Paul Craig Roberts

Mouksa Underground: We only wish the Ukrainians had heard their message before falling for the Western siren song.

In 2004 Hungary joined the EU, expecting streets of gold. Instead, four years later in 2008 Hungary became indebted to the IMF. The rock video by the Hungarian group, Mouksa Underground sums up the result in Hungary today of falling into the hands of the EU and IMF. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg8h526sB7w&feature=youtu.be The song is about the disappointing results of leaving socialism for capitalism, and in Hungary the results are certainly not encouraging. The title is “Disappointment with the System Change.” Here are the lyrics:

Over twenty some years now We’ve been waiting for the good life For the average citizen Instead of wealth we have poverty Unrestrained exploitation

So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for

No housing No food No work But that’s what was assured wouldn’t happen

Those on top Prey upon us The poor suffer everyday

So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for

(Repeat)

When will real change occur? When will there be a livable world The ultimate solution will arise When this economic system is forever abandoned

So this is the big system change So this is what you waited for

(Repeat)

There is no solution but revolution

Perhaps if the Kiev students had listened to the Hungarian rock group instead of to Washington’s NGOs, they would understand what it means to be looted by the West, and Ukraine would not be in turmoil and headed toward destruction. As Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland made clear in her speech last December and in the leaked recording of her telephone conversation with the US ambassador in Kiev, Washington spent $5 billion of US taxpayer dollars engineering a coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected democratic government. That it was a coup is also underlined by the obvious public lies that Obama has told about the situation, blaming, of course, the overthrown government, and by the total misrepresentation of Ukrainian developments by the US and European presstitute media. The only reason to misrepresent the events is to support the coup and to cover up Washington’s hand. There is no doubt whatsoever that the coup is a strategic move by Washington to weaken Russia. Washington tried to capture Ukraine in 2004 with the Washington-funded “Orange Revolution,” but failed. Ukraine was part of Russia for 200 years prior to being granted independence in the 1990s. The eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine are Russian areas that were added to Ukraine in the 1950s by the Soviet leadership in order to water down the influence of the nazi elements in the western Ukraine that had fought for Adolf Hitler against the Soviet Union during World War 2. The loss of Ukraine to the EU and NATO would mean the loss of Russia’s naval base on the Black Sea and the loss of many military industries. If Russia were to accept such strategic defeat, it would mean that Russia had submitted to Washington’s hegemony. Whatever course the Russian government takes, the Russian population of eastern and southern Ukraine will not accept oppression by Ukrainian ultra-nationalists and neo-nazis. The hostility already shown toward the Russian population can be seen in the destruction by Ukrainians of the monument to the Russian troops that drove Hitler’s divisions out of Ukraine during World War 2 and the destruction of the monument to Russian General Kutuzov, whose tactics destroyed Napoleon’s Grand Army and resulted in the fall of Napoleon. The question at the moment is whether Washington miscalculated and lost control of the coup to the neo-nazi elements who seem to have taken control from the Washington-paid moderates in Kiev, or whether the Washington neocons have been working with the neo-nazis for years. Max Blumenthal says the latter: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37752.htm The moderates have certainly lost control. They cannot protect public monuments, and they are forced to try to pre-empt the neo-nazis by legislating the neo-nazi program. The captive Ukrainian parliament has introduced measures to ban any official use of the Russian language. This, of course, is unacceptable to the Russian provinces. As I noted in a previous column, the Ukrainian parliament itself is responsible for the destruction of democracy in Ukraine. Its unconstitutional and undemocratic actions have paved the way for the neo-nazis who now have the precedent to treat the moderates the same way that the moderates treated the elected government and to cover up their illegality with accusations of crimes and arrest warrants. Today the illegally deposed President Yanukovych is on the run. Tomorrow will the current president, Oleksander Turchinov, put in office by the moderates, not by the people, be on the run? If a democratic election did not convey legitimacy to President Yanukovych, how does selection by a rump parliament convey legitimacy to Turchinov? What can Turchinov answer if the neo-nazis put to him Lenin’s question to Kerensky: “Who chose you?” If Washington has lost control of the coup and is unable to restore control to the moderates whom it has aligned with the EU and NATO, war would seem to be unavoidable. There is no doubt that the Russian provinces would seek and be granted Russia’s protection. Whether Russia would go further and overthrow the neo-nazis in western Ukraine is unknown. Whether Washington, which seems to have positioned military forces in the region, would provide the military might for the moderates to defeat the neo-nazis is also an open question, as is Russia’s response. In a previous column I described the situation as “Sleepwalking Again,” an analogy to how miscalculations resulted in World War 1. The entire world should be alarmed at the reckless and irresponsible interference by Washington in Ukraine. By bringing a direct strategic threat to Russia, the crazed Washington hegemon has engineered a Great Power confrontation and created the risk of world destruction.

