Western style free market economy.
The main players in this drama:
The Ukrainian people
Most Ukrainians are deeply unhappy and incensed by blatant corruption and social injustice. They all want prosperity, safety, and a stable and just society, yet they are divided about the way to achieve it. Some of them see an integration with Western Europe as the best hope of achieving this goal, others see a participation in an economic union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan as a much better option.
Whatever their opinion may be, in the end it won’t matter at all in this conflict, because the ordinary Ukrainians are just pawns used by all sides.
Viktor Yanukovich
Ex-president Viktor Yanukovich has fled, his whereabouts are not known. The parliament voted to refer him to the ICC in Den Hague, which may seem harsh and unjustified considering that he did nothing else than all the other politicians. Yet the pictures of his 140-hectare estate with a garage full of classic sports cars, a hovercraft, a golf course, exotic gardens with a private zoo, and a restored sailing ship rule out any pity for him.
He was counting on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s help, but Putin profoundly dislikes him and never was pleased with his avarice and dishonesty. Yanukovich for sure acted incompetent and foolish, he is to a big part responsible that fascist parties today have a real chance to take over the country.
Yulia Timoshenko
Yulia Timoshenko (the “Gas Princess”) is one of the oligarchs, benefiting from the privatizations after independence. In the Western media she has been elevated to quasi sainthood but the Ukrainians themselves have some reservations.
In 2011 she was convicted for embezzlement and abuse of power, sentenced to seven years in prison, and ordered to pay 188 million US$. Her business partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, was convicted in the US for money laundering, corruption, and fraud, the magnitude of which was in the billions of dollars.
Tymoshenko has been hastily rehabilitated and is ready to be put on the ballot for elections in May. She is undoubtedly corrupt and very probably responsible for contract killings but she is the most clever of all players and some regard her as the only chance to avoid a civil war and keep the neo-Nazis at bay.
She suffers from crippling back pain and appears at the moment to be wheelchair bound, yet some commentators suspect that to be just another trick to arouse sympathy.
Vitali Klitschko
A former world heavyweight champion and now the leader of the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform. He is probably the most honest of all players but he lacks oratory skills and sometimes appears to be naive. The fact that he holds a PhD degree (in sports science) doesn’t help.
The US envois don’t take him serious and don’t support him. He is not involved in the present caretaker government but has announced his candidacy for the coming presidential elections.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk
A lawyer and career politician who until now has served as Minister of Economy, Foreign Minister, and chairman of the parliament. He has been repeatedly insulted by right wing politicians because of his alleged Jewish roots. He is perceived as uncharismatic and as a populist, who has changed his allegiances so often and switched sides so many times than nobody knows anymore what he really stands for.
Yatsenyuk is the preferred presidential candidate of the USA.
Oleg Tyagnybok
He is the leader of the far-right Svoboda (Freedom) party and commands a much more powerful force (both politically and in terms of violent street power) than his political rivals. The EU really doesn’t want him around, but he has a solid basis in the western Ukraine and backing in the USA, therefore he cannot be easily bypassed.
Tyagnybok is clearly an ultranationalist and fascist who considers Jews and Russians as the root of all evil, dislikes the EU as well as Russia, has “Ukraine for Ukrainians” on his banner, promises the “re-birth of the nation,” and has called for “the liberation of his country from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.”
After the 2010 conviction of Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk for his role in the death of nearly 30,000 people at the Sobibor camp, Tyahnybok rushed to Germany to declare Demjanjuk a hero who was “fighting for truth.”
In the Ukrainian parliament, where Svoboda holds 37 seats, Tyagnybok’s deputy Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn repeatedly quoted Goebbels (he has even founded a think tank called “the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Center”). Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda and the Pravy Sektor.
The Pravy Sektor (Right Sector)
This is a shadowy syndicate of fascists and ultra-nationalists (they call themselves “autonomous nationalists”), distinguished by a skinhead style of dress and a fascination with street violence. They are promising to lead their army of aimless, disillusioned young men on “a great European Reconquest.” The group originated among football hooligans and has grown exponentially in the last years.
