Maidan

John Pilger’s 2014 Warning About Ukraine

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Originally published by The Guardian, May 13, 2014
In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia
Washington’s role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime’s neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
By John Pilger

Republished by Consortium News, September 24, 2022

In an article on May 13, 2014 in The Guardian, republished here, John Pilger warned the “U.S. is threatening to take the world to war” over Ukraine, words that have taken on new meaning.

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a “brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis”, as if the truth “never happened even while it was happening”.

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his “updated summary of the record of U.S. foreign policy” which shows that, since 1945, the U.S. has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – “our” terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the U.S. state department noted that, following Nato’s campaign in 2011, “Libya has become a terrorist safe haven“.

The name of “our” enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory, or merely offering an alternative to U.S. domination.

The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of vilification – think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.

“If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained ‘pariah’ role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.”

Washington’s role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the U.S. is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the U.S. and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.

Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.

But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with U.S.-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.

Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels”, as the western media calls them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a C.I.A. theme park – run personally by C.I.A. director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of “special units” from the C.I.A. and F.B.I. setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.

A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate. What occurred yesterday didn’t even take place during the fascist occupation in my town in world war two. I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.” [see footnote]

Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation“, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is “duly elected”. As Henry Kissinger once said: “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true.”

In the U.S. media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says“. Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia’s “undeclared war”. For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

A popular truism is that “the world changed” following 9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently runs “special operations” – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate this?_______________

FOOTNOTE: The Guardian attached the following footnote to Pilger’s story, which Pilger says suggests “that a quote of a witness to the Odessa atrocity is unverified. This appeared only in the last edition. In fact, the quote didn’t come from a Facebook entry, but from a Voice of America broadcast and was verified.” This is The Guardian‘s footnote: ” The following footnote was appended on 16 May 2014: The quotation from a doctor who says he was ‘stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals’ was from an account on a Facebook page that has subsequently been removed.”

John Pilger has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism and has been International Reporter of the Year, News Reporter of the Year and Descriptive Writer of the Year. He has made 61 documentary films and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Royal Television Society prize. His ‘Cambodia Year Zero’ is named as one of the ten most important films of the 20th century. He can be contacted at www.johnpilger.com

[John Pilger died December 30, 2023]

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/24/john-pilgers-2014-warning-about-ukraine/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger

Using Ukraine since 1948

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From Consortium News

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

The United States has for nearly 80 years seen Ukraine as the staging ground for its once covert and increasingly overt war with Russia. 

After years of warnings, and after talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia fought back two years ago. With neither side backing down, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war. 

The West thinks Russia is bluffing.

But its doctrine states that if Russia feels its existence is threatened it could resort to nuclear arms. Instead of taking these warnings seriously, NATO is recklessly opening corridors for a ground war against Russia in Ukraine; France says it’s putting together a coalition of nations to enter the war, despite Russia saying French or any other NATO force would be fair game. 

In Paris the other day Joe Biden said Russia wants to conquer all of Europe but can’t even take Khariv. It is this kind of inflammatory nonsense, combined with allowing Ukraine to fire NATO weapons into Russian territory, that is imperiling us all. 

The danger started building up many years ago but it is now reaching a climax. 

The U.S. relationship with Ukraine, and its extremists, to undermine Russia began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles. 
https://en%5Bdot%5Dwikipedia%5Bdot%5Dorg/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.  [https://www.archives[dot]gov/files/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf]

Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”

Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union. 

The U.S. government study says:

“CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. …

Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe.

Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’”

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991.

“Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.” 

Continued Until and Beyond Ukrainian Independence

The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved.

Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998.

He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, the U.S. National Archives study says.  

The successor organization to the OUN-B in the United States did not die with him, however.  It had been renamed the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), according to IBT.

“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported.  “Following the demise of [Viktor] Yanukovich’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.
https://www.ibtimes%5Bdot%5Dco%5Bdot%5Duk/america-backing-neo-nazis-euromaidan-1437848
https://www.ibtimes%5Bdot%5Dco%5Bdot%5Duk/ukrainian-parliament-impeaches-president-yanukovich-1437539
http://www.facebook%5Bdot%5Dcom/MaidanUSA

That is a direct link between the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup against a democratically-elected Ukrainian government and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism. 

