Sikorski: Russia rejects post-WWII, Western 'world of rules'

[HT: AB]  Sikorski, known in Poland for saying controversial things, here blasts several shibboleths of official Moscow. Read on!... 

Europe's Challenge: A 'Twilight Zone' in Russia's Shadow, or a 'World of Rules?'

By Radek Sikorski (Speaker of the Polish Parliament)

November 24, 2014 | The World Post

This comment is excerpted from a speech at Harvard's Center for European Studies late last week.

In Harvard Yard, on 5 June 1947, on the steps of Memorial Church, momentous words were said.

It is logical that the United States should do what it can to assist the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.

Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.

U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall set in motion the most profitable financial investment in human history: the reconstruction of Western Europe:

The Marshall Plan was part of a wider Western ambition after World War II. To create a World of Rules.

New global institutions were set up, led by U.S. leadership and generosity. 

The United Nations. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The International Court of Justice.

Despite harsh Cold War ideological differences, these institutions took root. They grew and flourished.

Why? Because the world -- or at least a part of the world -- had agreed that explicit international military aggression had to stop.

Differences between peoples and nations should be settled by peaceful negotiation.

The first principle of this World of Rules was self-restraint: by cooperating, not fighting, we build a shared interest in success.

Self-restraint -- ruling out the war option -- creates stability. Stability encourages investment. This creates innovation and new wealth.

The European Economic Community was only one of many institutions which flourished under this regime. It grew and grew to become today's European Union, precisely because it was based on this principle of national political self-restraint. Success bred success.

The second principle was that this World of Rules was worth defending from those who didn't accept it.

During the Cold War, this required a comprehensive Western approach, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at the heart.

There were programs to share intelligence, especially among the English speaking nations of the West; joint military exercises; exchanges of weapons and military technology.

Institutions such as Radio Free Europe and the BBC pushed back against communist lies and propaganda.

So successful were these economic and security institutions and so attractive to those who didn't enjoy them, that when the Warsaw Pact finally fell apart after 1989, the nations of central Europe made it a national policy imperative to work closely with them, or even apply to join them.

RUSSIA WAS HUMILIATED BY NATO EXPANSION? RIDICULOUS

The events in Crimea and eastern Ukraine are dramatic and dangerous.

They threaten Ukraine's stability. And they pose a new kind of test for the transatlantic alliance set up to protect the West and its rules.

Let me demolish an assertion heard quite often both in Moscow and in Western capitals: that the Ukraine crisis has been "provoked" by Western governments in general, and by NATO in particular.

As few now seem to remember, when the Cold War ended, the transatlantic team of North America and Western Europe welcomed central and eastern European countries into modern democratic society. 

But the impetus for NATO enlargement did not come from a triumphalist Washington. On the contrary, the U.S. initially resisted even the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Since 1990 12 European states have asked to join NATO. They all chose for themselves to belong to this cooperative military alliance.

NATO membership was a key part of "locking in" their turbulent democratic reforms.

NATO programs helped modernize our armed forces, and bring them fully under civilian control.

NATO played a vital role in helping all these countries make a clear break from secret communist-era military intelligence machinations, right at the heart of a supposedly independent state.

While this slow, cautious and -- as I remember well -- in some ways reluctant enlargement did eventually take place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia.

Russia was welcomed to the Council of Europe, World Trade Organization and given closer relations with the European Union.

No NATO bases were ever placed in the new member states.

Until 2013, no NATO military exercises were ever conducted in Poland, the Baltic states or anywhere else on the eastern flank.

No nuclear installations have been moved to the territory of new member states, even though Russia has them less than 100 kilometers from our border.

A NATO-Russia Council was set up and Russia was promised that as long as it respected borders in Europe, no substantial combat forces would be moved east.

Largely in response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were in fact denied NATO membership plans in 2008.

In pressing the reset button with Moscow toward Russia, President Obama changed the configuration of the proposed missile defense installation in Poland, then suspended its Phase 4 which Russia disliked.

In short, the assertion that Russia was "humiliated" during this period is ridiculous.

Russia took charge of all the former Soviet nuclear weapons, some transferred from Ukraine in 1994 when Russia recognized Ukraine's borders, including Crimea. Ukraine's territorial integrity was guaranteed in the Budapest Memorandum by Russia, [the] U.S., [the] U.K. and France.

Presidents Clinton and Bush treated their Russian counterparts as fellow "great power" leaders and invited them to join the G-8, even though Russia did not qualify to join this group at that time, either as a large economy or as a stable democracy.

The U.S. spent billions of dollars working with Russia to reduce Cold War nuclear and chemical weapons stocks, and to achieve new, better arms control agreements.

All sorts of smaller but practical projects have been set up with Russia. The NATO-Russia Cooperative Airspace Initiative aims to prevent aircraft hijackings. We have agreed to help destroy dangerous ammunitions stocks in the Kaliningrad exclave.

Russia has benefited from all these programs, and many more.

Freed from decades of self-inflicted communism, it has joined the global economy as a normal country.

It's seen the benefits. Its GDP was a feeble $570 billion in 1990. By 2013 it has grown to $ 2.1 trillion.

So, in the years following the end of the Cold War, did NATO and EU governments show unwavering hostility towards Russia?

Did we cynically "take advantage of Russia's weakness?"

Have we been "humiliating" Russia?

I answer those three questions in three words. No. No. And no.

The record since the Berlin Wall came down shows NATO and the European Union and their individual member states all working hard, and in good faith, to build normal, purposeful relations with Russia.

And it shows that Russia itself benefiting hugely from this support.

PUTIN'S REAL AIM: PROTECTING RUSSIA'S WEALTHY FROM DEMOCRACY

So where has it gone wrong?

The basic problem is that the current leadership in Moscow depends on corrupt business structures and media manipulation to keep power.

The Russian elite is dominated by former KGB officers who, starting in the late 1980s, used Russian state money, sometimes laundered through Western offshore banks, to purchase land, natural resources and property on a vast scale.

To protect this wealth, they must prevent the outbreak of a democratic revolution of the kind that shook central Europe in 1989, or an anti-corruption revolution as took place on Kiev's Maidan square early this year.

