Ukrainian Riots Accelerating

[Peter Lemkin]

The Anti-Empire Report #127

By William Blum Published April 7th, 2014

Indoctrinating a new generation

Is there anyone out there who still believes that Barack Obama, when he's speaking about American foreign policy, is capable of being anything like an honest man? In a March 26 talk in Belgium to "European youth", the president fed his audience one falsehood, half-truth, blatant omission, or hypocrisy after another. If George W. Bush had made some of these statements, Obama supporters would not hesitate to shake their head, roll their eyes, or smirk. Here's a sample:
"In defending its actions, Russian leaders have further claimed Kosovo as a precedent an example they say of the West interfering in the affairs of a smaller country, just as they're doing now. But NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years."
Most people who follow such things are convinced that the 1999 US/NATO bombing of the Serbian province of Kosovo took place only after the Serbian-forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this "ethnic cleansing". In actuality, the systematic deportations of large numbers of people did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a reaction to it, born of Serbia's extreme anger and powerlessness over the bombing. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, 1999, and the few days following. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

… with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would now vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation. [emphasis added]

On March 27, we find the first reference to a "forced march" or anything of that nature.
But the propaganda version is already set in marble.
"And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized, not outside the boundaries of international law, but in careful cooperation with the United Nations and with Kosovo's neighbors. None of that even came close to happening in Crimea."
None of that even came close to happening in Kosovo either. The story is false. The referendum the president speaks of never happened. Did the mainstream media pick up on this or on the previous example? If any reader comes across such I'd appreciate being informed.
Crimea, by the way, did have a referendum. A real one.
"Workers and engineers gave life to the Marshall Plan … As the Iron Curtain fell here in Europe, the iron fist of apartheid was unclenched, and Nelson Mandela emerged upright, proud, from prison to lead a multiracial democracy. Latin American nations rejected dictatorship and built new democracies … "
The president might have mentioned that the main beneficiary of the Marshall Plan was US corporations , that the United States played an indispensable role in Mandela being caught and imprisoned, and that virtually all the Latin American dictatorships owed their very existence to Washington. Instead, the European youth were fed the same party line that their parents were fed, as were all Americans.
"Yes, we believe in democracy with elections that are free and fair."
In this talk, the main purpose of which was to lambaste the Russians for their actions concerning Ukraine, there was no mention that the government overthrown in that country with the clear support of the United States had been democratically elected.
"Moreover, Russia has pointed to America's decision to go into Iraq as an example of Western hypocrisy. … But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim or annex Iraq's territory. We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state that could make decisions about its own future."
The US did not get UN Security Council approval for its invasion, the only approval that could legitimize the action. It occupied Iraq from one end of the country to the other for 8 years, forcing the government to privatize the oil industry and accept multinational largely U.S.-based, oil companies' ownership. This endeavor was less than successful because of the violence unleashed by the invasion. The US military finally was forced to leave because the Iraqi government refused to give immunity to American soldiers for their many crimes.
Here is a brief summary of what Barack Obama is attempting to present as America's moral superiority to the Russians:
The modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state … the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly … the people of that unhappy land lost everything their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again. … "It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003," reported the Washington Post. (May 5, 2007)
How can all these mistakes, such arrogance, hypocrisy and absurdity find their way into a single international speech by the president of the United States? Is the White House budget not sufficient to hire a decent fact checker? Someone with an intellect and a social conscience? Or does the desire to score propaganda points trump everything else? Is this another symptom of the Banana-Republicization of America?

Long live the Cold War

In 1933 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union after some 15 years of severed relations following the Bolshevik Revolution. On a day in December of that year, a train was passing through Poland carrying the first American diplomats dispatched to Moscow. Amongst their number was a 29 year-old Foreign Service Officer, later to become famous as a diplomat and scholar, George Kennan. Though he was already deemed a government expert on Russia, the train provided Kennan's first actual exposure to the Soviet Union. As he listened to his group's escort, Russian Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, reminisce about growing up in a village the train was passing close by, and his dreams of becoming a librarian, the Princeton-educated Kennan was astonished: "We suddenly realized, or at least I did, that these people we were dealing with were human beings like ourselves, that they had been born somewhere, that they had their childhood ambitions as we had. It seemed for a brief moment we could break through and embrace these people."
It hasn't happened yet.
One would think that the absence in Russia of communism, of socialism, of the basic threat or challenge to the capitalist system, would be sufficient to write finis to the 70-year Cold War mentality. But the United States is virtually as hostile to 21st-century Russia as it was to 20th-century Soviet Union, surrounding Moscow with military bases, missile sites, and NATO members. Why should that be? Ideology is no longer a factor. But power remains one, specifically America's perpetual lust for world hegemony. Russia is the only nation that (a) is a military powerhouse, and (b) doesn't believe that the United States has a god-given-American-exceptionalism right to rule the world, and says so. By these criteria, China might qualify as a poor second. But there are no others.
Washington pretends that it doesn't understand why Moscow should be upset by Western military encroachment, but it has no such problem when roles are reversed. Secretary of State John Kerry recently stated that Russian troops poised near eastern Ukraine are "creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine" and raising questions about Russia's next moves and its commitment to diplomacy.
NATO ever in need of finding a raison d'être has now issued a declaration of [cold] war, which reads in part:

"NATO foreign ministers on Tuesday [April 1, 2014] reaffirmed their commitment to enhance the Alliance's collective defence, agreed to further support Ukraine and to suspend NATO's practical cooperation with Russia. NATO's greatest responsibility is to protect and defend our territory and our people. And make no mistake, this is what we will do,' NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. … Ministers directed Allied military authorities to develop additional measures to strengthen collective defence and deterrence against any threat of aggression against the Alliance, Mr. Fogh Rasmussen said. We will make sure we have updated military plans, enhanced exercises and appropriate deployments,' he said. NATO has already reinforced its presence on the eastern border of the Alliance, including surveillance patrols over Poland and Romania and increased numbers of fighter aircraft allocated to the NATO air policing mission in the Baltic States. … NATO Foreign Ministers also agreed to suspend all of NATO's practical cooperation with Russia."

