Johnson's Russia List
2015-#74
14 April 2015
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"We don't see things as they are, but as we are"

"Don't believe everything you think"

In this issue
 
  #1
Reuters
April 10, 2015
War and poverty bring doubt to heartland of Ukraine's pro-Europe revolt
By Alessandra Prentice

(Reuters) - When Ukrainians toppled a pro-Russian president last year, nowhere was the euphoria greater than in Lviv, a short drive from the EU border, where people have dreamt for generations of escaping Moscow's orbit to join the West.

More than a year of war and economic collapse later, nowhere else has the disillusionment been felt more harshly.

"Everyone thought Ukraine would suddenly turn into Poland," said mechanic Taras Yakubovsky, sitting by a cast-iron woodburner in his small garage, where work has dried up because customers can no longer afford car repairs. "But we've become more like Europe's Somalia."
 
Part of the Austrian empire until World War I, this city of baroque churches and cobbled streets looks more like Mitteleuropa than the ex-Soviet Union, which it joined only after Red Army tanks rolled in and seized it from Poland in 1939.

Its residents, known for their fierce nationalist streak and pro-European outlook, traveled by busload to Kiev last year, forming the core of the "Maidan" movement on the capital's central square that toppled President Viktor Yanukovich after he rejected a free trade pact with the EU.

When that revolt was followed by war with pro-Russian separatists in the distant east, Lviv residents were among the most enthusiastic volunteers. The furthest major city in Ukraine from the war zone, it has suffered some of the highest per capita losses in a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people.

But after a tough winter and with no sign of economic pain ending any time soon, support for the war is eroding, even here. According to a poll by research company GfK, over half of residents of western regions believe the government must avoid further bloodshed at any cost.

"We understand it's difficult times, but they're tossing away money on the war, and someone in Kiev will definitely be making some money off it too," Yakubovsky said.

Donations to the war effort have dropped noticeably, said part-time volunteer Yuriy Yatnisa, 24, standing in an old military tent that serves as a makeshift center to collect money and food for the troops at the front.

"Everybody helps however they can, but it's hard - we get a lot less than last year. It's not just that they can't afford to give as much, it's also because people have become used to living in a country at war, it's a normal part of daily life now," Yatnisa said.

MOST TO GAIN

Ukraine's western provinces have the most to gain from closer trade ties with Europe. Officials say lifting EU trade barriers could mean European firms opening factories here just inside the border, bringing jobs and investment, as they did in countries like Poland since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Ukraine's population of 45 million is well educated and its labor is cheaper than in new EU countries nearby.

Some firms have already begun to find opportunities for increased trade with the EU. Yarych Confectionary, a Lviv cracker factory, announced in October it had begun making butter biscuits for Carrefour supermarkets to sell under their own name in Poland.

But so far, such benefits are still mostly hypothetical, while the damage brought by the war and economic crisis is real. The hryvnia national currency has collapsed, dragging down the value of the average monthly salary to just $150 per month.

In February, when the currency went into freefall, there was panic buying of basic foodstuffs. Some supermarkets in Lviv introduced short-term rationing after their shelves were emptied of flour and cooking oil.

Those who do business abroad have a hard time convincing customers that Western Ukraine is stable and far from the war zone, said Olena Linik, 29, who works for an American company that employs Ukrainians to design software in Lviv.

"We explained to our clients that from Lviv to east Ukraine, it's 1,000 kilometers - the same distance as from here to Venice," she said. "But many companies are put off by the instability."

She said a friend of hers had lost his job creating logos, because the firm he worked for moved its business to Taiwan from Lviv.

Still, some in Western Ukraine see opportunities already arriving. The weak hryvnia helps a domestic tourist trade, with those who can no longer afford to travel abroad coming to visit Lviv's old churches and cafes, and ski western Ukraine's Carpathian mountains.

"A trip to Europe has become too expensive for many," said Markiyan Malskyy of the European Business Association, a trade group for foreign companies operating in Ukraine which has an office in Lviv.

"Lviv especially is now considered to be Europe, but without a visa."


 #2
The Independent (UK)
April 12, 2015
Ukraine crisis: After the bullets and shells, it is red tape causing a million refugees to suffer
International aid-workers say bureaucracy is strangling efforts to provide those in need with care
By FRANCESCA EBEL, SLOVYANSK  

Lyudmila Shabanova says she has been forgotten by her own government. When she and her husband fled the "living hell" of Ukraine's battle with Russian-backed separatist rebels in the town of Avdiivka, she cursed the rebels and blamed Putin for the destruction of her city.

Now in the comparative safety of the government-controlled town of Sviatohirsk, she berated the Ukrainian government for failing to support her and her family. She described how she had to abandon her home, her eyes shining with tears: "The last feeling I remember was the sensation of the shell crashing through a wall. We lived on the upper floor. Everything - the ceiling, the roof, the windows - was destroyed."

Ms Shabanova is one of around a million Ukrainians who have become refugees in their own country since the fighting began last April. Some have fled to safer areas of Ukraine, while others have relocated just a few miles from the battleground. Traumatised and impoverished, they have found little assistance.

While the conflict has slowed in recent weeks, with a ceasefire still technically in force, casualties are reported almost daily. The government and rebel leaders have accused each other of intensifying attacks in recent days around the airport at rebel-held Donetsk.

In government-controlled areas, according to both international aid-workers and struggling internally displaced people (IDPs), Ukraine's bureaucracy is strangling efforts to provide those in need with care.

A recent report released by the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy stated that the government provides monthly financial assistance to displaced people: "884 hryvnas (�25) for disabled people and 442 hryvnas (�12) for able-bodied people." Only those who seek refuge in territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities are eligible and many people wait weeks, if not months, for payments to be processed.

Yelena Guseva, a 36-year-old with five children, displayed the stack of paperwork needed to officially register as an IDP with the Ukrainian government.

"I had to wait two weeks for a single stamp," she said. "We are still waiting for the complete certification to arrive. Until then, we have no money and no future."

With a fragile system of support in place, IDPs are dependent on the efforts of local volunteers and Western aid organisations.

At one such initiative hundreds of refugees waited patiently for its doors to open, the queue winding around the side of the building. Antonina Popova wept as she was handed bags heavy with buckwheat and potatoes.

"There are no words, I can only say thank you," she said. "I have nothing left. I have no family and there is no one to care for me."

M�decins Sans Fronti�res (MSF) is one of the few aid organisations able to access both sides of the conflict. Andreas Koutepas, an MSF project coordinator based in Artemivsk, says that Ukraine's stifling bureaucracy - difficult even in peacetime - is delaying MSF operations. Along with other organisations in the area, MSF finds it difficult to import drugs and medical materials. The consequent pressure on their supply chain is immense.

"The documentation we need to move drugs from one place to another, to purchase drugs locally, all of these administrative procedures are very complicated and take a lot of time," he said.

Pavlo Rozenko, Ukraine's minister of social policy, said the "state of war" meant the government could not "provide each individual with a comfortable, separate housing allowance". He said it was "doing everything in its power" and that payments to IDPs, as well as pensions and financial assistance, were received "on time and in full".

"There are lots of problems," he said. "Ukraine is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe. We need help, but we are doing a lot ourselves."
 
 #3
Interfax
April 14, 2015
Normandy Quartet calls for withdrawal of artillery and heavy weapons below 100mm in Donbass

Foreign ministers from the Normandy Quartet countries have called on the trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine to agree a schedule for the withdrawal of weapons below a 100 mm caliber from the line of contact in Donbass, the chair of the Normandy format's ministerial meeting in Berlin said in a statement.

"We furthermore call for the withdrawal of mortars and heavy weapons below 100mm as well as all types of tanks. We call upon the Trilateral Contact Group in consultation with SMM (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission) and JCCC (Joint Center for Control and Coordination) to agree on a relevant schedule," according to the statement.

"We also strongly call on the sides to be fully cooperative on the verification process," the document says.