Using military invasions of Georgia and now Ukraine, or strong-arm tactics as in Armenia, or corrupt political proxies in Moldova, they seek to stop nations of the former Soviet Union from daring to join the successful institutions of the West -- and from setting an example that Russians might want to follow.

They are playing games with our public opinion through propaganda tricks. Paid Internet "trolls" pollute our newspaper comment pages, and Twitter, Facebook and other sites. They roll out fake "experts" with fake authority.

They try to legitimize extreme political forces of all kinds, paying for far-left anti-American rhetoric on their English-language Russia Today channel, while simultaneously supporting far-right anti-European politicians in Europe.

NIBBLING AWAY AT WESTERN RESOLVE

Not content with all that, they are testing our very military resolve.

Russian planes buzz American, Swedish, Danish, even Canadian planes.

Russian troops have captured an Estonian security officer working on the Estonian side of the border. The Russian navy captured a Lithuanian fishing boat and held it for ransom.

All these obnoxious ploys are intended to nibble away at Western resolve, and our own and wider faith in NATO Article 5. To test the value of our mutual security guarantees. But also, as events this year in Ukraine have shown, to challenge head-on the most basic rule of international law and the World of Rules: that international borders cannot be changed by force.

A RESTRAINED RESPONSE

The international response to Russia's policies has been restrained. It has been designed to raise the cost to Russia of undermining Western institutions.

The policy is working, up to a point.

Russia's president has admitted that the price his country is paying is high. 

In the decade from 2002-2012, Russia's economy grew on average 5 percent per year. Russia, like Poland, was integrating with the global economy, and seeing positive results.

If Russia grows at that same rate from now until 2025, its GDP will be $ 3.7 billion -- from today's $2.1 billion.

If instead Russia grows at only 1 percent over the next decade because of sanctions and global mistrust of its intentions, its GDP in 2025 will be far less -- $2.3 billion. Cumulatively over the decade, Russia will have lost the staggering sum of over $81 billion! Its leaders have decided to gamble with their own citizens' lives and hopes, by looking to the past, not the future.

Some of Russia's citizens are wondering whether this enormous price is worth paying -- and what Russia is getting for it.

NATO MUST AGAIN DEFEND THE WORLD OF RULES

Maybe Russia's leaders too are starting to conclude that this price is not worth paying. I truly hope they do. But we need to be prepared if they don't, at least in the short term. We need to think hard about the health of those institutions we set up a half a century ago.

First and foremost, we need to face a grim reality. Hard, sharp security questions are being posed to us in Europe once again.

The NATO that we have now is not the NATO we need to deal with them.

If we were starting from scratch now, nobody would put NATO troops and equipment where they are now. NATO should shut down unnecessary commands and legacy bases, and get back to its primary mission: deterrence.

NATO is a defensive alliance. But for deterrence to work, our military capability has to look -- and be -- serious.

Second, follow the money.

Have we been complacently turning a blind eye to an uncomfortable truth: that our own tangled, over-complex banking systems have been exploited by international semi-criminal networks, not only from Russia but all over the world?

Simply by firmly enforcing existing money laundering laws and asking hard questions about murky money, we will help ourselves and help others who are trying, against high odds, to join the World of Rules. Peoples around the world would be empowered and kleptocrats would be restrained if only we implemented existing laws!

Third, we need to think hard about how Europe and the U.S. work together in Ukraine and other countries wanting our help. It's demoralizing for them that so much Western money is wasted through duplication and institutional jostling for position.

Swedish technical assistance agencies and Dutch or American technical assistance agencies shouldn't be duplicating or contradicting one another's programs.

Technical expert "advice" works best when supported by pragmatic peer-to-peer consultations.

Ukrainian ministers turn to their Polish counterparts to ask what we think: "You Poles have been through this. What makes sense?"

We do our best to tell them.

A NEW DIVIDING LINE ACROSS EUROPE

Back in 1947 Ukraine, like Poland, was blocked by Stalin from taking part in the generous Marshall Fund programs offered by the U.S..

Let's help Ukraine now, when at last it is free to ask for, and ready to receive, our help.

The principled way out of this crisis is based on all sides returning to the principles that George Marshall articulated at Harvard in 1947.

Teamwork. Cooperation. Russia's return to the World of Rules.

If this happens, sanctions can be lifted. Russia can again participate normally in international financial markets and institutions.

All Russia's grievances concerning Ukraine or anywhere else can be tackled sensibly and fairly through the UN or OSCE or Council of Europe, or other fora created for precisely such problems.

Moscow itself  asked to join all these organizations when it wasn't a founder partner when they were set up.

Moscow itself  has pledged to respect their rules.

Let's be clear.

The alternative to working through these issues normally and peacefully in a spirit of successful partnership is a new dividing line across the European continent. It won't be made of iron but it'll be real enough.

On one side of the line are countries and peoples free to choose their own democratic destiny.

On the other side are countries in a decaying Twilight Zone. A blighted, unhappy and unstable place outside the World of Rules.

If we get this wrong, our shared Western decades-long strategic ambition to create a Europe whole and free will falter.

Gessen: What comes next 'will be bloodier and more frightening'

Here's the meat of Gessen's essay [emphasis mine]:

This narrative [of essentially blaming the Ukraine crisis on Western-NATO expansion into Russia's traditional sphere of influence] is not without merit. The bombing of Yugoslavia enabled an unprecedented rise in nationalist politics in Russia. And NATO expansion confirmed Russians’ worst suspicions about the West. Ukraine’s attempted move westward last year terrified the Kremlin, as did everything that has happened in that country since the protests began in Kiev last November.

But the sleeping-bear story is missing two essential components: the role of Ukraine and its people, who have been fighting to choose their own destiny – indeed, this story tends to ignore the existence of Ukrainians altogether – and, ironically, the fact that Putin has his own agency.

It is tempting to view Putin as merely the embodiment of Russia’s reaction to the actions of Western powers. It creates the illusion that he can be managed, or contained. If all he wants is a buffer zone between Russia and NATO, then the way to prevent a large European war is to give it to him, whatever the people of Ukraine might want. Let him keep Crimea, make Ukraine grant significant autonomy to its eastern regions and promise not to enter into any military alliances – and the Nobel Peace Prize is on its way.