About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

By Alex Lantier, wsws.org

Russian military exercises.

The Kremlin carried out large-scale military exercises along its border with Ukraine yesterday, amid rising tensions with the Western-backed Ukrainian regime that seized power in Saturday’s fascist-led putsch in Kiev.

Announcing the exercises, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said: “In accordance with an order by the president of the Russian Federation, the forces of the western military district were put on alert at 2pm today.”

The military alert was billed as a “surprise comprehensive interoperability test” of armed forces in Russia’s western and central military districts and its air force command. Some 150,000 soldiers, 90 warplanes, 120 attack helicopters, 880 tanks, and 90 ships reportedly participated.

Though Shoigu claimed the mobilization was “largely unrelated” to events in Kiev, he pointedly noted that the exercises took place “on the border with several countries, including Ukraine.” The alert was widely reported as the first public reaction to the Ukrainian crisis by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who until now was at the Sochi Olympics and did not comment on it.

Shoigu added that Moscow was “carefully watching” the situation in the Crimean Peninsula, a Russian-majority region of Ukraine that includes a major Russian naval base at Sevastopol.

Thousands protested for and against the new Ukrainian regime in the Crimean regional capital of Simferopol yesterday. One person was killed and many wounded amid clashes between Russian opponents of the Kiev regime, many of them Cossacks, and ethnic Tatars supporting the Western-backed regime. Russian protesters demanded the organization of a referendum on secession from Ukraine, which was bitterly opposed by Tatar protesters.

These clashes highlight how the reckless support given to right-wing and fascist opposition groups in Kiev by Washington and the European Union (EU) have driven Ukraine to the brink of a civil war, threatening to escalate into a direct clash between Russia and NATO.

Tensions have exploded since the Saturday putsch toppled Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The Kiev regime declared Russian to no longer be an official language in Ukraine, while officials in the Crimea and several southern and eastern provinces of Ukraine have said they do not recognize the new regime’s authority.

Conflicts are escalating in particular over Crimea. On Tuesday, the Western-backed interim president in Kiev, Oleksander Turchynov, called an emergency meeting to discuss “not allowing any signs of separatism and threats to Ukraine’s territorial integrity [meaning the events which have taken place in Crimea] and punishing people guilty of this.”

Far-right groups backing the new regime in Kiev threatened to send so-called “trains of friendship,” which are in fact gangs of armed thugs, to take Sevastopol. Officials there are setting up checkpoints and self-defense militias to guard against an assault on the city. In one indication of the reactionary character of the pro-Russian forces, Sevastopol mayor Aleksey Chaly hailed members of the hated Berkut riot police, dissolved by the Kiev authorities, and invited them to come to Sevastopol to defend the city.

Anonymous Russian security officials told the Financial Times yesterday that, while they did not aim to break up Ukraine, they would feel “compelled” to militarily support the Crimean Peninsula if it decided to secede from the rest of Ukraine.

Western officials, who have reportedly exchanged tense phone calls with Russian military authorities in recent days, signaled their opposition. Calling Ukraine a “close” partner, NATO General Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he “assumed that all states respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and we have made this clear to all whom it may concern.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry issued a thinly veiled threat Thursday night, warning in an interview on NBC News not only against any use of military force by Moscow, but also that imperialism is preparing the same fate for the Putin regime as the one that befell the government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

“The rapidity with which it has moved [the coup in Ukraine] should be a message to Russia,” Kerry said. “Russia needs to be very careful in the judgments that it makes going forward here…”

These events highlight not only the utter criminality and recklessness of imperialist policy, but also the disastrous political and geo-strategic impact of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the USSR. The restoration of capitalism in the USSR produced obscene levels of social inequality—Ukraine’s top 50 oligarchs have a net worth of $112.7 billion, or two-thirds of Ukraine’s Gross Domestic Product—and left all the ex-Soviet republics torn by regional and ethnic antagonisms.