At their meeting in Berlin, the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine also noted that "the situation remains tense because of numerous violations."

"In particular, we expressed our grave concern at the recent outbreak of fights over the last weekend, including the use of heavy weapons around Shyrokine and Donetsk Airport," the statement says.

"We call on all sides to stop fighting and demonstrate their commitment to fully implementing the ceasefire and conclude the withdrawal of heavy weapons definitely," the document says.

"We call on the participants to urgently finalize an operational concept on the working groups within the Trilateral Contact Group as soon as possible," the chair of the Normandy format's ministerial meeting said in a statement.

"We agree that the four working groups on security; political process; humanitarian issues; and economic affairs and rehabilitation must be launched as soon as possible," the document says.

"The immediate appointment of participants by the sides and agreement on working group coordinators will facilitate a quick start of the working groups," it says.

"We task our Deputy Foreign Ministers Political Directors to continue to oversee the implementation of the Minsk Package, with a strong emphasis on a quick launch of the Working Groups and our continued support to their activities, as well as on the sustainable improvement of the security situation," the statement says.

The ministers also supported the efforts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission to de-escalate tensions in the village of Shyrokine and near the Donetsk airport and called "on the sides to establish permanent and unfettered access to the SMM to implement its mandate and the Minsk agreements, and to continue and conclude the withdrawal of heavy weapons as soon as possible."


 
#4
New York Times
April 14, 2015
Rival Factions in Ukraine Are Urged to Withdraw Heavy Weapons
By ALISON SMALE

BERLIN - Warring parties in Ukraine should withdraw heavy weapons - including tanks, armored vehicles, mortars and artillery - in order to comply with the shaky cease-fire that has held in eastern Ukraine since late February, the German foreign minister said early Tuesday.

The call from the minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, came after talks with his counterparts from France, Russia and Ukraine aimed at maintaining the cease-fire agreed to in Minsk, Belarus, on Feb. 12. In a statement, the four officials expressed "deep concern" over the continuing battles in eastern Ukraine.

Foreign observers who are monitoring the cease-fire have noted a flare-up in fighting in recent days, particularly around two hot spots: the village of Shirokino, near the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, and the ruined airport of Donetsk. A press officer for the Ukrainian Army said that six soldiers had been killed and 12 others wounded in the past day, a casualty tally that is reminiscent of those during the worst fighting in southeast Ukraine.

Diplomats have blamed both the Ukrainian Army and the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine for repeated violations of the truce.

Mr. Steinmeier emerged early Tuesday from a late-night dinner with his three colleagues and said they had agreed that both sides should withdraw heavy weapons from the battlefield.

A prisoner exchange that stuttered two weeks after the Minsk agreement was reached should also resume, Mr. Steinmeier said.

"We call on all sides to stop fighting and demonstrate their commitment to fully implementing the cease-fire and conclude the withdrawal of heavy weapons definitely," the four ministers said in a statement. "We furthermore call for the withdrawal of mortars and heavy weapons below 100 millimeters, as well as all types of tanks."

Although the fighting has abated markedly, the truce has been broken repeatedly.

Diplomats and officials were supposed to form working groups to move forward with political aspects of the Minsk agreement, which include making arrangements for special elections in eastern Ukraine. But there has been little progress on that front, diplomats noted before Monday's meeting in Berlin.

The ministers' statement indicated there had been no breakthrough at Monday's talks in forming the groups. It reiterated only that the groups should be named and begin work "as soon as possible."

In a sign of continuing peril on the ground, an employee of a Russian state news outlet was reported to have been severely injured on Tuesday when he stepped on a land mine near Shirokino.

TV Zvezda, a station run by the Russian Ministry of Defense, said that one of its reporters, Andrey Lunyev, had stepped on a tripwire while traveling near the front lines with representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is monitoring the cease-fire.

The O.S.C.E. confirmed that a journalist, whom they did not identify, had been wounded in Shirokino. Paramedics with the organization gave first aid to the reporter, who was taken to a hospital in separatist territory. Michael Bociurkiw, spokesman for the O.S.C.E. mission to Ukraine, said that the organization was aware from previous trips that there was unexploded ordnance in the area.


 
 
 
#5
Moon of Alabama
www.moonofalabama.org
April 13, 2015
Ukraine: Right Sector Breaks Ceasefire, Newsweek Smears Akhmetov

Serious fighting has again started in east Ukraine. The AP reports:

"On Sunday alone, the OSCE recorded at least 1,166 explosions, caused mainly by artillery and mortar shell strikes in northern Donetsk as well as on its outskirts including the airport, now obliterated by fighting.

"The OSCE also reported intense mortar fire outside the village of Shyrokyne, by the Azov Sea, but said its representatives were repeatedly barred from accessing the village on Sunday."

The AP report does not say who or what started these battles. It is dancing around the really important issue of who broke the ceasefire with this:

"Col. Andriy Lishchynskyi, a Ukrainian representative for monitoring the cease-fire in the east, blamed the clashes on 'a highly emotional state and personal animosity' between the fighters on both sides, according to the Interfax news agency."

Yeah, that is what a "Ukrainian representative" would probably say. What are the readers to assume from that?

The AP writers certainly read the relevant OSCE spot report. So why did they leave out this part?

"Both the Ukrainian Armed Forces representative and the Russian Federation representative to the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC) told the SMM that the Ukrainian side (assessed to be the Right Sector volunteer battalion) earlier had made an offensive push through the line of contact towards Zhabunki ('DPR'-controlled, 14km west-north-west of Donetsk)"

The Nazis from the Right Sector Azov battalion attacked, broke the ceasefire and started the fighting.

But readers of just AP reports will not learn that.

There is a comparable issue with this smear piece by Newsweek. It is somewhat laudable in that it is the first one I see in the "western" media which reports on the issue of the eight political functionaries who were "suicided" in Ukraine by unknown perpetrators:

"When Melnychuk's body was found on 22 March, police initially told local journalists he had committed suicide. But it soon emerged that alarmed neighbours had called police on hearing of a late-night struggle. Pathologists found he had been badly beaten before the fall. Later the same day, Odessa prosecutors registered Melnychuk's "suicide" as a murder, and arrested a former police officer they describe only as "citizen K".

"In reply to a legal request by Newsweek for information on investigations into the deaths of seven other former officials, all tied to Viktor Yanukovych's Party of Regions, the General Prosecutor's Office responded that all the information about all the deaths was a state secret - a staggering claim to make about a series of apparently unrelated civilian deaths they told the press were suicides.

"After an intervention by the Presidential Administration, the General Prosecutor's Office disclosed that four of the seven deaths are being investigated as murders, with another investigation as yet unclassified. The two remaining cases had been closed with no evidence of a crime. No other information was provided."

That is all well and correct so far. But then the Newsweek piece by Maxim Tucker weirs off into Lala-land.

Tucker claims that the most likely man behind these death is the the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. Akhmetov is the billionaire financial backer of the Party of the Regions who has many business interests in east Ukraine. Tucker asserts that Akhmetov had those people killed because they had helped him when he acquired, through bribes and violence, companies that the state privatized. They knew too much according to Tucker.

But these people were involved in many privatizations and not all of those went to Akhmetov. They were all also loyal to Akhmetov, long time servants of him and there was no sign that they were changing sides or worked against him. He simply had no reason to kill them.

Other oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoisky, the man behind the current prime minister Yatsenyuk and the financier behind the Azoz Nazis, have just as much interest to cover the tracks of their illegal acquisitions. They also saw the deceased party functionaries as the opposition to their rule. In any neutral investigation their ownerships of various companies and holdings would be just as much in question as Akhmetov's. As witnesses with knowledge of all wild privatization the killed people were much more likely to accuse them than they were to accuse Akhmetov. These oligarchs are, in my view, much more likely to have ordered the killings.