The only problem is that portraying Putin as an unlikable but, essentially, Western politician – one who formulates his strategic objectives in a way Western analysts can understand – misses the point entirely. Russia’s behavior over the past week of a fragile cease-fire in eastern Ukraine has shown this very clearly. Russia kidnapped an Estonian security officer on Estonian territory – the Russians claim he was arrested on Russian soil while spying – and is holding him in Russia. It has re-opened Soviet-era desertion cases against a large number of Lithuanian men. And Russia has ratcheted up its nuclear saber-rattling.

All this points to the possibility that, rather than the beginning of the end of the conflict, the cease-fire is a stepping stone to the next stage of the crisis. That stage may or may not involve Ukraine, but it will definitely involve the use of force and, as it always happens in warfare, it will be bloodier and even more frightening than what came before.

First, brava to Gessen for an important point about the Maidan Revolution and Russia's ensuing military action in Crimea and eastern Ukraine: many analysts and journalists dismiss the role of Ukrainians altogether, and portray them as helpless pawns of either the West or Russia. What do most Ukrainians want their government to do; and what kind of country do they want to live in? These basic questions often get overlooked, because we've become accustomed to thinking of Ukrainians as pawns in outsiders' game.

Second, contrary to what some have argued, Putin did have a choice whether to invade Crimea and destabilize eastern Ukraine with weapons and fighters. His hand was not forced. This is what Gessen meant by "Putin has his own agency."

Third, kudos to Gessen for acknowledging that Putin "isn't like us" in the West. To many Western leaders' recent astonishment, Putin has no compunction telling one lie today, and a contradictory lie tomorrow. Why? Because he is a former KGB agent and homo soveticus; for him lying is like breathing: second nature. (See Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin's excellent essay on this topic.) 

P.S. -- U.S. conservatives keep crowing that "Romney was right!" and Obama was wrong to criticize him when Romney said in March 2012 that Russia was "without question our number one geopolitical foe."  They have some cause to gloat... although I didn't hear their concern back then, or until March 2014, about Russia's intentions. My only clarification here would be that Russia is not Putin. On the world stage, for all intents and purposes, the two are now one in the same. Yet it is not destiny that the West finds itself opposed to Russia, it is because of Putin. 

Let's recall that in March 2012, Putin was Prime Minister and Dmitry Medvedev, his protege, was President. Putin had not yet become President again in May 2012, although many feared he would when Russia amended its constitution in 2008 to extend the president's term to six years. Nor had Putin yet cracked down on Russian media, NGOs, opposition political figures and public events. Prior to 2012, there was some hope among liberal Russians that Putin would let a new generation of modern, pragmatic politicians reform Russia. When Putin didn't, there were the most massive and violent street protests that Russia had seen in many years. 

Even former Kremlin insiders say that, since 2012, Putin has become more insular, impulsive and unpredictable. And it wasn't until 2014 that Putin started describing the "Russian World" and Russia's "right to protect" ethnic Russians and Russian speakers wherever they may be; when he started substituting the word russkiy (ethnic Russian) for rossiskiy (regarding matters of Russian state and national interest). 

Essentially, in Russia we are witnessing the frightening metamorphosis of a young, semi-reformist autocrat into a paranoid, bitter old dictator. Indeed, Putin first came to power in 2000. If we count Putin's term as ministerial "gray cardinal" under Medvedev and his likely re-election in 2018 and 2024, Putin will have been in power almost as long as Josef Stalin, and outlast at least three U.S. Presidents.

Russians love their children, too – but that alone won’t stop a nuclear war

By Masha Gessen

September 15, 2014 | Reuters

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS219326889120140916

Rachkevych: Ukraine's 'Praviy Sektor' is Russia's latest bogeyman

Way to go, Mark!  Хороша робота!

Praviy Sektor leader latest in long line

By Mark Rachkevych

May 22, 2014 | Kyiv Post

All dictators need an enemy, real or imagined. It’s the telltale sign of an authoritarian state and one that Russian President Vladimir Putin embraces to Orwellian proportions. Appropriately, his latest external enemy is Praviy Sektor, one of the most visible militant nationalist groups that provided security​during the EuroMaidan​ Revolution​ and defended it from police brutality.

The loosely-structured coalition has since registered as a political party, and its leader Dmytro Yarosh, a native of Russian-speaking Dniproderzhynsk in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, is running for president. 

At the Ukraine Crisis Media Center on May 22, Yarosh described Ukraine as a “neo-colonial” state that only started building an independent nation after EuroMaidan ousted the corrupt and criminal regime of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych in late February. His brand of nationalism is one of a positive, empowering aspiration akin to a liberationist movement. And he views the 100-day revolution as the final shattering of Russo-Soviet tendencies in Ukraine based on comrade capitalism instead of institutional state-building. 

Russia’s Kremlin-controlled media started demonizing the group in the early stages of EuroMaidan. Praviy Sektor became synonymous with neo-fascist, a term that Russia gratuitously uses for its enemies and those who pose a threat to its interests.

Rightfully so.

Moscow’s free public relations – its state-owned English-language Russia Today news channel alone has a $400 million yearly budget – elevated the nationalist group to such heights that it overshadowed the pluralistic fiber of EuroMaidan.

Today, millions of eastern Ukrainians who historically favor watching Russian TV channels, fear Praviy Sektor is at their doorstep getting ready to slit their throats. Many attacks on Ukrainian and pro-Russian separatists alike get attributed to Praviy Sektor in Russia’s propaganda campaign. Journalists months prior in Crimea also reported on the ominous Praviy Sektor scare among the local population as the Kremlin bloodlessly annexed the peninsula.

As Ukraine’s former ruler and oppressor, Russia historically vilifies any group or individual who has ever tried to break away from its grasp. The practice goes back centuries.

Starting in the 18th century, with czarist Russia’s increasing encroachment on Ukraine’s quasi-independent state, Cossack leader Hetman Ivan Mazepa forged an alliance with Swedish King Karl XII who was waging war against Peter the Great. Russia never forgave Mazepa’s “betrayal” and its history books say the act violated the two nations’ “fraternal brotherhood.”

