Russia violating Geneva Conventions in Ukraine

Russia's ongoing violations of the Geneva Conventions in Ukraine are doubly ironic and sad, since nowadays Russia claims to be the liberator of Europe from fascism/Nazism; and the Conventions were buttressed in 1949 to address Nazi atrocities. 

Indeed, in a statement on the 60th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the International Committee of the Red Cross noted that "the conventions were intended to fill the gaps in international humanitarian law exposed by the [Second World War]."

Happy Victory Day!  May our victory live on not only in parades and grandiose speeches, but also in the conduct of war.

Russia’s actions in Ukraine clearly violate the Geneva Conventions

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

May 6, 2014 | Washington Post

While Russia’s aggression against Ukraine tramples the United Nations charter, Moscow gets a free ride on its other transgressions of international law. Few have focused, for instance, on how Russia’s military operations in Ukraine violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The failure to challenge this misconduct is profoundly wrong and damages the integrity of this whole body of law.

The Geneva Conventions are a great civilizational accomplishment, tempering how wars are waged. For years, they have been transgressed by non-state actors who fight out of uniform, target civilians, take hostages and engage in torture. But these critical legal norms are far more threatened when such conduct is embraced (in action if not word) by a sovereign state and a party to the Conventions.

The fact that Russian troops operate in Ukraine in unmarked uniforms, or pretend to be civilians, is a significant Geneva violation. States can and do use commandos who operate with stealth and concealment, as the United States did in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There is a fundamental difference, however, between using special forces in an announced armed conflict and doing so while denying that one’s military is engaged at all, as Russia has done.

Moscow is trying to avoid political and legal responsibility for its actions — and Ukraine is not the only place it is prepared to act. Latvian analyst Janis Berzins has analyzed internal Russian military documents describing Moscow’s “new way of waging war” that includes undeclared wars, undercover destabilization, attacks on civilians to create false humanitarian crisis and psy-op operations. Moscow believes this style of waging war could be particularly effective against neighboring countries with large Russian-speaking populations.

Russia’s denials ring hollow. Moscow has inserted intelligence operatives, Spetsnaz personnel and other elite troops into the region, and some of these individuals have been apprehended by Ukrainian forces. Evidence of Russia’s involvement includes the Russian body armor these forces wear and the specialized and expensive Russian weapons they carry, such as AK-74 automatic rifles and Dragunov sniper rifles.

During the most recent fighting around Slovyansk, Russia’s stronghold in eastern Ukraine, hundreds of Russian personnel and irregulars deployed mortars, heavy machine guns and antitank weapons. The National Security Agency, NATO intelligence services and the Ukrainian government have also intercepted communications indicating that senior officers from Russia’sSouthern Military District control Moscow’s operations in eastern Ukraine, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry discussed in meetings last week.

Moscow-led forces have also engaged in an intimidation campaign of assassination and torture against Ukrainian civilians, among the most serious Geneva offenses. Examples include Vladimir Rybak, a local government official in the Donetsk region and a strong supporter of the Ukrainian government, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed. His body was thrown into a river on the outskirts of Slovyansk.

In another palpable violation of the Geneva Conventions, which require military operations to be waged in ways designed to minimize collateral damage to noncombatants, Russian forces have staged assaults on police stations and government buildings in ways designed to maximize civilian casualties. This was done to discredit the Ukrainian government and provide a “humanitarian” justification for further Russian intervention.

Russian forces in eastern Ukraine have seized hostages, including Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observers.They have also violated the Geneva Conventions and the customary laws of war by recruiting Ukrainian civilians and police personnel. In two regions of eastern Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk, about 50 percent of local police personnel have reportedly switched sides. The Ukrainian Security Service says Russian banks have been transferring funds to make daily payments to pro-Russian Ukrainians. .

While the responsibility for Russia’s actions in Ukraine begins with President Vladi­mir Putin and other Moscow leaders, the Geneva Conventions require that the Russian military be held accountable for its violations of the laws of war. The first step should be for the United States, NATO and the Ukrainian government to release all of the available information about the Russian offenses, including the names of all individuals involved. The second step should be sanctions that would prevent Russian military officers from traveling to any Western countries regardless of the purpose. No equipment sales or technology transfers to the Russian armed forces should be approved, and no Western military should buy Russian weapon systems or equipment.