[See: Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story] 

Since 2014, the U.S. pushed for an attack on the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who had rejected the coup, and NATO began training and equipping Ukrainian troops.  Combined with talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia reacted after years of warning. 

More than two years after Russia’s intervention, with Ukraine clearly losing the war, Western leaders will do just about anything to save their political skins, as they’ve staked too much on winning in Ukraine.   Don’t listen to them.  They need a West in denial of the dangers facing us.

As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1963 American University speech:

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
https://www.jfklibrary%5Bdot%5Dorg/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610

The world may wake up when it’s too late — after nuclear missiles have already started flying.   


Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/10/using-ukraine-since-1948/

2014, Ramsey Clark to Barack Obama: Stop the War in Ukraine! “Peaceful Coexistence” between Russia and America is the Answer

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Posted on Global Research
March 16, 2022

Open Letter to President Obama, Senator McCain, Secretary Kerry, Secretary-General Ban ki Moon, Members of US Congress, Members of the Media

Ramsey Clark passed away in April of last year

His legacy will live forever.

He has been a source of inspiration to anti-war activists for more than half a century.

Our thoughts are with Ramsey Clark, whom I first met in New York in 1999 at the height of the US-NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

Ramsey was fully aware of the dangers of all out war in Ukraine. Below is Ramsey Clark’s November 2014 open letter to President Obama et al, condemning US-NATO troop deployments on Russia’s borders.

With foresight, Ramsey Clark had predicted what is now happening.

“This massive U.S. intervention in the Ukraine and ever-increasing campaign to surround and isolate Russia must end, I therefore demand:

1. That the U.S. government and all its public, secret, official and unofficial agencies immediately cease all forms of intervention in Ukraine, including ceasing all material and political aid to fascist and right-wing organizations within the country;

2. That all sanctions and threats of sanctions against the Russian Federation be dropped — sanctions are an act of war;

3. That U.S. military forces immediately be withdrawn from the Eastern European region and that NATO’s expansion and provocative actions against Russia be ended.”

“Peaceful Coexistence” between Russia and America is the Answer

Michel Chossudovsky,

Global Research, April 11, 2021,  March 16, 2022

***

TO: President Obama, Senator McCain, Secretary Kerry, Secretary-General Ban, Members of Congress, and Members of the Media:

The overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. is against being dragged into another disastrous war. Nothing is more dangerous than the aggressive U.S./NATO troop movements right on the borders of Russia.

Sending U.S. destroyers into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea; scheduling threatening U.S./NATO war games and troop movements in East Europe; and imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation is a threat to peace on a world scale. We have seen the cost of past and continuing U.S. wars, which enrich the military corporations while impoverishing the targeted countries as well as poor and working people here in the U.S.

The years of U.S. funding of fascist forces in Ukraine and the recognition of a government in Kiev that overthrew the elected government, seized power and appointed extreme right-wing groups to head the police, army and national guard in order to pull Ukraine into NATO membership makes the U.S. complicit in the complete denial of the rights of the Ukrainian people. It is also a provocation against the entire region.

People in East and South Ukraine, outraged by this coup government, have attempted to resist the illegal junta, have declared an independent People’s Republic of Donetsk, and have called for referendums. In response, the right-wing coup government has allowed its military forces and other fascists to terrorize the Ukrainian people. In the most recent incident, some 40 people were massacred in the city of Odessa on May 2 by fascist militants, loyal to the Kiev government, who set the Trades Union Building on fire. In addition, 23 people were killed at Slavyansk and in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region in attacks by Ukrainian military forces from May 2-3.

Despite mass desertions by Ukrainian police and military personnel, so-called “anti-terrorist” campaigns against activists in southeastern Ukraine were launched immediately after visits to Kiev by U.S. officials. Washington has spent $5 billion to effect “regime change” in Ukraine, helping to bring into power a junta dominated by fascist, racist, anti-Semitic organizations like Svoboda, Fatherland and Right Sector. Meanwhile, the U.S. has pledged up to $10 billion in loans to the illegal coup regime, and Washington has been instrumental in securing a $17 billion aid and austerity package from the International Monetary Fund.