The social base of the existing regimes is so narrow that all these countries are vulnerable to subversion by imperialist powers working with determined fascist groups. Under conditions in which the imperialist powers are pursuing a ruthless campaign to isolate and dismember Russia, the ethnic and regional tensions fuelled by these power grabs directly raise the threat of war.

The positions of the pro-Russian factions—aiming to ally themselves with Moscow to preserve their positions through a conflict that could trigger a world war with NATO—is bankrupt and reactionary. The only way forward is the struggle for the independent mobilization of the working class against imperialism, its fascist helpmates, and the corrupt regimes created by the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

The response of the population is the main worry for the fascist-backed regime in Kiev, which announced its cabinet yesterday. It knows full well that its mandate from the imperialist powers is to repay Ukraine’s debts to the major banks and protect Ukrainian oligarchs’ wealth by imposing despised austerity measures upon the population, including deep cuts to state energy subsidies.

Therefore, in a bizarre ceremony, it presented the line-up of ministers to its only popular base: the few thousand far-right protesters on Kiev’s Independence Square. It asked them to shout their approval for the various ministers as they were presented on the square.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom US officials had identified as their preferred leader prior to the putsch because of his close ties to oligarch Yulya Tymoshenko, was selected as prime minister. (See also: US response to leaked call confirms US/EU regime-change plot in Ukraine)

He declared, “We are to take extremely unpopular steps, as the previous government and previous president were so corrupted that the country is in a desperate financial plight. We are on the brink of disaster and this is the government of political suiciders! So welcome to hell.”

Such remarks underscore that the putsch in Kiev had nothing to do with democracy, as is cynically claimed in Western media outlets; it is a naked bid to implement a dictatorship to defend the financial and strategic interests of Western imperialism.

The other ministers introduced included Andriy Parubiy, was named secretary of the security and defense council. The coordinator of security for protesters on Independence Square in Kiev, he is a political associate of Oleh Tyahnybok—the head of the fascist, violently anti-Semitic Svoboda party—with whom he founded the far-right Social-Nationalist Party in the 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the USSR.

One of China’s Air Force strategic bombers. Far more advanced craft is being developed. China is no longer a backwater nation in weapons designs. (Public domain)

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]ussia and China are both under attack by a multi-pronged U.S.-led ‘proto-war’ which could erupt into ‘hot war’ or even nuclear war.   ‘Protowar’ or ‘proto-warfare’ is the term I have coined to describe the use of multiple methods intended to weaken, destabilize, and in the limit-case destroy a targeted government without the need to engage in direct military warfare.

Protowar methods include threats against the targeted country; economic sanctions; military encirclement around its borders. cyber-warfare, drone warfare, and use of proxy forces from within or from outside the country for political and/or military action against the local government.

U.S.-led protowars also invariably include propaganda campaigns against the targeted governments. The media campaigns are  waged by the five giant media conglomerates which now control 90% of the U.S. media and which are directly  linked to the U.S. foreign-policy establishment through various means including corporate memberships in the Committee for Foreign Relations.

You can recognize these media campaigns because they frequently employ the words ‘human rights’ or ‘democracy’ as the pretext  for U.S. state protowars against other countries.  Sometimes, of course, these words cannot possibly be applied at all, as in the massive support currently given to the murderous military dictatorship in Egypt or the midevilist kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  In these cases  the U.S. media and government substitute the words ‘U.S. National Interest’ for ‘human rights’ as the pretext for targeting another country.

Proto-warfare often precedes, or leads up to, hot wars, as when a decade of economic sanctions, media demonization, and media-supported lies about ‘weapons of mass destruction’ led up to the Iraq war.   Thousands of young American men and women were sent over to kill and be killed, or to be injured or traumatized, to say nothing of the up to a million Iraqis who died as a result of the war.  However, Iraq did not possess nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, so there was no danger of a nuclear conflagration.   Matters are much different with respect to Russia and China, both nuclear powers.