Does anyone recall what NATO said in 2003 when the United States bombed and invaded Iraq with "shock and awe", compared to the Russians now not firing a single known shot at anyone? And neither Russia nor Ukraine is even a member of NATO. Does NATO have a word to say about the right-wing coup in Ukraine, openly supported by the United States, overthrowing the elected government? Did the hypocrisy get any worse during the Cold War? Imagine that NATO had not been created in 1949. Imagine that it has never existed. What reason could one give today for its creation? Other than to provide a multi-national cover for Washington's interventions.
One of the main differences between now and the Cold War period is that Americans at home are (not yet) persecuted or prosecuted for supporting Russia or things Russian.
But don't worry, folks, there won't be a big US-Russian war. For the same reason there wasn't one during the Cold War. The United States doesn't pick on any country which can defend itself.


1] William Blum, America's Deadliest Export Democracy: The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, p.22-5
2] Walter Isaacson & Evan Thomas, The Wise Men (1986), p.158
3] Washington Post, March 31, 2014
"4] NATO takes measures to reinforce collective defence, agrees on support for Ukraine", NATO website, April 1, 2014

[Lauren Johnson]

Here is an update from The Saker on today's events:

Okay, the picture of what is going on is getting clearer. First, besides Donetsk, Kharkov and Lugansk there were also heavy clashes in Nikolaev. Second, the tactic of the authorities is now becoming clearer:

1) First, cordon off the rebellious city (done in all four cities mentioned above).
2) Second, cordon off as best can be the city center (also done in all four).
3) Third, send in loyal cops from other cities.
4) Try to negotiate by sending in representatives.
5) Scare people off by announcing an "anti-terrorist" operation.
6) Threatening to introduce martial law.
7) Kidnap locally elected officials.
8) Fire most of the local police (officially about 30% will be fired).
9 ) Bring in special punitive/terror detachments (including Right Sector and, reportedly, foreign mercenaries, possibly ex-Blackwater types).
10) Cut off electricity and supplies.

So far, this has apparently worked successfully in Nikolaev and Kharkov were forces favorable to the new revolutionary regime in Kiev seem to be in control. Luganks seem to be waiting for an assault tonight, as does Donetsk.

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What is particularly worrisome to me is that all the footage I have seen appears to be showing only truly unarmed and, frankly, poorly organized civilians. The barricades they have erected are a big fat joke and the APCs of the pro-regime forces will waltz through them.

Also, nowhere do I see any organized local forces (cops, military, SBU, DAI, etc.) trying to lead the preparations to defend their cities. At best, they are only remaining neutral and refusing to crack-down on the local population.

To make things worse, I have seen no footage of weapons other than bats. No firearms at all, nevermind something more useful like 30mm guns or ant-tank weapons. Worst of all, I see absolutely no radios as everybody seems to rely on cellphone which the regime can disconnect at any time.

Finally, nobody seems to be in charge - there is no one leader, no real resistance HQ, no coordination and therefore probably no reconnaissance or intelligence components.

In other words, this all looks very bad, at least from the footage I have seen.

The one thing the locals seem to have is bigger numbers and a lot of very determination, but that will not be enough against a well-coordinated attack lead by well-armed thugs and APCs.

The contrast between these Russian-speakers and the neo-Nazis on the Maidan is striking. The latter did have a clear chain of commands (they were organized in groups of 10s then 100s), lots of radios, firearms and the support of well-trained organizers. And all they faced were pretty well-trained (but not nearly "Spetsnaz" level, not by a huge margin) riot cops with nothing but batons and flashbang and teargas grenades.

I hope that the Russian speakers get organized fast, really really fast.

Stay tuned,

The Saker

UPDATE: The Saker agrees with one of his commenters that Russia has nothing to gain from turmoil Eastern Ukraine:

First, I completely agree with A.B.'s comment who said that Russia does not want the Ukraine to rise up. The three reasons he gives are, I believe, spot on. However, I do believe that there are scenarios in which Russia will have to intervene, such as a bloody repression by the neo-Nazis against the Russian speakers.

The problem is that the more the revolutionary regime in Kiev and its western patrons (USA, US, EU) push for the maximalist solution (no federation, one language, no referendum, full scale repression) the more the eastern Ukraine will try to get out of Banderastan.

Furthermore, I would argue that the Russian-speaking population in the east of the Ukraine really has zero hopes of getting some kind of more or less civilized and reasonable negotiated agreement with the freaks in power in Kiev. Therefore, while Russia does not need the eastern Ukraine, the Russian speakers in the eastern Ukraine have little or no hope except to have a Russian intervention.

Since the game so far has been to maneuver Russia into doing things she would rather not do, e.g. annex the Crimea, then my guess is that we should expect the continuation of this game.