This massive U.S. intervention in the Ukraine and ever-increasing campaign to surround and isolate Russia must end. I therefore demand:

1. That the U.S. government and all its public, secret, official and unofficial agencies immediately cease all forms of intervention in Ukraine, including ceasing all material and political aid to fascist and right-wing organizations within the country;

2. That all sanctions and threats of sanctions against the Russian Federation be dropped — sanctions are an act of war;

3. That U.S. military forces immediately be withdrawn from the Eastern European region and that NATO’s expansion and provocative actions against Russia be ended.

Tragically, neither the US nor the EU honored the February 21 compromise accord between the Maidan coalition and the Yanukovich govenment that was brokered by Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Poland. It is upon the US government to save the honor of Western democracies as promoters of peace, legality and moderation. Return to the February 21 Accords before the hell of war breaks loose!

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark

Former US Attorney General
Founder of International Action Center
New York

Article published with permission from Ramsey Clark.

The original source of this article is Russia & America Goodwill Association

Copyright © Ramsey Clark, Russia & America Goodwill Association, 2022

Ukraine on Fire, documentary by Oliver Stone

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Ukraine on Fire: The Real Story – Full Documentary by Oliver Stone (Original English version)

Ukraine, the ‘borderlands’ between Russia and ‘civilized’ Europe is on fire. For centuries, it has been at the center of a tug-of-war between powers seeking to control its rich lands and Russia’s access to the Mediterranean.

The Maidan Massacre in early 2014 triggered a bloody uprising that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych, spurred Crimeans to secede and join Russia, and sparked a civil war in Eastern Ukraine.

Russia was portrayed by Western media as the perpetrator, and has been sanctioned and widely condemned as such. But was Russia responsible for what happened?

Ukraine on Fire provides a historical perspective for the deep divisions in the region which led to the 2004 Orange Revolution, the 2014 uprisings, and the violent overthrow of democratically-elected Yanukovych.

Covered by Western media as a ‘popular revolution’, it was in fact a coup d’état scripted and staged by ultra-nationalist groups and the US State Department.

Investigative journalist Robert Parry reveals how US-funded political NGOs and media companies have emerged since the 1980s, replacing the CIA in promoting America’s geopolitical agenda abroad.

Executive producer Oliver Stone gained unprecedented access to the inside story through his on-camera interviews with former President Viktor Yanukovych and Minister of Internal Affairs Vitaliy Zakharchenko, who explain how the US Ambassador and factions in Washington actively plotted for regime change.

And, in his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Stone solicits Putin’s take on the significance of Crimea, NATO and the US’s history of interference in elections and regime change in the region.

Now, at last, the full exposé is available in the West. Though, of course, everyone is encouraged to purchase a copy to support Stone’s important work.

Victoria Nuland’s role in 30 years of U.S. invasions and interference

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“Progressives in Congress and their partners in the media, think tank world, and among grassroots activists should join forces with the growing caucus of anti-interventionist Republicans on the Hill and vigorously oppose her nomination.” — James W. Carden
theamericanconservative.com/articles/stop-bidens-neocon-nominee-to-the-state-department/

“Victoria Nuland is highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.”

From MintPressNews
February 11, 2012
Rick Sterling

As the Senate prepares to confirm Nuland for Under Secretary for Political Affairs, a reflection of her last 30 years in government shows how she was connected to nearly every foreign policy disaster undertaken by the United States.

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Victoria Nuland for Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the third-highest position at the State Department, is a dangerous sign. Nuland exemplifies the neoconservatives who have led American foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years, all while evading any shred of accountability.

As a top-level appointee, Nuland must still be confirmed by the Senate. And while pro-peace groups have waged a campaign to stop her confirmation, reflecting on her career in public service makes clear why she is incompetent, highly dangerous, and should not be confirmed.

Afghanistan and Iraq

From 2000 to 2003, when the Bush administration attacked and then invaded Afghanistan, Nuland was serving as Bush’s permanent representative to NATO. The Afghan government offered to work with the Americans to remove al-Qaeda, but the offer was rejected. After al-Qaeda was defeated, the U.S. could have left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases, splintered the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.

From 2003 to 2005, Nuland was principal foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney who “helped plan and manage the war that toppled [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein, including making [the] Bush administration’s case for preemptive military action based on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.” The foreign policy establishment, including Nuland, insisted that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a U.S. “ally” would be simple.

