Dispatches from Deena Stryker
TIMELINE
As anti-Russian sentiment proliferates in Washington, accusations that Moscow interfered in the American presidential election alternate with distorted references to events that took place in Ukraine starting in 2014. TGP took a look at how the US press covered those events at the time. But unlike those accounts, ours starts on Nov 13, 2013, when Assistant Secretary of State for East European Affairs Victoria Nuland told the DC Press Club that the US had invested 5 billion dollars since 1991 to ‘build Ukraine independence’. At that time, Ukraine’s President Yanukovich was reconsidering his decision to apply for EU membership, because the EU would not allow his country to also participate in a Moscow-BelaRus-Khazakstan trade agreement.
Our timeline shows how the US press covered this story, which still today is at the forefront of our relations with Moscow.
November 21, 2013:
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspends talks with the EU, in the face of opposition from Russia, sparking protests across the country.
Jan 16, 2014:
The Yanukovich government passes an anti-protest law as protests build on Maidan Square in Kiev, and across Ukraine, leaving 98 dead and approximately fifteen thousand injured.
During the first week in February (the Western press admits the date of the phone call is uncertain) Victoria Nuland, previously seen distributing cookies to protesters on Maidan Square, discusses with US Ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt who the US should choose to lead Ukraine in the place of Yanukovich. The recording that ended with Nuland saying ‘Fuck the EU!’ when Pyatt suggested Ukraine’s neighbor’s might not agree with her pick, went viral on YouTube.
No mention was made in that conversation of the fact that the opposition was relying on nationalists wielding chains and hammers to impose its will.
According to the NY Times: “On February 21, 2014, Yanukovich signed an agreement brokered by France, Germany, the US and Russia for an orderly transfer of power and political reform in Ukraine. However, Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, the main nationalist coalition, reacted defiantly:
“The agreements that were reached do not correspond to our aspirations,” he said. “Right Sector will not lay down arms. Right Sector will not lift the blockade of a single administrative building until our main demand is met — the resignation of Yanukovych.”
Here, a crucial bit of history is necessary: Anyone doubting it can Google ‘Nazi insignia’ and Right Sektor:
Right Sektor, as well as its twin Svoboda (‘freedom’ sic) are organizations that continue the traditions established during World War II by Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian uber nationalist who organized the OUN to fight for Ukrainian independence. He chose Hitler as his ally, his men killing many Jews, Poles and Russians, only to be betrayed. In an interview with Time magazine on February 4, 2014 Exclusive: Leader of Far-Right Ukrainian Militant Group Talks Revolution With TIME he boasted that his men had been training to bring Yanukovich down violently for months in Western Ukraine. This lengthy interview is literally the key to understanding what has transpired in Ukraine in the last three years. Wielding chains and hammers, the nationalist units were the only organized military force on Maidan Square. It was they who brought down the legally elected government, and they have played a decisive role in the US-backed coup government. (Yaros was first head of National Security…..)
Aside from not reporting the true nature of the nationalist militias, the Western Press failed in most reports to mention the crucial event that took place on February 21, 2014: President Yanukovich signed an agreement brokered by Russia, France, Germany and Poland, to wind down the protests, hold early presidential elections by December, a swift return to a 2004 Constitution that sharply limited the president’s powers and the establishment within 10 days of a “government of national trust.”
Here is the CNN version of the Ukraine story:
November 21, 2013
After a year of insisting he would sign a landmark political and trade deal with the European Union, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspends talks in the face of opposition from Russia, which has long opposed Ukraine forming closer ties with the EU. Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets in the following days, highlighting the deep divide between the pro-European west and Yanukovych’s power base in the pro-Russian east of Ukraine.”
First aid medics fired on in Ukraine 03:19
February 20, 2014: Violence that has been simmering for weeks bubbles over when a gunfight erupts between protesters and police in Maidan (Independence) Square in central Kiev, leaving dozens of people dead. Protesters say government snipers opened fire on them; Yanukovych’s government blames opposition leaders for provoking the violence.