[Lauren Johnson]

from The Beeb There are several news feed videos at the website.

Nato has warned Russia that further intervention in Ukraine would be a "historic mistake" with grave consequences.
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Moscow must pull back troops it has massed on the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine has regained control of one of the government buildings occupied by pro-Russian activists in the east of the country, in the city of Kharkiv.
However, armed militants are refusing to withdraw in another city, Luhansk.
Moscow has said that using force to end the protests could lead to civil war.
Kiev says the unrest in the east is being fomented by Russia following its annexation of the Crimean peninsula.

Steve Rosenberg reports from the barricades surrounding Donetsk city hall

Russia took control in Crimea - where Russian-speakers are in a majority - after a disputed referendum, which sparked Western sanctions.
In other developments

• The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet senior officials on Wednesday to discuss economic ties with Ukraine - including energy supplies
  
• The International Monetary Fund said Russian growth this year was likely to be "subdued" partly because of tensions with Ukraine and warned of further damage if sanctions were intensified
  

'Historic mistake' "I urge Russia to step back and not escalate the situation in east Ukraine," Mr Rasmussen said in Paris where he was attending a seminar on Nato reforms.
Pro-Russian activists erected a barricade outside the security service building in Luhansk
Activists with metal bars guarded the outside of the building
Ukrainian police sealed off the regional government building in Kharkiv
Barricades and razor wire surround the government building in Donetsk
Manning the barricades in Donetsk proved tiring for some activists

He called on Russia to "pull back the tens of thousands of troops" it had massed on Ukraine's borders and "engage in a genuine dialogue with the Ukrainian authorities".
Meanwhile, the European Commission is setting up a special "Support Group for Ukraine" to co-ordinate assistance, an EU diplomatic source told BBC News.
The group will consist of several dozen people and its work could be extended to cover fellow ex-Soviet states Georgia and Moldova, the source added.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, addressing a US Senate panel, said Russian special forces and agents had been "the catalyst behind the chaos of the last 24 hours".
Recent events, he said, "could potentially be a contrived pretext for military intervention just as we saw in Crimea".


A senior Russian parliamentarian, Senator Viktor Ozerov, stressed that President Putin could theoretically send troops anywhere in Ukraine under the powers given to him by parliament that allowed him to move forces into Crimea.
Eastern tension Hundreds of pro-Russia demonstrators seized government buildings in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk on Sunday night, barricading themselves inside and raising Russian flags, with calls for Moscow to send in "peacekeepers".
On Tuesday, the Ukrainian authorities said they had retaken control of the building in Kharkiv, detaining some 70 people in a bloodless operation.
But in Luhansk, officials accused "radicals" occupying the state security building of placing explosives and holding about 60 people against their will.
Activists in the building denied having explosives or hostages but said they had seized an armoury full of automatic rifles.

A video was released purporting to carry a statement by the gunmen, delivered by a masked man surrounded by three other masked men armed with Kalashnikovs.
He insisted they were all Ukrainian citizens, from Luhansk or the surrounding region, including veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Their sole demand, he said, was to carry out a referendum on the region's status within Ukraine. In the event of the building being stormed, he said: "Welcome to Hell."
In the city of Donetsk, protesters remained inside the regional authority building, calling for a referendum on secession from Ukraine.

Russia is refusing to recognise the new authorities in Kiev who took power after pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in February.
Mr Yanukovych fled Kiev for Russia after months of street protests triggered by his refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU in favour of closer ties with Russia.
More than 100 people died in the ensuing unrest.
On Tuesday, a brawl erupted inside the Ukrainian parliament in Kiev after a Communist leader accused nationalists of playing into the hands of Russia by adopting extreme tactics early in the crisis.

[Lauren Johnson]

By Steve Weissman, Reader Supported News

If the US State Department's Victoria Nuland had not said "Fuck the EU," few outsiders at the time would have heard of Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, the man on the other end of her famously bugged telephone call. But now Washington's man in Kiev is gaining fame as the face of the CIA-style "destabilization campaign" that brought down Ukraine's monumentally corrupt but legitimately elected President Viktor Yanukovych. "Geoffrey Pyatt is one of these State Department high officials who does what he's told and fancies himself as a kind of a CIA operator," laughs Ray McGovern, who worked for 27 years as an intelligence analyst for the agency. "It used to be the CIA doing these things," he tells Democracy Now. "I know that for a fact." Now it's the State Department, with its coat-and-tie diplomats, twitter and facebook accounts, and a trick bag of goodies to build support for American policy.

A retired apparatchik, the now repentant McGovern was debating Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a self-described left-winger and the author of two recent essays in The New York Review of Books "The Haze of Propaganda" and "Fascism, Russia, and Ukraine." Both men speak Russian, but they come from different planets.

On Planet McGovern or my personal take on it realpolitik rules. The State Department controls the prime funding sources for non-military intervention, including the controversial National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which Washington created to fund covert and clandestine action after Ramparts magazine and others exposed how the CIA channeled money through private foundations, including the Ford Foundation. State also controls the far-better-funded Agency for International Development (USAID), along with a growing network of front groups, cut-outs, and private contractors. State coordinates with like-minded governments and their parallel institutions, mostly in Canada and Western Europe. State's "democracy bureaucracy" oversees nominally private but largely government funded groups like Freedom House. And through Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, State had Geoff Pyatt coordinate the coup in Kiev.