The invasion and continuing occupation have resulted in over a million dead Iraqis, many thousands of dead Americans, hundreds of thousands with PTSD, and a bill for American taxpayers of 2 to 6 trillion dollars.

Continue reading →

Five years ago, U.S. installed a neo-Nazi government in Ukraine — a ‘flowering of democracy’?

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From Global Research

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Originally published March 6, 2014, reprinted in 2017
–

This article first published in March 2014 at the very outset of the Ukraine crisis explains the nature of the Kiev proxy regime. we are dealing with a Neo-Nazi government supported by “Western democracy” and the “international community”. 

According to the New York Times, “The United States and the European Union have embraced the revolution here as another flowering of democracy, a blow to authoritarianism and kleptocracy in the former Soviet space.” ( After Initial Triumph, Ukraine’s Leaders Face Battle for Credibility,  NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, emphasis added)

“Flowering Democracy, Revolution”?  The grim realities are otherwise. What is a stake is a US-EU-NATO sponsored coup d’Etat in blatant violation of international law.

The forbidden truth is that the West has engineered –through a carefully staged covert operation– the formation of a proxy regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

Confirmed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, key organizations in the Ukraine including the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda were generously supported by Washington: “We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. … We will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”

The Western media has casually avoided to analyze the composition and ideological underpinnings of the government coalition. The word “Neo-Nazi” is a taboo. It has been excluded from the dictionary of mainstream media commentary. It will not appear in the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post or The Independent. Journalists have been instructed not to use the term “Neo-Nazi” to designate Svoboda and the Right Sector.

Composition of the Coalition Government

We are not dealing with a transitional government in which Neo-Nazi elements integrate the fringe of the coalition, formally led by the Fatherland party.

The Cabinet is not only integrated by the Svoboda and Right Sector (not to mention former members of defunct fascist UNA-UNSO), the two main Neo-Nazi entities have been entrusted with key positions which grant them de facto control over the Armed Forces, Police, Justice and National Security.

While Yatsenuyk’s Fatherland Party controls the majority of portfolios and Svoboda Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a major cabinet post (apparently at the request of assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland), members of Svoboda and the Right Sector occupy key positions in the areas of Defense, Law Enforcement, Education and Economic Affairs.

Neo Nazi Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok

Andriy parubiy.jpgAndriy Parubiy [right] co-founder of the Neo-Nazi  Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU). (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. The RNBOU is central decision-making body. While it is formally headed by the president, it is run by the Secretariat with a staff of 180 people including defense, intelligence and national security experts.

Parubiy was one of the main leaders behind the Orange Revolution in 2004. His organization was funded by the West. He is referred to by the Western media as the “kommandant” of the EuroMaidan movement. Andriy Parubiy together with party leader Oleh Tyahnybok is a follower of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera, who collaborated in the mass murderer of Jews and Poles during World War II.

Neo-Nazi march honoring Stepan Bandera

In turn, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector delegation in the parliament, has been appointed Parubiy’s deputy Secretary of the RNBOU.

Yarosh was the leader of the Brown Shirt Neo-Nazi paramilitary during the EuroMaidan “protest” movement. He has called for disbanding the Party of the regions and the Communist Party.

Dmytro Yarosh speech at Euromaidan (Centre)

The Neo Nazi party also controls the judicial process with the appointment of  Oleh Makhnitsky of the Svoboda party to the position of prosecutor-general of Ukraine. What kind of justice will prevail with a reknown Neo-Nazi in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine?

Cabinet positions were also allocated to former members of the Neo-Nazi fringe organization Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO):

“Tetyana Chernovol, portrayed in the Western press as a crusading investigative journalist without reference to her past involvement in the anti-Semitic UNA-UNSO, was named chair of the government’s anti-corruption committee. Dmytro Bulatov, known for his alleged kidnapping by police, but also with UNA-UNSO connections, was appointed minister of youth and sports.

