Ukrainian Riots Accelerating

[Lauren Johnson]

[url=http://A collection of interesting reads on how the putsch in the Ukraine happened and the background behind it.Max Blumenthal is looking at the historic background of the Nazi groups in the Ukraine and there relation with Ukrainian exile groups in the United States. The connections are deeper than one might have thought:Is the U.S. Backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? - Exposing troubling ties in the U.S. to overt Nazi and fascist protesters in Ukraine.Many surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the United States occasionally with CIA help where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements. "You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence," one member told journalist Russ Bellant, who documented the group's resurgence in the United States in his 1988 book, "Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party."In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an umbrella organization comprised of "complete OUN-B fronts," according to Bellant. By the mid-1980's, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with 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 Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.Paula Dobriansky was on of the neo-cons in the Bush administration:According to her State Department biography, Dobriansky's background includes having "lectured and published articles, book chapters, and op-ed pieces on foreign affairs-related topics, ranging from U.S. human rights policy to East European foreign and defense policies, public diplomacy, democracy promotion strategies, Russia, and Ukraine.The current lead on Eastern Europe in the State Department is "fuck the EU" neo-con Victoria Nuland. The coup in Kiev was a neo-con project.Also this comment by markfromireland at Ian Welsh's blog:To eliminate Russia as a threat to American hegemony you need to hive of The Ukraine and use it as a forward post against Russian resurgence.This is why the Americans have been exerting massive pressure on the European Commission and on European governments to bring the Ukraine into the North American/North Western European economic sphere. With the UKraine in the "Western" camp they can stymie Russian efforts to drag the Baltic Republics back into orbit around Russia. Without it that becomes far more difficult.There are allegations in the following piece that parts of the neo-nazis that attacked the police in Kiev have been trained in NATO countries. I have not verified this but it seems plausible: Ukraine: Neo-Nazi Criminal State Looming In Centre Of Europe AnalysisA number of NATO-sponsored training centers for the Ukrainian ultranationalist militants were opened on the territory of the Baltic states immediately after they joined NATO in 2004. The detailed photo report on a Ukrainian group taking a course of subversive activities at a NATO training center in Estonia in 2006 is available here (texts in Russian).Abundant financial and human resources were directed to bolster the paramilitary units of the radical UNA-UNSO, Svoboda and other ultranationalist organizations in the Ukraine. Since 1990s these thugs were participating in the Chechen and Balkan wars on the side of radical Wahhabi (!) militants and committing war crimes against captured Russian and Serbian soldiers and civilian population. One of the notorious guerilla fighters of the Ukrainian origin in Chechnya, Olexander Muzychko (aka criminal leader Sasha Biliy) today is heading a brigade of "Pravyi Sector", the radical militant driving force of the ongoing coup d'état in Kiev.There have been reports, also mentioned in the above, from Russian sources that, allegedly, Israeli special forces were involved with the anti-semitic neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. That may sound implausible until you recognize that Israeli state policy is to move as many Jews as possible to Israel. To frighten those who still want to stay in their native country by promoting anti-semitic forces makes sense withing this (in itself anti-semitic) policy frame:For the life of me, I don't understand the Jews living in France. I don't understand the Jews living in Poland. I don't understand the one Jew living in Afghanistan (nor the one living in Eritrea) and I can't believe there are still 100 Jews in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq or Botswana. I don't understand the Jews living in the Ukraine and, to be honest, I don't much understand the Jews living in America either. ... But seriously if you are a Jew living in the Ukraine today, why aren't you packing your bags? If you are a Jew living in France, do you really expect it to get better? And, if you are a Jew living in the US, do you expect your grandchildren to still be Jewish?Chinahand aka Peter Lee explains how the U.S., by threatening sanctions on one oligarch, managed to change the majority in the Ukrainian parliament against Yanukovich: Looks Like US Played Hardball in the Ukraine...and Against the EU:So, by a less-than-generous view, it might be suspected that the United States encouraged demonstrators to break the truce, with the expectation that violence would occur and Yanukovich's equivocal fat cat backers, such as Akhmetov, would jump ship because the US had already informed them that their assets in the West would be at risk under US and EU sanctions.If this is the case, the EU perhaps has additional reason to feel sore and resentful at the US. By blowing up the truce and the transition deal, Nuland got Yanukovich out and "Yats"the preferred US proxy, Arseniy Yatsenyukin, but at the cost of terminally alienating the Ukraine's pro-Russian segmenta segment, it might be pointed out, was actually able to elect Yanukovich in a free and fair election a while back.I do not expect any Russian move on the Ukraine. Putin will now sit back and let the "west" squabble about who will throw tons of money into the bottomless pit that Ukraine is going to become. No politician in Kiev who wants to be re-elected will dare to sign an IMF agreement that will send a generation of the Ukrainian people into deep poverty. Unless there are nazi-progroms in Russian affiliated parts of the Ukraine Putin now just has to wait for the apple to fall from the tree.]Moon of Alabama, February 25[/url]

A collection of interesting reads on how the putsch in the Ukraine happened and the background behind it.