Because military establishments, by their nature, value respect and esprit de corps, ostracizing Russia’s armed forces could have a significant impact on Moscow’s behavior, getting its attention in real and immediate ways. They would also underscore the strong Western commitment to upholding the laws of war in general and the Geneva Conventions in particular.

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

U.S. and Ukraine must fight Russia's propagandistic lies

This one's about a week old but still quite relevant, since Russia continues to push obvious lies about Ukraine.  I hope to God that Obama, Cameron and Merkel are telling Putin on the phone, "Look, we know you're full of shit.  Cut the crap."  

Just to give you an idea of the cynicism of the liar we're dealing with in Russia's President Vladimir Putin:

[Russian propaganda minister Dmitry] Kiselov’s film of Ukrainians purportedly fleeing to Russia was actually of a normal day at a congested Polish border point. The pro-Russian protesters arrive in sleek buses as “protest tourists” with plenty of “walking around money” to pay bands, organize mobs, and harass reporters and international observers, who could documents any outrages against ethnic Russians. Crimean “self defense forces” are not armed and uniformed from the local five and dime, as Russian television claims, but are regular [Russian] troops. Russia’s media magicians claim with a straight face that footage of the brutal horror of Maidan is actually film of neo-Nazi-inspired demonstrations on the streets of Crimea. Wrong time and wrong place, but good television! Russian-television maps already show Crimea as part of Russia and circulate fake photographs of nonexistent Hitler posters in Kiev.

And on and on.... Educated and well-informed Ukrainians and certainly Westerners overestimated the capacity of ignorant and propaganda-laden Crimeans to distinguish truth from fiction.  We can't repeat this mistake in Eastern Ukraine.  We can't assume the Internet magically keeps people well-informed; in fact it can quite effectively can keep them misinformed. Meanwhile, most Ukrainians still get their news from the TV, which is increasingly Russian.

Putin's Big Lie On Ukraine (If It Weren't So Serious It Would Be Funny)

By Paul Roderick Gregory

March 10, 2014 | Forbes

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it…..For the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels 

Joke circulating in Russia: If you want to live in France – you go to France. If you want to live in UK, you go to England. If you want to live in Russia – Russia will come to you! 

Ukrainian Facebook posting: “We have not killed one Russian (Rossiyan), we did not take their land or introduce troops on their territory, did not grab their resources. We simply became a free people for one week. Is this enough for Russia to declare war on us with a unanimous decision and  the full approval of the Russian people! Why do they hate us? Because of freedom? Because of different thinking?

Russia’s Big Lies about Ukraine, while easily discredited, have been repeated with such frequency and with so little pushback that they, unfortunately, are coming to be perceived as true. The Western world finds it hard to believe that a head of state and his official media engage in persistent and blatant lying and distortion. “There must be something there,” we think. “If they are lying, where are the rebuttals?”

Putin takes propaganda seriously. We do not. That is a major mistake.

The first Big Lie is that Ukraine is such a cauldron of ethnic hatred and violence that Mother Russia was forced to intervene to rescue and protect Russian speakers from their extremist Ukrainian neighbors. False.

Ukrainians, be they first-language Russian or Ukrainian speakers (virtually all speak Russian), would shake their heads, just as would Bavarians when warned they are in danger of ethnic and racial violence at the hands of North Germans. On any stroll in Kiev or other cities, one hears more Russian than Ukrainian. Although the Russian media has likely scoured the record, there are no incidents of Ukrainian-on-Russian ethnic violence. There are no cases of Russian speakers in the east hiding in their cellars from the latest Ukrainian pogrom. Ukrainians do not feel hatred towards Russians. First-hand reports coming out of Ukraine say that Ukrainians, who had regarded Russians as friends and neighbors, for the first time regard them with a sense of loss as “others” (chuzhie).

Russia’s second Big Lie is that Ukraine’s East and South wish to join voluntarily their Russian brethren in a united Russia. False.