Inside Yanukovych’s palace 02:23
Interior of Yanukovych’s residential compound: Much was made by the Western media by the lavish splendor of Yanukovych’s home, which resonated doubly in a nation wracked by economic insecurity.
CNN does not mention the agreement signed on February 21, but goes straight from February 20, to:
February 22, 2014
Yanukovych flees Kiev as his guards abandon the presidential compound. Thousands storm the grounds, marveling at the lavish estate he left behind. Former Prime Minister (and Yanukovych adversary) Yulia Tymoshenko — jailed in 2011 for “abuse of office” and many charges of blatant corruption after a trial that was widely seen in the West and by the opposition as politically motivated — is released from prison and addresses pro-Western protesters in Maidan Square.
In a similar vein, a year later, the March/April 2015 World Affairs’ The Ukraine Invasion: One Year Later, is a diatribe against Putin that also skips the signing of the February 21 Agreement , going straight to: “After President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine on February 22, 2014, Putin apparently panicked, fearing that what happened in Ukraine could spread to other countries, including his own.”
The NYTimes did report the deal on February 21st:
KIEV, Ukraine — A deal aimed at ending a lethal spiral of violence in Ukraine began to show serious strains late Friday just hours after it had been signed, with angry protesters shouting down opposition members of Parliament who negotiated the accord and a militant leader (ed note: Yaros) threatening armed attacks if President Viktor F. Yanukovych did not step down by morning.
Russia introduced a further element of uncertainty by declining to sign the accord, which reduces the power of Mr. Yanukovych, an ally of Moscow. This stirred fears that Moscow might now work to undo the deal through economic and other pressures, as it did last year to subvert a proposed trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union. But American officials said Mr. Putin told Mr. Obama in a telephone call on Friday that he would work toward resolving the crisis.
In a series of votes that followed the accord and reflected Parliament’s determination to make the settlement work, lawmakers moved to free Mr. Yanukovych’s imprisoned rival, former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko; grant blanket amnesty to all antigovernment protesters; and provide financial aid to the hundreds of wounded and families of the dead.
Except for a series of loud explosions on Friday night and angry chants in the protest encampment, Kiev was generally quiet. And the authorities, although previously divided about how to handle the crisis, seemed eager to avoid more confrontations. By late in the afternoon, all police officers had vacated the government district of the capital, leaving behind burned military trucks, mattresses and heaps of garbage at the positions they had occupied for months.
In Independence Square (Maidan), the focal point of the protest movement, however, the mood was one of deep anger and determination, not triumph. “Get out criminal! Death to the criminal!” the crowd chanted, reaffirming what, after a week of bloody violence, has become a nonnegotiable demand for many protesters: the immediate departure of Mr. Yanukovych.
When Vitali Klitschko, one of the three opposition leaders who signed the deal, spoke in its defense, people screamed “shame!” A coffin was then hauled on a stage in the square to remind Mr. Klitschko of the more than 70 people who died during violence on Thursday, the most lethal day of political mayhem in Ukraine since independence from the Soviet Union more than 22 years ago.
….
Vividly clear was the wide gulf that had opened up between the opposition’s political leadership and a street movement that has radicalized and slipped far from the already tenuous control of politicians. Mr. Klitschko was interrupted by an angry radical who did not give his name but said he was the leader of a group of fighters, known as a hundred:
“We gave chances to politicians to become future ministers, presidents, but they don’t want to fulfill one condition — that the criminal go away!” he said, vowing to lead an armed attack if Mr. Yanukovych did not announce his resignation by 10 a.m. on Saturday. The crowd shouted: “Yes! Yes!” Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, a coalition of hard-line nationalist groups, reacted defiantly to news of the settlement, drawing more cheers from the crowd.
It is the overbearing presence of the Right Sektor and Svoboda, two ultra right-wing nationalist parties, in the new Kiev government that sets off alarm bells in Eastern Ukraine, whose mainly Russian inhabitants remember the crimes of the groups’ hero, Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II to kill mainly Russians and Jews.”