The Newsweek smear piece does not even mention that as a possibility. It simply asserts, with zero evidence, that Akhmetov must have been the man behind the murderers.

It seems to be a rule for "western" reporting on Ukraine (and elsewhere) that anything that may show a negative light on "our" puppets will be left out or, if that is no longer possible, be blamed on the other side.
 
 
#6
Russia Insider
http://russia-insider.com
April 13, 2015
It's a Waiting Game in Donbass. What Comes Next?
It is clear that the West has started an endgame against Russia. How will Russia respond?
By Jon Hellevig

Reflecting on my visit in Donetsk last week, what strikes me the most is the total absence of Russia, in every respect. Obviously there are no signs of Russian military hardware or personnel; but not only that, Russia does not participate in building Donetsk statehood in any way. Russia has not even moved to ease the economic blockade imposed by the Ukrainians, which it could do by recognizing customs documents issued by Donetsk authorities. The only Russian presence is the humanitarian aid that is periodically hauled in by white truck convoys.

The impression one gets is that Russia is fully committed to doing everything from its own side to ensure the implementation of the Minsk agreements, at any cost, and using its influence on the people's militia to make them abide as well.

Once again, Russia has chosen the legalistic approach by adhering to agreements. Many are baffled by this approach, knowing that the other party, that is, the West and its puppet government in Kiev, could not care less. Certainly Russia must know that it cannot impress the West in any way with such respect for agreements. Whatever it does, it will continuously be accused of breach of agreements and incursions into Ukraine.

It seems to me that Russia is motivated by other concerns than the predictable Western reaction. Primarily, Russia seems to be interested in actually seeing the Minsk accords through, and secondly in establishing its case in front of the larger global community, rather than just the West. Russia's real friends, China, the other BRICS countries, the many countries of Asia, South America and Africa must be convinced that Russia wants peace.

It should be noted, though, that the Minsk accords do not actually impose any obligations on Russia; for Russia it is just a question of refraining from actions that could be seen to fuel separatism.  The key to the implementation of the peace plan is with Kiev. Cessation of military hostilities and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry is imposed on both Kiev and the rebel governments. The Donetsk and Lugansk troops have implemented these conditions for their part, but the Kiev military keeps attacking the frontlines and heavily shelling Donetsk. I experienced this first hand visiting the district near the airport with a group of journalists last Thursday. There was a constant rumbling of artillery shelling in the background.

Apart from the military withdrawal, all of the obligations are squarely and solely on Kiev, which must make constitutional reforms to grant autonomy to parts of Donetsk and Lugansk and pass other legal acts as outlined in the Minsk protocol. So far, Kiev is in blatant breach of these obligations and there does not seem to be any positive will to abide by them. The deadline for passing the constitutional reforms according to the Ukrainian constitutional procedures is about to close.
 
This is a waiting game. Russia and the Donbass authorities must sit out all the Minsk deadlines. Which of the interested parties want to see the ceasefire accords fail? If the ceasefire fails, as it likely will, then the Donetsk and Lugansk republics will take the final steps towards statehood and Russia will be legally free to support them.

In the meanwhile dark clouds of war have been gathering in Europe. The security system has considerably deteriorated, especially in developments on each side of the Baltic Sea. This might push Russia to reconsider its role in Donbass. The governments of Poland, Lithuania and Estonia are asking for more NATO troops in their areas under the cover of hysterical fears of an imminent Russian invasion.  On the other side of the Baltic shore, Finland's media have gone into overdrive whipping up war hysteria, providing the government cover in its efforts to invite NATO troops to Finland. In great secrecy and in apparent breach of the constitution, Finland signed with NATO in Septermber 2014 a so-called Host Nation Support accord, which in practice allies Finland with NATO.

At the same time Sweden also gave up its formal neutrality with signing a similar agreement with NATO. The accord spells out directly that the purpose of the agreement is to create the procedures for establishing NATO bases in Finland in order to support a NATO military buildup. Finland's political leadership, from President Niinisto to Prime Minister Stubb and Defense Minister Haglund, have gradually during the year ramped up their aggressive rhetoric and provocative statements against Russia. A couple of days ago Haglund signed a joint article with four other Nordic (Scandinavian) defense ministers in a Swedish daily advocating the need for the Nordic countries to intensify common defense efforts against "Russian aggression".

Only public opinion, which is vehemently opposed to NATO membership, has so far kept the Finnish elite from applying for direct membership, but no doubt it is only a question of time before the needed excuse will be invented to override public opposition after the country's parliamentary elections of April 19. And indeed the purpose of these constant provocations from Finland's political leadership and the press is precisely to inflame the situation so as to produce the casus belli to go for full NATO membership.

There seems to be no turning back. As a result Finland's 1,340 km border is now the longest direct border between Russia and NATO, again posing a direct military threat on St. Petersburg and the route all the way to Moscow.

It is clear that the West has started an endgame against Russia and Russia must reply at some point. As more troops will be needed in the North, I do not see how Russia could let Donbass fail.


 #7
Interfax-Ukraine
April 14, 2015
Russia continues to provide support to separatists - U.S. ambassador Pyatt
 
Russia continues to provide support to the separatists in eastern Ukraine by providing military leadership and training, U.S. Ambassador in Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt has said.

"Russia has command and control centers in eastern Ukraine to coordinate military operations there," Pyatt tweeted on Tuesday.

"We know Russia has established training areas in eastern Ukraine to train separatist fighters in gunnery and artillery firing," he said.

Pyatt added that Russia continues to station advanced surface-to-air missile systems near the frontline in violation of the Minsk agreements.
 
#8
No humanitarian assistance to south-east Ukraine from West - senior Russian diplomat

MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. Western media systematically ignore reports on the scale of human rights violations in Ukraine, which is a manifestation of double standards, a senior Russian diplomat said Monday.

"As regards the treatment of humanitarian aspects, 20 plus [humanitarian] convoys came from Russia, and there'll be others," the Russian Foreign Ministry's commissioner for human rights, democracy and rule of law, Konstantin Dolgov, said on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.

"Targeted assistance will be rendered to veterans residing in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions," Dolgov said.

"There is still no serious humanitarian assistance to residents of south-east Ukraine on the part of the West and many international organizations," he said, however noting the role of the Red Cross.

"Russia bears the key burden," Dolgov said. "No one in the West writes about this 'burden' in the good sense of the word for political reasons."

Clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev's military operation, conducted since mid-April 2014, to regain control over parts of the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People's republics, have left thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee Ukraine's embattled east.
 #9
The National Interest
April 14, 2015
Time for a 'Lousy' Peace in Ukraine
The Donbas War has deepened and intensified divisions in Ukraine. The longer it drags on, the less likely a political reconciliation becomes.
By Brian Milakovsky
Brian Milakovsky has been living in Russia and Ukraine and working as a forest ecologist since 2009. For the past two months he has been volunteering with refugee aid organizations in Luhanska Province in eastern Ukraine.

President Obama should deny Congress's appeal to send deadly force arms to Ukraine. Such an action would be neither in the national interests of the United States, nor of Ukraine itself.

Ukrainians and Russians often use the old saying that a lousy peace is better than the best of wars. If the geopolitical considerations of this conflict are weighted with its real human costs for Ukraine, the truth of this becomes clear.

The costs in lost lives and social strife of a military victory over the separatists are too high for Ukraine to bear. The war has claimed the lives of 6,000 citizens at a bare minimum, and displaced more than a million people within Ukraine and possibly as many without. It has torn open ideological and social divisions that have plagued the country since independence, and which after 10 months of brutal fighting are beginning to look unsurmountable.

In this intense wartime atmosphere, Ukraine's democratic institutions are suffering. Opposition to the government's conduct of the war and the economic crisis are often equated with treason or inciting domestic unrest. Government control over the information sphere is tightening as never before. The national economy is in a deep crisis, with massive inflation pushing average incomes down to $150 a month. The conflict in the Donbas is drawing energy away from the fundamental political reforms that millions of Ukrainians called for during the Euromaidan movement. Instead of a new kind of governing, Ukraine is descending into a familiar struggle between oligarchic clans.