Putin cites his Levada Institute polls as proof of the admiration he enjoys among his people. He should therefore accept the results of a scientific poll of more than 2,000 Ukrainian citizens taken during the worst of the Maidan demonstrations, when separatist tendencies would have been inflamed, but before the Russian invasion ignited anti-Russian sentiment.  The highly professionalpoll shows an overwhelming majority of Ukrainian citizens want Russia only as a friendly neighbor with open borders and no visas.Some 12.5 percent want Russia and Ukraine as one country, reaching a high of twenty percent in the East and 25 percent in the Crimean south. An unoccupied Ukraine would not voluntarily join the corrupt and dysfunctional Russia. The Maidan revolution offers a fresh start with a chance of becoming part of law-abiding and prosperous Europe.

The new prime minister of Crimea – installed by the Russian occupation to preside over Crimea’s annexation — is one Sergei “The Goblin” Aksyonov, a purported member of the Crimean underworld, whose pro-Russian party won a whopping four percent of the votes in the last regional elections. Now he purports to represent all Crimea as he barrels through the Crimea with his escort of  AK-47-toting Russians (Excuse me, I meant to say Crimean self-defense troops).

The third Big Lie is that the Maidan demonstrators were not ordinary people venting against corruption and mismanagement, but vile, extreme nationalists, anti Semites, and Nazis paid and trained by Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Having driven out the legitimate president of Ukraine, extremists are poised to take the Ukrainian presidency and parliament.  Two presidential candidate hail from the far right. Poor Russia had no choice but to intervene. False.

Yes, nationalists were among the bravest of the Maidan demonstrators, but they constituted a small minority. The grim list of  the “Heavenly Hundred” victims shows a grand total of eight deaths from the two right-wing parties. The others were students, factory workers, and otherwise ordinary people, some from the East, demonstrating out of conscience. As to the upcoming presidential elections, the latest polls show ex-heavyweight boxing champion, Vitaly Klitshko,  in the lead with the two right-wing candidates polling collectively less than five percent – scant evidence of  an impending skin-head Nazi takeover.

If Putin is intent on saving Europe from right-wing extremism, he is advised to invade Greece (Golden Dawn), France (National Front), Netherlands (Wilder’s Freedom Party), or  Hungary (Jobbik) – all of which have double the popular support of Ukraine’s far right. Maybe such invasions would actually wake up the somnambulant Europeans.

[Right on!  Bullseye!  All these hand-wringing liberals forget that far-right nationalist parties exist all over Europe and yet somehow the EU does not degrade into vile Fascism.  In fact, it's quite possible that, in the big scheme of things, small far-right and far-left parties provide a necessary political dynamism that leads to compromise and wiser policy choices. - J]

Western diplomats are busy harrumphing that Russia’s invasion of the Crimea violates international treaties to which Russia was a signatory, and that sovereign Ukrainian territory cannot be annexed, especially not by a referendum supervised by foreign forces and without legitimate observers. Putin’s diplomats respond with razzle-dazzle and obfuscate with claims of “self-defense forces,” “humanitarian intervention,” and the threat of Neo-Nazism. In a rare departure from diplomatic language, a State Departmenttalking-points memo labels the “illegal actions in Ukraine” as “startling Russian fiction (not seen) since Dostoyevsky wrote, “The formula ‘two times two equals five’ is not without its attractions.”

But the West is of no use in countering Putin’s Big Lies delivered as desinformatsia  to the Russian people and to the ethnic Russians of Ukraine by the Russian mass media. Only informal Russian and Ukrainian social media can fight back. With belief that the Cold War is “over” everywhere but in Russia, the United States lacks voices like Radio Liberty and Voice of America to beam some truth into troubled Eastern and Southern Ukrainian territory. Putin’s forces have blocked Ukrainian television in occupied Crimea and increasingly-occupied Eastern Ukraine. The only media presence is Putin and his Big Lie.

Propagation of the Big Lie requires – not taciturn diplomats – but imaginative media masters, unconstrained by reality and truth telling. Putin has promoted former news anchor, Dmitry Kiselov, to head his Ukraine disinformation campaign. Known for his rants against Europe and Ukraine, Kiselov has promised to “apply the correct political technology,” then “bring it to the point of overheating” and bring to bear “the magnifying glass of TV and the Internet.” (Snyder, Fascism, Russia and Ukraine).