By contrast, a pact that Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky signed with Russia a century earlier is viewed by mainstream Russian historians as the start of a beautiful relationship that re-united the two Slavic entities. To Ukrainian nationalists, the Pereyaslav Treaty marked the beginning of Russian domination over much of Ukraine that eventually devastated the Cossacks’ once flourishing lands and subjugated them to Moscow.

Next on Russia’s villification hit list was Semyon Petliura, who headed the Ukrainian People’s Republic Army and for a time the Directory government of the UNR when Ukraine briefly gained independence in the wake of World War I. Eventually Bolshevik Russia took over more than half of modern-day Ukraine’s territory while he emigrated to Paris in 1924 where he was assassinated. Again, mainstream Russia glosses over this period of Ukraine’s statehood and many Ukrainians believe their nation’s first capital was Kharkiv before it was moved to Kyiv – a purely Soviet historiography of events.

Incidentally, writer Mikhail Bulgakov who was a young adult living in Kyiv when Petliura came to power, hated the very idea of an independent Ukrainian state. He felt the same way about Petliura whom he called a “wonderful bookkeeper.” Towards the end of his short story “The City of Kyiv” he wrote: “May the memory of Petliura be damned.”

The Kremlin also lavished free publicity upon Stepan Bandera who headed the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during and after World War II. The militant organization’s main goal was to attain Ukrainian independence. Many of its members fought with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), an underground resistance movement that fought Nazi Germany and Soviet forces until the mid-1950s. The USSR’s propaganda machine demonized Bandera to such an extent that his name still instills fear in many Russians today. Indeed, the term Banderivtsi is another Russian code word for an independent-minded Ukrainian.

In fact today, Putin doesn’t recognize the interim government in Kyiv and his media minions often refer to it as a “junta” or a “banderite regime.” These hollow labels will continue to be sputtered until a government appears in Kyiv that is either “friendlier” to Moscow, loyal, or willing to be controlled by it. Any other option means to be branded a “fascist” by the world’s most bona fide fascist state ruled by a former KGB lieutenant-colonel who constantly needs a phantom enemy to justify his criminal acts.  

Stop forcing Ukraine into a 'West vs. Russia' narrative?

I have a lot of sympathy with where writer Oliver Bullough is headed here.  Indeed, the Euro-Maidan movement started in 2013 as an internal struggle against endemic corruption, lies and bad governance, personified by President Yanukovych's regime and his ruling Party of Regions, whose sole mission, sans anything resembling an ideology, was to consolidate power from the presidency down to the level of every village in Ukraine.

Writes Bullough:

This is what the revolution is about: Ukrainians trying to wrest control of their country from the oligarchs of Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and elsewhere who – with help from east and west – have robbed them for 23 years. The left should be cheering them on.

The east against west story does have one beneficiary: the Kremlin. In Ukraine Moscow is trying to preserve a crooked regime against the wishes of Ukrainians who want to live with dignity, because the old ways made it money. It also fears a united and stable Ukraine would join Nato. That's why Russia is sheltering Yanukovych, and threatening not to recognise the elections on 25 May. Russia is deploying its propaganda apparatus to present this as an ideological struggle rather than a mercenary one. RT, the channel formerly known as Russia Today, addresses the outside world, while state television channels bombard Russian-speakers with denunciations of the "fascists" in Kiev.

But let's not forget that Yanukovych was always "Putin's man" in Ukraine, starting in 2004 when Putin bankrolled Yanukovych's presidential campaign and Putin spoke out against the Orange Revolution.  And Yanukovych's "power vertical" was a direct emulation of Putin's regime in Russia.

Secondly, the Ukraine conflict quite openly ceased being an internal Ukrainian struggle the moment Russian troops left their Crimean bases in February 2014 and took over the parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in southern Ukraine.  

Thirdly, now less openly but still quite actively, Russia is supporting, arming and coordinating the actions of pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine (aka Donbass).

Having said that, I believe, as Bullough is trying to say, that internal corruption and bad governance are still at the heart of this crisis.  If Ukraine's new government can truly tackle corruption, then they will have addressed the main grievance of most of Ukraine's population, and win a respect and legitimacy that no government has enjoyed since Ukraine's independence. 

(The language issue is a red herring; people in Kyiv and Lviv speak Russian freely everyday without a thought of suffering persecution; this is just a Russian-inspired media lie.)

However, if the new government cannot manage to make Ukraine less corrupt, or says one thing and does another, then it risks the wrath of a second "Euro-Maidan"... but one that could be much more violent and chaotic, and set off a true civil war.... 

Hopefully Ukraine's self-serving and often puerile politicians understand what's at stake, and will do what's right and necessary to pull the country back from the brink of dissolution!  

Stop forcing Ukraine into a narrative of Moscow versus Washington

By Oliver Bullough

May 19, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3pc4k

Referendums in east Ukraine were a Russian farce

My man Mark Rachkevych at the Kyiv Post nailed it. I especially liked this paragraph [emphasis mine]:

When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Kremlin officials say that Kyiv should negotiate with the “southeastern regions,” they mean with people that are under their control. They are not genuine leaders who enjoy popular, grass-roots support. They are lackeys financed and armed from abroad who kill, torture, and kidnap innocent people, and who have terrorized millions more. After all, recent surveys say that 70 percent of residents of southeastern Ukraine are for a united country.

Rachkevych concludes with this important warning [italics and emphasis mine]:

Still, Moscow’s pressure has already moved the goal posts in Kyiv’s policy. Ukraine’s interim government has signaled it is willing to allow for regional and local governments to set language policy, among other compromises. Decentralization is also on the table: letting local governments expand their tax bases, establish municipal police departments as well as other policy decisions that would be delegated to them.

And the calls for Crimea's return are muted as the interim government struggles for survival until the May 25 presidential election.

Some steps, such as the decentralization of government, are necessary to shed the Soviet legacy of governance, but not federalization, which is the Kremlin’s code wor for dismembering Ukraine.  Federalization is a powerful, unifying force when a nation-state is being formed. It has the opposite effect when one exists like Ukraine.