In facing down the separatist threat, the Ukrainian army, National Guard and privately organized volunteer battalions have conducted sustained artillery shelling of rebel-held towns, resulting in numerous lost lives. The continuous shelling of Donetsk, Luhansk and other Donbas towns has at times resembled collective punishment.

Local activists from the city of Lisichansk showed me videos and photos of the aftermath of Ukrainian artillery attacks in July that drove the separatists from the city. A ten story apartment building is a charred ruin, with the central "stack" of apartments collapsed into rubble.

An elderly man showed the numerous shrapnel he collected in his garden and pried out of the walls of his shattered house when he emerged from his root cellar after the shelling.  It should be noted that these activists are supporters of a united Ukraine, who did not side with the separatists when they controlled their city.

Today they are doing great work to aid the thousands of refugees that have flooded into their city from the front lines. But they cannot help but ask - why was this done to us? Is this really the only way? And they consider with dread the prospects of renewed fighting.

Recognizing the terrible collateral damage of Ukraine's campaign against the separatists does not in any way turn the latter into some kind of heroes. Their shelling of Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Artemivsk, Debaltseve, Avdeevka and other Ukrainian-held towns shows that they have no qualms with using the same brutal tactics. One refugee related how the rebels shelled her village relentlessly throughout the summer, despite the fact that the Ukrainian National Guard detachment had deliberately moved out of the town so as not to draw fire on it.

Other refugees who fled from the "Luhansk People's Republic" to Kharkiv told me how they were denied exit by the rebels, who wish to keep a human buffer between themselves and the Ukrainian army. They were forced to sneak into government-held territory on foot, using a map of unmined fields leaked to them by a sympathetic rebel.

But what I hear more and more often are stories from people who feel stranded between two warring sides. Many have had their homes shelled by both sides as their towns are alternately "occupied" and "liberated." They may be patriots of Ukraine or they may be sympathetic to Russia, but they are all exhausted by the violence and cannot understand why the tough decisions that would end the fighting are not being made.

A resumption of armed hostilities in the Donbas means more of this hell. That is 100 percent certain. Many of these towns will again become the grounds for artillery duels and it is likely that new territories will come under fire. Maybe this would be worth it if there was real hope that an offensive with U.S. arms would be the decisive battle of the war. However, that is a very doubtful assertion considering Russia's determination not to see "its side" defeated.

The stakes are extremely high in this conflict not only for Putin's government, but for ordinary Russians as well. I have been living in Russia for most of the conflict in Ukraine, and the majority of people I know there interpret the war as an existential struggle with the United States. This ideological mobilization can be seen in the massive Anti-maidan rally in Moscow against the new government in Kyiv and its American "puppetmaster," as well as the country-wide demonstrations celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Crimea annexation.

We don't need to agree with or justify their beliefs in order to recognize the risk of ignoring them.  Russians have been continuously told in the media that the provision of U.S. arms would justify open intervention by the Russian army, in place of the hybrid war it is now waging. It is highly unlikely that the U.S. would send boots on the ground, but Russia could do so easily and with strong support from its public.

As a result our military assistance could lead to the exact opposite of a conclusive victory: the prolongation and intensification of the war and the drastic increase in Russian involvement.

What would remain of Ukraine after the showdown?

Making a Lousy Peace

It is time to recognize that forcing the total capitulation of the separatists is either impossible or unjustifiably costly in human lives. Rather than accept the violent uncertainties of a renewed war, the United States should help Ukraine facilitate a negotiated settlement whereby the "People's Republics" remain inside the country in exchange for expanded political and economic autonomy. As Ukrainian political scientist Oleg Voloshin put it: "What's worse: Russian sympathizers in our parliament or Russian soldiers on our territory?"

We should be realistic - a negotiated peace with the rebels and their Moscow backers would partially legitimize armed separatism and Russian violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The "People's Republic" separatists would likely remain the dominant political force in the Donbas, well financed by the Kremlin and function as a lever of Russian influence over Ukrainian domestic politics.

But in theory this would give those Ukrainians who support the separatists a means to express their discontent through political and not military means, as the Sinn Fein party did for IRA supporters in Northern Ireland. Their representatives would join the bloc of parliamentarians opposed to policies of the government that emerged from the Euromaidan revolution, which dominates in those portions of the east not under separatist control.

This reflects the powerful political division that opened up in Ukraine after the Euromaidan movement ousted President Yanukovych in February 2014. Nationwide public polling during the mass protests showed that while the movement commanded significant support (45 percent), it was geographically uneven, with a mere 17 percent of easterners regarding it positively. The latest polling demonstrates nearly equal numbers of Ukrainians who consider that the movement did the country harm as did it good (33 percent vs 36 percent).

The Donbas War has deepened and intensified that division, even within those regions of Ukraine where separatism has not found a foothold. The longer it drags on, the less likely a political reconciliation becomes. If these difficult questions of east vs. west, and Europe vs. Russia, constituted a faultline in Ukraine politics for the first 23 years of its independence, since 2014 they have begun to resemble a chasm. Every effort should be made now to ensure that it does not become unbridgeable.

That means painful, ideologically suspect negotiations and not war. It is time for a lousy peace in Ukraine.

 
 
#10
Mashable.com
April 11, 2015
After war, Ukraine's soldiers face a fight with an internal enemy
BY CHRISTOPHER MILLER

KIEV, Ukraine - Officer Sergei Yatchenko pulls closed the curtains in his cluttered bedroom, sits at his desk, pours himself a drink, takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes shut.

It's quiet here, far away from the bloody front lines of the war in eastern Ukraine, now in its second year.

But it's not peaceful. Not for Yatchenko.

SEE ALSO: 'Like dancing with death': Russian bomb defusers on Ukraine's front lines

"I feel terrible," Yatchenko says, now passing a knife between his hands. He pulls it out of its sheath, slides it back in. "I'm not living; I'm existing."

"I can't call what I'm living 'life,'" he adds.

He says returning home from the war has been difficult.

"Have you seen First Blood?" he says, referring to the 1982 film starring Sylvester Stallone as John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran who winds up in rural Washington state looking for an old friend, but is met with intolerance by the community and abuse by a local sheriff. "It's like that."

Yatchenko, a 35-year-old licensed child and family psychologist from Kiev who joined the 25th "Kievan Rus" Territorial Defense Battalion after the war began last year and went to fight against Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's east in May, wasn't a trained soldier.

But he thought, given his professional experience, he'd be ready mentally.

Boy, was he wrong.

"I had to face horrible things there, at the front. But I have to deal with even harder things here at home," Yatchenko says. "Ukrainian society is not ready to accept war veterans." "Ukrainian society is not ready to accept war veterans."

After more than four months in the theater of war around Donetsk, Yatchenko returned to Kiev in September to find he'd developed dependent personality disorder (DPD) and an acute reaction to stress, as well as many symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Not the only one

There are thousands of more soldiers here like him.

The ongoing war in Ukraine between Kiev's government forces and the separatists isn't the only conflict being fought here. Following months of intense combat, which has cost the lives of more than 6,000 people, including more than 1,660 Ukrainian soldiers, men are coming home only to face a new, internal enemy: PTSD, as well as a grocery list of other psychological traumas, or "invisible injuries," as Yatchenko calls them.

And Ukraine is woefully unprepared for the mental toll of the war.

Over the past year, the military has trained its soldiers to fire everything from Kalashnikovs to multiple-launch rocket systems. But it wasn't until the fourth mobilization that it required that all of its new recruits take training courses in emotional toughness to prepare them psychologically for battle.

"There was no time to train them in this way," says Sergey Gryluk, a Ukrainian colonel in charge of the military's social-psychological center. "We were already at war and we didn't have enough troops."