They promise to fight “against degeneration and totalitarian liberalism, for traditional national morality and family values.” Via Svoboda they are linked to an umbrella organization of international fascist parties called the “Alliance of European National Movements.”
In essence the Pravy Sektor is the military wing of Svoboda.
Dmitro Yarosh, one leader of Pravy Sektor, revealed in an interview that the group has amassed a big arsenal of weapons and is prepared to “to defend all of Ukraine.” Andriy Tarasenko, another leader, said that the groups page on the social network Vkontakte has more than 50,000 members. On the barricades, “hundreds are quickly turning into thousands,” he claimed.
Most of the armed militias in Maidan are part of the Pravy Sektor. Armed with helmets, shields, and clubs, the group’s cadres have manned the front lines of Maidan and led the storming of government buildings, chanting: “Ukraine uber alles.”
Afiliated fascist groups involved in Maidan are Spilna Sprava (Common Cause), Afgantsy (a coalition of Afghanistan veterans), Trizub’, ‘Patriot of Ukraine’, and UNA-UNSO.‘
The Oligarchs
Most of them believe that as long as the Ukraine maintains an anti-Russian stance the European Union will let them do whatever they want to do inside the Ukraine, and they are correct. For them, signing an otherwise meaningless agreement with the EU is basically accepting the following deal: they become the faithful servants of their EU masters in exchange for that the EU masters will let them continue to pillage the Ukraine in pretty much any way they want.
There is a smaller group of oligarchs who still stand to lose more than win if the Russian-Ukrainian relations sour and Russia introduces trade barriers with the Ukraine (which Russia would have to do if the Ukraine signs an free trade agreement with the EU). These oligarchs believe that more money can be made from Russia than from the EU and they are the folks who convinced Viktor Yanukovich to make his switch from the EU towards Russia.
The European Union
For Western Europe the Ukraine is first and foremost a market to sells goods and services. The Ukraine could also provide cheap labor for the EU, but considering the already high EU unemployment, letting Ukrainians flood across the boarders into the West is not a viable political option. Average unemployment in the southern countries of the Eurozone is 17 percent, Greece and Spain have 27 percent unemployment.
The big companies would of course like to set up sweatshops, but Ukraine’s unemployment rate of 7.6 percent is comparatively low and the population is not yet ready to accept third world wages.
There is another economic dilemma: Ukraine’s main economy centers are tightly integrated with Russia, and they are located mainly in the Eastern part. Russia has made very clear that Euro-association would mean closed borders on the East and that means death of the whole manufacturing sector. A loss of the Russian market would be very hard to counteract, given that there’s zero demand for Ukrainian tractors and tanks in the EU.
The EU itself is in a deep economic, social, and political crisis and is absolutely desperate for new opportunities to rescue itself from the ongoing slow-motion collapse. The EU would like to exploit Ukrainian resources but it cannot pay the Ukraine’s deb’s, it can only arrange further IMF loans. All this becomes clear by studying carefully the 1500 pages of the proposed agreement with the EU.
Yet the situation is urgent, because the Ukraine is out of cash and there are a lot of people who depend of government payouts, like the civil servants and the pensioners for instance. Financial reserves are down to a few days, federal structures are being dismantled throughout the country, regional governors are fleeing or reseigning, and a default on some 60 billion Euros of Ukrainian bonds, many held by Russian banks, seems likely.
The financial reforms which the EU in the proposed agreement demands are alone for the above mentioned reasons unfeasible and would inevitably lead to further civil unrest.
Baroness Ashton, the first EU official to visit Kiev since the overthrow of the government, voiced strong support and urged to form an “inclusive” government, but she spelled out no details of any foreign financial assistance, saying that the EU would work with the IMF, which would make its own assessment of the situation.
The present situation is a nightmare for European politicians, but the Ukrainian nationalists and the armed heroes of Maidan are mainly bought and paid for by the USA. The EU bureaucrats can continue visiting the Ukraine and make loud statements, in the end they really don’t matter.