That’s precisely why the May 11 mimicry of a vote is a farce. It was the latest, unequivocal Russian step to dismantle Ukraine. 

That is why the West -- and the U.S. especially! -- cannot play dumb or give in to Putin's cynical gambit to dismantle Ukraine as a functioning state.

Why the poll on self-rule was a farce

By Mark Rachkevych

May 12, 2014 | Kyiv Post

Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov rightfully called the May 11 ballot in eastern Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts a “farce.”

But it wasn’t a travesty because it violated the constitution, or that more than 100,000 pre-completed ballots were seized in favor of secession ahead of the vote. Or that there was a dismally low turnout, multiple voting occurring, or that proof of residence wasn’t a criterion to cast a ballot.

It was a sham because Moscow was behind the vote, just as it was behind the annexation of Crimea and now, the slow-motion invasion of eastern Ukraine, and the recent unrest in Odesa, Kharkiv and other regions.

It is all a Kremlin charade to impose its will on and cover up a foreign policy debacle on Ukraine after the democratic EuroMaidan Revolution in February toppled the criminal regime of disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. Putin and his minions in the state-controlled press corps had defended Yanukovych’s corrupt government until the very end.

EuroMaidan signaled the second slap in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ended up on the wrong side of history – again – after twice backing the ex-convict Yanukovych (the first time was during the 2004 presidential election that led to the Orange Revolution and Viktor Yushchenko's election as president).

So, the former KGB colonel, in his unabashed contempt for Ukraine as a nation, had to create an alternative, make-believe reality to invade.

Eschewing accepted policy norms, and institutions like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe or the United Nations to voice his grievances – primarily that his “Russian compatriots” were under threat of violence and were being discriminated – Putin primitively used force. And he’s shown he is willing to expend more resources than the West to get his way despite a looming third round of sanctions that would hurt Russia’s economy. Those resources include a cadre of media hounds who not only distort the news, but also manufacture it to shameless depths of bawdiness.

Just as the world has watched Russia transform into a fascist state, there is mounting evidence that the unrest in eastern and parts of southern Ukraine are led from Moscow and financed either through state-owned banks or Yanukovych and his inner-circle. Ukraine’s Security Service has captured Russian agents and military officers, as well as other subversives who were trained and received instructions from their handlers in Crimea and elsewhere. Russian sleepers have been activated and mercenaries with combat experience in the Russian military are on Ukrainian territory using Russia-supplied arms and weapons.

When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other Kremlin officials say that Kyiv should negotiate with the “southeastern regions,” they mean with people that are under their control. They are not genuine leaders who enjoy popular, grass-roots support. They are lackeys financed and armed from abroad who kill, torture, and kidnap innocent people, and who have terrorized millions more. After all, recent surveys say that 70 percent of residents of southeastern Ukraine are for a united country.

Kyiv has made it clear that it won’t engage with armed terrorists hiding behind masks and human shields, and likewise, whose chief handlers are sheltered behind the Kremlin’s walls. Still, Moscow’s pressure has already moved the goal posts in Kyiv’s policy. Ukraine’s interim government has signaled it is willing to allow for regional and local governments to set language policy, among other compromises. Decentralization is also on the table: letting local governments expand their tax bases, establish municipal police departments as well as other policy decisions that would be delegated to them.

And the calls for Crimea's return are muted as the interim government struggles for survival until the May 25 presidential election.

Some steps, such as the decentralization of government, are necessary to shed the Soviet legacy of governance, but not federalization, which is the Kremlin’s code wor for dismembering Ukraine. Federalization is a powerful, unifying force when a nation-state is being formed. It has the opposite effect when one exists like Ukraine.

That’s precisely why the May 11 mimicry of a vote is a farce. It was the latest, unequivocal Russian step to dismantle Ukraine. Sadly, Russia is succeeding. It still has the initiative and Ukraine's government, the European Union and the United States will have take tougher actions quickly to reverse the Kremlin tide.

Who is to blame for 46 Odessa deaths? (Kyiv Post)

Now the Kyiv Post is saying that there were no foreigners who died in the Trades House, although presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko still insists this is true.

Ukraine's security service (SBU) says they discovered that many of the AntiMaidan activists were paid by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).

I realize that some people will believe or disbelieve what suits them, but the rest of us should try to discover the facts. Those who believe the government of Ukraine is "fascist" will not believe a word it says; they'll believe SBU is fabricating evidence. I myself have zero belief in anything coming from the Russian government; it is a Putin propaganda machine.

What seems clear to me is that part of this conflict was planned by the * 400 or so AntiMaidan thugs who came armed with guns, clubs, etc. and wearing body armor. But what happened after that was chaos and reaction. I don't see how anybody from Kyiv or elsewhere could have "planned" the movements, actions and reactions of opposing sides exceeding a few thousand people. 

At least one film on YouTube shows an AntiMaidan protester shooting a machine gun from behind a wall of police, i.e. under their protection. This was outrageous and must be punished.

My friend in Odessa witnessed two men killed in front of his office by AntiMaidan thugs: one with an ice pick; and one shot by a sniper.  I believe his word 100%.

Again, people will believe what they want, but I'm hoping there is still room for facts and sober analysis.

* In Odessa, Slovyansk and elsewhere, we keep seeing similar figures: 200 to 400 fighters/activists/thugs whatever you want to call them. This seems like the key number. I don't know why. (Maybe it's too difficult for Russia to arm and support more men than that?...)  But it shows that a lot of havoc can be wreaked by just a few individuals. It also shows that not "millions" of Ukrainian citizens in the East support such violence. 

Indeed, let's not forget a a recent Pew Research poll showed that 70 percent in the East -- including 58 percent of Russian speakers -- want Ukraine to maintain its current borders.

Odessa: Who is to blame for 46 Odessa deaths?

By Lily Hyde and Olga Rudenko

May 7, 2014 | Kyiv Post

In the bloodiest day in Ukraine since government snipers claimed more than 50 lives during the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 20, 46 people were killed in Odessa on May 2. The violence started when an armed group of pro-Russian activists attacked a peaceful pro-Ukrainian rally, whose participants, uncharacteristically, fought back.