The trainings, hastily organized and the first of their kind in Ukraine's military, are meant to improve soldiers' combat performance and stave off potential mental health problems, including PTSD and depression.

It is greatly needed. Some 52,000 of the 117,000 conscripts in the country's fourth wave of mobilization were unfit for military service because of psychological and anxiety disorders, says Dr. Olga Bogomolets, Honored Doctor of Ukraine and an adviser to President Petro Poroshenko.

Volunteer psychologists

But plagued by tremendous financial woes, Ukraine has only a small staff of unpaid volunteer psychologists - driven by a mixed sense of duty and patriotism - to conduct the trainings.

Valentina Neikova-Mokhova, a crisis psychologist with 15 years experience who works privately with soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress, says the scale of the PTSD problem is "huge" and the trainings are a step in the right direction. But she is doubtful they are enough.

Unlike Neikova-Mokhova, this is the first time many of the volunteer psychologists have seen and treated people with war-related psychological traumas and PTSD. "They are learning as they go, and shadowing the ones with experience," she says. And they work for free, sometimes 30 hours a week.

Gryluk knows the military can't rely on volunteers forever. "We're training permanent staff specialists to take over for them," he says. "But it takes time and money, which we don't have much of now."

Signs of mental trauma

Gryluk and Neikova-Mokhova say many veterans returning home from the war discover coping with the simplest of everyday tasks arduous. As they struggle to reintegrate into civilian life, many get caught up in a dangerous web of anxiety, addiction and aggression.

The soldiers exhibit other symptoms of mental trauma.

They tremble and shift in their chairs, unable to sit still. They are constantly on guard. They get into fights. They don't communicate openly. Their personal relationships fall apart. Memories of the combat trigger mood swings. Flashbacks of battlefield traumas are common. So are sleep problems and depression. Flashbacks of battlefield traumas are common. So are sleep problems and depression.

Amputees reach to scratch their scabbing wounds with phantom limbs. Many experience night terrors.

"The nightmares are the worst," says Slavik, a soldier recuperating from a gunshot wound to his leg in a Dnipropetrovsk military hospital. He tells me over tea about when he woke up delirious one night about two weeks ago thinking his roommate was a rebel fighter.

"I was ready to kill him," he says. A nurse found him talking to himself while standing over the sleeping soldier with a six-inch knife in his hand. "Thank God she was there."

Despite such disturbing behaviors, soldiers oftentimes refuse help from psychologists.

"We try to explain to soldiers how they might feel and act like when they return, like they're still on the front line, in a fighting or defensive mode," Gryluk says. "But 1,000 psychologists can't help a soldier who doesn't want to help himself. 1,000 psychologists can't help a soldier who doesn't want to help himself."

Many say they simply don't trust psychologists, and they confuse them with psychiatrists, Neikova-Mokhova says.

There is cause for their skepticism. In the time before the war, "post-traumatic stress disorder" was not in the vocabularies of many Ukrainians. And for those who knew of PTSD, discussing it openly was a social taboo. Those who suffer from it were stigmatized and discriminated against.

Part of the new training, Gryluk says, is to prepare soldiers to help themselves while at the front, where there is little help available.

Help on the front lines

There, the task often falls on medical nurses, like those at Artemivsk's central hospital, to help emotionally raddled soldiers recovering from gruesome physical wounds.

One Artemivsk nurse, who asked that her name not be used because she isn't allowed to speak with journalists, says the medical staff "does what it can to help."

Besides dressing physical wounds, "we smile, we talk to them and we tell jokes," she says.

One soldier in her care is Sergei, a middle-aged, bulky Cossack volunteer fighter with the 43rd Battalion who prefers to go by his nom de guerre "Wolf" and wears a grayed walrus mustache. He comes from Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine's bulwark against the separatists in the east.

Wolf wound up in Artemivsk's central hospital after a grenade he tried to heave toward a separatist fighter exploded prematurely in his hands, blowing off his fingers.

He admits he needs psychological help, but he doesn't know where to get it. "Give me a bottle of vodka and I'll be fine," he tells me. He drinks to block out the memories of horrors from the battlefields that live so vividly in his mind.

"Dogs were growling and chewing the arms and legs of corpses [in Debaltseve]," Wolf says. "How the fuck can I ever forget seeing that?" "Dogs were growling and chewing the arms and legs of corpses [in Debaltseve]," Wolf says. "How the fuck can I ever forget seeing that?"

Next to him is 18-year-old Seryozha, who likes to go by his call sign, "Jester." It suits him.

A practical joker, even stuck in this grimy hospital doesn't block him from being chipper and grinning. His infectious chuckle still sounds like a child's, though his face and scars are those of a war-battered man several years older.

Like Wolf, Jester says he lost his fingers when a grenade exploded in his hand. It happened after he threw himself atop a rebel grenade that landed inside his bunker to save his fellow soldiers. When it failed to detonate, he grabbed it and hurried to toss it back toward enemy lines. That's when it blew up.

He said the thought of mentally preparing himself for war didn't cross his mind.

"Our commanders told us, 'We are going to war and we won't return,'" Jester said. "I really thought we'd all die, so why would I think about returning home?"

But his hand will heal, and he will go home. When he does, it's likely he'll need some form of counseling, he says.

Will it help?

"Time will tell if we are successful," Gryluk, the Ukrainian military psychologist says. "We will only get better in the future."
 
 
#11
Russia Insider
April 14, 2015
The State of Education in Eastern Ukraine
Students and faculty in the East have been entirely abandoned by the Kiev government
By Cosmin Dzsurdzsa

An often overlooked consequence of the civil war in Ukraine is the state of education in the East. Many separatist zones have been almost entirely abandoned by the Kiev officials who instead focus on implementing educational reform with a cash-strapped government and rewriting curriculum to promote an alternative history that serves their ideological needs.

Besides a lack of government sponsored aid, schools in Donetsk and Luhansk face the brunt of the crisis. Out of 1,735 schools, over 100 have faced destruction and are unable to operate at full capacity. With over 500,000 students who wish to return to school, this places increasing pressure on remaining facilities to adjust for the losses without humanitarian aid.

Many teachers have chosen to flee from Donetsk, cutting the city's educational faculty by half and making it even more difficult to serve the remaining 70,000 students. Despite this, the area is free from Kiev's attempts to rewrite curriculum and restrict the use of the Russian language.

Parents in Donetsk have the ability to choose what language their children are taught in, whether in Ukrainian or Russian, according to the Headmistress of Donetsk. Ukrainian textbooks are still in use, a big contrast to the West's refusal to have anything to do with Russian language and culture.

Higher education has also suffered from economic blockades imposed by Poroshenko that cut state funding to social services. Donetsk has suffered from the loss of 70% of students and faculty who have fled to Western territory, where a university was relocated 800 kilometers away, in hopes of better opportunities. Despite this, the prime minister's promises of payments to faculty have yet to come through.

The original Donetsk University is still up and running but many students fear that their degrees will no longer be recognized by the Education Ministry. To solve this, the local government will recognize diplomas from Donetsk National University along with Russian cooperation. Donetsk Education Minister Igor Kostyenuk hopes that diplomas in the separatist region will be accepted across Eurasia (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan) giving hope to many students for promising futures.

In the face of all these struggles, students have become increasingly devoted to the East's future. A video by Graham Phillips shows a bright bunch of Ukrainian students who will be the backbone of a promising future for the East.


 
 #12
Christian Science Monitor
April 13, 2015
Do Ukraine's new nationalist laws justify Kremlin's criticism?
Kiev has passed new laws that outlaw communist symbols and honor Ukrainian nationalists connected to Nazis and ethnic cleansing during World War II. Experts say the timing could not be worse.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent

KIEV, UKRAINE - Russian propagandists have argued all along that Ukraine's Maidan revolution, which toppled an elected pro-Moscow president a year ago, was motivated by ultra-nationalist aspirations, not pro-democracy ones.

Now, a cluster of sweeping new laws is helping to prove their point.