The USA
US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Jane Nuland is married to the prominent neocon ideologue Robert Kagan (foreign policy commentator at Brookings). Her brother-in-law Frederick W. Kagan is a leading military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, he has shaped decisively US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
She was foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney, US ambassador to NATO, and special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
An intercepted phone conversation proved her disregard for the European partners (“Fuck the EU”) as well as for most Ukrainian leaders. She also stated: “We have invested more than five billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals.”
She and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt are cold warriors, put in place by President Barack Obama, who with many key appointments has proven, that he, despite his rhetoric of change and apeasement, is basically a hardline neoconservative.
More than a hundred Western NGOs are operating in the Ukraine. CANVAS, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, Open Society Institute, Freedom House, just to name a few. Together with CIA-operatives they have equipped the fascist storm troops in Maidan with helmets, shields, clubs, firearms, kevlar vests, tents, and communication equipment.
They helped with logistical support, provided food and organized transportation. The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs for instance has paid a field hospital and medical equipment ordered by a Ukrainian NGO for the treatment of injured fighters. There were also reports that jobless men from Moldova get 30 Euros a day for participating in the riots and that busloads of them were transported to Kiev.
As mentioned already in the first part of this text, during World War II, the Nazis supported a number of Ukrainian nationalist movements against the Soviet Union. After the war, these groups began receiving support from the CIA in their underground resistance fight against the Soviet Union, particularly in western Ukraine.
Among the Ukrainian groups supported by the Nazis and identified as potential allies of the CIA was the OUN-B (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), led by Stepan Bandera.
Worshiped by Ukrainian nationalists as a legendary freedom fighter, Bandera’s real record is dishonorable and ignominious at best. After participating in a campaign to assassinate Ukrainians who supported accommodation with Poland, Bandera’s troops started to ethnically cleanse western Ukraine of Poles in 1943. They killed over 90,000 Poles and many Jews, whom Bandera’s top deputy Yaroslav Stetsko was determined to exterminate. After the war Bandera continued to organize and direct a fascist insurgency, advocating a totalitarian, ethnically pure Europe. His affiliated Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) carried out an armed struggle against the Soviet Union. The bloodbath he inspired ended only when KGB agents assassinated him in Munich in 1959.
When World War II ended, the surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the USA (often with CIA help) where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements.
In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted itself under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), and by the mid-1980’s, the Reagan administration was penetrated by UCCA members, with the group’s chairman Lev Dobriansky serving as ambassador to the Bahamas and his daughter Paula sitting on the National Security Council.
Reagan personally welcomed Yaroslav Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983. “Your struggle is our struggle,” Reagan told the former Nazi criminal. “Your dream is our dream.”
The UCCA played a leading role in opposing investigations of suspected Nazi war criminals and when the US Justice Department in 1985 launched a program to capture and prosecute Nazi war criminals, the UCCA lobbied Congress to halt the initiative.
In the last weeks the UCCA has organized rallies in cities across the USA in support of the Maidan fighters. When several hundred demonstrators marched through downtown Chicago, some of them waved Ukrainian flags while others proudly flew the red and black banners of the UPA and OUN-B, chanting: “USA supports Ukraine.”
As mentioned before, the Svoboda’ (Freedom) party, which made international headlines after winning nearly 10 percent of the votes and 37 seats in the last parliamentary election, is the successor of Banderas OUN-B, and the Pravy Sektor is its military wing.
The Maidan fighters will hardly lay down their weapons and go home peacefully. They were unexpectedly successful in resisting the police, injuring and killing scores of policemen and taking many of them as prisoners. They were building massive barricades which are rather earthworks and they were firebombing an armored personal carrier, they burned down big buildings and completely devastated many government offices. They smashed computers and destroyed crucial files about tax debts and criminal investigations. They have seized weapons and ammunition depots of police and army. According to the latest news 2,000 firearms and hundreds of thousands ammunition cartridges have been put away by the neo-Nazis.
They rejected the agreement for an orderly transition toward early elections, instead seizing additional key government buildings and installations. Fascist fighters have even taken control of the atomic power plant in Rovno by occupying administrative buildings and burning the files to the central computer. This nuclear plant is the main energy resource for a whole province.