The CIA, NSA, and Pentagon likely provided their specialized services, while some of the private contractors exhibited shadowy skill sets. But if McGovern knows the score, as he should, diplomats ran the campaign to destabilize Ukraine and did the hands-on dirty work.

Harder for some people to grasp, Ambassador Pyatt and his team did not create the foreign policy, which was and is only minimally about overthrowing Ukraine's duly elected government to "promote democracy." Ever since Bill Clinton sat in the Oval Office, Washington and its European allies have worked openly and covertly to extend NATO to the Russian border and Black Sea Fleet, provoking a badly wounded Russian bear. They have also worked to bring Ukraine and its Eastern European neighbors into the neoliberal economy of the West, isolating the Russians rather than trying to bring them into the fold. Except for sporadic resets, anti-Russian has become the new anti-Soviet, and "strategic containment" has been the wonky word for encircling Russia with our military and economic power.

Nor did neoconservatives create the policy, no matter how many progressive pundits blame them for it. NED provides cushy jobs for old social democrats born again as neocons. Pyatt's boss, Victoria Nuland, is the wife and fellow-traveler of historian Robert Kagan, one of the movement's leading lights. And neocons are currently beating the war drums against Russia, as much to scupper any agreements on Syria and Iran as to encourage more Pentagon contracts for their friends and financial backers. But, encircling Russia has never been just a neocon thing. The policy has bi-partisan and trans-Atlantic support, including the backing of America's old-school nationalists, Cold War liberals, Hillary hawks, and much of Obama's national security team.

No matter that the policy doesn't pass the giggle test. Extending NATO and Western economic institutions into all of a very divided Ukraine had less chance of working than did hopes in 2008 of bringing Georgia into NATO, which could have given the gung-ho Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvilli the treaty right to drag us all into World War III. To me, that seemed like giving a ten-year-old the keys to the family Humvee.

Western provocations in Ukraine proved more immediately counterproductive. They gave Vladimir Putin the perfect opportunity for a pro-Russian putsch in Crimea, which he had certainly thought of before, but never as a priority. The provocations encouraged him to stand up as a true Russian nationalist, which will only make him more difficult to deal with. And they gave him cover to get away with that age-old tool of tyrants, a quickie plebiscite with an unnecessary return to Joseph Stalin's old dictum once popular in my homestate of Florida: "It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes."

Small "d" democrats should shun such pretense. Still, most journalists and pollsters on the scene report that with the exception of the historic Tatar community the majority of Crimeans want to join the Russian Federation, where they seem likely to stay.

Tensions will also grow as the US-picked interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk our man "Yats" joins with the IMF to impose a Greek, Spanish, or Italian style austerity. Hard-pressed Ukranians will undoubtedly fight back, especially in the predominantly Russian-speaking east. According to Der Spiegel, a whopping three quarters of the people there do not support the coup or government. What a tar patch! A domestic conflict that could split Ukraine in two will inevitably become even further embroiled in the geo-strategic struggle between Russia and the West.

On Planet Snyder, as in most Western media, these realistic considerations make absolutely no difference. Ideology rules, masked as idealism. Fine sounding abstractions fill the air. Ukrainians are making their own history. They are acting with great courage. They are seeking the rule of law and their rightful place in "European Civilization." They are defending "sovereignty" and "territorial integrity." Russians remain vicious. Big bad Vlad is the new Hitler. He is seeking his own Eurasian empire (as opposed to NATO's), which could soon include parts of Moldova, Belarus, and Kazakhstan that the West needs like a "lok in kop," a hole in the head. And those watching in the West must abandon what Snyder calls "our slightly self-obsessed notions of how we control or don't control everything."

"It was a classic popular revolution," proclaims the professor. An undeniably popular uprising against "an unmistakably reactionary regime."

Writing in The Nation, Professor Stephen Cohen shreds Snyder's argument. My concern is more pointed. Popular uprisings deserve our support or opposition depending on who comes to control them and to what ends. As McGovern puts it, "The question is: Who took them over? Who spurred them? Who provoked them for their own particular strategic interests?"

Detailed evidence provides the answers. For all the courage of the Ukrainian minority who took to the barricades, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt and his team spurred the protests in Kiev and exercised extensive though never complete control over them. Tactically, Pyatt and his fellow diplomats showed unexpected skill. Strategically, they should have stayed home.

Revolution on Demand
Arriving in the Ukrainian capital on August 3, Pyatt almost immediately authorized a grant for an online television outlet called Hromadske.TV, which would prove essential to building the Euromaidan street demonstrations against Yanukovych. The grant was only $43,737, with an additional $4,796 by November 13. Just enough to buy the modest equipment the project needed.

Many of Hromadske's journalists had worked in the past with American benefactors. Editor-in-chief Roman Skrypin was a frequent contributor to Washington's Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and the US-funded Ukrayinska Pravda. In 2004, he had helped create Channel 5 television, which played a major role in the Orange Revolution that the US and its European allies masterminded in 2004.

Skrypin had already gotten $10,560 from George Soros's International Renaissance Foundation (IRF), which came as a recommendation to Pyatt. Sometime between December and the following April, IRF would give Hromadske another $19,183.

Hromadske's biggest funding in that period came from the Embassy of the Netherlands, which gave a generous $95,168. As a departing US envoy to the Hague said in a secret cable that Wikileaks later made public, "Dutch pragmatism and our similar world-views make the Netherlands fertile ground for initiatives others in Europe might be reluctant, at least initially, to embrace."