The ProtoWar Against Russia and China

U.S.-led proto-warfare against Russia and China has a number of elements.  To begin with, it conforms to two popular doctrines in U.S. foreign policy circles.  The first doctrine states that the U.S. must never allow another super-power to emerge, and must remain the unchallenged dominant force on Earth.  This doctrine is clearly set-out in the original version of the U.S. Defence Department policy document  known as ‘the Wolfowitz doctrine:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

The document containing this statement and similar notions was changed for public consumption after the original provoked an outcry when it was leaked to the press.

The second doctrine underpinning proto-warfare against Russia and China is that U.S. dominance of the planet depends on control of the Eurasian land mass, on which Russia and China occupy key positions.  This doctrine has been heavily  promoted by  former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski.  “For America,”  he has written, ” the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… Eurasia is the globes largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the worlds’ three most advanced and economically productive regions… Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played.

In pursuit of Eurasian dominance a whole gamut of protowar tools are now being used by the U.S. in its campaigns against Russia and China.  Militarily, the U.S.-led Nato military alliance has progressively squeezed Russia’s’ strategic space by enlisting one former Russian aligned state in Eastern Europe after another.  Now, with a U.S.-supported coup-imposed government in power in Kiev, there is open talk of Nato also incorporating Ukraine, a country right on Russia’s’ border.

To help U.S.  readers understand the significance of Natos’ movement around Russia, imagine that from South America, up through central America, and up to Mexico and Canada, one country after another was being integrated into a Russian-dominated military system.

Russia’s Sukhoi Su-34 is an advanced tactical strike fighter. Russia currently has many more advanced planes, some surpassing the US designs. (Wikimedia)

Other current protowar actions against Russia include economic sanctions; the use of the Ukraine crisis as a pretext to mobilize more U.S. and other Nato forces in Eastern Europe for purposes of intimidating or threatening Russia; and the publication by the U.S. media conglomerates of an unending series of lies, half-truths, and obscurantism’s regarding the Ukraine, in order to demonize Russia and prepare the U.S. public to accept whatever actions the U.S. state and military chooses to take.

On the other side of Eurasia, U.S. military encirclement of China has also recently proceeded apace.   Military bases and transfers of billions of dollars in military equipment have been positioned around China for years in areas such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

Now, with the Obama administrations’ so-called ‘pivot to Asia’, a new more ambitious program called ‘Air-Sea battle plan’ involves deployment of large amounts of very hi-tech military systems and equipment in the pacific area all aimed at China.

At the same time, new U.S. military bases are being opened across the Pacific arena, from the Philippines to Australia, with no other conceivable target but China.

In conjunction with this Pacific military build-up, the U.S.state is attempting to use previously minor disputes over ownership of maritime resources to turn a number of smaller Asian nations into proxies to help it destabilize China.  These nations include Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines.  By offering its support, and in some cases promises of military assistance in any maritime conflict with China, the U.S. has stoked the ambitions and aggressive nationalist tendencies of these smaller nations vis-a-vis China.

Coinciding with the military build-up against China is extensive cyber-penetration of China by the U.S. NSA (National Security Agency), as revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

This penetration includes wholesale capture of hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese mobile text messages; the monitoring of mobile phone conversations of Chinese leaders; and serious intrusions into the computer network backbone system of Beijings’ Tsinghua university, which is linked to large numbers of Chinese research centers including labs engaged in sensitive military-related work.

The NSA has also penetrated and compromised the server computers made by Chinese Huaweii, a giant telecommunications equipment and networking company, whose equipment is used throughout China and around the world.

Russia’s strategic deterrent comprises an advanced submarine fleet armed with ICBMs. (Photo: Russian Pacific Fleet).

It should be noted – and emphasized – that the U.S. government has never apologized or stated that these cyber-attacks on China will stop.

Other U.S.attempts to destabilize China include political and economic support for separatist movements by some members of ethnic minorities in the Chinese provinces of Xinjiang and Tibet.   Since the 1950’s, first the CIA and later the so-called “National Endowment for Democracy’, which is funded by the U.S. government, have transferred millions of dollars to the so-called Tibetan government-in-Exile in India. Both sets of money transfers are in the public domain, due to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

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At the same time, a so-called ‘East Turkistani Government In Exile’ claiming to represent XInjiang province was formed in Washington DC in 2004.  On his way to the Beijing Olympics in 2008l, then President George W. Bush stopped by the see one of the leaders-in-exile  of the Xinjaing separatist movement.