Anne Applebaum (Russia’s information warriors are on the march – we must respond) has reported on Kiselov’s frenetic media campaign:   

“Russian television news has reported, among other things, that 675,000 Ukrainian refugees have flooded over the Russian border; that extremists and neo-Nazi militants have illegally taken over the Ukrainian government in Kiev; and that Crimean “self-defense forces” or “pro-Russian forces” have spontaneously gathered in front of the Crimean parliament in order to defend it from those same Nazis. Each of these statements is a lie.”

Kiselov’s film of Ukrainians purportedly fleeing to Russia was actually of a normal day at a congested Polish border point. The pro-Russian protesters arrive in sleek buses as “protest tourists” with plenty of “walking around money” to pay bands, organize mobs, and harass reporters and international observers, who could documents any outrages against ethnic Russians. Crimean “self defense forces” are not armed and uniformed from the local five and dime, as Russian television claims, but are regular troops. Russia’s media magicians claim with a straight face that footage of the brutal horror of Maidan is actually film of neo-Nazi-inspired demonstrations on the streets of Crimea. Wrong time and wrong place, but good television! Russian-television maps already show Crimea as part of Russia and circulate fake photographs of nonexistent Hitler posters in Kiev.

Russian television’s Big Lie bombardment of Russian and Ukrainian has left its mark. A Ukrainian businessman from Dnepropetrovsk stuck in Singapore with nothing but Russian television to watch claimed that, had he not known better, he would have wanted to join the Russian side. A coal miner’s wife in Donetsk reacted to the Big Lie saying that the choice is either “join Russia or war,” and she does not want war.  A young Russian historian dumbfounded me by asking whether I knew that neo-Nazis now control Ukraine.

Both the Ukraine and West urgently need to up their propaganda game. Our diplomats must focus, not on violated treaties, but on demolishing the Big Lie. They should not shy away from calling a lie a lie a lie, to steal a line from Gertrude Stein. Ukraine must find ways and means to deprive Russia of its current information monopoly over its southern and eastern regions and the Russian people.

Ukraine must use all the social media at its disposal to counter Putin’s massive media apparatus. Ukraine versus Russia may seem like a hopeless David and Goliath, but the truth is a powerful ally. No lie from Putin can go unanswered. A good offense is better than a good defense.

Ukraine can gain the advantage if and when Putin’s Big Lie machine goes too far. Planting false claims and even doctored or falsified film and photos can backfire. The fact that Putin’s machine lies without hesitation suggests a cockiness and overconfidence.

Philosopher Lao-Tsi said more than two thousand years ago that we do not notice a good government, we hate a bad government, but the worst government is one over which we laugh.

The most potent weapon against Putin’s Big Lies is laughter and satire. Apparently, the thin-skinned Putin is now the butt of  jokes on night time talk shows and Saturday Night Live skits.

Let me end with an anecdote that may have a much deeper meaning for the outcome of crisis. On the way to lunch, a colleague told me that the nine-year-old daughter of a Russian couple was teased at her school today for being Russian. If this young girl was subject to public humiliation for being Russian, imagine how Russian tourists, businessmen, and students will be received in the West as a consequence of Mr. Putin’s adventurism. The Russian people have suffered the loss of empire, bankruptcy, and economic collapse. They want to hold their heads high, and they have looked to strong-man Putin to give them this.

Ukraine's Maidan activists are not 'fascists'

Disturbingly, some of the Western left wing and even some of the media have adopted the Russian propaganda meme that protesters and activists centered on Ukraine's Maidan are "nationalists" and "fascists."  

It is strange then that Ukraine's power structures and military have given themselves over so willingly, bloodlessly, to a group of fascists. Does that make Ukraine's military leadership fascistic?  Were they not fascist a month ago under President Yanukovych?  Absurd premises lead to absurd conclusions.

Only in Ukraine is it "nationalistic" to insist that in the one country on earth where people speak Ukrainian that Ukrainian should be the official state language, and receive other forms of protection.  Only in Ukraine is it "nationalistic," not patriotic, to proclaim, "Glory to Ukraine," (I myself was witness to an incident when these words provoked a fistfight), or to sing the national anthem.  