Some here call the legislation, which bans communist symbols and elevate controversial anti-Soviet fighters to "national hero" status, long overdue. But it also risks deepening the rifts in Ukrainian society at a time when chances for reconciliation between the nationalistic west and the more Russified east are slipping away.

One of the laws passed late last week by the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's unicameral parliament, will ban communist and Nazi ideologies along with all of their emblems, including the five-pointed red star, crimson flag, and hammer-and-sickle. It even mandates local authorities across Ukraine to pull down Soviet-era monuments and change street names that honored communist-era heroes.

Oleksandr Klimenko, minister of revenue in the government of former President Viktor Yanukovych, argued on his Facebook page that even that step could cost the near-bankrupt Kiev government hundreds of millions of dollars it doesn't have.

"There are 459 cities in Ukraine, and each has some 30 streets named after Soviet-era figures," he writes. "It's not so simple to change names. Everyone who lives or works on those streets has to renew all their documents, records need to be revised, maps redrawn. All this to comply with a law passed out of quasi-patriotic feelings that nobody needs?"

Ukraine's Communist Party, which no longer holds seats in the Rada but still has 112 members of regional legislatures, would seem to be effectively banned by the law, given its ideology and use of communist symbols. Party representatives were not answering phones in Kiev Monday. But party leader Pyotr Simonenko, who was detained and interrogated for 11 hours by Ukrainian security services last week, told Russian media that "[these laws] only lead to a greater split in the society and continuation of war."

Venerating collaborators and war criminals?

A second law, potentially more polarizing, grants recognition to a broad group of "fighters for Ukrainian independence" in the 20th century, including armed groups who fought against Soviet forces in World War II. However, historians say that many of the honored fighters, such as Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, are tainted by their collaboration with the Nazis and participation in the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles during the war.

About 200 members of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian Insurgent Army are still alive. The new law would provide pensions and benefits, as well as recognition of their role as "independence fighters."

And while those fighters may be perceived as heroes in western Ukraine, the majority in the country's east - whose grandfathers served in the Soviet Red Army - have learned to view them as enemies.

"There is no reason to expect Russia's well-paid and manned propaganda machine to stay silent when such obvious opportunities to fuel resentment and anger are handed to them on a platter," writes analyst Halya Coynash in the Kyiv Post.

A third law would end the Soviet-era practice of celebrating the victory over Nazi Germany on May 9, and change it to a "Day of Remembrance" to be marked on May 8, the day most of Europe commemorates the war's end.

"There are thousands of surviving veterans of the Soviet army, who are used to rallying on May 9, who will now feel gratuitously offended," says Iryna Vereschuk, a former mayor from western Ukraine and founder of Dobro Team, a group that works for civic reform. "Why antagonize people in the eastern Ukraine like this, especially right now?"

'You can't blame Putin for this'

Proponents of the laws argue that after a string of military defeats against Russian-backed rebels ended by a shaky ceasefire, an economic crisis that is starting to bite very deeply, and infighting within government ranks, Ukrainians need to glimpse a larger vision of what they're fighting for.

"People have been feeling disillusioned in the results of the revolution, some are starting to lose heart," says Alexei Kolomiyets, president of the independent Center of European and Transatlantic Studies in Kiev. "These laws make a clean break with the Soviet past. We should have done this long ago."

But other experts argue that at the very least, the effort to legislate a solution to long-standing historical disputes at a time when Ukraine is wracked by civil war is ham-handed and extremely untimely.

"These are extremely unrealistic laws. With all the problems we're facing, our parliamentarians think they can fix everything like this?" says Mikhail Pogrebinsky, director of the independent Kiev Center of Political and Conflict Studies. "And how on earth can they be implemented? If you follow the logic, anything that glorifies the Soviet regime is punishable by law. So, must we forgo our favorite old movies?"

"It's as if our leaders want to keep the war going and deepen the divisions in the country," says Ms. Vereschuk. "You can't blame Putin for this. We're doing it ourselves."

 
 
#13
http://readrussia.com
April 13, 2015
Ukraine's Ban on "Communist Propaganda"
By Mark Adomanis

The Ukrainian parliament recently voted to ban all "propaganda of the totalitarian communist and Nazi regimes." At first I didn't think this could be true: it sounded like a too-perfect confirmation of Kremlin talking points about the "fascists" running around Kiev.

Whenever reality in Eastern Europe, which is of course a mishmash of various shades of gray, neatly comports with a particular side's narrative one should be suspicious. Adding to my skepticism was the fact that the first few outlets trumpeting Ukraine's supposed ban on communist symbols were all managed by the Russian state. If that doesn't ring a few alarms bells, nothing does.

It turns out, though, that my skepticism was, in this narrow instance, unjustified: before long Western news outlets like AFP and Radio Free Europe were reporting on the ban as well, in virtually identical terms to the aforementioned Russian ones. Unless Poroshenko swoops in with some kind of last minute veto, it would appear all but certain that the recently-passed ban will, in fact, become law.

According to RFE/RL, only 254 out of 450 members of the Rada voted for the bill. However, it was noteworthy that literally no one voted against it (according to the Rada's website there were a number of abstentions and absences).

Ukraine's ban is, of course, a gross violation of freedom of speech and a drastic imposition on the country's still sizable communist party. As recently as 2012, Ukrainian communists received more than 13% of the total vote and had 32 out of the Rada's 450 seats. Even in the October 2014 election, which did not take place in several regions (e.g. Donetsk and Lugansk) from which the party had traditionally drawn a disproportionate share of its support, the Ukrainian communist party received more than 600,000 votes, or about 3.9% of all those cast.

After the ban is in place, literally all of those hundreds of thousands of people would be breaking the law by campaigning in favor of the party that they support. That is bad!

If Ukraine wants to be part of the "civilized community of nations" and to observe "European values," as its leaders so regularly and passionately argue, then banning the political activities of many thousands of its own citizens is an exceedingly poor way to start.

The ban on communist propaganda follows on the heel of the Ukrainian government's ban on Russian films, or at least those films that were produced after January 1st 2014 or those that glorify the Russian armed forces or law enforcement agencies. It's not yet clear if anything else will get banned, but at this point it certainly wouldn't be surprising if there is a blanket prohibition on state-owned Russian broadcasters (like RT or Voice of Russia) or, perhaps, any depictions of high-ranking Russian politicians.

These bans are products of an intuitively understandable desire on the part of Ukrainians to "punish" Russia for its aggression in the Donbass and to signal that the new government remains unbowed in its determination to move towards integration with the European Union. Banning something sends a clear message of disapproval and contempt, and can feel immensely satisfying.

The problem is that, while understandable from an emotional point of view, the bans are totally unjustifiable on the merits. Anyone who seriously believes in "democratic values" understands that freedom of speech is the first, most important, and fundamental right, the right that undergirds all others. Without the freedom to openly support political parties (even nasty, annoying, illogical, and corrupt political parties!) the democratic process quickly turns into a sham.

The goodness or badness of the Ukrainian communist party and its members is entirely beside the point. Nothing could be less relevant to the discussion. It doesn't matter if the party's leaders are corrupt (they are), if its policy proposals don't make a great deal of sense (they don't), or if the party is "worthy" of praise (it isn't). I'm second to note in my contempt for communism and communists, but there is a world of difference between the expression of personal disapproval and a legal prohibition on political activity.

The decision to implement such a crude "ban" also speaks volumes about the insecurity and pettiness of the current Ukrainian government. Here is a country that is beset by an endless list of economic, financial, and political problems, that has had much of its eastern landscape ravaged by Russian-backed separatists, and that is a hair's breadth away from a total default on its government debt. Somehow, in the midst of this existential crisis, Ukraine's legislative branch thought that the most productive use of its time would be to ban a bunch of political symbols.