But nearly a week later, many questions remain about who died, how they died, why so many perished and who is responsible for their deaths amid accusations from Ukraine’s leading presidential candidate, Petro Poroshenko, that a toxic chemical was used in the building where most lost their lives.

Pro-Russians came armed, ready to attack

Some 1,000 pro-Ukrainian citizens and football fans from Odessa and Kharkiv gathered at Soborna Square in central Odessa on 3 p.m. to march for Ukraine’s unity, a tradition that began during the EuroMaidan Revolution that toppled former President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22. Metalist Kharkiv’s fan club, however, denied they took part.

Before the march, some 400 pro-Russian protesters approached the square from Hrecheska Street; many of them were armed with guns, bats and sticks and wore bulletproof vests and helmets, while most of the Ukrainian patriots on Soborna Square were unarmed.

After the group of mostly Ukrainian football fans came under attack, they responded by throwing rocks at the AntiMaidan crowd of pro-Russians. Soon the fighting escalated, as both sides threw Molotov cocktails and fired automatic weapons. Police were seen either shielding the pro-Russians or not taking action to keep the two crowds apart. Masked, pro-Russians were also een shooting from the rooftop of the Afina shopping mall in the central square.

The fighting lasted for hours and left six men dead before it moved to an even deadlier phase.

Pro-Ukrainian activists vastly outnumbered the pro-Russian crowd and eventually chased them away. They then descended on Kulikove Pole Square, where the AntiMaidan protesters had set up an encampment, and destroyed the tents near the Trade Union House that had been the headquarters of the pro-Russian protesters in Odessa since February.

When the activists set the tents on fire, Odessa Oblast council member Oleksiy Alba called on some 200 pro-Russians in the camp to flee to the nearby Trade Union House.

The pro-Ukrainians threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the building, while the AntiMaidan supporters threw Molotov cocktails from the rooftop. Several bottles broke inside the front entrance and the windows of the second and fourth floor, where a fire spread quickly.

The burning building trapped people inside. Police said eight of them died after jumping from the upper floors of the tall, stately five-story building as they tried to escape from the fire, while 32 died of smoke inhalation. The rest went to the rooftop or hid in areas of the building not consumed by fire.

The victims

The death toll unofficially stands at 46. As of May 7, only 38 of the victims were identified, 19 of whom have been buried. Despite rumors that there were Russian citizens among the dead, all the identified victims turned out to be from Odessa. Five participants of the clashes went missing. Some 200 people sought medical aid after the clashes. Of identified victims, six are women.

One of the women was Khrystyna Berzhanytska, 22. A blonde young woman of Russian origin and an AntiMaidan activist in Odesa, she died of smoke inhalation inside the Trade Unions House. In early November 2013, she participated in a talk show on local TV, defending the idea of Slavic unity and criticizing the West.

“I don’t understand why everyone is so pro-Western now. What comes from West kills our culture, our traditions. It’s wrong to take after someone; everyone should have their own way. Otherwise, we can turn into a herd,” Berzhanytska said then.

Most of the bodies in Trade Unions House were found lying in the stairwell and upstairs rooms.

How the fire started

The official version given by the Interior Ministry is that the Trade Unions House could have caught on fire from the Molotov cocktails that some of the AntiMaidan protesters were throwing from the rooftop.

But even eyewitnesses are not sure what started the deadly inferno. Many videos shot at the scene show the building on fire from Molotov cocktails thrown by pro-Ukrainian protesters. But at least one video shows a fire burning in the room on the fourth floor while the room’s window is closed and unbroken.

People try to escape from a fire at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2.

Minyayev, who witnessed the tragedy, says he saw pro-Ukrainian activists beating those who jumped from the windows, but he does not believe there was any intent to kill those inside. The activists helped save many lives by bringing scaffolding any other rescue devices to the building.

The pro-Ukrainian fighters “didn’t know there were people inside who had died. People were shouting until the end – ‘Come out!’ ‘Give up!’ Until the very end, when the emergency services people came out and said, “Guys, there are only corpses in there,” Minyayev said.

Some allege that the victims died from a deadly gas, or toxic chemicals, not smoke. Poroshenko, the billionaire front-runner in the presidential election on May 25, thinks this version may be true.

“New details of the Odesa tragedy are now being disclosed. There were terrorists brought from Transnistria and Russia who fired at the pro-Ukrainian march and there were also special toxic substances placed in the Trade Union house. It was a scenario developed in advance to make the number of victims higher,” Poroshenko told journalists in parliament on May 6 after lawmakers listened to a report by law enforcement officials.

The investigation

The unrest in Odesa was financed by members of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s inner circle, said Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on May 7. He added that Russia’s KGB-successor agency, the Federal Security Service, organized the unrest and backed the pro-Russian crowd.

Clashes between participants of the march “For the unity of Ukraine” and pro-Russian activists in Odessa on May 2.

According to him, the SBU discovered that the people who attacked the pro-Ukrainian rally in Odessa were paid from a money conversion center in Odessa. The center was associated with former Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov and former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Klymenko, both part of Yanukovych’s inner circle. They, along with Yanukovych, are among the coterie of former high officials who fled Ukraine and are believed to be hiding out in Russia.

On May 7 Klymenko was summoned to the General Prosecutor’s Office to be questioned, but didn’t appear.

There were other, peaceful rallies in Odessa as recently as May 1, when AntiMaidan activists and left-wing parties held a march.

The next day, AntiMaidan groups on the Russian-controlled Vkontakte social network suddenly shared calls to forcefully stop the pro-Ukrainian march and “take after Donetsk,” a reference to the bloody attacks by Kremlin-backed, pro-Russian demonstrators on pro-Ukrainians on April 27.

During the clashes in Odessa, many were surprised and outraged by the inaction of police.

Police didn’t prevent the hundreds of armed AntiMaidan supporters from attacking the pro-Ukrainian rally, even though several dozens of the officers were present at the AntiMaidan supporters’ gathering spot. When the fight started, the police formed a line to protect AntiMaidan people from the pro-Ukrainian football fans.