Yegor Sobolev, leader of a civic group in Independence Maidan and politically close to Yatsenyuk, was appointed chair of the Lustration Committee, charged with purging followers of President Yanukovych from government and public life. (See Ukraine Transition Government: Neo-Nazis in Control of Armed Forces, National Security, Economy, Justice and Education, Global Research, March 02, 2014

The Lustration Committee is to organize the Neo-Nazi witch-hunt against all opponents of the new Neo-Nazi regime. The targets of the lustration campaign are people in positions of authority within the civil service, regional and municipal governments, education, research, etc.  The term lustration refers to the “mass disqualification” of people associated with the former government. It also has racial overtones. It will in all likelihood be directed against Communists, Russians  and members of the Jewish community.

It is important to reflect on the fact that the West, formally committed to democratic values, has not only spearheaded the demise of an elected president, it has instated a political regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

This is a proxy government which enables the US, NATO and the EU to interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs and dismantle its bilateral relations with the Russian Federation. It should be understood, however, that the Neo-Nazis do not ultimately call the shots. The composition of the Cabinet broadly coincides with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland ” recommendations” contained in the leaked telephone call to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Washington has chosen to spearhead Neo-Nazis into positions of authority. Under a “regime of indirect rule”, however,  they take their orders on crucial military and foreign policy issues –including the deployment of troops directed against the Russian federation– from the the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads: The structures and composition of this proxy government installed by the West do not favor dialogue with the Russian government and military.

A scenario of military escalation leading to confrontation of Russia and NATO is a distinct possibility. The Ukraine’s National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) which is controlled by Neo-Nazis plays a central role in military affairs.  In the confrontation with Moscow, decisions taken by the RNBOU headed by Neo-Nazi Parubiy and his brown Shirt deputy Dmytro Yarosh –in consultation with Washington and Brussels– could potentially have devastating consequences.

However, it goes without saying that “support” to the formation of a Neo-Nazi government does not in any way imply the development of “fascist tendencies” within the White House, the State Department and the US Congress.

“The flowering of democracy” in Ukraine –to use the words of the New York Times– is endorsed by Republicans and Democrats. It’s a bipartisan project. Lest we forget, Senator John McCain is a firm supporter and friend of Neo Nazi Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok (Image right).

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 2017

Poroshenko urges ban on Russian flag worldwide

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From Fort Russ

February 18, 2018 – FRN –
DNR News – by Inessa Sinchougova

[Translation correction by editor]
At the Munich Security Conference, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko accused Russia of trying to “destroy democracy” and stated that the Russian flag “should not be flown anywhere”.
–
Speaking at the 54th Conference, Poroshenko spoke out against holding a presidential election in the Crimea and restoring Russia’s powers in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. “The Nord Stream-2” is also “political expansion using energy” and it “has nothing to do with economic interests.”
–
“Neither politics nor business can exist separately from values. In today’s politics in Moscow there is no place for fair play. That’s why the Russian flag does not fly at the 2018 Winter Olympics.”  said Poroshenko.
–
The president of Ukraine also accused Russia of “unleashing a hybrid war, gradually turning into a world war.”
–
“The Russian flag should not be flying anywhere while Russia continues to incite a worldwide hybrid war, and Russian bullets are aimed at our symbols.” he concluded.
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Events moving rapidly across Ukraine to an end-point

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A fight is coming one way or another, but Russians are ready to fight and die alongside Ukrainians who want to seize their badly abused country back from the jaws of death. Are Americans, weary from decades upon decades of state endorsed genocide, coup de etat’s and mass invasions, willing to sacrifice more of their sons and daughters to useless, horrific and murderous campaigns for false ideals that end in abject failure?