Ukraine's leaders need to understand that they are on the hook to deliver results. Having made a number of extraordinarily bold declarations about their ability to make Ukraine a "normal European country" they need to turn those promises into reality or run the risk of delegitimizing the concepts in the minds of the Ukrainian public (as happened in Russia during the 1990s). The substantial time being devoted to meaningless political theatrics suggests that the Ukrainian political elite doesn't understand the true gravity of the situation.


 
 #14
Sputnik
April 14, 2015
Kiev Thinking Twice About 'Banning Communism'

Deputies of the ruling coalition in Ukraine's parliament have begun second-guessing their recent decision to vote to ban communist symbols and propaganda, while local political scientists don't rule out that the country's president may not sign the bill into law, Ukraine's Vesti has reported.

Following the rush to pass the law last week, Ukrainian media have begun focusing on the details of the 'decommunization' initiative, and especially its provision about the renaming of cities, towns, villages and streets, which it is estimated will cost local budgets several billion hryvnia. With nearly a dozen cities now up for renaming, so too are thousands of streets across the country's cities, towns and villages.

Vesti notes that MPs from the country's governing coalition have begun to reinterpret some of the law's basic provisions as recommendations rather than hard and fast laws, despite the law's clear points about the necessity to rename locations named after the old communist regime.

Viktoria Syumar, a deputy from Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's Popular Front, has stated that the renaming provisions of the law are 'advisory in nature', given that place naming is a local matter. Poroshenko Bloc MP and Parliamentary Secretary of the Committee on Local Government Alexei Goncharenko agrees, stating: "I believe that with regard to the renaming of cities and streets, this law carries an advisory character. It allows for local authorities to rename cities. Now, they will have to go through public hearings, on the basis of which local authorities will decide whether to keep the old names or not. If they decide to preserve them, so be it."

Initiative to Rename Cities, Streets to Cost Billions and Result in Massive Bureaucratic Headaches

The governing coalition's flip-flopping aside, local authorities have already begun pulling their hair out thinking about the cost of the renaming, along with the bureaucratic mess millions of people, businesses and organizations will cause when they appear in government offices requesting new, corrected documents.

In the eastern city of Kharkov, a commission by local authorities has determined that nearly every ninth place name will have to be changed, including 200 streets and squares, five city districts and several metro stations. Locals are concerned that the renaming process could get bogged down by financial problems and bureaucracy and take over a decade to actually implement.

Former Minister of Finance Alexander Klymenko complains that the project will cost billions. "In a country with a budget deficit of around $9 billion US, a useless law has been adopted, the cost of which, according to conservative estimates, is estimated at 5 billion hryvnia [around $214 million US]."

Meanwhile, Ukrainian political scientist Andrei Zolotarev has estimated that the place name changes will affect "a minimum of 2 million people, across 250 cities, towns and villages." Zolotarev complains that while "lawmakers have announced that it will be free...who then will pay for the millions of reissued documents? It will be money taken from pensions, salaries, and road repairs -millions and billions worth. If authorities want to speedily get over the totalitarian past, they should first show a path to a better future."

Local authorities have been thinking of clever ways to avoid the headaches associated with the renaming initiative. The mayor of the port city of Ilyichevsk now says that the city, founded in 1952, is actually named after the prophet Elijah (Ilya in Ukrainian), and not after Lenin's patronymic. In Dnepropetrovsk, the industrial giant on the Dnepr, authorities are at a loss over what the city, renamed by the Bolsheviks in 1925, will be renamed to. Its previous name was Yekaterinoslav, after the Russian Queen Catherine the Great. And before that, the city was called Novorossiysk, literally meaning 'New Russia City'.

Will the Law Cause Further Political Unrest in the East?

Shortly after the passage of the law, administrators and locals in eastern Ukraine have begun complaining about unknown masked persons taking down monuments. The management of Kharkov's famous Kharkov Tractor Plant wrote an angry press release last week about "masked vandals" demolishing a monument to Soviet politician Sergo Ordzhonikidze located at the entrance to the plant under the cover of night, which plant officials said amounted to "spitting on Ukraine's history and into the souls of the [plant's] employees."

Political scientist Vadim Karacev considers that the decommunization bill has been "a risky undertaking, politically speaking. And I can't rule out that the president may not sign it, or recommend corrections. However, even if he does sign it, I don't think that this will lead to massive unrest, even if the example of Donbass showed what such initiatives can lead to. It's another matter that the decommunization effort will further weaken the already damaged authority of the governing parties in the south and east of the country, and local elections in these regions will give more votes to the opposition."

Nonetheless, current Poroshenko Bloc Leader Yuri Lutsenko, the son of the former First Secretary of the Rivne Regional Committee of the Communist Party in Soviet days, believes that the passing of the law was the right thing to do. "From now on, children will not ride on a carousel in a park named after a cannibal; students will not learn at an institute named after a terrorist; couples in love will not agree to a date at a meeting named after a murderer...Get rid of the streets of all the red devils!"


 
 
#15
Ukraine needs $217mn to abolish Soviet names - expert

KIEV, April 14. /TASS/. Ukraine needs at least $217 million in a project to rid itself of Soviet-era placenames, a senior Ukrainian expert said on Tuesday.

The program is envisages by the law passed on April 9 condemning and criminalising Communist and Nazi regimes and banning propaganda and public use of their symbols.

Within six months, Ukrainian towns, villages, streets and other places having names associated with former days must also be given new identities.

"This is not just about changing nameplates," noted expert Alexander Okrimenko. The new law requires printing new maps and dismantling monuments, he said.

Kiev city council calculates that changing nameplates at one street of 100 houses would cost $5,300. Across the country, Ukraine has some 30,000 towns with streets named after Bolshevik Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin.

Most towns having Communist-era names are located in eastern Ukraine.
 
 #16
To Inform is to Influence
http://toinformistoinfluence.com
April 13, 2015
Kharkiv terrorists vow to kill five civilians per demolished Soviet monument
By Joel Harding
[Videos here http://toinformistoinfluence.com/2015/04/13/kharkiv-terrorists-vow-to-kill-five-civilians-per-demolished-soviet-monument/]

Russian provocateurs aka Kharkiv Terrorists are stooping to new lows, trying to stop the destruction of decrepit Soviet monuments to a bygone era.

Russia sees the destruction of eroding Soviet symbols as an insidious annihilation of their perceived power.  Russia is torn between embracing the cruel and inhuman Stalinist tendencies for killing, torture and illegal imprisonment of the tens of millions and the new Putin regime of killing, torture, assassinations and illegal imprisonment.  Keeping these symbols embraces the worst of mankind and clutching onto Putin's imperialistic attempt at empire building is yet another bad tendency, shunned by the developed world.

Now these Russians threaten Kharkiv civilians and the Ukraine government with terrorist acts, all to maintain the evil symbols of a defunct evil period.

Article by: Kirill Mikhailov

In an apparent response to the laws recently adopted by the Ukrainian parliament,banning propaganda and symbols of Nazi and Soviet regimes and recognizing the WWII Ukrainian Insurgent Army, among others, as Ukrainian freedom fighters, have sparked a response from a terrorist group which labels "Kharkiv Partisans". Enraged by the provision in the former law for demolishing monuments to Soviet leaders, Phillip Ekozyants, the leader of the group responsible for numerous bombings in Kharkiv in the recent months, took to Youtube vowing to kill civilian Euromaidan supporters in response to any such demolitions in Kharkiv. Just a day after the Ukrainian Parliament adopted the law, masked unknowns had taken to implementing the law by dismantling statues to Soviet leaders, many of which went into history as killers and oppressors but were hailed by the Communist party for implementing the Soviet plan.

Western media have reported on the group's terror activities, citing Ekozyants admitting his close ties to both the "separatist" authorities in Eastern Ukraine and Russian itself. This could potentially serve as grounds to define Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. While indiscriminate attacks on civilians and bombings targeting military installations may be labeled as forbidden ways of waging war, Ekozyants' activities are unambiguously acts of terror targeting people for their political views.