To put all these U.S. protowar actions against China in perspective, we need to consider who is really the aggressive actor in Asia.  The U.S. has over 650 military bases in other peoples’ countries, including Asia, while China has none.   The U.S. is impinging militarily and politically in China’s backyard; China is not interfering in U.S. relations or military activities in the U.S. backyard.  The U.S. has a doctrine of global supremacy; China has no such doctrine and basically wishes to be left alone to develop economically and to engage in economic trade with other nations.

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Russian BUK anti-aircraft battery.

The danger of the U.S.Eurasian protowar erupting into hot war – or even nuclear war – stems from a single factor:  Previous U.S.-led protowars which erupted into hot wars were against countries like Serbia, Iraq, or Libya.  Those countries did not have nuclear weapons and could not effectively defend themselves against U.S. military and other pressures   Russia and China are in a different category – they are nuclear- armed and can defend themselves.

The U.S. state presumably does not intend to provoke a hot war with Russia and China.. But directing intensive protowar against powerful nuclear-armed states is to risk the possibility of ‘sleep walking’ into the abyss through miscalculation, or through a gradual hightening of conflicts which finally go out of control.  In 1914, with the European powers of the day already on edge, it took just the assassination of a minor duke in a peripheral country to trigger World War I.   As an old adage has it, “If you play with fire, you may get burned.”

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Eric Sommer is an international journalist.

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What is $1 a month to support one of the greatest publications on the Left?

Pelley: Happy to spout the official line. 

Did the people who pass themselves for journalists at CBS ever heard of false flag ops? Did it ever enter their conformist skulls that the US government, along with other Western intel and military services, have long used dirty tricks to demonize their opponents du jour? It’s all part of the propaganda battle that prepares the way for interventions.  Now we hear a lot about the Syrian government crimes, and more recently the latest pious fixation, the fate of the Ukrainian protesters bent on overthrowing their government (an idea the authorities would not tolerate for a minute in the US).  Given these elementary circumstances,  what guarantee do we have that these putative victims of Ukrainian government violence are indeed so and not some underhanded operation mounted on the opposition by false government thugs to smear the regime?

Or simply that the victim is lying and the wounds and injuries are an elaborate hoax? Hasn’t Hollywood special effects proved already that almost any falsification is possible? If you doubt that such things do happen in real life, think again. As former Gov. Jesse Ventura reminds us in his book (American Conspiracies) that the Pentagon itself was ready to bomb American cities to frame the young Cuban revolution in 1962.  Here’s the Wiki on the infamous Operation Northwoods (never denied):

Operation Northwoods was a series of false flag proposals that originated within the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals, which called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit perceived acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere, were rejected by the Kennedy administration.^[2]

At the time of the proposal, Cuba had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts.^[3] To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings andbombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

Maybe the CBS Evening News producers should read that, as well as their star presenter, Scott Pelley.
Below, the CBS story, which is still lacking verification. Given the stakes—the capturing of one of the most important pieces of strategic real estate in Europe, anything is possible.—Eds

Last Updated Jan 31, 2014 3:36 PM EST

KIEV, Ukraine — The bloody images of Ukrainian opposition supporter Dmytro Bulatov, who says he was abducted and tortured for more than a week, have fueled fears among anti-government activists that extrajudicial squads are being deployed to intimidate the protest movement.

Bulatov, who was in charge of a vocal protest group before he disappeared Jan. 22, recounted a gruesome ordeal, saying his unidentified kidnappers beat him, sliced off part of his ear and nailed him to a door during his time in captivity.

“There isn’t a spot on my body that hasn’t been beaten. My face has been cut. They promised to poke my eye out. They cut off my ear,” Bulatov, 35, said Friday in a short video from his hospital ward. “They crucified me by nailing me to a door with something and beat me strongly all the while.”The government has faced two months of major protests that started after President Victor Yanukovych backed out of an agreement to deepen ties with the European Union in favor of Russia. The demonstrations quickly grew into discontent over heavy-handed police, corruption and human rights violations.CBS News correspondent Holly Williams reports from Kiev that the protesters have stayed outside in sub-zero temperatures because they believe these demonstrations will decide the future of their country and whether Ukraine turns east toward Russia or west toward Europe.

Some opposition leaders believe the government will do anything to save itself, including sending brutal squads of torturers to quash the demonstrations.