Witnesses say and videos show the police shielded the AntiMaidan crowd and even let some from their ranks launch attacks. At least one protester on the AntiMaidan side was seen shooting a machine gun from behind rows of police, using them as a shield.

“What for me was the worst thing was that the firing came from behind the police line, from behind their shields,” Minyayev said. “They couldn’t have not seen it. It’s proof to me that they didn’t just let it happen, they supported it.”

Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitskiy agrees.

“We can speak of not just (police) inactivity, but of collaboration,” Makhnitskiy told Channel 5 on May 6.

Two criminal investigations of the Odessa events have been opened – one of the police actions and the other of the violent riots. Meanwhile, a range of Odessa top officials have been fired and replaced, including the chief of regional police and the governor of Odessa Oblast.

Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych, Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko, journalist Sergiy Dibrov from Odessa contributed to this story.

Russian harbinger: 'Russian Facebook' founder flees country

I don't harbor any affection for the founder of Facebook knock-off VKontakte (VK, for short) Pavel Durov -- I noted back in May 2012 how he was a spoiled rich a-hole. Yet undoubtedly, Durov's fleeing Russia is a harbinger of an even more despotic rule to come under Russia's President Vladimir Putin.

VK, which largely resembles an older version of Facebook, attracts about 60 million users daily, primarily from countries in the former Soviet Union, vastly outstripping Facebook's reach in the region. It played an instrumental role in bringing hundreds of thousands of protesters into the streets in late 2011 in the wake of widely manipulated parliamentary elections, and it has played a part in drawing crowds to the Kiev protest movement that helped oust Ukraine's pro-Russian president in February.

As many others have predicted, Putin's strong-armed adventures abroad must certainly coincide with a stronger hand at home against Russian dissidents, journalists, academics, ethnic and other minorities, and entrepreneurs.  Putin simply cannot allow a version of reality that isn't his own.

As AP noted:

On Tuesday, the Russian parliament passed a law requiring social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save all information about their users for at least half a year. The same law, which will go into effect in August if signed by Putin, gave bloggers the same legal status — and responsibilities — as media outlets, making them more vulnerable to accusations of libel or extremism.

Durov said "we held out for seven and a half years," meaning VK held some semblance of freedom despite Putin. But a threat to autocracy anywhere is a threat to autocracy everywhere; and threats cannot be tolerated.

Russian Social Media CEO Quits, Flees Country

By Laura Mills and Alexander Roslyakov

April 23, 2014 | AP

URL: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/russian-social-media-ceo-quits-flees-country

Russia, not Ukraine, is flirting with Far Right politics

I meant to send this a few days earlier. It shows that Vladimir Putin's Russia is the truly neo-fascist state, not Ukraine!

East Ukraine crisis and the 'fascist' matrix

By Halya Coynash

April 17, 2014 | Al Jazeera

Ukraine's main far-right party, VO Svoboda, has been dumped by its erstwhile European ultra-nationalist allies. It was dumped for Russia with whom the most virulently anti-Semitic, anti-migrant and far-right parties in France, Hungary and other EU countries are developing close ties. The Kremlin's blossoming contacts with those parties, and the far-right roots of prominent pro-Russian activists in Ukraine do not deter Russia from claiming to be protecting Russian nationals from the anti-Semitic and fascist hordes who have allegedly seized control in Ukraine.

The claims have been refuted countless times and attempts to use anti-Semitism condemned by the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine,prominent Jewish civic figures, academics and others. The UN's High Commissioner on Human Rights has rightly indicated that "misinformation, propaganda and incitement to hatred need to be urgently countered" but missed the point entirely about the source of it all.

Who is fascist?

Russia's propaganda machine, and especially Russian-language TV channels are feeding not only the Russian audience, but also a significant number of Ukrainians with lies and manipulated reports. Images of a Crimean rabbi forced to leave for Kiev after condemning Russian intervention are presented as showing a rabbi forced to leave Ukraine because of mounting anti-Semitism.

In one astounding attempt to explain the denial by Ukrainian Jews of Russia's claims, viewers on the Kremlin-funded Russia Today were asked whether such Jewish organisations "are with their own hands bringing on a second Holocaust?" 

You have only to listen to those on the streets supporting the armed "federalists" in the Donetsk region to see that the propaganda works. The armed separatists and their supporters would tell journalists that they do not want to live in the same country with "fascists". It is no accident that the puppet government "elected" after armed Russian soldiers seized government buildings in the Crimea immediately closed down almost all Ukrainian media and gave the broadcasting frequencies to Russian channels.

A number of the main actors in the pro-Russian protests in the Donetsk region have strong links with far-right parties. Pavel Gubarev, for example, is a Donetsk business owner and the head of the "People's Militia". On March 1, he was supposedly elected "people's governor" and led a crowd in storming the Donetsk regional administration building, demanding that a referendum be held on the oblast's secession and calling for Russian military intervention. His detention was presented by Russian TV channels as politically motivated persecution. They preferred not to delve into Gubarev's ideological roots as a member of the neo-Nazi Russian National Unity Party.

Gubarev, and a number of other leading figures in the Donetsk federalist protests, are members of Natalya Vitrenko's Progressive Socialist Party. That party was singled out by Josef Zissels, head of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress when he rejected Russian claims that the EuroMaidan protesters were anti-Semitic. He said that the Congress which monitors anti-Semitism and xenophobia had instead found a lot of anti-Semitic material on pro-Russian sites like that of the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) aimed at inciting antagonism to EuroMaidan. The latter was presented as having been instigated by Jews.

A rather small rally in Mykolaiv on April 6 declared another PSP supporter, Dmitry Nikonov, "people's governor", while two members - Alexander Kharytonov and Alexander Kravtsov - are leading figures in the Luhansk Guard, a major separatist organisation in the south-east. Kravtsov is also involved in organisations with neo-Nazi leanings.

More can and has been said about the relatively small number of such pro-Russian activists. It should, however, be stressed that none was well-known or had any influence before the events which led to Russia's annexation of the Crimea. This changed on April 6 when administrative buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv were seized, then most dramatically on April 13, with the deployment of armed militants noted by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, as being "equipped with Russian weapons and the same uniforms as those worn by Russian forces that invaded Crimea".