For Pyatt, the payoff came on November 21, when President Yanukovych pulled back from an Association Agreement with the European Union. Within hours Hromadske.TV went online and one of its journalists set the spark that brought Yanukovych down.

"Enter a lonely, courageous Ukrainian rebel, a leading investigative journalist," writes Snyder. "A dark-skinned journalist who gets racially profiled by the regime. And a Muslim. And an Afghan. This is Mustafa Nayem, the man who started the revolution. Using social media, he called students and other young people to rally on the main square of Kiev in support of a European choice for Ukraine."

All credit to Nayem for his undeniable courage. But bad, bad history. Snyder fails to mention that Pyatt, Soros, and the Dutch had put Web TV at the uprising's disposal. Without their joint funding of Hromadske and its streaming video from the Euromaidan, the revolution might never have been televised and Yanukovych might have crushed the entire effort before it gained traction.

For better or for worse, popular uprisings have changed history long before radio, television, or the Internet. The new technologies only speed up the game. Pyatt and his team understood that and masterfully turned soft power and the exercise of free speech, press, and assembly into a televised revolution on demand, complete with an instant overdub in English. Soros then funded a Ukrainian Crisis Media Center "to inform the international community about events in Ukraine," and I'm still trying to track down who paid for Euromaidan PR, the website of the Official Public Relations Secretariat for the Headquarters of the National Resistance.

Orange Revolution II
Preparing the uprising started long before Pyatt arrived in country, and much of it revolved around a talented and multi-lingual Ukrainian named Oleh Rybachuk, who had played several key roles in the Orange Revolution of 2004. Strangely enough, he recently drew attention when Pando, Silicon Valley's online news site, attacked journalist Glenn Greenwald and the investor behind his new First Look Media, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Trading brickbats over journalistic integrity, both Pando and Greenwald missed the gist of the bigger story.

In 2004, Rybachuk headed the staff and political campaign of the US-backed presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko. As the generally pro-American Kyiv Post tells it, the shadowy Rybachuk was Yushchenko's "alter ego" and "the conduit" to the State Security Service, which "was supplying the Yushchenko team with useful information about Yanukovych's actions." Rybachuk went on to serve under Yushchenko and Tymoshenko as deputy prime minister in charge of integrating Ukraine into NATO and the European Union. In line with US policy, he also pushed for privatization of Ukraine's remaining state-owned industries.

Despite US and Western European backing, the government proved disastrous, enabling its old rival Yanukovych to win the presidency in the 2010 election. Western monitors generally found the election "free and fair," but no matter. The Americans had already sowed the seeds either to win Yanukovych over or to throw him over, whichever way Washington and its allies decided to go. As early as October 2008, USAID funded one of its many private contractors a non-profit called Pact Inc. to run the "Ukraine National Initiatives to Enhance Reforms" (UNITER). Active in Africa and Central Asia, Pact had worked in Ukraine since 2005 in campaigns against HIV/AIDS. Its new five-year project traded in bureaucratic buzzwords like civil society, democracy, and good governance, which on the public record State and USAID were spending many millions of dollars a year to promote in Ukraine.

Pact would build the base for either reform or regime change. Only this time the spin-masters would frame their efforts as independent of Ukraine's politicians and political parties, whom most Ukrainians correctly saw as hopelessly corrupt. The new hope was "to partner with civil society, young people, and international organizations" as Canada's prestigious Financial Post later paraphrased no less an authority than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

By 2009, Pact had rebranded the pliable Rybachuk as "a civil society activist," complete with his own NGO, Center UA (variously spelled Centre UA, Tsenter UA, or United Actions Center UA). Pact then helped Rybachuk use his new base to bring together as many as 60 local and national NGOs with activists and leaders of public opinion. This was New Citizen, a non-political "civic platform" that became a major political player. At the time, Pact and Soros's IRF were working in a joint effort to provide small grants to some 80 local NGOs. This continued the following year with additional money from the East Europe Foundation.

"Ukraine has been united by common disillusionment," Rybachuk explained to the Kyiv Post. "The country needs a more responsible citizenry to make the political elite more responsible."

Who could argue? Certainly not Rybachuk's Western backers. New Citizen consistently framed its democracy agenda as part of a greater integration within NATO, Europe, and the trans-Atlantic world. Rybachuk himself would head the "Civil Expert Council" associated with the EU-Ukraine Cooperation Committee.

Continuing to advise on "strategic planning," in May 2010 Pact encouraged New Citizen "to take Access to Public Information as the focus of their work for the next year." The coalition campaigned for a new Freedom of Information law, which passed. Pact then showed New Citizen how to use the law to boost itself as a major player, organize and train new activists, and work more closely with compliant journalists, all of which would seriously weaken the just-elected Yanukovych government. Part of their destabilization included otherwise praiseworthy efforts, none more so than the movement to "Stop Censorship."

"Censorship is re-emerging, and the opposition is not getting covered as much," Rybachuk told the Kyiv Post in May 2010. He was now "a media expert" as well as civic activist. "There are some similarities to what Vladimir Putin did in Russia when he started his seizure of power by first muzzling criticism in the media."