On now to what happened in Eastern Ukraine, as a result of the US-led coup in the country’ capital, Kiev:
March 1, 2014
The Luhansk region demands that Russian be Ukraine’s second official language, that the government disarm Maidan self-defense units and ban far right political organizations like Right Sektor and Svoboda, warning it reserved the right “to ask for help from the brotherly people of the Russian Federation“.
Protesters in Donetsk raised the Russian tricolor over the Donetsk Oblast Regional Administration building and elected a pro-Russian governor. Demonstrators in Mariupol protested waving Russian flags. Between 5,000 and 20,000 participated in a pro-Russian demonstration in Odessa, and Russian flags were raised across the southeast.
The SBU arrested new Donetsk governor Pavel Gubarev and dozens of his supporters, charging “encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine” as well as “actions aimed at the forcible change or overthrow of the constitutional order, or the seizure of state power”. About 70 supporters of Gubarev were also arrested.
March 10 – Russia protests chaos
March 13
The Russian Armed Forces announced military exercises in the border regions of Rostov, Belgorod, and Kursk on 13 March, involving “artillery batteries, assault helicopters, and at least 10,000 soldiers”. Amateur footage has shown columns of trucks and armored vehicles amassing just 30 miles outside of Kharkiv.The United States Department of State said that the Russian military exercises have “certainly created an environment of intimidation [in Ukraine]”.
14 March
The Governor of Luhansk Oblast and the Mayor of Kharkiv are placed under house arrest. Four participants in yesterdays clashes in Donetsk were arrested. Clashes in Kharkiv between pro-Russian nationalists and an unknown group killed two.
On 7 April 2014, Donetsk People’s Republic is proclaimed, followed by Luhansk People’s Republic on 27 April 2014.
Now comes an event that dwarfs all others in this drama and illustrates better than any comment, the fundamental cleavage between ordinary participants in a civil war and those involved in the Ukraine crisis. We are dealing here with two opposing concepts of strife:
“On May 2, as unrest continued, 200 anti-Maidan protesters were killed when clashes drove them into a trade union building and the building was torched. This incident hardened the resolve of Ukraine’s Russian population against the Kiev regime.
While Ukraine’s Russian population looked on in horror at this event, the nationalists took up the chant of ‘burn the cockroaches, burn the Moscovites’.
December 12, 2014
Nazi symps Ukie Banderistas with some of the the tools of their trade. Thank you, Mr Obama. Thank you, Victoria. This pestilence is what the “separatist republics” chose to reject.
The two republics issue “a declaration of sovereignty under the name Novorossiya.”
Russia’s role in these events has been hotly disputed by both sides. It seems certain that the anti-Maidan republics received military support from Russia. However, the difference between providing military support to Russian-speaking populations in Eastern Ukraine and ‘invading’ the country is that had the latter taken place, Russian troops would have been in Kiev in one day. The fact that the situation has remained stalemated for three years is ample proof that there was never a “Russian invasion”.
At present, the stalemate continues, with anti-fascist populations determined to defend themselves, and the Kiev government, notwithstanding American support (as well as admonitions against corruption), presenting a dismal spectacle. Periodically, American politicians such as Vice-President Joe Biden and Senator John McCain, visit the country they birthed to try to instill “democratic” memes in a country whose majority is fixated on revenge.
The rise of far-right nationalist parties across Europe was undoubtedly influenced by the success of the fascist militias in Ukraine, who have held this vast territory for the last three years.
DEENA STRYKER, Senior Contributing Editor
Born in Philadelphia, Stryker spent most of her adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, her latest being
CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez
America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World
A Taoist Politics: The Case For Sacredness
She began her journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome, spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before they made the revolution (‘Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young’). After spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, she wrote the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of the Soviet Union (“Une autre Europe, un autre Monde’). Her memoir, ‘Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel’, tells it all. ‘A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness’, which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and modern science and what this implies for political activism; and ‘America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World” is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from the City on a Hill’.
MAIN IMAGE: Victoria Nuland with her fascist associates in Kiev.
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