Prominent opposition figure Oleksandr Turchynov accused the government of being behind the attacks on Bulatov and other activists.

“Ukraine has experienced a merger of law enforcement bodies and criminal structures, which function as a single entity that uses criminal structures to kill and intimidate and to set cars on fire,” Turchynov told reporters. “The authorities are using criminal structures to fight against the opposition and its own people.”

The Interior Ministry said it was investigating Bulatov’s story, but it also accused him of failing to cooperate. Oleh Tatarov, deputy chief of the Interior Ministry’s main investigative department, said Bulatov’s kidnapping could have been staged in order to create a provocation.

Later Friday, the ministry dispatched investigators to Bulatov’s hospital to interrogate him, saying that besides being a kidnapping victim, he was also suspected of organizing mass disorders in the protests. Opposition lawmakers and Bulatov’s supporters feared he was about to be arrested and rushed to the hospital to shield him from police. The standoff continued late into the evening.

 Yanukovych adviser Hanna Herman urged a thorough investigation into Bulatov’s disappearance. But she also branded Turchynov a “provocateur” and accused the opposition of seeking to further inflame tensions instead of working toward a compromise in the protests, which call for Yanukovych’s resignation and other demands.”I think the opposition now is doing all it can to again ignite the situation which had already begun to calm down,” Herman told the Associated Press.

Bulatov’s group, car owners known as Automaidan, started out by picketing the residences of top government officials and their allies, but soon took an active part in the protests that have rocked Ukraine. They blocked streets and monitored police cars.

Bulatov went missing on Jan. 22, prompting his friends to organize a campaign for his release. They pleaded with top government officials for assistance, offered a $25,000 bounty to anyone who could help locate him and even consulted psychics, fellow activist Oleksiy Hrytsenko said.

Hrytsenko grew all the more worried about Bulatov’s fate because Automaidan members’ cars were being torched and their activists detained, harassed and threatened. Hrytsenko showed an Associated Press reporter a text message he received from an unknown number that read: “Go ahead, go ahead, your mother will be happy to see her son dead.”

Bulatov was dumped in a forest Thursday night after eight days in captivity and made it to a house outside Kiev where he got help and was able to call friends, according to an Interior Ministry statement. He went missing one day after Igor Lutsenko, another prominent opposition activist who had also disappeared, was discovered after being taken to woods and beaten severely by unknown attackers.

Lutsenko was kidnapped from a hospital, where he had brought a fellow protester, Yuri Verbitsky, to be treated for an eye injury. Verbitsky was also beaten severely along with Lutsenko and was later discovered dead.

An investigative journalist and an active leader of the protests, Tetyana Chernovil, was also badly beaten outside Kiev in late December.

Lutsenko says he spent some eight hours spread on the floor of what looked like a garage in an unknown location, as about 10 people beat him in a way to leave few visible marks, but to cause severe pain. All the while, the attackers interrogated Lutsenko about the protest movement, he said.

“They are very professional about beating people,” Lutsenko said in a recent interview with a Ukrainian TV channel. “Their goal was to put pressure on us, to punish us.”

The reported beatings and intimidation stoked speculation that special security teams were roaming Ukraine and hunting down opposition activists.

“The Ukrainian authorities have now introduced real death squads to the political scene of the country,” wrote political commentator Vitaly Portnikov.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton issued a statement Friday saying she was “appalled by the obvious signs of prolonged torture and cruel treatment” of Bulatov. She also condemned the death of Verbitsky.

“These are but two cases of the continuous deliberate targeting of organizers and participants of peaceful protests,” Ashton said. “All such acts are unacceptable and must immediately be stopped.”

Yanukovych took indefinite sick leave Thursday, stalling the negotiations between authorities and the opposition in a bid to find a way out of the political crisis.

Yanukovych told opposition leaders it was now up to them to make concessions, since he already accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and approved the scrapping of harsh anti-protest legislation that sparked last week’s violence.

Yanukovych also signed into law a bill offering to grant amnesty to protesters, but only after they vacate scores of government buildings they have seized across the country.

The mysterious kidnappings of the activists also leave unclear the motives of those behind them, because each time they have only served to energize the protests.

“I would like to tell you that we will not be frightened we have no intention to stop,” Bulatov said.