From Fort Russ

March 3, 2017 – Fort Russ News –
– Op-ed – by James Harmon –

Right now the situation in Ukraine is moving to a critical point. With the “economic Stalingrad” of the march 1st reorientation of management that will direct funds back into the Donbass community, and into the Russian federation, away from western Ukraine, the nationalist gambit to choke off funds from the DNR is going to backfire tremendously.
With extremists acting outside the will of the government of Poroshenko, and viciously protesting him in Kiev – and in places such as Odessa, as recent as ten days ago – a mass march with Ukrainians shouting RUSSIA! RUSSIA! and antifascist slogans, holding USSR and Russian flags, Ukrainians are increasingly divided and polarized.
One thing seems to be ubiquitous however – the antipathy towards the bandit-regime of kleptocrats, globalists and oligarchs that is currently occupying western Ukraine. As Poroshenko’s grip of the country loosens, and more and more citizens become emboldened by rage and motivated by national shame – ground reports of correspondents attached to this publication have reported upwards of 100 soldiers in mid sized Polish cities, likely sent there by the US’s former regime before Trump’s election, to help the current CEO of Ukraine, Poroshenko, retain power for as long as he can over the company assets.
Just like Saigon eventually fell to the North Vietnamese army, large parts of Iraq fell to ISIS terrorists, and the Ustaše fled Yugoslavia frightened, the current western Ukrainian regime exists on borrowed time and will be forced to flee, tail between the legs. However, the memory of many murdered, the many orphaned, and the many raped and robbed will endure in the minds of Russians and those who oppose the horrific events that happened in the past few years in a country that to many, is inseparable from the identity of Russia.
Poroshenko’s “deal with the devil”, in his collaboration with fascists and Americans is coming undone, as the wild dogs will no longer listen to their intoxicated master. A sword of Damocles hangs above his office, ready to strike him down, and force him to flee his own country – only instead of purchasing a Dacha next to Yanukovych’s in Russia, he’ll likely be forced to settle for a cottage in Virginia.
Before that time comes however – the US troops stationed in Polish airports, drunkenly leering at naive Polish girls, urinating on buildings, and loudly bragging will likely find their way into Ukraine, where before they are recalled, more innocent lives will be lost to the greed and ambition of globalist elites. The globalists use any Sturmabteilung they can – Fascists in Ukraine, “Antifascists” in USA, west-philes in Russia, Islamists in Syria – the list goes on.
The question will be – before Chancellor Poroshenko falls, before he runs, in shame, fleeing to a safe house – how many will have to suffer? Will Trump prove that he is more than mere campaign rhetoric, and follow in the footsteps of Reagan, who pulled out of Lebanon in the early 80’s, or will he follow in the footsteps of Obama who destabilized and destroyed large sectors of the world with idealism and Machiavellian use of extremists? [not idealism — it was marketing and PR cover for American and industrial empire-building, a foreign policy tradition; that’s why he could use extremists]
A fight is coming one way or another, but Russians are ready to fight and die alongside Ukrainains who want to seize their badly abused country back from the jaws of death. Are Americans, weary from decades upon decades of state endorsed genocide, coup de etat’s and mass invasions, willing to sacrifice more of their sons and daughters to useless, horrific and murderous campaigns for false ideals that end in abject failure?
Trump has officially snubbed Poroshenko after a long series of very obscure and abstract moves that showcase the deep state’s displeasure at his pro Russian sentiments. Is this the start of Trump showcasing a reasonable attitude to foreign policy, or is it the calm before the storm?

February 20, Kiev: new Maidan or build up to civil war?

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From Fort Russ
February 17, 2017 –
By Eduard Popov for Fort Russ – translated by J. Arnoldski –

 