Right now Kiew is in chaos. The Maidan troops have rejected a deadline to vacate occupied government buildings, countering with their own deadline to release jailed protesters. Most Regional State Administrations in Western Ukraine are occupied by right wing activists and the governors have resigned or fled. The new rulers have banned all activities and symbols of the Communist Party and the Party of Regions.
Chief Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman asked Kiev’s Jews to leave the city and, if possible, the country, due to fears that Jews might be targeted in the ongoing chaos. The Israel National News reported that Jewish shops have been vandalized and threats to the Jewish community have increasingly been uttered.
All this doesn’t sound promising and it doesn’t bode well for a peaceful and prosperous future of the Ukraine, but all the USA needs is chaos, something easy to achieve and relatively cheap to finance. Chaos, mayhem, and even a full-scale civil war in the Ukraine will not negatively impact them but will mean trouble for Russia, which is good (for the US). It will also spell trouble for the European Union, but the Obama administration doesn’t care much about their European partners, who are just pawns like all other client regimes, and they care even less about the sufferings of the Ukrainian aborigines.
Of course a Western puppet regime would be the most preferred outcome and open the door to the eastward expansion of NATO, finally reaching Russia’s border. It is a long boarder, 1400 km long, and facing NATO along this line would be a major headache for Russia.
Russia
Regardless of the closeness between the languages and cultures, regardless of a long common history, regardless of the fact that Russians and Ukrainians jointly defeated Nazi Germany, regardless of the close economic ties, Russia does not need the Ukraine and it does not want to takeover its neighbor and incorporate it into Russia.
Why should they want this country? The Ukrainian economy is in ruins, the nation is plagued by immense social and political tensions, and there are no natural resources which Russia would need.
Yet Russia needs stability and prosperity in the Ukraine, because the collapse of such a big neighbor is bound to affect the Russian economy. Most Russian families have ties with the Ukraine and millions of Russians live there (also millions of Ukrainians live in Russia). If a civil war breaks out Russia would almost inevitably be drawn in.
There is also the risk of five nuclear power plants falling in the hands of neo-Nazi stormtroopers and there are the pipelines which transport Russian gas through Ukraine on its way west.
Russia needs stability and prosperity in the Ukraine and that was the main reason, that President Putin offered 15 billion US$ plus discounted gas to provide a cardiac resuscitation to the ruined Ukrainian economy and start some kind of reforms.
The governors of Kharkov and Crimea have called back their local Berkut forces and are openly talking about secession, but even in Crimea all Russia really needs is a status quo: Peace, prosperity, a good tourism infrastructure to host Russian tourists, and stable basing right for the Black Sea Fleet. For that Russia does not need to occupy or annex the Crimea.
However, should the Crimean Peninsula be attacked by the neo-Nazis, there is no doubt that the Black Sea Fleet will intervene to protect the local population with which it has many family ties.The Black Sea Fleet is infinitely better trained and equipped that the Ukrainian police or military and it includes a very powerful Naval Infantry force (one Brigade and one Battalion, the latter specialized in counter-terrorism operations).
It is one thing to beat up and subdue riot cops and quite another to deal with battle hardened (Chechnya, Georgia) and highly trained elite forces armed to the teeth with the latest and best military equipment.
For now Russia has just enacted emergency plans to seal the border to Ukraine.
The Sniper Killings
There were reports of snipers on rooftops using automatic weapons, but the identity of the snipers remains unknown. The Western media anonymously would refer, without evidence, to government snipers. RT News, however, reported the presence of both police and Pravy Sektor gunmen in possession of automatic weapons.
On February 20, just as then still President Viktor Yanukovych met with a high level EU delegation, 21 protesters were killed by professional snipers. It was not a spontaneous event resulting from clashes between protesters and riot police, nor was it the result of gunfire between the police and the Neo-Nazi storm-troopers. The victims were shot in the head, the neck or the heart. None were shot anywhere else like in the legs.
These killings had the hallmarks of a carefully planned operation and they happened in a short period. These targeted killings were subsequently used to topple the government and President Yanukovych.
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