One of Rybachuk's main allies in "Stop Censorship" was the journalist Sergii Leshchenko, who had long worked with Mustafa Nayem at Ukrayinska Pravda, the online newsletter that NED publicly took credit for supporting. NED gave Leshchenko its Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellowship, while New Citizen spread his brilliant exposés of Yanukovych's shameless corruption, focusing primarily on his luxurious mansion at Mezhyhirya. Rybachuk's Center UA also produced a documentary film featuring Mustafa Nayem daring to ask Yanukovych about Mezhyhirya at a press conference. Nothing turned Ukrainians or the world more against Yanukovych than the concerted exposure of his massive corruption. This was realpolitik at its most sophisticated, since the US and its allies funded few, if any, similar campaigns against the many Ukrainian kleptocrats who favored Western policy.

Under the watchful eye of Pact, Rybachuk's New Citizen developed a project to identify the promises of Ukrainian politicians and monitor their implementation. They called it a "Powermeter" (Vladometer), an idea they took from the American website "Obamameter." Funding came from the US Embassy, through its Media Development Fund, which falls under the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Other money came from the Internews Network, which receives its funding from the State Department, USAID, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and a wide variety of other government agencies, international organizations, and private donors. Still other money came from Soros's IRF.

New Citizen and its constituent organizations then brought together 150 NGOs from over 35 cities, along with activists and journalists like Sergii Leschchenko, to create yet another campaign in 2011. They called it the Chesno Movement, from the Ukrainian word for "honestly. " Its logo was a garlic bulb, a traditional disinfectant widely believed to ward off evil. The movement's purpose was "to monitor the political integrity of the parliamentary candidates running in the 2012 elections."

This was a mammoth project with the most sophisticated sociology. As expected, the Chesno monitoring found few honest politicians. But it succeeded in raising the issue of public integrity to new heights in a country of traditionally low standards and in building political interest in new areas of the country and among the young. The legislative elections themselves proved grim, with President Yanukovych's Party of the Regions taking control of parliament.

What then of all New Citizen's activism, monitoring, campaigning, movement-building, and support for selective investigative journalism? Where was all this heading? Rybachuk answered the question in May 2012, several months before the election.

"The Orange Revolution was a miracle, a massive peaceful protest that worked," he told Canada's Financial Post. "We want to do that again and we think we will."

He Who Pays the Piper
Rybachuk had good reason for his revolutionary optimism. His Western donors were upping the ante. Pact Inc. commissioned a financial audit for the Chesno campaign, covering from October 2011 to December 2012. It showed that donors gave Rybachuk's Center UA and six associated groups some $800,000 for Chesno. PACT, which regularly got its money from USAID, contributed the lion's share, $632,813, though part of that came from the Omidyar Network, a foundation set up by Pierre and his wife.

In a March 12th press release, the network tried to explain its contributions to Rybachuk's Center UA, New Citizen, and the Chesno Movement. These included a two-year grant of $335,000, announced in September 2011, and another $769,000, committed in July 2013. Some of the money went to expand Rybachuk's technology platforms, as New Citizen explained.

"New Citizen provides Ukrainians with an online platform to cooperatively advocate for social change. On the site, users can collectively lobby state officials to release of public information, participate in video-advocacy campaigns, and contribute to a diverse set of community initiatives," they wrote. "As a hub of social justice advocates in Kiev, the organization hopes to define the nation's 'New Citizen' through digital media."

Omidyar's recent press release listed several other donors, including the USAID-funded Pact, the Swiss and British embassies, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Soros's International Renaissance Foundation. The Chesno Movement also received money from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

Figures for fiscal year 2013 are more difficult to track. Washington's foreignassistance.gov shows USAID paying PACT in Ukraine over $7 million under the general category of "Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance." The data does not indicate what part of this went to Center UA, New Citizen, or any of their projects.

What should we make of all this funding? Some of it looks like private philanthropy, as back in the days when the CIA channeled its money through foundations. Was the Soros and Omidyar money truly private or government money camouflaged to look private? That has to remain an open question. But, with Rybachuk's campaigns, it makes little difference. USAID and other government funding dominated. The US Embassy, through Pact, coordinated most of what Rybachuk did. And, to my knowledge, neither Soros nor Omidyar ever broke from the State Department's central direction.

Strategic Containment, OK?
When Ambassador Pyatt arrived in Kiev, he inherited Pact and its Rybachuk network well on its way to a second Orange Revolution, but only if they thought they needed it to win integration into Europe. That was always the big issue for the State Department and the Ukrainian movement they built, far more telling than censorship, corruption, democracy, or good governance. As late as November 14, Rybachuk saw no reason to take to the streets, fully expecting Yanukovych to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union at a November 28-29 summit in Vilnius. On November 21, Yanukovych pulled back, which Rybachuk saw as a betrayal of government promises. That is what "brought people to the streets," he told Kyiv Post. "It needed to come to this.

Euromaidan would become a "massive watchdog," putting pressure on the government to sign the association and free trade deal with the EU, he said. "We'll be watching what the Ukrainian government does, and making sure it does what it has to do."

That is where the State Department's second Orange Revolution started. In my next article, I'll show where it went from there and why.

---

A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."

[Magda Hassan]

Great article Lauren. I'll be looking forward to Steven's follow up.

[Magda Hassan]

Broadcast on german television on the 10.4.2014 this investigative report presents evidence for their having been snipers from among the ranks of the opposition, shooting at their own people at Independence Square (Maidan) in Kiev.
With english subtitles.

[Lauren Johnson]

The civil war escalates:

Graham Phillips is a British freelance journalist living in Ukraine. These are tweets by him during the last three hours. The last one just 15 minutes ago.