On February 16th, Zoryan Shkiryak, an adviser to the minister of internal affairs of Ukraine, appealed to block Odnoklassniki and VKontakte social networks in the country. In his opinion, this is necessary to defend the Ukrainian info-field. Parallel to this, Anton Gerashchenko, an assistant to the minister of internal affairs and a Verkhovna Rada deputy, accused Russia of preparing to blockade railway lines with the republics of Donbass, which is actually being carried out by members of neo-Nazi gangs headed by Rada deputy Parasyuk.
These statements by “Avakov’s clowns” (the words of Mikhail Pogrebinsky, a leading Ukrainian political analyst) were, without a doubt, coordinated and focused on one goal: preventing the recurrence of a new Maidan in Kiev. More precisely: not allowing a Maidan created by competitors.
A number of Ukrainian organizations intend to hold protests on February 20th, the third anniversary of the Maidan’s victory. In particular, the NAZHDAK movement which is positioning itself as an “anti-oligarch association of the common people” is set to protest. The Radical Right Forces movement has also stated its participation, as have the “federation of small businesses,” an association of failed banks (headed by the leader of NAZHDAK, Nikolay Dulsky), and the military wing of the neo-Nazi Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian National Self-Defense.
Nikolay Dulsky has appealed to his followers and other potential protest participants with the call to bring officially registered weapons. The aim is the overthrow of the treacherous Poroshenko and Groysman government. Characteristically enough, the organization’s VKontakte page speaks in detail of its relations with Azov, whose leader is Verkhovna Rada deputy Andrey Biletsky. Azov, in Dulsky’s opinion, is nothing but a pet of Avakov in his service.
In this regard, the statements of Shkiryak and Gerashchenko are not random, but are aimed at (1) competitors’ organizations (not associated with the interior ministry like Azov and its offshoots) and (2) Russian social networks. The current Ukrainian government, and especially the interior ministry, remember the massive organizing role played in the Euromaidan by social networks, and first and foremost VKontakte. During the days of the Maidan, the Right Sector group grew to number as many as 600,000 people. But the call to close Russian social networks is being sounded now, not three years ago, for an obvious reason: the government is afraid of a repetition of the events of three years. 
Appeals to go out onto the Maidan on February 20th are essentially an announcement of plans to overthrow the new government. However, it is by no means evident that this overthrow will happen on February 20th, since the Ukrainian neo-Nazis opposed to the current internal minister simply lack sufficient resources. But as a training and mobilization all, this action fits perfectly. On the other hand, the government will also have a wonderful opportunity to practice dispersing a new Maidan.
Already now, based on “Avakov’s clowns’” statements, it is obvious that the ruling regime has chosen an easy formula: declare militants striving to overthrow the legal government “agents of Putin” operating with the help of Russian social networks.
The West “does not notice” violations of freedom of speech in Ukraine or the literally bloody dispersal of protesters. Therefore, I am skeptical of the possibilities of a new Maidan in Ukraine. More likely is a second scenario in which the disease will be pushed deeper and, as a result, protest energy will later explode into a civil war. The fire of civil war has already been smoldering for three years. The bloody suppression of rallies in Kiev, the dispersal of “blockade” participants in Donbass, and a number of related operations, might ignite this. And then the war against Donbass will spill over into Ukraine and turn into a civil war. 
–
http://www.fort-russ.com/2017/02/february-20-kiev-new-maidan-or-build-up.html

A documentary you’ll likely never see: “Ukraine on Fire” by Oliver Stone

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Trailer

Neo-Nazis are being used by the Ukrainian Government,

“That whole process was headquartered in the US  Embassy” (former Ukraine president Yanukovitch)

Nobody should feel safe today… 

By James DiEugenio
Global Research, February 14, 2017
Consortiumnews 13 February 2017
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It is not very often that a documentary film can set a new paradigm about a recent event, let alone, one that is still in progress. But the new film Ukraine on Fire has the potential to do so – assuming that many people get to see it.

Usually, documentaries — even good ones — repackage familiar information in a different aesthetic form. If that form is skillfully done, then the information can move us in a different way than just reading about it.

A good example of this would be Peter Davis’s powerful documentary about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Hearts and Minds. By 1974, most Americans understood just how bad the Vietnam War was, but through the combination of sounds and images, which could only have been done through film, that documentary created a sensation, which removed the last obstacles to America leaving Indochina.

Ukraine on Fire has the same potential and could make a contribution that even goes beyond what the Davis film did because there was very little new information in Hearts and Minds. Especially for American and Western European audiences, Ukraine on Fire could be revelatory in that it offers a historical explanation for the deep divisions within Ukraine and presents information about the current crisis that challenges the mainstream media’s paradigm, which blames the conflict almost exclusively on Russia.

Key people in the film’s production are director Igor Lopatonok, editor Alex Chavez, and writer Vanessa Dean, whose screenplay contains a large amount of historical as well as current material exploring how Ukraine became such a cauldron of violence and hate. Oliver Stone served as executive producer and conducted some high-profile interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The film begins with gripping images of the violence that ripped through the capital city of Kiev during both the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 removal of Yanukovich. It then travels back in time to provide a perspective that has been missing from mainstream versions of these events and even in many alternative media renditions.

A Longtime Pawn

Historically, Ukraine has been treated as a pawn since the late Seventeenth Century. In 1918, Ukraine was made a German protectorate by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. Ukraine was also a part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 signed between Germany and Russia, but violated by Adolf Hitler when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.