A public opinion survey carried out in the second half of March reported a majority in Ukraine favouring joining the EU and a majority in all regions believing that Crimea should remain a part of Ukraine in some manner. Another survey was undertaken by Civic Watch with the participation of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, from March 16 to 30, with respondents from throughout Ukraine, including the Crimea. An absolutely majority - 89 percent - consider Ukraine to be their motherland. Only 8 percent support separatism. Even in Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions) only 18 percent were in favour of it.

The so-called referendum on March 16 on Crimea's future has not been recognised by the international community for many reasons, including the presence of armed Russian soldiers. The self-styled prime minister, Sergei Aksenov whose pro-Russian party gained a mere 4 percent of the votes at the last parliamentary elections, had previously gained notoriety for criminal connections rather than far-right views.

Russian ties with Europe's far right

The same cannot be said of those invited by Russia to "observe the referendum". The choice was clearly limited since Ukrainian and international election watchdogs had refused to recognise a "referendum". Those who turned up were Russia's far-right (or neo-Stalinist) allies.

Russian TV channels reported the essentially full stamp of approval provided by this "team of international observers". These included at least two members of the radical right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria: Aymeric Chauprade, adviser on international issues for the French National Front; Belgian Luc Michel, former neo-Nazi FANE member and now member of an extreme right party, as well as two compatriots from the far-right Vlaams Belang; two members of the Bulgarian far-right Ataka Party; Hungarian Bela Kovacs from the far-right Jobbik party, and others.

Some of the above-mentioned and others are members of the Alliance of European National Movements which issued astatement on Ukraine that effectively drops its former ally, Ukraine's VO Svoboda Party and sides with Russia. The statement's anti-Semitic argumentation is well-worth reading given the constant Kremlin narrative about supposed Ukrainian anti-Semitism.

Shekhovtsov reports that on April 9, Tamas Gaudi Nagy, MP from the far-right Jobbik party gave a three-minute speech against European democracy at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He was wearing a t-shirt reading: "Crimea belongs to Russia; Transcarpathia [in Ukraine - HC] belongs to Hungary." It is worth recalling that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union once signed a collaboration pact which involved a similar carving up of Poland.

Besides Jobbik, Russia is also cultivating relations with Marine Le Pen's French National Front and other far-right movements. Strong showing by these parties in the upcoming May European Parliament elections will presumably add other voices, like Nagy's, in support for Moscow's annexation of a part of Ukraine.

In a recent study, the Political Capital Institute suggests that there are ideological links between some far-right European parties and the current Russian leadership. Russia, it says, has under Vladimir Putin, set its sights on the restoration of the country's status as a world power. Far-right and other parties seeking to undermine European unity and taking an anti-Western line are presumably to play a role in its fulfilment of Russia's imperialist aspirations. So, too, are the references to "fascists" used as an attempt to justify Ukraine's dismemberment. The world has been here before, and the price for collaborating with fascists and for failure to react to clear danger proved tragically high.

Who are these neo-Nazi bogeymen in Ukraine?

I'm pasting the most relevant graphs here, since most frequently I hear that Pravy Sector and Svoboda are powerful neo-Nazi bogeyman who will... do what, I'm not sure, but they're definitely the worst guys since Hitler, all pro-Russians assure us [emphasis mine]:

The leader of the Right Sector is Dmytro Yarosh, born and raised in the predominantly Russian speaking south-eastern city of Dniprodzerzhinsk. Yarosh was a member of the Young Pioneers and the Countrywide Leninist Communist Youth League  and served two years in the Soviet Army. One of the key forces during the Kyiv Revolution, the Right Sector has many Russian speaking members and has not been associated with any ‘fascist’ or anti-Jewish statements. In his first foreign interview, Yarosh told TIME that while the revolution needs to steer the country into a new direction, not dependent on either the West or East, he understands that any new opposition government is not likely to carve out a place for him and his men.

The Svoboda party was established in 1991 but only within the last four years attained a noticeable profile. Both Svoboda and Right Sector are very minor players on the current political landscape and have no realistic hope of a major role in the coming government. Svoboda members have recently bullied a TV journalist. Svoboda formally says it is not anti-European, nor anti-Russian, nor anti- Jewish but pro-Ukrainian.

Actually, the ‘anti-Semitic’ theme is now being played by Moscow at low volume ever since the chief Rabbi of Ukraine, seconded by every major Ukrainian Jewish organization, issued statements categorically affirming the freedoms Jews have in Ukraine and supporting the new Kyiv government. There are no instances of any Human Rights Watch organization reporting either Jewish or Russian “persecution” in Ukraine.

What the West does not understand about the “right”-ist groups in Ukraine is that they are here because the anti-Imperialist battle is not over, and they are not that frightening. They are certainly not saying “ban all foreigners…or Russians… or Jews” like Right groups in other European countries. What they are saying is it is time to save their culture and society which the Russians destroyed.

Europe and the EU have many more militant, far-right parties than Ukraine does, and yet these countries are not under existential threat as Ukraine is from Russia. Their language and culture are not under systematic assault as Ukrainian is by Russia. Extreme nationalism is a reaction, not a cause.  If it was OK to be pro-Ukrainian without being accused of fascism, if it was considered normal to defend the Ukrainian language the same way France's gov't. defends French, or Estonia's gov't. defends Estonian, then there would be little cause for nationalist fervor in Ukraine.  

And again, I repeat that there are way more neo-Nazis in Russia than Ukraine. Go to YouTube and search "skinheads russia" or "neo-nazis Russia" and see what horrible videos pop up!

“The Wolf who cried Fascist!” – Pathology of Russian Propaganda against Ukraine, pt. 2

By Adrian Bryttan

March 21, 2014 | Euromaidan PR

URL: http://euromaidanpr.com/2014/03/21/the-wolf-who-cried-fascist-pathology-of-russian-propaganda-against-ukraine-pt-2/#more-5340

All sides agree: Hilter was a bad guy (Atlantic)

At least they can all agree on something.

Good News From Ukraine: Everyone Still Hates Hitler

By Matt Ford

March 20, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/good-news-from-ukraine-everyone-still-hates-hitler/284489/