• Reports of 5 killed in shooting in the night here in #Sloviansk - working to confirm that now - http://rt.com/news/slavyansk-checkpoint-shooting-killed-640/ … #Ukraine #Russia
  
• En route to hospital here in #Sloviansk to confirm those reports of deaths in the night - http://rt.com/news/slavyansk-checkpoint-shooting-killed-640/ … #Ukraine #Russia
  
• Pretty extreme scenes out here, reports of up to 5 killed outside #Sloviansk. pic.twitter.com/XK4egOpj1m
  
• Bullets littering the ground as anti-Kiev activists say they were victims of a 'military style attack'. #Sloviansk pic.twitter.com/MLSCEu5xa3
  
• Mood here, some 6km outside #Sloviansk - shock, sadness. Working to find identities of those killed. pic.twitter.com/Yw0hmockuM
  
• I'm here reporting with @RT_com - latest report from ground there soon, will also put some video up to my YouTube channel asap. #Sloviansk
  
• New video - here's by the scene of shooting out at #Sloviansk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzGDcRldoc … #Ukraine #Russia
  
• Number plates of 2 destroyed cars (reported convoy of 4 originally) displayed - Ukrainian. #Sloviansk pic.twitter.com/v0fEcDh1hT
  
• Now 'self-defence' with guns here, but sitting as seem to be in state of shock at this 'Easter massacre' as one says. pic.twitter.com/hXq9gRTYeg
  
• If these death reports are confirmed, this marks the bloodiest escalation of violence yet here in the east of Ukraine pic.twitter.com/9ZkiQwEWj1
  
• Here filming for @RT_com holding bullets - they are all over the ground here, along with bloodstains. #Sloviansk pic.twitter.com/bhaUDaRo7K
  
• New video - a walk right through scene of #Sloviansk shooting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0RnVhw2shI … #Ukraine #Russia
  
• 1/2 Reports from ground here in #Sloviansk - 4 cars approached at 1am, opened fire on unarmed anti-Kiev activists. 3 killed immediately.
  
• 2/2 Armed anti-Kiev activists quickly to scene returned fire, destroyed 2 vehicles, reports of 2 deaths on other side, they say Pravy Sektor
  
• This was filmed to air on @RT_com , member of self-defence holds up bullets and gives interview as to what happened. pic.twitter.com/6GdqJapCB9
  
• Member of 'self-defence' holds up spent bullet casing in #Sloviansk pic.twitter.com/cJZdc0C3V9
  
• New video - a close-up look at the cars destroyed when fire was returned by anti-Kiev activists here in #Sloviansk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgAHiW5KGSk …
  

This is very bad news. The OSCE had reported that Pravyi Sektor paramilitaries were moving to the eastern Donbass region. It looks like they have arrived.

It seems the U.S. neocons found out that they can not have the Ukraine and are responding like they always do. "Can't have it? Will destroy it!"

This is likely the beginning of an intense civil war in Ukraine. One that is sure to draw external powers into it. Let us not forget who started this. The EU made an "offer" to Yanukovich which could not accept without destroying the Ukrainian economy, especially the eastern industries. When he rejected the "offer" a "color revolution" was instigated in Kiev and the democratically elected Yanukovich was removed by force. The new coup government, a mixture of oligarchs and western Ukrainian fascists, wants to suppress the Russian affine eastern Ukraine. The east responded by calling for greater regional autonomy.

It seems it will now have to fight for such.

Easter is the highest holiday in the Orthodox believe prevalent in eastern Ukraine. Today's killings will therefore reverb deeply in the soul of the people living there. Some people will surely feel the need to "actively" respond to this incident which again guarantees even further escalation. Do not expect any "western" politician to step back from this and to call on the coup government in Kiev to calm things down. We will rather likely see more bellicosity towards Russia and the people it supports.

Posted by b on April 20, 2014 at 05:24 AM | Permalink

[Lauren Johnson]

by Thierry Meyssan

Lies have shorter and shorter legs. Two months after the change of regime in Kiev, the Polish press has disclosed the role of Donald Tusk's government in preparing the coup. The new revelations belie Western discourse and demonstrate that the current interim government of Oleksandr Tourtchynov was imposed by NATO in violation of international law.

he Polish left-wing weekly Nie (No) published a startling witness account of the training given to the most violent of the EuroMaidan [1] activists. According to this source, in September 2013, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski invited 86 members of the Right Sector (Sector Pravy), allegedly in the context of a university exchange program. In reality, the guests were not students, and many were over 40. Contrary to their official schedule, they did not go to the Warsaw University of Technology, but headed instead for the police training center in Legionowo, an hour's drive from the capital. There, they received four weeks of intensive training in crowd management, person recognition, combat tactics, command skills, behavior in crisis situations, protection against gases used by police, erecting barricades, and especially shooting, including the handling of sniper rifles.

Such training took place in September 2013, while the Maidan Square protests were allegedly triggered by a decree suspending preparations for the signing of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement, which was issued by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov on November 21, i.e. two months later.

The Polish weekly refers to photographs attesting to the training, which show the Ukrainians in Nazi uniforms alongside their Polish instructors in civilian clothing.

These revelations warrant a fresh look at the resolution adopted in early December 2013 by the Polish Parliament (Sejm), pledging its "total solidarity with Ukrainian citizens who, with strong determination, are showing the world their desire to achieve the full membership of their country in the European Union." Naturally, the MPs were not yet aware of their country's involvement in the training of the very individuals who were planning - and ultimately achieved - a violent takeover of power.