German dictator Adolf Hitler

The reaction of many in Ukraine to Hitler’s aggression was not the same as it was in the rest of the Soviet Union. Some Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis. The most significant Ukrainian nationalist group, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), had been established in 1929. Many of its members cooperated with the Nazis, some even enlisted in the Waffen SS and Ukrainian nationalists participated in the massacre of more than 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar ravine in Kiev in September 1941. According to scholar Pers Anders Rudling, the number of Ukrainian nationalists involved in the slaughter outnumbered the Germans by a factor of 4 to 1.

But it wasn’t just the Jews that the Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered. They also participated in massacres of Poles in the western Ukrainian region of Galicia from March 1943 until the end of 1944. Again, the main perpetrators were not Germans, but Ukrainians.

According to author Ryazard Szawlowksi, the Ukrainian nationalists first lulled the Poles into thinking they were their friends, then turned on them with a barbarity and ferocity that not even the Nazis could match, torturing their victims with saws and axes. The documentary places the number of dead at 36,750, but Szawlowski estimates it may be two or three times higher.

OUN members participated in these slaughters for the purpose of ethnic cleansing, wanting Ukraine to be preserved for what OUN regarded as native Ukrainians. They also expected Ukraine to be independent by the end of the war, free from both German and Russian domination. The two main leaders in OUN who participated in the Nazi collaboration were Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Bandera was a virulent anti-Semite, and Lebed was rabidly against the Poles, participating in their slaughter.

After the war, both Bandera and Lebed were protected by American intelligence, which spared them from the Nuremburg tribunals. The immediate antecedent of the CIA, Central Intelligence Group, wanted to use both men for information gathering and operations against the Soviet Union. England’s MI6 used Bandera even more than the CIA did, but the KGB eventually hunted down Bandera and assassinated him in Munich in 1959. Lebed was brought to America and addressed anti-communist Ukrainian organizations in the U.S. and Canada. The CIA protected him from immigration authorities who might otherwise have deported him as a war criminal.

The history of the Cold War was never too far in the background of Ukrainian politics, including within the diaspora that fled to the West after the Red Army defeated the Nazis and many of their Ukrainian collaborators emigrated to the United States and Canada. In the West, they formed a fierce anti-communist lobby that gained greater influence after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

Important History

This history is an important part of Dean’s prologue to the main body of Ukraine on Fire and is essential for anyone trying to understand what has happened there since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For instance, the U.S.-backed candidate for president of Ukraine in 2004 — Viktor Yushchenko — decreed both Bandera and Lebed to be Ukrainian national heroes.

Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and Nazi collaborator.

Bandera, in particular, has become an icon for post-World War II Ukrainian nationalists. One of his followers was Dmytro Dontsov, who called for the birth of a “new man” who would mercilessly destroy Ukraine’s ethnic enemies.

Bandera’s movement was also kept alive by Yaroslav Stetsko, Bandera’s premier in exile. Stetsko fully endorsed Bandera’s anti-Semitism and also the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Stetsko, too, was used by the CIA during the Cold War and was honored by Yushchenko, who placed a plaque in his honor at the home where he died in Munich in 1986. Stetsko’s wife, Slava, returned to Ukraine in 1991 and ran for parliament in 2002 on the slate of Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party.

Stetsko’s book, entitled Two Revolutions, has become the ideological cornerstone for the modern Ukrainian political party Svoboda, founded by Oleh Tyahnybok, who is pictured in the film calling Jews “kikes” in public, which is one reason the Simon Wiesenthal Center has ranked him as one of the most dangerous anti-Semites in the world.

Another follower of Bandera is Dymytro Yarosh, who reputedly leads the paramilitary arm of an even more powerful political organization in Ukraine called Right Sektor. Yarosh once said he controls a paramilitary force of about 7,000 men who were reportedly used in both the overthrow of Yanukovych in Kiev in February 2014 and the suppression of the rebellion in Odessa a few months later, which are both fully depicted in the film.

This historical prelude and its merging with the current civil war is eye-opening background that has been largely hidden by the mainstream Western media, which has downplayed or ignored the troubling links between these racist Ukrainian nationalists and the U.S.-backed political forces that vied for power after Ukraine became independent in 1991.

The Rise of a Violent Right

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