If Western liberals were to judge France by the same standard as they do Ukraine, then they must label them a bunch of "French nationalists" whose borders don't deserve sovereign protection.  Likewise, that makes American Republicans who rail against "press 2 for Spanish" or sing "The Star Spangled Banner" at ballgames a bunch of fascist nationalists.

And yet even those comparisons are not quite apt, since native French and English are spoken in other countries and on other continents. Not so with Ukrainian. If Ukrainian dies in Ukraine, it dies in the world. And with it would be lost the richness of Ukrainian culture. Ukrainian is worth fighting for, worth protecting.  Yet any casual visitor to Ukraine would get the impression that Russian, not Ukrainian, gets preferential treatment.  Most television shows, newspapers, magazines and books are in Russian only. Most films are shown in Russian, albeit with Ukrainian subtitles -- a modest victory for Ukrainian "nationalists." 

Indeed, outside Ukraine, the "great and powerful" Russian language has a huge country of 142 million people to protect it: Russia. Therefore, Russia doesn't need Ukraine for the Russian language to flourish. Anyhow, nobody from any Ukrainian political party has ever proposed legislating what language people speak in their everyday lives -- and yet the lumpen on the streets of the South and East of Ukraine firmly believe this lie.  In this lie, nurtured cynically by Russia, lies much of ethnic Russians' support for Russia's annexation of Crimea....

Next, there is the "nationalist" Svoboda (Freedom) party in Ukraine, whose leaders said that Jews in league with Russia have sought to keep Ukraine down. Granted, this was several years ago, but still it's cause for the West to be deeply concerned, right?  Well, not so much. Svoboda is still a small party and it doesn't stand a chance of winning many seats in Parliament or in the Cabinet of Ministers.  

Moreover, Jews were activists on Maidan.  Indeed, there was a Jewish brigade on Maidan including "four Israelis with combat experience."  I've heard of "self-hating Jews," but this would be a new extreme, if indeed Israeli Jews came to Ukraine to support anti-Semitic fascists!  

And Israel's Haaretz newspaper recently examined the level and anti-Semitism among pro-Maidan forces and concluded: no big deal.  Jews were among the pro-Maidan activists and at least four Jewish protesters were killed by Berkut special police.

So what other "evidence" does Putin's Russia and the deluded Western left offer of Ukrainian fascism? The fact that many Maidan activists revere Ukrainian nationalist freedom fighter Stepan Bandera. He is a controversial historical figure, to say the least. I won't go into the entire history of it now. It suffices to say the mere mention of his name is enough to cause spontaneous brawls in both Ukraine and Russia. You can make up your own mind about Bandera. 

Let me offer this: there are many times more statues of Lenin in Ukraine than of Bandera.  "Anti-Maidan" and "pro-Russian" activists in Ukraine have banded together to protect Maidan protesters from tearing down statues of Lenin as they did in Kyiv and other cities. Lenin is a symbol of Russian oppression and terror -- including two Soviet-imposed famines on Ukraine when millions died of hunger. It is now acknowledged by the U.S. and the West as genocide. (Russia, as the protector of the Soviet legacy, not surprisingly, disagrees). Thus reasonable people would cast suspicion on anybody, or any group, defending the legacy of Lenin. And yet it is not so.  And yet Bandera is called a "mass murderer" by many ethnic Russians in Ukraine. For them Bandera, not Lenin, is the bogeyman of Ukrainian history. Go figure.

(An epitaph on Bandera: two of his brothers died in the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz; his father was executed by the Soviets; and three of his sisters were sent to Soviet gulags in Siberia.)

But all the above-mentioned is academic. Anybody who bothered to go to Maidan could see that it was not decorated with swastikas, hidden fascist symbols, or echoing with anti-Semetic rhetoric. These were normal people. Scratch that -- better than normal. These were, and are, the most liberal, progressive people in Ukraine: doctors, teachers, artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, lawyers, journalists, students, and human rights activists. These are the dynamic people who make Ukraine go. And as the country's most honest and honorable, they were the most likely to suffer under President Yanukovych's corrupt and lawless regime.

Therefore it's painfully unfair of the West to dismiss Ukrainians' struggle -- which was peaceful and orderly until President Yanukovich tried to evict unarmed people with deadly force from Independence Square -- with terms like "fascist," "neo-Nazi," or "nationalist."  In our ignorance and haste to judgement, we should not throw out such loaded terms willy-nilly. 

I challenge anybody to find a report from a Western journalist on the ground on Maidan who corroborated Russia's fascist or nationalistic narrative of events there. It was perhaps the most well-covered revolution in history; beyond the Western media like BBC, it was YouTubed, Facebooked and Tweeted by thousands of people. If there were rampant fascist sentiments there -- not just a few neo-Nazi malcontents -- then we surely would have seen their faces and heard their voices. 

And finally, regarding neo-Nazis, Putin had best remove the beam from his own eye before remarking on the speck in Ukraine's (Matthew 7:5).  Putin tolerates an active and violent neo-Nazi movement within Russia. He finds them useful to conduct planned attacks and pogroms on gays and national minorities, mostly from the Caucasus. (For many graphic examples, go to YouTube and search "skinheads Russia.")

Putin should send his Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea to fight Russian fascists at home!

UPDATE 1 (05.03.2014):  My friend TK wanted to add something about Stepan Bandera. I haven't fact-checked it, only cleaned up the grammar & spelling:

Just FYI: about Nazi collaborators among Ukrainian nationalists. Many tend to forget during WWII only 14,689 Ukrainians collaborated with Hitler, but 1,150,000 Russians collaborated with Hitler and almost all European countries either collaborated as a whole or had their own collaborators with Hitler. Bandera spent one year in Berlin prison, received proposal to diversify (?) the rear of Red Army, refused to collaborate and then was confined for three years in a [Nazi] concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Bandera announced Ukraine was an independent country in 1941 when Hitler occupied Ukraine and he never collaborated with Hitler. The second person after Bandera was Lev Rebet, who spent three years in Auschwitz concentration camp (he was liberated in 1945), so all those insinuations about anti-Semitic Bandera are just Soviet propaganda. Both were killed by the same KGB officer.

There has been so much Russian propaganda on each and every possible social media, including many in English. What Russia is definitely great at is propaganda and plotting diversions internally and externally. But it is a devastating loss to the Ukrainian nation (as to any other as a matter of fact) not to know its own history. Seventy years of Soviet propaganda and 20 years of not paying attention to education, even worse the last four years of returning back to the distorted Soviet version of history led to absolute ignorance of own country and own identity that we observe now in the east-south and Crimea. Even if you ask people there who is Bandera and what he did, the only answer you will get is he is a fascist, but nothing else. Even more, most people in the rest of Ukraine will not be able to tell you much either with an exception they would not call him fascist. I strongly believe that making the population un-educated, illiterate and uninformed is the way for corruption, destruction and dictatorship. If you have sheep, not a nation, it is very easy to rule them. That relates to any country, but Russian rulers have mastered this tactic.

UPDATE 2 (05.03.2014):  This should ease the fears in the East and South of Ukraine that the new government is fascist: it's talking seriously about federalism, something the ousted Party of Regions never achieved (because they didn't want to). Reported Reuters today [emphasis mine]:

[Prime Minister] Yatseniuk has been gradually unveiling the outlines of the new government's plans for bringing the former Soviet republic's economy back from what he says is the edge of an abyss.

Earlier this week he announced plans to trim government spending by up to about 16 percent and said the government would meet any conditions set by the IMF to secure a new loan package. 

On Wednesday he said it was vital to give more authority to the regions, hungry for financial and, in some cases, for more political independence.

"One of the main things the new Ukrainian government must do is dismantle the centralized power created in the last four years," Yatseniuk said, referring to Yanukovich's rule.

Although this is part of a long-running debate and applies to all regions, it can be seen partly as a gesture to Russian speakers in the east at odds with the central government.  

UPDATE 3 (06.03.2014):  Here is yet more evidence that fascism and anti-Semitism aren't an issue on Maidan or Ukraine's new government: an "Open letter of Ukrainian Jews to Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin," dated March 4, 2014.