Max Blumenthal is looking at the historic background of the Nazi groups in the Ukraine and there relation with Ukrainian exile groups in the United States. The connections are deeper than one might have thought:

[URL="http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark"]Is the U.S. Backing Neo-Nazis in Ukraine? - Exposing troubling ties in the U.S. to overt Nazi and fascist protesters in Ukraine.

[/URL]

Many surviving OUN-B members fled to Western Europe and the United States occasionally with CIA help where they quietly forged political alliances with right-wing elements. "You have to understand, we are an underground organization. We have spent years quietly penetrating positions of influence," one member told journalist Russ Bellant, who documented the group's resurgence in the United States in his 1988 book, "Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party." In Washington, the OUN-B reconstituted under the banner of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), an umbrella organization comprised of "complete OUN-B fronts," according to Bellant. By the mid-1980's, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with 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 Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.

Paula Dobriansky was on of the neo-cons in the Bush administration:

According to her State Department biography, Dobriansky's background includes having "lectured and published articles, book chapters, and op-ed pieces on foreign affairs-related topics, ranging from U.S. human rights policy to East European foreign and defense policies, public diplomacy, democracy promotion strategies, Russia, and Ukraine.

The current lead on Eastern Europe in the State Department is "fuck the EU" neo-con Victoria Nuland. The coup in Kiev was a neo-con project.

Also this comment by markfromireland at Ian Welsh's blog:

To eliminate Russia as a threat to American hegemony you need to hive of The Ukraine and use it as a forward post against Russian resurgence. This is why the Americans have been exerting massive pressure on the European Commission and on European governments to bring the Ukraine into the North American/North Western European economic sphere. With the UKraine in the "Western" camp they can stymie Russian efforts to drag the Baltic Republics back into orbit around Russia. Without it that becomes far more difficult.

There are allegations in the following piece that parts of the neo-nazis that attacked the police in Kiev have been trained in NATO countries. I have not verified this but it seems plausible: [URL="http://www.eurasiareview.com/25022014-ukraine-neo-nazi-criminal-state-looming-centre-europe-analysis/"]Ukraine: Neo-Nazi Criminal State Looming In Centre Of Europe Analysis

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A number of NATO-sponsored training centers for the Ukrainian ultranationalist militants were opened on the territory of the Baltic states immediately after they joined NATO in 2004. The detailed photo report on a Ukrainian group taking a course of subversive activities at a NATO training center in Estonia in 2006 is available here (texts in Russian). Abundant financial and human resources were directed to bolster the paramilitary units of the radical UNA-UNSO, Svoboda and other ultranationalist organizations in the Ukraine. Since 1990s these thugs were participating in the Chechen and Balkan wars on the side of radical Wahhabi (!) militants and committing war crimes against captured Russian and Serbian soldiers and civilian population. One of the notorious guerilla fighters of the Ukrainian origin in Chechnya, Olexander Muzychko (aka criminal leader Sasha Biliy) today is heading a brigade of "Pravyi Sector", the radical militant driving force of the ongoing coup d'état in Kiev.

There have been reports, also mentioned in the above, from Russian sources that, allegedly, Israeli special forces were involved with the anti-semitic neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. That may sound implausible until you recognize that Israeli state policy is to move as many Jews as possible to Israel. To frighten those who still want to stay in their native country by promoting anti-semitic forces makes sense withing this (in itself anti-semitic) policy frame:

For the life of me, I don't understand the Jews living in France. I don't understand the Jews living in Poland. I don't understand the one Jew living in Afghanistan (nor the one living in Eritrea) and I can't believe there are still 100 Jews in Egypt, Algeria, Iraq or Botswana. I don't understand the Jews living in the Ukraine and, to be honest, I don't much understand the Jews living in America either.
...
But seriously if you are a Jew living in the Ukraine today, why aren't you packing your bags? If you are a Jew living in France, do you really expect it to get better? And, if you are a Jew living in the US, do you expect your grandchildren to still be Jewish?

Chinahand aka Peter Lee explains how the U.S., by threatening sanctions on one oligarch, managed to change the majority in the Ukrainian parliament against Yanukovich: Looks Like US Played Hardball in the Ukraine...and Against the EU:

So, by a less-than-generous view, it might be suspected that the United States encouraged demonstrators to break the truce, with the expectation that violence would occur and Yanukovich's equivocal fat cat backers, such as Akhmetov, would jump ship because the US had already informed them that their assets in the West would be at risk under US and EU sanctions.

If this is the case, the EU perhaps has additional reason to feel sore and resentful at the US. By blowing up the truce and the transition deal, Nuland got Yanukovich out and "Yats"the preferred US proxy, Arseniy Yatsenyukin, but at the cost of terminally alienating the Ukraine's pro-Russian segmenta segment, it might be pointed out, was actually able to elect Yanukovich in a free and fair election a while back.

I do not expect any Russian move on the Ukraine. Putin will now sit back and let the "west" squabble about who will throw tons of money into the bottomless pit that Ukraine is going to become. No politician in Kiev who wants to be re-elected will dare to sign an IMF agreement that will send a generation of the Ukrainian people into deep poverty. Unless there are nazi-progroms in Russian affiliated parts of the Ukraine Putin now just has to wait for the apple to fall from the tree.