This scandal illustrates the role assigned by NATO to Poland in Ukraine, analogous to the one entrusted to Turkey in Syria. The government of pro-European liberal Donald Tusk is fully committed to playing its role. Foreign Affairs Minister Radosław Sikorski - a journalist and former political refugee in the United Kingdom - was the mastermind behind Poland's integration into NATO. As a member of the "Weimar Triangle", he was one of three EU representatives who brokered the 21 February 2014 agreement between President Viktor Yanukovych and the three main EuroMaidan leaders [2]. Needless to say, the Ukrainian president was unaware of the Polish representative's entanglement with the rioters. As for the Interior Minister and special services coordinator, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz (the great grand-son of novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, best known for Quo Vadis?), he co-founded the Office for State Protection (Urzd Ochrony Państwa), Poland's current intelligence agency. He also co-created and served as vice-president of the Centre for Eastern Studies (Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich), a national think-tank dealing with the situation in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, with particular emphasis on Ukraine and Turkey. It exerts a profound influence on the West's perception of current events, through its agreements with Carnegie Foundation [3].

During Yulia Tymoshenko's government (2007-2010), the current interim president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Tourtchynov, had served as intelligence chief and deputy prime minister. He liaised at the time with the Poles Donald Tusk (already Prime Minister), Radosław Sikorski (then Defense Minister) and Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz (director of the private intelligence firm ASBS Othago).

To overthrow the government of its neighbor state, Poland resorted to Nazi activists in the same way that Turkey uses Al-Qaeda to overthrow the Syrian government. Not only is it not surprising to see the current Polish authorities rely on the grand-children of the Nazis that the CIA tucked into the NATO Gladio network to fight against the Soviet Union, but we should also be reminded of the controversy which broke out in the 2005 Polish presidential election, when journalist and MP Jacek Kurski revealed that Józef Tusk, the grandfather of Donald Tusk, had intentionally enrolled in the Wehrmacht. After denying the facts, the Prime Minister finally admitted that his grandfather had indeed served in the Nazi army, but claimed he had been forcefully conscripted after the annexation of Danzig. A recollection that speaks volumes about how Washington selects its agents in Eastern Europe.

In summary, Poland trained a mob of thugs to overthrow the democratically-elected president of Ukraine and pretended he was subscribing to an appeasement agreement with him on 21 February 2014, while his rioters were in the process of seizing power.

Moreover, there is no doubt that the coup was sponsored by the United States, as evidenced by the telephone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt [4]. Similarly, it is clear that other NATO members, including Lithuania (in the past, Ukraine was dominated by the Polish-Lithuanian empire), and Israel in its capacity as a de facto member of its military command structure, took part in the coup [5]. This arrangement suggests that NATO now runs a new Gladio network in Eastern Europe [6]. In addition, following the coup, mercenaries working for Greystone Ltd., a subsidiary of Academi, were deployed in the country in coordination with the CIA [7].

These facts radically modify the perception that we may have had of the coup of 22 February 2014. They undermine the arguments provided supplied to the press by the U.S. Department of State (points 3 and 5 of the factsheet dated March 5) [8] and constitute an act of war under international law. Therefore, the arguments peddled by the West regarding the ensuing the events, including the accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the current uprisings in East and South Ukraine, are null and void.

Thierry Meyssan

[Magda Hassan]

Far-right rally turns into massive fight on Kiev's Maidan, shots heard (PHOTOS)

Published time: April 29, 2014 22:53 Get short URL

Pro-Kiev activists clash with ultra-nationalists activists in their attempt to stop them to march through the Independence Square in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)









A massive fight broke out on Kiev's landmark Independence Square (Maidan) on Tuesday night, with shots and explosives being heard, according to Ukrainian media. There are reports of injuries.
Eye witnesses described over 100 people, reportedly members of the far-right Social-National Assembly, marching with burning torches towards Maidan the epicenter of the massive uprising that removed former President Yanukovich from power. The marchers came to commemorate those killed during anti-government protests in December-February.

Unknown ultra-nationalists activists march towards the Independence Square to commemorate "Maidan heroes" in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)

Maidan self-defense units blocked the rally at the barricades across from the main post office, prompting a massive fight.



The far-right radicals reportedly used firecrackers, traumatic guns, and tear gas. Many of them carried bats and sticks. There are reports of injuries, according to Ukrainian media.

Unknown ultra-nationalists activists march towards the Independence Square to commemorate "Maidan heroes" in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)

One of the tents at Maidan caught fire, and the blazes were swiftly extinguished. Witnesses reported ambulances arriving at the scene.
Eventually, the self-defense units allowed the rally to pass through. The march then began to move towards Ukrainian Parliament, local television channels reported.

Pro-Kiev activists clash with unknown ulta-nationalists activists to stop their march through the Independence Square in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)

Nationalist sentiment has been prevalent in Ukraine throughout the ongoing crisis. On Sunday, hundreds took part in a march in the western city of Lvov to mark the anniversary of the formation of the 'Galician' Ukrainian SS division, which fought for the Nazis against the Soviet Union during World War II.

Pro-Kiev activists clash with ultra-nationalists activists in their attempt to stop them to march through the Independence Square in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)


Pro-Kiev activists clash with ultra-nationalists activists in their attempt to stop them to march through the Independence Square in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)


Pro-Kiev activists clash with ultra-nationalists activists in their attempt to stop them to march through the Independence Square in Kiev on April 29, 2014. (AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky)