US/NATO War on Russia

[David Guyatt]

An excellent article and analysis from Robert Parry. This is six months old and, therefore, apologies if already posted. Either way it provides great insight about the Ukraine plan of the Neocons.

What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis

March 2, 2014

Special Report: The Ukrainian crisis partly fomented by U.S. neocons including holdovers at the State Department has soured U.S-Russian relations and disrupted President Obama's secretive cooperation with Russian President Putin to resolve crises in the Mideast, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry
President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such as Iran and Syria. But Obama's timidity about publicly explaining this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his own administration.
The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine, contributing to the violent overthrow of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych and now to a military intervention by Russian troops in the Crimea, a region in southern Ukraine that historically was part of Russia.

President Barack Obama discusses the crisis in Ukraine for 90 minutes on March 1, 2014, with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (White House photo/Pete Souza)

Though I'm told the Ukraine crisis caught Obama and Putin by surprise, the neocon determination to drive a wedge between the two leaders has been apparent for months, especially after Putin brokered a deal to head off U.S. military strikes against Syria last summer and helped get Iran to negotiate concessions on its nuclear program, both moves upsetting the neocons who had favored heightened confrontations.
Putin also is reported to have verbally dressed down Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan over what Putin considered their provocative actions regarding the Syrian civil war. So, by disrupting neocon plans and offending Netanyahu and Bandar, the Russian president found himself squarely in the crosshairs of some very powerful people.
If not for Putin, the neocons along with Israel and Saudi Arabia had hoped that Obama would launch military strikes on Syria and Iran that could open the door to more "regime change" across the Middle East, a dream at the center of neocon geopolitical strategy since the 1990s. This neocon strategy took shape after the display of U.S. high-tech warfare against Iraq in 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union later that year. U.S. neocons began believing in a new paradigm of a uni-polar world where U.S. edicts were law.
The neocons felt this paradigm shift also meant that Israel would no longer need to put up with frustrating negotiations with the Palestinians. Rather than haggling over a two-state solution, U.S. neocons simply pressed for "regime change" in hostile Muslim countries that were assisting the Palestinians or Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran. The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table.
U.S. neocons working on Netanyahu's campaign team in 1996, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, even formalized their bold new plan, which they outlined in a strategy paper, called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The paper argued that only "regime change" in hostile Muslim countries could achieve the necessary "clean break" from the diplomatic standoffs that had followed inconclusive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
In 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but President Bill Clinton refused to go along. The situation changed, however, when President George W. Bush took office and after the 9/11 attacks. Suddenly, the neocons had a Commander in Chief who agreed with the need to eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein and a stunned and angry U.S. public could be easily persuaded. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War."]
So, Bush invaded Iraq, ousting Hussein but failing to subdue the country. The U.S. death toll of nearly 4,500 soldiers and the staggering costs, estimated to exceed $1 trillion, made the American people and even Bush unwilling to fulfill the full-scale neocon vision, which was expressed in one of their favorite jokes of 2003 about where to attack next, Iran or Syria, with the punch line: "Real men go to Tehran!"
Though hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney pushed the neocon/Israeli case for having the U.S. military bomb Iran's nuclear facilities with the hope that the attacks also might spark a "regime change" in Tehran Bush decided that he couldn't risk the move, especially after the U.S. intelligence community assessed in 2007 that Iran had stopped work on a bomb four years earlier.
[B]The Rise of Obama[/B]
[B]The neocons were dealt another setback in 2008 when Barack Obama defeated a neocon favorite, Sen. John McCain. But Obama then made one of the fateful decisions of his presidency, deciding to staff key foreign-policy positions with "a team of rivals," i.e. keeping Republican operative Robert Gates at the Defense Department and recruiting Hillary Clinton, a neocon-lite, to head the State Department.[/B]
[B]Obama also retained Bush's high command, most significantly the media-darling Gen. David Petraeus. That meant that Obama didn't take control over his own foreign policy.[/B]
[B]Gates and Petraeus were themselves deeply influenced by the neocons, particularly Frederick Kagan, who had been a major advocate for the 2007 "surge" escalation in Iraq, which was hailed by the U.S. mainstream media as a great "success" but never achieved its principal goal of a unified Iraq. At the cost of nearly 1,000 U.S. dead, it only bought time for an orderly withdrawal that spared Bush and the neocons the embarrassment of an obvious defeat.[/B]
[B]So, instead of a major personnel shakeup in the wake of the catastrophic Iraq War, Obama presided over what looked more like continuity with the Bush war policies, albeit with a firmer commitment to draw down troops in Iraq and eventually in Afghanistan.[/B]
[B]From the start, however, Obama was opposed by key elements of his own administration, especially at State and Defense, and by the still-influential neocons of Official Washington. According to various accounts, including Gates's new memoir Duty, Obama was maneuvered into supporting a troop "surge" in Afghanistan, as advocated by neocon Frederick Kagan and pushed by Gates, Petraeus and Clinton.[/B]
[B]Gates wrote that Kagan persuaded him to recommend the Afghan "surge" and that Obama grudgingly went along although Gates concluded that Obama didn't believe in the "mission" and wanted to reverse course more quickly than Gates, Petraeus and their side wanted.[/B]
[B]Faced with this resistance from his own bureaucracy, Obama began to rely on a small inner circle built around Vice President Joe Biden and a few White House advisers with the analytical support of some CIA officials, including CIA Director Leon Panetta.[/B]
[B]Obama also found a surprising ally in Putin after he regained the Russian presidency in 2012. A Putin adviser told me that the Russian president personally liked Obama and genuinely wanted to help him resolve dangerous disputes, especially crises with Iran and Syria.[/B]
[B]In other words, what evolved out of Obama's early "team of rivals" misjudgment was an extraordinary presidential foreign policy style, in which Obama developed and implemented much of his approach to the world outside the view of his secretaries of State and Defense (except when Panetta moved briefly to the Pentagon).[/B]
[B]Even after the eventual departures of Gates in 2011, Petraeus as CIA director after a sex scandal in late 2012, and Clinton in early 2013, Obama's peculiar approach didn't particularly change. I'm told that he has a distant relationship with Secretary of State John Kerry, who never joined Obama's inner foreign policy circle.[/B]
[B]Though Obama's taciturn protectiveness of his "real" foreign policy may be understandable given the continued neocon "tough-guy-ism" that dominates Official Washington, Obama's freelancing approach gave space to hawkish elements of his own administration.[/B]
[B]For instance, Secretary of State Kerry came close to announcing a U.S. war against Syria in a bellicose speech on Aug. 30, 2013, only to see Obama pull the rug out from under him as the President worked with Putin to defuse the crisis sparked by a disputed chemical weapons attack outside Damascus. [See Consortiumnews.com's "How War on Syria Lost Its Way."][/B]
[B]Similarly, Obama and Putin hammered out the structure for an interim deal with Iran on how to constrain its nuclear program. But when Kerry was sent to seal that agreement in Geneva, he instead inserted new demands from the French (who were carrying water for the Saudis) and nearly screwed it all up. After getting called on the carpet by the White House, Kerry returned to Geneva and finalized the arrangements.[See Consortiumnews.com's "A Saudi-Israel Defeat on Iran Deal."][/B]
[B][B]Unorthodox Foreign Policy[/B][/B]
[B][B]Obama's unorthodox foreign policy essentially working in tandem with the Russian president and sometimes at odds with his own foreign policy bureaucracy has forced Obama into faux outrage when he's faced with some perceived affront from Russia, such as its agreement to give temporary asylum to National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.[/B][/B]
[B][B]For the record, Obama had to express strong disapproval of Snowden's asylum, though in many ways Putin was doing Obama a favor by sparing Obama from having to prosecute Snowden with the attendant complications for U.S. national security and the damaging political repercussions from Obama's liberal base.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Putin's unforced errors also complicated the relationship, such as when he defended Russian hostility toward gays and cracked down on dissent before the Sochi Olympics. Putin became an easy target for U.S. commentators and comedians.[/B][/B]
[B][B]But Obama's hesitancy to explain the degree of his strategic cooperation with Putin has enabled Official Washington's still influential neocons, including holdovers within the State Department bureaucracy, to drive more substantive wedges between Obama and Putin. The neocons came to recognize that the Obama-Putin tandem had become a major impediment to their strategic vision.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Without doubt, the neocons' most dramatic and potentially most dangerous counter-move has been Ukraine, where they have lent their political and financial support to opposition forces who sought to break Ukraine away from its Russian neighbor.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Though this crisis also stems from the historical division of Ukraine between its more European-oriented west and the Russian-ethnic east and south neocon operatives, with financing from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy and other U.S. sources, played key roles in destabilizing and overthrowing the democratically elected president.[/B][/B]
[B][B]NED, a $100 million-a-year agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against targeted states, lists 65 projects that it supports financially inside Ukraine, including training activists, supporting "journalists" and promoting business groups, effectively creating a full-service structure primed and ready to destabilize a government in the name of promoting "democracy." [See Consortiumnews.com's "A Shadow US Foreign Policy."][/B][/B]
[B][B]State Department neocons also put their shoulders into shoving Ukraine away from Russia. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, the wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan and the sister-in-law of the Gates-Petraeus adviser Frederick Kagan, advocated strenuously for Ukraine's reorientation toward Europe.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Last December, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that, to help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have invested more than $5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into the future that it deserves," by which she meant into the West's orbit and away from Russia's.[/B][/B]
[B][B]But President Yanukovych rejected a European Union plan that would have imposed harsh austerity on the already impoverished Ukraine. He accepted a more generous $15 billion loan from Russia, which also has propped up Ukraine's economy with discounted natural gas. Yanukovych's decision sparked anti-Russian street protests in Kiev, located in the country's western and more pro-European region.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Nuland was soon at work planning for "regime change," encouraging disruptive street protests by personally passing out cookies to the anti-government demonstrators. She didn't seem to notice or mind that the protesters in Kiev's Maidan square had hoisted a large banner honoring Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the German Nazis during World War II and whose militias participated in atrocities against Jews and Poles.[/B][/B]
[B][B]By late January, Nuland was discussing with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who should be allowed in the new government.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"Yats is the guy," Nuland said in a phone call to Pyatt that was intercepted and posted online. "He's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the guy you know." By "Yats," Nuland was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who had served as head of the central bank, foreign minister and economic minister and who was committed to harsh austerity.[/B][/B]
[B][B]As Assistant Secretary Nuland and Sen. McCain cheered the demonstrators on, the street protests turned violent. Police clashed with neo-Nazi bands, the ideological descendants of Bandera's anti-Russian Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi SS during World War II.[/B][/B]
[B][B]With the crisis escalating and scores of people killed in the street fighting, Yanukovych agreed to a E.U.-brokered deal that called for moving up scheduled elections and having the police stand down. The neo-Nazi storm troopers then seized the opening to occupy government buildings and force Yanukovych and many of his aides to flee for their lives.[/B][/B]
[B][B]With these neo-Nazis providing "security," the remaining parliamentarians agreed in a series of unanimous or near unanimous votes to establish a new government and seek Yanukovych's arrest for mass murder. Nuland's choice, Yatsenyuk, emerged as interim prime minister.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Yet, the violent ouster of Yanukovych provoked popular resistance to the coup from the Russian-ethnic south and east. After seeking refuge in Russia, Yanukovych appealed to Putin for help. Putin then dispatched Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea. [For more on this history, see Consortiumnews.com's "Cheering a Democratic' Coup in Ukraine."][/B][/B]
[B][B][B]Separating Obama from Putin[/B][/B][/B]
[B][B]The Ukraine crisis has given Official Washington's neocons another wedge to drive between Obama and Putin. For instance, the neocon flagship Washington Post editorialized on Saturday that Obama was responding "with phone calls" when something much more threatening than "condemnation" was needed.[/B][/B]
[B][B]It's always stunning when the Post, which so energetically lobbied for the U.S. invasion of Iraq under the false pretense of eliminating its (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction, gets its ire up about another country acting in response to a genuine security threat on its own borders, not half a world away.[/B][/B]
[B][B]But the Post's editors have never been deterred by their own hypocrisy. They wrote, "Mr. Putin's likely objective was not difficult to figure. He appears to be responding to Ukraine's overthrow of a pro-Kremlin government last week with an old and ugly Russian tactic: provoking a separatist rebellion in a neighboring state, using its own troops when necessary."[/B][/B]
[B][B]The reality, however, appears to have been that neocon elements from within the U.S. government encouraged the overthrow of the elected president of Ukraine via a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi storm troopers who then terrorized lawmakers as the parliament passed draconian laws, including some intended to punish the Russian-oriented regions which favor Yanukovych.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Yet, besides baiting Obama over his tempered words about the crisis, the Post declared that "Mr. Obama and European leaders must act quickly to prevent Ukraine's dismemberment. Missing from the president's statement was a necessary first step: a demand that all Russian forces regular and irregular be withdrawn … and that Moscow recognize the authority of the new Kiev government. … If Mr. Putin does not comply, Western leaders should make clear that Russia will pay a heavy price."[/B][/B]
[B][B]The Post editors are fond of calling for ultimatums against various countries, especially Syria and Iran, with the implication that if they don't comply with some U.S. demand that harsh actions, including military reprisals, will follow.[/B][/B]
[B][B]But now the neocons, in their single-minded pursuit of endless "regime change" in countries that get in their way, have taken their ambitions to a dangerous new level, confronting nuclear-armed Russia with ultimatums.[/B][/B]
[B][B]By Sunday, the Post's neocon editors were "spelling out the consequences" for Putin and Russia, essentially proposing a new Cold War. The Post mocked Obama for alleged softness toward Russia and suggested that the next "regime change" must come in Moscow.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"Many in the West did not believe Mr. Putin would dare attempt a military intervention in Ukraine because of the steep potential consequences," the Post wrote. "That the Russian ruler plunged ahead shows that he doubts Western leaders will respond forcefully. If he does not quickly retreat, the United States must prove him wrong."[/B][/B]
[B][B]The madness of the neocons has long been indicated by their extraordinary arrogance and their contempt for other nations' interests. They assume that U.S. military might and other coercive means must be brought to bear on any nation that doesn't bow before U.S. ultimatums or that resists U.S.-orchestrated coups.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Whenever the neocons meet resistance, they don't rethink their strategy; they simply take it to the next level. Angered by Russia's role in heading off U.S. military attacks against Syria and Iran, the neocons escalated their geopolitical conflict by taking it to Russia's own border, by egging on the violent ouster of Ukraine's elected president.[/B][/B]
[B][B]The idea was to give Putin an embarrassing black eye as punishment for his interference in the neocons' dream of "regime change" across the Middle East. Now, with Putin's countermove, his dispatch of Russian troops to secure control of the Crimea, the neocons want Obama to further escalate the crisis by going after Putin.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Some leading neocons even see ousting Putin as a crucial step toward reestablishing the preeminence of their agenda. NED president Carl Gershman wrote in the Washington Post, "Ukraine's choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. … Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."[/B][/B]
[B][B]At minimum, the neocons hope that they can neutralize Putin as Obama's ally in trying to tamp down tensions with Syria and Iran and thus put American military strikes against those two countries back under active consideration.[/B][/B]
[B][B]As events spin out of control, it appears way past time for President Obama to explain to the American people why he has collaborated with President Putin in trying to resolve some of the world's thorniest problems.[/B][/B]
[B][B]That, however, would require him to belatedly take control of his own administration, to purge the neocon holdovers who have worked to sabotage his actual foreign policy, and to put an end to neocon-controlled organizations, like the National Endowment for Democracy, that use U.S. taxpayers' money to stir up trouble abroad. That would require real political courage.[/B][/B]

[Paul Rigby]

This stunningly good stuff which answers any number of puzzling questions - such as why Moscow saved Poroshenko by calling a truce when the NAF was winning, to the reasons for the Guardian's "discovery" of Nazis among the Ukrainian volunteer battalions - and then some. Enjoy:

Pravy Sektor Coup as ISIS Scenario: NATO to Feign a Unilaterial' Alliance With Russia

Posted on September 15, 2014 by Joaquin Flores

http://syncreticstudies.com/2014/09/15/p...th-russia/

The US stages a coup ousting Poroshenko and installs Pravy Sektor in order to build international support for a Human Rights intervention against Pravy Sektor and to restore democracy' and order'; the real aim being to create a failed state, perpetuate indefinite war on Russia's door and even World War … and beyond

[video=youtube_share;VR-pizmkqUQ]http://youtu.be/VR-pizmkqUQ[/video]

The time has come to explore the growing possibility of a US covert funding of a Pravy Sektor putsch against the pseudo-constitutional republican junta led by Poroshenko. Also required is an examination of the relevant factors surrounding it. This may prove a necessary strategy towards the ultimate desired position of the US, that being to continue the infinite game scenario which the US is pushing in the former Ukraine. While naturally, as in the field of geostrategic forecasting, we cannot claim this to be a foregone eventuality. Based on how developments have materialized as of the date of publishing, we now have this at a less than 40% probability of occurrence. However, the more that public awareness of this increases, it may mitigate either its occurrence chance or if implemented, its efficacy.

Liberal Western audiences will easily be whipped into a hysteria about the Pravy Sektor, and for a NATO R2P type action of sorts in the former Ukraine. It will be more effective on the propaganda front in many ways than the War on Terror'. At least Western left-liberals are by in large skeptical of claims that all' Muslims are terrorists, but there is no doubt that all Nazis are Nazis. This is a significant point.

Nazis are far worse than Islamic Terrorists, and more over, in the western mind, Nazis are far worse than Communists, especially Russian Communists. This has created a new quasi-secular religion in the West: one where everyone is compelled to worship Hitler as an Evil Demi-God who demands the never ending blood sacrifice of very bad people' in order to avert his own very resurrection upon the temporal plane.

Introduction

Any theory regarding a possible strategic scenario which takes into account the known facts including the known positions, and provides realistic solutions for each of the existing problems, requires further consideration. Additionally when this is also modeled after a strategy which has already been employed before, and moreover is being presently employed in the middle-east with ISIS/ISIL, it becomes even more necessary to consider.

As we have previously written and discussed for the last nine months, as exampled by our February 27th video interview/presentation with transcript titled Right Sector are the Wahhabis in Ukrainian Spring, the immediate aim of the US is in creating a never ending mid-level conflict-war in the region, with the long-term goal of:

1.) Destroying Europe and Russia economic integration

2.) Delegitimizing the Russian state, and,

3.) Breaking Russia up ultimately into ten or more mutually hostile statelettes comprised from the 85 present subjects of the Russian Federation.

2FingersTreeOnce it is understood that these, and not "peace, European integration and development" are US goals, the efficacy of this kind of US plan can be better understood. The US wants to reduce the European economy as well, this strengthening it's own both in relative terms and by filling in the gaps created in absolute terms. As an infinite game, it requires changing the rules to keep the game going. First the the rule was to support democratic rule' in Ukraine through moderates' like Poroshenko and to pretend that Pravy Sektor are not ultra-right neo-nazi types. And if this is leading eventually soon to a resolution, regardless of the outcome, then the rules change to keep the game going.

Stages of the Strategy:

*The Media Spectacle Warms Up

*Premised that US and Russia already agree: Poroshenko is the Moderate (or better than the alternative)

*The US Makes sure Poroshenko Loses on the Political and Military Fronts

* The Execution (In Chapters)

* Regional War Total War: Problems and Solutions

The Media Spectacle Warms Up Just like In Syria

The Pravy Sektor in this hypothetical scenario finally are recognized as neo-nazi fanatics', and roundly condemned. One clue, as with the case in the middle-east with Al-Nusra split from the FSA, and ultimately ISIS, would be the ramping up of media attention. After the chemical weapons de-escalation situation, the western official MSM began to report more about atrocities carried out by Al-Nusra and then ISIS/ISIL. We are seeing a somewhat similar pattern emerge in the last week or two in the western press.

Bear in mind that the more distance that western press can create between the regular' army of Poroshenko and the unaccountable' and war crimes' nature of the Pravy Sektor battalions (Aidar, Azov, etc.) the easier it will be to sell this falsehood to the public.

For example, we have seen this report by George Soros's Open Society Institute funded group Amnesty International of September 8 titled:

"DOCUMENT UKRAINE: ABUSES AND WAR CRIMES BY THE AIDAR VOLUNTEER BATTALION IN THE NORTH LUHANSK REGION "

*

We have also seen this stunning shift in reporting from the Guardian dated September 10:

"Azov fighters are Ukraine's greatest weapon and may be its greatest threat: The battalion's far-right volunteers' desire to bring the fight to Kiev' is a danger to post-conflict stability"

Critical attention should be paid here to the second part of this headline as it mirrors numerous threats made by Yarosh should they view that Poroshenko is mismanaging the ATO or that lustration processes are not carried out sufficiently.

*

Also we saw stunningly from CNN this one, who until recently pretended that ATO operations were clean and only targeted terrorist rebels'. This article focuses on the misery brought to Donetsk and Lugansk residents from KJ shelling, even sympathetically quoting several residents in their plea to Poroshenko to cease the activities. dated September 2

"Misery in Ukraine as deadly conflict drives civilians from homes"

*

The New York Times also has flipped the script in at first an apparently muted fashion, but reading into the article dated an early August 9, we find near the bottom and important element of this hypothetical strategy,

"Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.

In pressing their advance, the fighters took their orders from a local army commander, rather than from Kiev. In the video of the attack, no restraint was evident."

"Ukraine Strategy Bets on Restraint by Russia "

Also note in the above headline the espousing of a Russia acting with restraint.

*

Also a little ahead of the script, then would be the Telegraph article, dated August 11,

"Ukraine crisis: the neo-Nazi brigade fighting pro-Russian separatists"

*

The Irish Times, testing the waters, reports on July 17th

"Foreigners join far-right militias in Ukraine's fight against rebels Fears that nationalist Azov Battalion and others could ultimately turn on new rulers"

Russia and NATO Already Agree: Poroshenko is a "Moderate"

The line about Poroshenko being a moderate remains, but once out of power it is only lamenting that he will receive from the US. The US will be nominally committed to restoring Poroshenko, and will use this as the legal basis for their increased bellicosity in the region, but in actual fact will support Pravy Sektor economically and militarily in order to ensure that the fight continues on, destroying infrastructure and creating a lasting social psychology of distrust and never-ending warlordism (as done in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Libya, etc.).

This was exactly what was done in Afghanistan when the US funded four factions with varying degrees of mutual hostility, simultaneously: The Taliban (supposedly Al Qaeda/MAK), the Northern Alliance, the Kabul Government, and its own US forces on the ground.

At the same time Russia will have a hard time, unless they pull back out Yanukovich or some other well executed meme, disagreeing on that point. Russia did after all recognize the legitimacy of the May elections in Kiev, even though they were illegal under Ukrainian law.

Keep in mind that the Pravy Sektor coup will involve more than several Odessa type massacres, more photos of cut heads and burnt bodies. The victims won't just be ethnic 10157337_813884908639969_1940654853275379907_nRuss ians in the east, but even liberal left and liberal right pro-EU Ukrainians who, numerically speaking, together were the majority of the original Euro-Majdan protesters back in November of 2013. This is sure to get the R2P cogs turning within both the European and US discourse (the so-called International Community)

If Russians are behind in the information war game in speaking out on their behalf (though we doubt they will be), it will be even easier for the NATO propaganda machine to claim the moral high ground NATO through its EU proxies in civil society will claim to represent not only the human rights' interests of ethnic Russians in the east, but Ukrainians in the center and west of the former Ukraine.

Those who are conflicted by their partiality towards Novorossiya and dislike for Putin will be among the easiest to pull towards the pro-European intervention line in opposition to the Pravy Sektor Junta. They will reason that since Putin let this happen, and this is Putin's fault, then we have no choice but to support the R2P initiative of Human Rights' oriented European states to intervene to save lives'.

Citizens with Wechsler Classification IQ's of between 90 to 109 who follow the mainstream media, and those with IQ's of 110 to 119 who follow the controlled alternative' media will be susceptible to the promoted simulacrum, their lives and existences having hitherto prepared them to follow the proposed logic combined with emotional appeal. Because this is the vast majority of people who follow news about world events, the pull will be quite significant.

US is Making Poroshenko Lose

On the Military Front: Following the logic of this scenario, we are led to another critical question. Something which should be critically examined is what appears to be the unnecessary losses taken by the Ukrainian side. The US has only given to the Poroshenko led KJ forces a relatively minimal amount of support; primarily they have relied on their own resources, and have been helped with replacement tanks and supplies from -neighboring NATO countries, but also with basically outdated (even if well maintained) equipment and heavy weapons. While it is true that Ukraine has burned through about 110 to 130% of the air-force which they started with (meaning they've imported some), one would realize that if the US were really committed we would have seen a multi-billion dollar package including the leasing, lending, or sale of numerous advanced craft, able to carry out many hundreds of more sorties.

It had been sufficient to place significant pressure on the then NM's who in turn were being supported by an increasing Russian trickle on the official level of operational, tactical, and then later more tangible material support going into August.

But to explain the classic tactical encirclement maneuvers used against KJ forces also means that the KJ was not being provided with US aerial and satellite intelligence which would have enabled them to avoid being foiled and routed for a consecutively running number of weeks hitherto.

If the US plan is to use the Pravy Sektor' as Al Qaeda/ISIS stratagem, then the erosion of Poroshenko's support will continue in this scenario. This last week, he's blitzed the liberated' areas, giving talks about having Won the Peace'. Now he's in the situation of trying to compromise the vision of two increasingly divergent groups who were responsible for his rise to power': regular order-loving Europhile/Russophobe Ukrainian liberals, and Pravy Sektor and Svoboda ultra right misanthropes and war aestheticists/romanticizers.

The battles that US war planners, who in effect control much of the operations already, have pushed onto the KJ forces are suspect in their costliness. Even when they believed they were pushing back the NM forces' (in reality, just marching to the actual front), their supplies were limited and units were left with poor coordination and communication. They would be told to hold positions that were liable to be hit, and were hit, and did not receive orders to change positions. A combination of these, and more, led to an eventual condition of distrust towards Poroshenko's Kiev government. Meanwhile, the Pravy Sektor groups have used their being placed inside of larger units to propagandize among the regular conscripted men.

On the Economic Front: While the US has it's own serious structural economic problems, it is still in the position to deliver significant military aid from its stockpiles, and is also able to print money. If one considers that QE1 alone was actually a series of three $700 billion dollar bailouts, followed by QE2, and if one also considers the enormous black budget which the US has for special military plans and related, one could see that money exists' to really arm and equip the KJ, and yet it does not. These are not economic issues, but ones of priority. This would seem to point to a thesis that the US is making Poroshenko lose. But what of Kiev's own ability to create value on the economic front?

The Economic Front US policy has caused an ongoing near-collapse of the Ukrainian economic system'. With the value of the Hryvnia having dropped below 15 to the dollar, inflation has seriously affected buying power, creating the roots of mass social unrest, and this has been coupled with a stagflationary decline in production without any of the substantive increase in exports that one would expect with such a drop in value.

Ukraine's productive industries have all been hit beyond near-term repair or fixing. Some are leaving the country.

*Kherson Shipyard which was a leading ship producer is going bankrupt.

*Iron and Steel industry at standstill

*Zaporozhye automotive has announced a cut-back in production and lay-offs.

*Kremenchug car assembly plant is moving to Kazakhstan.

*Aircraft engine producer Motor-Sich is relocating to Russia.

* Mining industry not running

IMF Greece Financial CrisisOn top of this is a $15+ billion IMF debt which will be impossible to pay back the framework of the loan was based around having these industries, and of course having the Donbass region and perhaps as well the Crimea. The mining industry in Donbass was producing a significant portion of the coal that powered industry. Even if alternative sources can be used, Ukraine is facing a major energy deficit with its supplies of Russian gas in serious question.

All of these are making the present Ukrainian government the most reviled in it's history. There is only so much that can be done to blame Russia for things, as we have seen in the Arab Spring, the value of a removed responsible party can only go so far. Arab leaders attempted to explain that they did not control the price of bread in international markets, but bread riots and protests erupted nonetheless. While Blythe Masters was the individual charged with putting together the plan to shift the QE1 bailout into cornering the global perishable goods market, people took their protests not to the US embassy (at first) but to their own governments. Only in the case of Syria was the government able to stay in power. Ultimately people need somewhere they can go petition, protest, and make change. This will be the Ukrainian government's undoing, and will set the stage for the Pravy Sektor seize of power as this US written script unfolds.

A Brief Description of the Execution

Chapter 1. In short, the US will covertly support a Euromajdan redux, but this time coupled perhaps with better organized armed march spectacle on Kiev or similar, reminiscent of Mussolini's famous simulacrum March on Rome. Like in Rome, it will have the appearance of a radical change but in fact will be supported by numerous sections of the Ukrainian elite who will be taken along on a journey which, objectively, is likely to be outside of the scope of their long-term self interests. The US will employ both bribery and the immediate self-interest mechanism for some, and the use of false marketing (e.g. Intermarium) for others.

Yarosh, Lyasko Oleg, or similar will be charged with gathering all forces to make the spectacle of a putsch. Kolomoisky's forces and others would join. They would, in this scenario, order back from the front these soldiers for the tactic, and collectively pressure Poroshenko and almost the entire Verkhovna Rada to step down. Yarosh has already threatened such on numerous occasions, but has carefully mitigated his speech in referring to reforms' within the legality of the Rada as the end game of such a March on Kiev. Naturally this time it would be quite different.

With these Pravy Sektor and Svoboda related battalions, as with others, their morale is presently very low; most accounts and reports from field indicate that they blame the Ukrainian government for corruption, inefficiency, and false promises such as failing to deliver needed materials, support systems, even correct artillery and basic food rations. Looting and pillaging have become a commonplace method of last resort, as well as quartering themselves in the homes of the over half million people who have fled. Pravy Sektor activist groups and football clubs still in Kiev, Lviv and surrounding country, towns and villages, will also be filed in by bus to join in. This time armed with firearms instead of bats, clubs, and chains, the simulacrum of an organic and native putsch will be projected over a very foreign high level US military intelligence operation complete with well orchestrated arrests, detentions, assassinations and the like.

The US will covertly overthrow Poroshenko and install the Pravy Sektor, but create an alternate hyperreality to denounce this and have surrealistic grave concerns' over those developments. Covertly the US will likely attempt an arrest, socio-political marginalization, or assassination of nearly the entire Ukrainian political and military establishment, as their attempts to root out individual agents of the FSB have to date been more or less unfruitful. The marginalization of the Party of Regions, and the banning of the Communist party in this regard have only a symbolic meaning, as actual pro-Russian agents had from the start been members not only of the Russophobic Ukrainian establishment but also Svoboda party and movement itself.

Notably was the former head of the Ukrainian Military Command and prior Navy, General Ihor Tenyukh, who was forced to resign after giving stand-down orders when legally stationed Russian naval personnel extended their sphere of operations to encompass the whole of Crimea following the now famous referendum. This is just one example of the extent to which the FSB had penetrated the entire Ukrainian establishment from many sides.

From this we can ascertain that that even this Pravy Sektor' government will contain much less of the original cast and crew that saw in the original show's series. NATO can trust no-one here. Only US, English, Australian, and Israeli advisers; only Mossad, M16, CIA and FBI. No Ukrainians at any level of authority. It will be mostly fresh faces parading with the Pravy Sektor title. To deal with language barriers and for the building of trusted chains of command, militarized Mossad operatives and Israeli mercenaries fluent in Ukrainian, Polish, and/or Russian will be used to fill in the gaps created by the ousting of the FSB infiltrated old Ukrainian apparatchiks.

Just like ISIS, from Al Nusra, from Al Qaeda, from Maktab al-Khidamat, it may go through some rebranding which accompanies the introduction of new directors, producers, and actors. This means we might expect something like a Night of Long Knives' tactic to be used at least once or twice.

This first part accomplishes the US goal of ultimately confusing the issue, changing the entire discourse, and implementing what is really the third stage of creating a failed state. How is this the actually the third stage? That requires seeing the pattern from the specifics.

The General Strategy Template Used in All Cases

1.) Color Revolution protest-to-power Tactic combined with,

2.) Arab Spring uprising with US backed militias and civil war, install democracy',

3.) A transition from nominally stable pro-western' government into a failed state ruled by extremist ideological warlords,

Chapter 2. Here we have arrived at the total end of the Ukrainian state. Part 3.) of the General Strategy is entirely realized.

The Pravy Sektor are established as the "National-Socialist" Uniate Church "Wahhabis". The media, as we explored in the section above, is already committed to exposing their war-crimes. If Russian and Novorossiyan efforts too stop them are successful in the east, there will be more in the west. If rank and file Pravy Sektor are unwilling to do this, the US will resort to the special employment of a combination of torture-loving misanthropes and an occasional hoax.

Also, we must recall that on the Novorossiyan side, there are also people the west can reasonably call far-right extremists', such as the Varyag Battalion, RNU, and Nazbol connected brigades. This will be used to add additional confusion to the issue, as the western liberal mind suffers from both a tendency to equivocate or fall for the equivocation of others, and to abuse or be abused by broad categories lacking in nuance. Thus the Europeans supporting Poroshenko, and not the Russians supporting the Novorossiyans, will be able to present themselves to their own audience as the neutral arbiters.

The Pravy Sektor will have the job of destroying all remnants of civil society and shatter the illusion of the pluralism which the middling classes find comfort in, and will secure the important areas of resource extraction for western banking and industrial conglomerates. As Monsanto has an interest in soil-rich parts of eastern Ukraine, and as they are also strongly connected to the Academi mercenary firm, we can expect to see Anglophonic world, Polish, and Baltic state mercenaries involved in securing similar areas.

Naturally in discussing the coup tactic, with a view towards the failed state strategy, comes the issue of US investments, fracking, energy, telecom, etc. being enjoyed by friends, relatives, and colleagues of the US political establishment. Like in Iraq, small areas of control will the the desired outcome, backed by private armed groups will oversee the security of these places, especially where natural and raw resource extraction will take place. If public information or journalism reveals this scenario, those armed groups will be deemed moderates.

But the US also uses the spectacle of US investment to confuse their real aims: investment seems in many minds to be connected to development and conditions of prosperity, wrongly associated with peace'. Because the marketing and the product often diverge in these scenarios, it is likely, as before with the original coup, that numerous elements of the Ukrainian elite will act in line with US expectations even if in reality their own fortunes will ultimately be destroyed.

Quite importantly in this phase the Pravy Sektor will be able to accomplish several tasks with one important blow: they will sabotage and destroy the gas pipeline. This will accomplish the US goal of eliminating roughly 65% of the capacity of Russian gas into Europe (Nord-Stream delivers the balance), as part of their plan to destroy Europe and Russia economic integration. It also ends no small amount of the leverage which Russia has on both Europe and Ukraine to resolve this matter in a way which protects Russian sovereignty and national interest. Also it is a pseudo-paradigm shifting act. How so?

The Pravy Sektor ideology is not only based in Nazi aesthetics but in Fascist asceticism. They believe this will purify their people and rid them of the materialist, western, consumerist disease of modernism and capitalism. They think the people will grow stronger by having less; they will grow closer by having their enemies farther from them. They know that people will have only each other keep each other warm. There will be a return to cottage industry. Candles will illuminate the home at night. It will be a general return to the 13th century. In this sense as well, they are nearly identical to Wahhabis.

There are many elements of truth to their critique of capitalist and consumerist western civilization, and moreover there is no reason to think, in the abstract, that their solutions might not be required given their desired goal. But in a similar way to how some of the finer points of Islam are used by Wahhabism to the benefit of US and Zionist regional hegemony, in turn it is the very same consumerist and materialist west which is manipulating this false simulacrum war against the modern world in order to perpetuate the actual-reality of the modern world, indefinitely.

These are not contradictions whose understanding comes easily, because the world of man as it is created is not naturalistic, but constructed. Thus in understanding the strategies of states and supra-national powers, we must understand that it is an intentionally constructed maze which not only meanders but leads to dead ends and traps. Radical promises of liberation and paradigm shifts are often the opposite.

What will ultimately happen prior to any foreign intervention, is that these various Pravy Sektor groups will break down into various competing groups of warlords who use ideology as the main organizing principle holding their warband together. They will take all of Ukrainians with them in the descent into post-apocalyptic madness.

Regional War, Total War Problems and Solutions

The Pravy Sektor Junta can do all sorts of things to expand the scope of the war. This can include attacks on Polish border guards and more, even raids deep into Polish territory. On a given day that NATO is having most of the Polish army performing an anti-Russian Polish_Army_Poland_soldiers_combat_uniforms_001dri ll near the Baltic Sea, Pravy Sektor can storm' into Poland and steal numerous tanks and aircraft from an unprotected military base. Those who question the timing or possibility of such an attack without sufficient Polish response will be easily dismissed as conspiracy theorists. Of course this attack would be virtual, not real, and would only be used to explain away the fact that Pravy Sektor was being suddenly and mysteriously armed. We might see a large caravan of them in Toyota trucks, perhaps.

Poland may in fact be key to expanding the war into a broader regional war, and could draw in Latvia and Lithuania. Pravy Sektor attacks on Poland would give Poland a legal right to attack Ukraine. The problem of course being that the US goal is to destroy Ukraine, but not just once to keep the fighting ongoing so that reconstruction and redevelopment cannot occur. At a certain point it may force the Russians into a situation of defensive forward occupation of the Baltic, deepening the scope of the conflict and invoking NATO's mutual defense clauses.

Moving towards regional and total war, there are number of other serious standing issues which the US may be able to solve by using the Al Qaeda/ISIS strategy

1.) Problem: EU-Atlanticists (primarily banking) and EU-Eurasianists (primarily industrialists and retailers) are splitting over Ukraine. There are also known fence sitters. Among known fence sitters are those pretending to be such. Among EU-A's and EU-E's are also those pretending that they are each other. This is a problematic mess for the US. It is difficult to tell whom is leading the other. There is a Russian strategy at play of bringing fence sitters over to the side of the EU-E's in order to create further pressure in that discourse favoring the Russian position.

Solution: Post-coup, the US will organize for the EU-A fence sitters to to see the light' and lead that EU-A's go over to the side of the EU-E's to basically support Russia in words' against Pravy Sektor Junta. That will solve through confusion for some time the issue of the EU-E's and the EU-A's. They will all seem to be on the same side of the Ukraine conflict Remove the Pravy Sektor Junta.

This will create the simulacrum of unanimity on the issue of Ukraine. NATO, the EU and Russia will all be in the position of roundly condemning the Fascist takeover' of Ukraine. Once this goes into effect, the talking points and public dissemination will be impossible to untangle. It is impossible to be against Nazis for the wrong reasons, in western thinking.

2.) Problem: The Russian propaganda angle has increasingly taken hold in western Europe; while the actual uprising of the Donbass people is only secondarily ideological, and at that it is a mix of Ultra-nationalism, religious Orthodoxy, Soviet Nostalgia, Eurasianism, Communism, Russian irredentism, and National Bolshevim, is lost upon much of the sympathetic Western European audience. They believe that this is a battle of Russian Leftists against NATO backed Rightist Nazis. There are strong elements of truth to this, but it is far from the whole truth. At any rate, they have, using bottom up politics, helped to shift the public discourse in the direction of Novorossiya

Solution: Western press continue to expose the nazi' nature of the KJ, now led by Pravy Sektor, but also expose the Ultra-nationalists, religious Orthodox, Eurasianists, irredentists, and Nazbols as equivalent in both moral abstraction and activity to the KJ nazis. Since they are all nazis, it doesn't matter if some NATO actions against the west nazis accidentally strike the east nazis.

3.) Problem: Euro-skepticism has never been bigger in Europe, and the ideas of the far-right and far-left are becoming more popular as polar extremes against the bourgeois center. Leftists are realizing they've lost more than their surplus value in the process of capitalist development, and long for a simpler bygone era where kin was kin, but combined with some of the luxuries of modern technology, but none of the war and imperialism that plagued the 20th century. They've made some intersections with the far right. The far right are realizing that they need a real anti-globalist economic model in order to preserve their culture, nationality or race, and heritage, and that this economic model looks a lot more like socialism than capitalism. They are also seeing that choosing to live among one's own kind is not the same as being a supremacist towards others. In essence, the bourgeois in Europe can see which way the wind is blowing, and they need to reverse that flow.

Solution: Force the right and the let back into stupid and malleable roles: As an intended side effect, fake-far right Europeans will once against become white-supremacist' groups, and will also grow as both a direct and indirect product of this Pravy Sektor example, producing a greater number of neo-nazi jihadis both going into Ukraine, and within their own European countries to clash more violently with Islamists and then Leftists in Europe. The European clash will incidentally make it very difficult for critics to say that the US is supporting both the Islamists and the neo-nazis from essentially the same game-book if they are apparently fighting each other. This fits in precisely with the 4GW doctrine of blurring the lines between civilians and combatants.

It will also bring to the forefront the divide and conquer strategy of the Clash of Civilizations' promoted by the US Neo-Cons in the last decade. The European clash will coincide with economic woes in general, due to the trillion euros plus hit to the economy which sanctions on Russia are projected to take. Rather than a needed class struggle with strong elements of a pan-European and anti-materialist cultural renewal project, it will pit Muslim migrants against native Europeans; problematically ignoring a fight against those on top who both created the economic problems and opened the doors to a flood of culturally incompatible migrants.

Fake-far left European guilt-ridden white-supremacist' groups will trip over their own Russophobia, and believe that only they, the holders of liberal civilization and pluralism, are in the moral-ethical position to act on behalf of Ukrainians and ethnic Russians. They will support NATO action in Ukraine in the name of human rights. It really is a no-brainer, because "Nazi" means "human rights violator".

4.) Problem: Russia has leverage over Ukraine and Europe with its gas pipelines. Ukraine needs the gas to fuel industry and to heat the homes of people.

Solution: Exterminate or ethnically cleanse more of the eastern half of the population. Blow up the gas pipelines and revert to an agrarian sustenance based economy mirroring the 13th century. Wealthy Ukrainians in Kiev have foreign goods shipped in for their use at a significant cost. The rest move to Switzerland or London. Prostitution, drugs, and gambling become the main stay of normal life.

5.) Problem: The FSB is entirely infiltrated in many crevices of the Ukrainian high command, all the way to the field. This is another reason why the US cannot give the KJ too much whatever they give, can go over to the other side. They cannot give the KJ access to their satellites and aerial ground imaging, because then the Russians would see exactly what the US and KJ sees.

Solution: The coup takes out everyone. All are replaced by Israeli and US military leadership and intelligence. Mercenaries as well play an increased role.

Russian Awareness and Counter-Measures

Russia would of course be aware that there is a growing chance of this happening in any event, but a greater chance if things escalate the wrong way. This may help to explain other reasons why Russia has essentially helped build the credibility of Poroshenko, going 0307-Ukraine-Paris-meeting_full_600back to the May elections. It also explains why it wants to control the escalation in a certain way which give Poroshenko numerous face saving opportunities and ways to remain in office in the face of growing internal opposition. If Russia sees the coming coup as an eventuality, then its present tactics are part of a strategy of a.) preventing a coup or b.) forcing a delayed realization of the coup tactic.

For further reading on the subject of the coup tactic which is often a requirement at the under-graduate level in our field, it is recommended to familiarize oneself with at least one of the three following titles:

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins , 2004

Coup d'État: A Practical Handbook, by Edward Luttwak, 1979

The Coup: Tactics in the Seizure of Power, Bruce W. Farcau, 1994

That Strelkov is known for having irredentist views, and Gubarev is known for having led the ostensibly neo-nazi RNU group of ethnic-Russians in Donbass, may have been a factor in their removal within this hypothetical, as the Russians prepare for an intensification of the media war, attempting to avoid one of the problems listed in Chapter 2 in the Execution section above. It is true that the new faces we have seen do not have questionable pasts, and speak more clearly about social justice' and liberation of our people'.

Our scenario also means that Russia does not want to see Poroshenko go, until conditions arise for his replacement along Russian terms. An alternate route is for Poroshenko to switch sides, as he is without exception a US puppet. This would be the Yanukovichization of Poroshenko'. This would be dificult, but what Russia needs of course is a pro-Russia government in Kiev.

For this to work with Poroshenko, they must accurately assess his motives. If he has been bitten by the state power bug', then they have a better shot with him in the event that they can demonstratively show that the US wants him out and Pravy Sektor in.

So its possible then that Russia can also be managing this already with Poroshenko. This would include the sending of Pravy Sektor battalions into bad situations, promising them reinforcements and heavy artillery and tanks, and then supplying none, only realized after its too late, after they are surrounded and destroyed.

With their own military and information war initiative, the Russians would seem at first to be in a very tight spot. There would be a lack of clear messaging which would allow Russia to act on behalf of the people of a foreign country, but not NATO. Poland borders Ukraine as much as Russia does. Additionally, a pro-US Poroshenko as the universally recognized legitimate leader of Ukraine would have the authority to beg European countries to intervene to restore civilian government. If the Russians can persuade him first, then he might invite the Russians; this much could be key.

While seemingly tight at first, this is not without precedent. In 1999, Putin comes to power and his first major international move was in defense of Yugoslavia, on the Serbian side. He did so as ostensibly a US ally, and claimed a united Russia-US interest, but in actual fact frustrated the US effort in ways which have only become realizable to us in a more full form over the last three or four years.

In this case, with or without Poroshenko's blessing, because Russia will again be within the role play of being a US or EU ally against the Pravy Sektor, Russia suddenly scrambles its forces for a blitz occupation of Kiev, treats all Pravy Sektor people as suspects in a police action, and declares the whole thing over, with elections to take place in four months.

However, this is a best case scenario, and all situations which would tend to increase the number of players, increase, the hostilities, also increases the variables and the introduction of unknowns, making the real situation increasingly volatile and threatening to the future existence of human life.

Conclusion

Fourth Generation Warfare involves dissemblance and memetic warfare, manipulation of mass-publics as well as target elite's very understanding of reality itself. Being able to understand the simulacrum created in the pursuing of this kind of warfare requires a multidisciplinary approach involving a number of both hard sciences and social sciences. The generalist will have a broader view than the specialist, and must excel over the specialist in a number of key areas which the most critical specialists are oriented in. The quality of analysis will reflect the development of the general-as-specialist in a given area of expertise.

Strategy is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, and military matters defy the economics of efficiency and simplicity. They also require explanations entirely opposite from the Occam's razor used to explain phenomenon in the natural sciences. Instead, replication, redundancy and complication of physical strategic points as well as complexity of plans are required, rather than avoided.

The US is presently using a very similar strategy in Syria and Iraq to what is described here. This itself is evidence that the US has 1.) the inclination to use such a strategy 2.) experience using this strategy. 3.) success using this strategy. and 4.) given how we've contextualized the present US dilemma, a possible need to use this strategy.

Taken all together, it is incumbent upon us to examine in greater detail the possibility of the use of this strategy and begin to publicly expose it and inoculate mass publics to its potential use in Ukraine, as it threatens to expand the way and usher in an unmanageable increase in this period of instability and constant war.

[Lauren Johnson]

Holy shit!

[David Guyatt]

I'll be interested to see if this pans out. But I heartily agree that the principal objective of the US is to bring ruination to Russo-European economic cooperation and the destruction or maginalization of of competitor currency blocs.

[David Guyatt]

Hello. No one saw this coming?

Suspending gas supplies to Ukraine is such an obvious Russian riposte that it must've been factored in, surely?

Russia freezes Ukraine into submission: Kiev admits country doesn't have enough fuel for winter


There's no gas. The mines have been bombed. Kim Sengupta reports from Grabova on the bleak winter ahead

KIM SENGUPTA

GRABOVA

Monday 15 September 2014

The fields around Grabova and Debaltseve became the focus of international attention as the crash site of Flight MH17. But along the roads leading to the villages are reminders, on the scarred landscape, of another casualty of Ukraine's civil war which will have a huge impact in the coming months the coal mines that have been closed down.

An energy crisis, started when Vladimir Putin cut off the gas from Russia, has been severely exacerbated by the disruption of coal supplies. This country is facing the prospect of the grimmest of winters; the threat of cities starved of fuel for heating and delivery of food while, at the same time, facing artillery and air strikes.
Europe has experienced winter conflicts since the Second World War. But while the population of Sarajevo during the siege in the early 1990s was around 430,000, there are more than one million people living in Donetsk alone, along with 440,000 in Luhansk, and, on the edge of the battlezone, 1.43 million in Kharkiv.
Cities not directly affected by the fighting, such as the capital Kiev and Lviv in the west, will also be in General Winter's frontline. Numbers of inhabitants have swollen to three million and 800,000, respectively, as internal refuges arrive from the east and Crimea.
Ukraine crisis: A timeline of the conflict
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The Ukrainian government admits that it does not have enough fuel to heat homes and keep factories running through the winter. And the crisis comes with an economy already in meltdown. It was expected to contract by 7 per cent, but Valeria Gontareva, head of the National Bank of Ukraine, warned at the weekend that the real figure is likely to be 10 per cent. Exports to Russia, a key market, will fall by 35 per cent, she added; meanwhile the currency, the hryvnia, has depreciated by 50 per cent against the dollar in the past nine months.
After Russia cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in a dispute over unpaid bills, Kiev sought to replace the shortfall through "reverse flows", taking Russian gas from countries such as Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. But Gazprom, Russia's state gas company, has complained over the practice, denouncing it as " a semi fraudulent mechanism" and threatened to reduce exports to these states so that none is left to send on to Ukraine.
Speaking at the Yalta international conference, held in Kiev this year after the annexation of Crimea by the Kremlin, Ukraine's Energy Minister, Yuriy Prodan, accused Russia of "blatantly using gas as a political tool". To survive the winter, he added, "rather unpopular measures, including administrative ones aimed at reducing energy consumption, will have to be taken".
The cutting of coal stocks has been a blow. Ukraine is Europe's second-largest producer: but more than half of its 115 mines have stopped operating and output has plummeted. The Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said : "The mines have been bombed, so there's no production of thermal coal; without supplies to power plants, there are problems with electricity and heating. It's obvious the situation in the winter is going to be very difficult."
Oleg Tsarev, a former presidential candidate who is now a separatist leader wanted by the Kiev government for treason, agrees with Mr Yatsenyuk that what happens in the winter will be of crucial interest. "I expect major upheavals for Ukraine ahead: most importantly, how will it handle the winter, the cold , the economic crisis that is now arriving in Ukraine?"
The regions seeking to break away, Donetsk and Luhansk, will escape this problem, Mr Tsarev and his allies believe. Russia has pipelines into the region and talks over cheap deals have already begun. But nothing can be guaranteed at a time of strife: power stations in Donetsk have been hit a number of times recently by Ukrainian government fire, leading to electricity and water being cut off, and supplies remain vulnerable to sabotage.
At the port of Mariupol, which has been under repeated attacks by rebel forces backed by Russian armour, members of the Azov Battalion, one of a number of oligarch-funded private armies fighting for Kiev, claim they have plans for the pipelines. "In normal times, blowing up a pipeline would be terrorism; but here we are fighting terrorists and if their Russian masters are using gas supplies as a weapon, surely it is justified," maintained Denys, a former laboratory technician from Kharkiv, who joined the force four months ago. "If they make the rest of the country suffer, then the territory controlled by the terrorists should suffer as well."
His comrade Grigory, a former teacher from Kiev, was not sure: "It will only make ordinary Ukrainians suffer, the DPR [Donetsk People's Republic] heads will have their own fuel and generators. It seems to me the only winners out of this winter will be the Russians. They always win in winter, don't they?"
The closure of the mines has left many unemployed in the Grabova region. Nicolai Anasenko, lost his job of 24 years in the pits and does not think he will find steady work again while the conflict continues: "We had legal mines here and illegal mines, almost all of them have been shut down because of the fighting. I was a foreman at the end, the money was not bad, now the only thing I can do is help out in farms.
"Everyone around here is very worried about what's going to happen this winter, I am not sure the east will be any better off than the rest of the country. Our fathers, mothers, grandparents went through this in the winters of the war against the Nazis. We are a hard people; and we'll have to be hard this winter."

[Magda Hassan]

READ YOUR CONSTITUTION
The situation in Ukraine
Introductory note:
The Bandera OUN-B legacy is critical to understanding the nature of the armed insurrection now unfolding in Ukraine. OUN (the right-wing bourgeois-nationalist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) was founded in 1929, to fight against Poland after it had seized western Ukraine from the infant Soviet Union. Within four years, Stepan Bandera was its head. In 1934, Bandera and other OUN leaders were arrested for the assassination of Bronislaw Pieracki, the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs. Sentenced to life imprisonment he was sought out by the Nazis as a future Quisling (just as they sought out disaffected nationalists in various countries who they thought could be potential "leaders" of puppet states for them) and freed from prison after the German invasion of Poland.


Bandera immediately entered into negotiations with the German Occupation Headquarters, receiving funds and arranging Abwehr training for 800 of his paramilitary commandos.
























Bandera received 2.5 million German marks to conduct subversive operations inside the Soviet Union. In 1940, the OUN split into two factions; Bandera became the leader of OUN-B, the more radical (ie more violent) faction. By the time of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Bandera's forces consisted of at least 7,000 fighters, organized into "mobile groups" that coordinated with German forces.


On 30 June 1941, eight days after Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, Bandera in Lviv proclaimed an independent Ukrainian state. His militant branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) thought that, in their struggle against the Soviet Union, they had a powerful ally in Nazi Germany. But Bandera quickly fell out with his new "allies" (his followers' dreams of a "Greater Ukraine" incorporating Polish and Soviet territory did not coincide with Nazi plans for a Greater Germany) and the Germans arrested the newly formed "Ukrainian government" and sent them to Berlin.

Bandera (centre) in Nazi uniform.

But Bandera maintained his Nazi ties and funding, and his "mobile groups" were supplied and given air cover by the Germans throughout the war.


In 1943, Bandera's OUN-B carried out a mass extermination campaign of Poles and Jews, killing an estimated 70,000 civilians during the summer of that year alone. Although Bandera was still running the OUN-B operations out of Berlin, the ethnic cleansing program was run by Mykola Lebed, the chief of the Sluzhba Bespeki, OUN-B's secret police organization. In May 1941, at an OUN plenary in Krakow, the organization issued a document, "Struggle and Action of OUN During the War," which stated, in part, "Moskali, Poles, Jews are hostile to us and must be exterminated in this struggle." ("Moskal" is derogatory Ukrainian slang for "Muscovites," or Russians.)


In September 1944, with the war going very badly against Germany, Bandera and his group were reorganised into the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, so that they could fight the advancing Soviet forces. He received German financial, materiel, and personnel support and his pro-Nazi force fought against the Red Army for the rest of the War (and was noted for its atrocities) and then continued to do so in the chaotic post-war conditions, killing Communists, Jews, ethnic Russians among the population, collective farm secretaries, civil officials, in fact anyone who might contribute to a non-racially "pure" Ukraine or to rebuilding socialism in the country. After the ultimate defeat of his forces, Bandera fled to Germany where he was treated not as a Nazi war criminal but as an honoured anti-Soviet fighter.


According to Stephen Dorrill in his authoritative history of MI6, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, Bandera was recruited to work for MI6 in April 1948. The link to the British was arranged by Gerhard von Mende, a former top Nazi who had headed the Caucasus Division of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Ostministerium). Von Mende recruited Muslims from the Caucasus and Central Asia to fight with the Nazis during the invasion of the Soviet Union [the Chechens were some of these]. At the close of World War II, he worked for the British through a front company, Research Service on Eastern Europe, which was a recruiting agency for principally Muslim insurgents operating inside the Soviet Union. Von Mende was instrumental in establishing a major hub of Muslim Brotherhood operations in Munich and Geneva.
Through von Mende, MI6 trained agents from the OUN-B and dropped them inside the Soviet Union to carry out sabotage and assassination operations between 1949 and 1950. A 1954 MI6 report praised Bandera as "a professional underground worker with a terrorist background and ruthless notions about the rules of the game."


In March 1956, Bandera went to work for the German equivalent of the CIA, the BND, then headed by Gen. Reinhardt Gehlen, the head of German military intelligence on the Eastern Front during World War II. Again, von Mende was one of his sponsors and protectors. In 1959, Bandera was assassinated by the KGB in West Germany.


Mykola Lebed, the on-site commander of Bandera's secret police, fared even better at the close of World War II. Lebed was recruited by the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) in December 1946, and by 1948, was on the CIA payroll. Lebed recruited those OUN-B agents who did not go with Bandera and MI6, and participated in a number of sabotage programs behind the Iron Curtain. Lebed was brought to New York City, where he established a CIA front company, Prolog Research Corporation, under the control of Frank Wisner, who was the head of the CIA s Directorate of Plans during the 1950s. Prolog operated well into the 1990s, getting a big boost when Zbigniew Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor.


In 1985, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into Lebed's role in the wartime genocide in Poland and Western Ukraine, but the CIA blocked the probe and it was eventually dropped. Nevertheless, in 2010, after the release of thousands of pages of wartime records, the National Archives published a documentary report, Hitler's Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence, and the Cold War, by Richard Breitman and Norman Goda, which included a detailed account of Bandera's and Lebed's wartime Nazi collusion and involvement in mass executions of Jews and Poles.


It is this Bandera-Lebed legacy, and the networks spawned in the postwar period, which are at the centre of imperialism's current schemes in Ukraine.


On 22 January 2010, the outgoing President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine. The award was condemned by anti-fascists everywhere and by Russian, Polish and Jewish organizations as well as the European Parliament and was declared illegal by the following Ukrainian government and by a court decision in April 2010. In January 2011, the award was officially annulled.


While Western news accounts promoted this year's orchestrated demonstrations in Kiev's Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnesti, or Euromaidan as it is now called), as initially peaceful, the fact is that, from the outset, the protests included hardcore avowed neo-Nazis, right-wing "soccer hooligans" and "Afghansy" combat veterans of the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Georgia. According to Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleh Tsaryov, 350 Ukrainians returned to the country from Syria in January 2014, after fighting with the Syrian rebels, including al-Qaeda-linked groups such as the al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).


Protesters from the opposition Svoboda Party, formerly called the Socialist-Nationalists, marched under the red and black flag of Stepan Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), and prominently displayed a large photo of Bandera on the steps of the Square's main building, to arrogantly confirm their fascist allegiance.


The following Statement by Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), "On the situation in Ukraine", traces the roots of extreme Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism, the economic basis of its pro-fascist nature and the nature of the present struggle in Eastern Ukraine.


Today, war is raging in the vast territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk people's republics. For the first time since Ukraine's liberation from the Nazis 70 years ago, civilian towns and villages are shelled and bombed. The dead and wounded number thousands and the refugees tens of thousands. Entire residential neighbourhoods, orphanages and schools, outpatient clinics and hospitals, power generation and water supply facilities have been destroyed. A number of cities, where hundreds of thousands of people live, are being strangled by the blockade.


The Banderaists at power, their patrons in the West and yes-men in the Russian liberal camp openly hush up the war crimes that are being committed in Novorossiya / New Russia. This is because the ongoing destruction of towns and villages is in direct violation of international norms and customs of war. The 1949 Geneva Conventions specifically prohibit the use of artillery and combat aircraft against undefended populated areas. Meanwhile, the junta that seized power in a coup in Kiev is pursuing a most vile and cowardly strategy for its death squads are invariable losers in direct combat with the Self-Defence Forces of Novorossiya/New Russia.


Forces and private armies of the oligarchs are deliberately destroying the civilian population. This is ethnic cleansing. The Russian-speaking population is being squeezed out of their historic homeland. That is a grave crime against humanity.






The historical roots of recent developments
Russia's attention to the Ukrainian developments and the anguish that we feel in connection with the war blazing there are natural. Ukraine is not just a part of the Slavic world. The Ukrainian land and its people are integral part of the Russian consciousness, of Russian history. The thing at point is the deepest spiritual and cultural bond between our peoples, their historical inalienability from each other. When attempts are made to set us at loggerheads for the sake of the interests of the West, it is like cutting us to the quick, causing a deep wound both to Russian society and to all the citizens of Ukraine, including those who are befuddled by anti-Russian propaganda. For it is only in alliance with Russia that Ukraine can reach the heights of prosperity which many people in Ukraine have considered possible only in alliance with Europe. An alliance that has eternally brought about trouble.


It has always been so. Both in the 12ththrough the 14thcenturies when the Chermnaya (Red) Rus' nestled around Lvov was severed from the historic core of Russia and was torn to pieces by her western neighbours and in the16th and the 17th centuries, when the Polish gentry sought to wipe out by fire and sword from the Ukrainian soil the very spirit of freedom and Orthodox Christianity along with the memory of the great all-Russia unity. It also happened in the 18th century, when a handful of traitors gathered around Mazepa (to whom Peter the Great seriously intended to award a two-stone "Medal of Judah" to wear on his neck as a sort of reward for betrayal). At the beginning of the 20th century, during the Civil War, the local samostiitsy (Ukrainian separatists) relied on German bayonets. All this turned the Ukrainian land into a scene of gory battles. The rescue came solely with Russia's help.


The current terrific developments have borne out V.I. Lenin's statement that a free Ukraine was only possible if Great Russia's and Ukraine's proletarians joined in action and it was out of the question without such unity. It is appropriate to recall here that all of the major high-tech industries in Ukraine, not only in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, but also in the Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhe, and other regions, were built in the Soviet era at the expense of the Union budget, of which 70% came from Russia, i.e. from Russian people.


So a fraternal alliance with the Ukrainian people at the time of terrible trials is our common cause and our common duty.


It might seem that a civil war broke out in Ukraine overnight. Six months ago, the country was one of the many states experiencing difficult economic and social problems but preserving its political stability. The people's discontent was accumulating. However, there were no signs of heavy shocks coming. It would, however, be ill-advised to assume that a social explosion occurred all of a sudden, like a bolt from the blue.


The Russian leadership, admittedly, responded to this threat quite adequately by bringing the Crimea back into Russia in time for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the peninsula from the Nazis and preventing, in fact, an outbreak of a major war.


To better understand the origins of the tragedy of Ukraine, it is necessary to see the historical roots in their development, to understand the mechanisms of the severe crisis originating in the brotherly country. It is necessary to see the recent external symptoms of a bloody fratricidal war surfacing in Ukraine, as well as the deeper historical, economic, class, ethnic, cultural, religious and other prerequisites of these developments. Only an integrated analysis will enable correct identification of the driving forces in the crisis in Ukraine, prediction of the further course of events and elaboration of strategies and tactics for the resolution of this dire conflict.


For us Communists, what is happening in the sister republic is not of a mere theoretical interest. We are not political scientists, who impassively watch any developments. We have an obligation to draw lessons from the most severe social confrontation into which the neighbouring country has plunged. It is therefore necessary to analyze the events in Ukraine, bearing in mind that similar events could also be repeated in one form or another in Russia.


Of course, our attention and sympathy focus primarily on Novorossiya that is emerging in the struggle. However, it is equally important to understand the sources and driving forces of the opposing side - the resurgent Neo-Nazism. For this purpose it is necessary to analyze the historical origins and formation of the Bandera movement as a form of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism in its most extreme forms. It is necessary to understand on what ideological foundation the movement rested and in what way nationalism coupled with Russophobia is being fuelled in Ukraine today.
The origins of radical nationalism
It is crucial to understand that Ukraine, with the exception of the Soviet period, never had its own statehood and no other periods in history that were identical for the entire Ukrainian people. Over the centuries, when European powers were emerging, Ukraine was never once an independent state, nor a unified whole entity in the structure of other states. What is modern-day Ukrainian territory was always divided between different European powers. In the middle of the 17th century, as a result of a voluntary union with Russia, its eastern half found itself under Russia's wing, wherein a history of Malorossiya or Rus' Minor (Lesser Russia) began to take form, while the western Ukrainian territories were under the rule of Poland and then Austro-Hungary.


Poland's policy towards the Ukrainian population was extremely cruel, often sadistic. Western Ukrainians, as a part of the Polish state population, were second-class citizens. That was the key reason why a radical Ukrainian nationalism began to emerge in western Ukraine; it was in part similar to the ideas of racial exclusiveness, enshrined in the "Third Reich."


The then Bandera followers did not just enter into a strategic coalition with the German occupiers, but participated most actively in their punitive actions, including against the native Ukrainian population. They carried on the same practice in western Ukraine after the war upon going underground. Not only more than 25 thousand Soviet soldiers and security officers but also more than 30 thousand innocent Ukrainians were killed in the battles with Bandera followers lasting until the mid-1950s. Those clashes came at a high cost to the Banderovites, too: they lost more than 60 thousand men dead over the years.


The Bandera-style nationalism did not evolve into a national liberation idea but into a totalitarian sect of crazed fanatics who killed primarily native Ukrainians. Characteristics of an analogous totalitarian sect are inherent in West Ukrainian Uniate church, which is formally in communion with Rome. Sticking with it were the Bandera followers who did not want to take into account the fact that the vast majority of Ukrainians embraced Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The ideology of the Uniates (Eastern Rite Roman Catholics) has in fact very little to do with Catholicism. It is rather an extreme, sectarian form of Protestantism mixed with Baptism. Not accidental are the relations to the sectarians of the key top figures in Kiev - Baptist Turchinov and Yatseniuk who is friends with scientologists.


Every victory scored by extremist, low zoological-scale nationalists has resulted from a deep crisis of the government, whose hostility society is increasingly aware of and reacting radically to its ugly manifestations. The only way for the forces at power to keep afloat is through an alliance with the radical nationalist ideology, thanks to which the former top heads are reportedly retaining their posts, already under new banners.
The new "elite", wholly emerging from the previous series, enjoys the use of Banderaite instruments and of Bandera followers as "cannon fodder" in order to once again fool the millions of people after performing a clan castling within the power circles. As a result, the oligarchs have not only maintained but also strengthened their positions. They will now carry out the same or even more brutal economic policies under the Banderaite banners with a harsh tutelage from the West and in the same "alliance with the devil" against Moscow, that will bring no relief from Ukraine's troubles and problems but certainly their aggravation.


An unbiased, scientific approach guides one to a conclusion that both the Western policy-makers and the current Kiev rulers, who are seeking to cut the age-old ties with Russia, have shunned in every way. This conclusion is that the people of Central and Eastern Ukraine are, in fact, connected with Russia in a much stronger way than with West Ukraine. Any attempts to steer Ukraine into a pro-Western, anti-Russia channel are directed not only against Russia, but against most of the Ukrainian people. They are inherently anti-Ukrainian, anti-national actions cloaked in nationalist demagogy.


Objectively, everything is just so, even though not all the residents of the central and western regions of Ukraine are yet aware of it. History of the Bandera movement has already revealed the tragic paradox, which is now being played out again through the fault of the new Banderovites who seized power. While allegedly upholding the interests of the Ukrainian people, these figures are infringing on the interests of the greater part of Ukrainians, the interests which cannot be implemented outside of close ties with Russia. It is what Bandera and his associates did not want to understand and what Ukraine's current "elite", which is under the auspices of Washington, does not want to hear about.


The Bandera-style nationalism as an extreme manifestation of Russophobia
The Ukrainian radical nationalists' choice in favour of the fight against "Soviet occupation" was neither their fault, nor forced, nor a temporary tactical move. It was natural and inevitable, and for Ukrainian nationalists it still remains as such today. For them, the only possible choice is in favor of an anti-Russia alliance with any, even the worst enemy of Ukraine. Without such an unnatural union no "independent" Ukraine is possible in isolation from Russia.


Of course, in the past there occurred political and cultural imbalances in the actions of Russia's central authorities in the Ukrainian territories as parts of the Russian Empire. But the original language and cultural closeness of our peoples, the similarity of their thinking, traditions and customs mitigated that problem. It is impossible to describe that period of history as occupation of Ukraine. Descriptions of that sort are rooted in ignorance and vile speculation. It is right to speak about a centuries-long common history of Russia, Eastern and Central Ukraine and say that, as a result of our union, a uniform political nation was formed.


But Bandera and his followers transferred their hatred of the former oppressors on to the Soviet regime after it began to assert itself in West Ukraine. They did not want to see that the principles of Soviet government had nothing to do with the colonial order imposed by Polish pans/lords. They did not want to see that within the structure of the Soviet state East and Central Ukraine were already receiving more de facto independence than in the Russian Empire and the advent of the Soviet regime in the western part of Ukraine was not a sort of new colonization but liberation from colonization.


But why do the ideologues of Russophobia manage, even nowadays, to fool a large part of society? The explanation lies in the fact that many Ukrainians repeatedly see radical nationalism as a panacea for their ills, an alternative to what oppressed and humiliated them in the past. But their troubles and humiliation are now associated with a new reality. It is not tantamount to the violent Polish outrage of the past centuries. Now it is the tyranny of the oligarchs and highhandedness of gangster capitalists.


Arising upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a permanent economic and moral crisis arose in Ukraine bringing along with it cases of deepening social injustice and inequality that became a catalyst for radical nationalist sentiments which splashed out first in 2004 and then at the turn from 2013 to 2014. Without these factors, no sentiments of the kind would have found fertile soil in Ukraine, just as they lacked it during the heyday of the Soviet country, within whose structure the interests of the Ukrainians were being implemented to the maximum extent. Suffice it to say that for most of the second half of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union was led by figures that were closely linked with Ukraine: Nikita S. Khrushchev and Leonid I. Brezhnev.


However, the Russophobes in the West, the anti-Soviet liberals in Russia and the new Ukrainian nationalism ideologists put forth a false thesis insisting that even though the Soviet government gave more freedom to the Ukrainian people, it still was, in fact, an occupational force, as Ukraine remained under the control of an empire this time the Soviet empire.


Consequently, the struggle of Bandera and his associates against the Soviet authorities was to them still the same struggle for liberation. Nowadays, in trying to finally break free from the Russian influence, the new Ukrainian nationalists allegedly follow the same principles of the struggle for independence and are driven by a desire to consolidate independence within the framework of a Ukraine that has achieved statehood.


The fundamental falsity of this thesis is made clear by history and today's developments in which history is largely repeated. The fact is that radical nationalists have never acted as an independent national political force. Liberation of Western Ukraine from Polish oppression was not an achievement of theirs, but that of the Soviet government. The struggle against it guided the Ukrainian nationalists straight to a direct alliance with the Nazi occupiers.


But as soon as the idea of Ukrainian statehood was paired with an orientation to the West and estrangement from Russia, that sort of statehood turned out to be a fiction and the shaky unity begot unrest. The reason for this is that Ukraine has had little experience of independent statehood. Nowadays, it is simply unable to exist outside the area of influence from more powerful states.


Meanwhile, in an anti-Russia alliance with Ukraine's outright enemies, who are capable of concealing their true hostile intentions only for a short while, the Ukrainian people have no chance of true independence. "The National Movement" in Ukraine is a path leading to no liberation but in the opposite direction. It is an anti-nation way.


This is felt today by millions of Ukrainians, many of whom have risen up in arms against the new Bandera-style nationalism. Their struggle is a genuine national resistance movement because they said a resounding "no" to the intent to break the age-old ties with Russia, with the Russian people. In response they got aerial bombings and artillery shelling of residential neighbourhoods. The Banderovites acted similarly in the 1930-1950 period against the Ukrainians who had become aware of the destructive nature of their "nationalism". They who are moved by a truly national idea and really care for their people cannot do that with their compatriots.


The immediate causes of the coup in Ukraine
The watershed that split Ukraine's contemporary history came with President Yanukovich's decision last autumn to give up associate membership in the European Union and move in the direction of the Customs Union with Russia and other countries. The decision was quite justified from an economic point of view. The Russian negotiators with the Ukrainian side argued for many months but failed to convince their partners in Kiev that the drive toward the West is fraught with a complete breakdown of the Ukrainian economy that is still closely linked with the Russian economy.


However, the ruling circles in Kiev kept sticking to a purely pro-Western ideological course. It was only at the last moment, when the final decision was to be determined, that the Ukrainian leadership recognized the economic realities and announced their intention to join the Customs Union. By that moment public opinion had, through the efforts of numerous "social organizations" and the media outlets created by the West and under its control, already been steered to a pro-European direction. The people did not have reliable information about the inevitable hardest consequences of a second-class membership in the European Union. But the dream of "reunification with Europe" had long been befuddling the brains of intellectuals and ordinary people who passionately and fondly hoped that the associated membership in the E.U. would automatically take the Ukrainians to the European level of well-being.


The decision to join the Customs Union with Russia, semi-despicable in the eyes of "zapadenskoi"/West Ukrainian/intelligentsia, was seen by many in Ukraine as shattering their crystal dreams. Mass irritation spilled out on the streets of the capital, which had long fallen under the influence of vociferous activists from West Ukraine.


However, the Maidan that flared up last November wilted gradually. By January of this year, two or three hundred fanatics and homeless tramps were still there in scattered groups, having found a way of self expression and a source of free mess of pottage in the centre of the capital. Meanwhile, any reduction in the level of opposition heat was clearly not in the plans of those who actually ran the developments in Ukraine. Western politicians and agents of intelligence services began to hurl sizable amounts of combustible material into the fading fire of public discontent and create an incendiary mix for flares of radicalism, skilfully directed against Russia.


But it would be wrong to see the situation at a narrow angle as resulting only from the machinations of Western politicians and intelligence agencies. Mr. Yanukovich and his team are to take a considerable part of the blame for the fire breaking out. Upon rising to power that "team", or rather the family of the former president began aggressively to convert political power into money. Greed of the "Donetskites", as they were nicknamed by many people, had no limits. A huge number of small and large businesses were squeezed for tributes. Business take-overs became commonplace. So the popular discontent over the steadily worsening economic situation merged with sharp resentment on the part of a very active population segment - small and medium-sized businesses - in connection with the "grabilovka" (plundering) by Yanukovich's friends and relatives.


Meanwhile, Mr. Yanukovich for tactical purposes diligently portrayed himself as a supporter of rapprochement with Russia, although his real stance was openly pro-Western. In public opinion Yanukovich was therefore, associated with Russia. Hence the Maidan anti-Russian overtones. But do we have the moral right to condemn the Ukrainian people for its majority lacking the awareness of the need to revive a fraternal union with Russia? We might have such a right, if the RF were setting an example of a welfare state, if it had eradicated oligarchy, total corruption and the gangster capitalism principles. That's when the Ukrainian people would have stood up without hesitation under the same banners with Russia the banners that had led to salvation in the past.


The explosive mix, which led to a social explosion in Ukraine, included several basic elements: the legitimate grievances of the bulk of the people due to the steady deterioration of their financial positions; resentment of small and medium-sized businesses over the raids by Yanukovich's team; the desire of "zapadenskiye" (Western Ukrainian) intellectuals to ride public opinion still harder, along with the intrigues of pro-American politicians and secret services aiming to enhance the split between Ukraine and Russia


Meanwhile, Russia's ruling group saw and still sees Ukraine primarily as a territory in which a gas pipeline is laid. Therefore, the policy of the upper RF authorities focused almost exclusively on ensuring a smooth flow of gas to Europe. Public sentiments in Ukraine were not only a mere subject of interest and influence for the Russian "elite", but were completely ignored as a factor fully irrelevant against the background of intrigues around the gas pipeline at the "top" of the authorities of the two countries, for which the peoples of the fraternal republics subsequently had to pay a heavy price.


The coup and its aftermath
The attempts of the Ukrainian leadership to restore basic order in the streets of the capital, including through negotiations, met with fierce resistance from the well-trained fighters who had been recruited in the western regions. In mid-February, the American technology of pseudo-popular revolutions began to be used in Kiev, including, the seizure of power by street crowds with massive external support, tested during the coups in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukraine (2004), and in Libya, as well as during the "Arab Spring" events in a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa.


Simultaneously, the Ukrainian leadership became an object of outright pressure from the West. The European Union threatened the creation of a "black list" of officials, against whom a variety of sanctions would be imposed. The Yanukovich clan members were thinking primarily about their own accounts in Western banks and offshore funds. That made the Ukrainian leadership particularly vulnerable to the West's blackmail. The head of state's faintness resulted in a paralysis of the law enforcement agencies and the betrayal of the political elite, who failed to fulfil their constitutional obligations.


Meanwhile, representatives of the opposition, supposedly fighting for democracy against an authoritarian regime and for a bright future for Ukraine under the auspices of the European Union, demonstrated, in fact, habits of their Banderaite, fascist predecessors. "Peaceful" protesters seized government buildings and attacked police forces, pelting them with Molotov cocktails. President Yanukovich kept shying away from decisive action and was handing power, step by step, to the neo-Nazi elements. The process culminated in a coup d'état. Genuine battles with the use of firearms began on the streets of Kiev February 18. In three days the death toll had reached 100 casualties and more than 600 were hospitalized. On February 23, Yanukovich fled from Kiev.


The heirs of the Nazi henchman Bandera seized power and immediately launched a campaign of suppression against their political opponents and the Russian-speaking population. The intimidated deputies of the Verkhovna Rada passed a decision repealing the law allowing the use of Russian as the second state language in a number of regions of Ukraine. Pogroms started against the premises of the Communist Party of Ukraine, and the Communist Party was banned in some regions. Members of Parliament from the Communist Party and the Party of Regions were physically abused along with the policemen who remained faithful to the oath.


The Banderovites started attacks on historical memory with widespread destruction of monuments to Lenin and Soviet soldiers who fell during the liberation of Ukraine from Nazi occupation. By toppling monuments to Lenin, the rioters were destroying not only the historical heritage, but also the symbols of Ukrainian statehood, because the Decree on the establishment of the Ukrainian Republic was signed by Lenin. That orgy of destruction resulted in the rise of the resistance movement in the south-east of the country and, ultimately, in the Civil War.


The Class-related nature of the conflict in Ukraine
The inherent nature of the events in Ukraine is difficult to understand without an analysis of the alignment of its class forces. It must first of all be noted that as a result of the 1990 - 2000 wild, destructive privatization of the economy of Ukraine in the interests of the oligarchs and the newly-minted deindustrialization in the interests of Western competitors, the industrial proletariat numbers declined sharply. Accordingly, the level of its organization was reduced. With the destruction of collective and state farms the rural proletariat was virtually eradicated. This changed the balance of class forces.


However, the pro-western top authorities of Ukraine failed to completely destroy the working class, especially in the most industrialized south-east regions. It is therefore no accident that the Bandera-style junta received the most powerful rebuff in those regions. The industrial proletarians of Novorossiya are well aware of the fact that the cut of historical ties with Russia, to which products of their enterprises were oriented, must inevitably lead to mass unemployment and poverty. Not only the national feelings, but also the class consciousness of millions of people in Novorossiya, though not expressed in relief, formed the basis for resistance to oligarchic usurpation of power.


An important feature of the popular revolutionary actions in south-east Ukraine, and earlier in Crimea, is that they were directed against the neo-fascist usurpers of power in Kiev, who were closely related to the global transnational capital, and against the "Donetsk" oligarchic clan, which established their political and economic dictatorship in these regions. Incidentally, the "early" independence Maidan (November - December 2013) was, in this sense, not so much anti-Russia as anti-oligarchy in character.


However, as the protest sentiments of the masses had not got the class character, they were used in the battle of the two clans of the big-time bourgeoisie. That clash was won by the group which had brought together the pro-Western, nationalist and extreme right-wing forces, who benefited from the people's discontent in the coup.


Usually the big-time capital controls countries through their hired servants - state officials. In Russia in the 1990s, oligarchs initially dominated the bureaucrats. Then the top government officials took precedence, but later the higher bureaucracy and oligarchy merged.


In Ukraine, too, there was a struggle between two related class groups - the state bureaucracy and oligarchy. And there, as in Russia, there emerged a symbiosis of these two class groups. But after the February 2014 revolution, the oligarchs effected the subjugation of the bureaucrats. Faced with tough resistance of the people in Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and other cities, the ruling elite in Kiev went straight to the introduction of the big-time capital dictatorship.


Oligarchs, previously hiding in the shadow of hired politicians from various "bat'kivshchinas", "udars" and "regions" were appointed governors of several regions. Then the direct roguish dictatorship of the oligarchy not cloaked with any "democratic" trinkets came to reign supreme in Ukraine.


The billionaires Poroshenko, Kolomoysky and their ilk did not only immediately take over the governing functions, but also created their own private armies and secret police forces engaged in kidnapping and torturing people. Ukraine was becoming an "in war as in war" banana republic, ruled not by law but by complete arbitrariness of a politically temporary "president" relying on "death squads", as well as on the political and military support from the United States. The peoples of Latin America shed their banana republic labels as a result of persistent struggle. Unfortunately, that kind of "state governance" came to reign in Ukrai...

[Peter Lemkin]

Ex-CIA Official Under Reagan Proposes Assassination of Putin
By Kit Daniels

Global Research, August 29, 2014
In a recent op-ed, a former CIA official suggested the removal of Russian President Vladimir Putin, by assassination if necessary, should be the primary objective of the Obama administration in its strategy for Ukraine.
Herbert E. Meyer, who served as a Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence under the Reagan administration, said the goal of U.S. sanctions against Russia "should be to get the Russians who've been keeping Putin in power, or tolerating Putin in power, to throw that knockout punch."

"If Putin is too stubborn to acknowledge that his career is over, and the only way to get him out of the Kremlin is feet-first, with a bullet hole in the back of his head that would also be okay with us," he stated.

To ensure Putin's removal, Meyer suggested, the Obama administration should strike a wedge between the Russian business elite and the Kremlin that could serve as a catalyst for an attempt on Putin's life.

"That's why the sanctions will work if the president and his European counterparts will keep tightening the screws; if they keep making commerce more difficult for Russia's serious business executives, for instance by blocking their access to capital, and if they keep making life more miserable for Russia's playboy oligarchs, for instance by canceling their credit cards and denying landing rights to their private jets,"

he added.

"And if the president and European leaders keep telling these Russians bluntly and publicly that all this will end the moment Vladimir Putin leaves the Kremlin for good."

The former CIA official is describing a centuries-old tool of statecraft in which a foreign power creates discontent between the nobles of another country and their ruler to ensure the eventual overthrow of that ruler.

But given today's explosive increase in tensions between Russia and Ukraine, which could very well lead to another world war, Meyer's suggestion is particularly disturbing considering is it likely that current Western intelligence officials also share similar views.

And the destabilization of the Russian government with the loss of Putin will only create chaos in the East, chaos which can be exploited by the global financial elite who hold no allegiance to any nationality.

"Every major international crisis for the past century or more has ended with an even greater consolidation of world power into the hands of the few, and this is no accident," journalist Brandon Smith wrote.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ex-cia-offi...in/5398216

[Magda Hassan]

Peaceful co-existence and diplomacy has never been a strength of the US.

[Lauren Johnson]

OMG! Combined Session of Congress giving standing ovations to this fascist. This is what it has come to.

[Drew Phipps]

They stood and clapped, sure, and then refused the aid he requested.

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/09/18/uk...d%3D532248

Ukraine's pleas for lethal aid from US go unmet

Sep 18th 2014 9:27PM WASHINGTON (AP) - In a show of solidarity with Ukraine, President Barack Obama welcomed the new leader of the embattled former Soviet republic to the White House Thursday, but he stopped short of fulfilling his visitor's urgent request for lethal aid to fight Russian-backed separatists.