It should be noted that Ekozyants' warnings are built on a warped representation of the decommunization law, which explicitly excludes monuments to WWII Soviet soldiers from the list of demolition targets. Moreover, the memory of fighters against Nazism continues to be honored in Ukraine, as evidenced by Poroshenko's recent address (in Russian) commemorating the anniversary of Soviet troops liberating Odesa from Nazi invaders. Poroshenko has also hailed he Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which was not a Nazi ally, despite what Russian propaganda could lead Ekozyants to believe. The memory of Soviet heroes, just like UPA freedom fighters, is not forgotten in Ukraine. A Russian historian has said that in adopting the decommunization laws, Ukraine shows it is "increasingly diverging from Russia." Could it be that the Kharkiv terrorists just badly need a pretext to kill civilians whose views differ from theirs, like any terrorist might do?
 
 #17
Time.com
April 13, 2015
Why Ukraine Still Can't Break Ties With Russian 'Aggressor State'
Simon Shuster / Kharkov      

Having survived an assassin's bullet, a revolution and a war, Gennady Kernes now faces a fight over Ukraine's constitution

One afternoon in late February, Gennady Kernes, the mayor of Kharkov, Ukraine's second largest city, pushed his wheelchair away from the podium at city hall and, with a wince of discomfort, allowed his bodyguards to help him off the stage. The day's session of the city council had lasted several hours, and the mayor's pain medication had begun to wear off. It was clear from the grimace on his face how much he still hurt from the sniper's bullet that nearly killed him last spring. But he collected himself, adjusted his tie and rolled down the aisle to the back of the hall, where the press was waiting to grill him.

"Gennady Adolfovich," one of the local journalists began, politely addressing the mayor by his name and patronymic. "Do you consider Russia to be an aggressor?" He had seen this loaded question coming. The previous month, Ukraine's parliament had unanimously voted to declare Russia an "aggressor state," moving the two nations closer to a formal state of war after nearly a year of armed conflict. Kernes, long known as a shrewd political survivor, was among the only prominent officials in Ukraine to oppose this decision, even though he knew he could be branded a traitor for it. "Personally, I do not consider Russia to be an aggressor," he said, looking down at his lap.

It was a sign of his allegiance in the new phase of Ukraine's war. Since February, when a fragile ceasefire began to take hold, the question of the country's survival has turned to a debate over its reconstitution. Under the conditions of the truce, Russia has demanded that Ukraine embrace "federalization," a sweeping set of constitutional reforms that would take power away from the capital and redistribute it to the regions. Ukraine now has to decide how to meet this demand without letting its eastern provinces fall deeper into Russia's grasp.

The state council charged with making this decision convened for the first time on April 6, and President Petro Poroshenko gave it strict instructions. Some autonomy would have to be granted to the regions, he said, but Russia's idea of federalization was a red line he wouldn't cross. "It is like an infection, a biological weapon, which is being imposed on Ukraine from abroad," the President said. "Its bacteria are trying to infect Ukraine and destroy our unity."

Kernes sees it differently. His city of 1.4 million people is a sprawling industrial powerhouse, a traditional center of trade and culture whose suburbs touch the Russian border. Its economy cannot survive, he says, unless trade and cooperation with the "aggressor state" continue, regardless how much Russia has done in the past year to sow conflict in Ukraine.

"That's how the Soviet Union built things," Kernes explains in his office at the mayoralty, which is decorated with an odd collection of gifts and trinkets, such as a stuffed lion, a robotic-looking sculpture of a scorpion, and a statuette of Kernes in the guise of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. "That's how our factories were set up back in the day," he continues. "It's a fact of life. And what will we do if Russia, our main customer, stops buying?" To answer his own question, he uses an old provincialism: "It'll be cat soup for all of us then," he said.

Already Ukraine is approaching that point. With most of its scarce resources focused on fighting Russia's proxies in the east, Ukraine's leaders have watched their economy fall off a cliff, surviving only by the grace of massive loans from Western institutions like the International Monetary Fund, which approved another $17.5 billion last month to be disbursed over the next four years. But that assistance has not stopped the national currency of Ukraine from losing two-thirds of its value since last winter. In the last three months of 2014, the size of the economy contracted almost 15%, inflation shot up to 40%, and unemployment approached double digits.
 
But that pain will be just the beginning, says Kernes, unless Ukraine allows its eastern regions to develop economic ties with Russia. As proof he points to the fate of Turboatom, his city's biggest factory, which produces turbines for both Russian and Ukrainian power stations. Its campus takes up more than five square kilometers near the center of Kharkov, like a city within a city, complete with dormitories and bathhouses for its 6,000 employees. On a recent evening, its deputy director, Alexei Cherkassky, was looking over the factory's sales list as though it were a dire medical prognosis. About 40% of its orders normally come from Russia, which relies on Turboatom for most of the turbines that run its nuclear power stations.

"Unfortunately, all of our major industries are intertwined with Russia in this way," Cherkassky says. "So we shouldn't fool ourselves in thinking we can be independent from Russia. We are totally interdependent." Over the past year, Russia has started cutting back on orders from Turboatom as part of its broader effort to starve Ukraine's economy, and the factory has been forced as a result to cut shifts, scrap overtime and push hundreds of workers into retirement.

At least in the foreseeable future, it does not have the option of shifting sales to Europe. "Turbines aren't iPhones," says Cherkassky. "You don't switch them out every few months." And the ones produced at Turboatom, like nearly all of Ukraine's heavy industry, still use Soviet means of production that don't meet the needs of most Western countries. So for all the aid coming from the state-backed institutions in the U.S. and Europe, Cherkassky says, "those markets haven't exactly met us with open arms."

Russia knows this. For decades it has used the Soviet legacy of interdependence as leverage in eastern Ukraine. The idea of its "federalization" derives in part from this reality. For two decades, one of the leading proponents of this vision has been the Russian politician Konstantin Zatulin, who heads the Kremlin-connected institute in charge of integrating the former Soviet space. Since at least 2004, he has been trying to turn southeastern Ukraine into a zone of Russian influence - an effort that got him banned from entering the country between 2006 and 2010.

His political plan for controlling Ukraine was put on hold last year, as Russia began using military means to achieve the same ends. But the current ceasefire has brought his vision back to the fore. "If Ukraine accepts federalization, we would have no need to tear Ukraine apart," Zatulin says in his office in Moscow, which is cluttered with antique weapons and other military bric-a-brac. Russia could simply build ties with the regions of eastern Ukraine that "share the Russian point of view on all the big issues," he says. "Russia would have its own soloists in the great Ukrainian choir, and they would sing for us. This would be our compromise."

It is a compromise that Kernes seems prepared to accept, despite everything he has suffered in the past year of political turmoil. Early on in the conflict with Russia, he admits that he flirted with ideas of separatism himself, and he fiercely resisted the revolution that brought Poroshenko's government to power last winter. In one of its first decisions, that government even brought charges against Kernes for allegedly abducting, threatening and torturing supporters of the revolution in Kharkov. After that, recalls Zatulin, the mayor "simply chickened out." Facing a long term in prison, Kernes accepted Ukraine's new leaders and turned his back on the separatist cause, refusing to allow his city to hold a referendum on secession from Ukraine.

"And you know what I got for that," Kernes says. "I got a bullet." On April 28, while he was exercising near a city park, an unidentified sniper shot Kernes in the back with a high-caliber rifle. The bullet pierced his lung and shredded part of his liver, but it also seemed to shore up his bona fides as a supporter of Ukrainian unity. The state dropped its charges against him soon after, and he was able to return to his post.

It wasn't the first time he made such an incredible comeback. In 2007, while he was serving as adviser to his friend and predecessor, Mikhail Dobkin, a video of them trying to film a campaign ad was leaked to the press. It contained such a hilarious mix of bumbling incompetence and backalley obscenity that both of their careers seemed sure to be over. Kernes not only survived that scandal but was elected mayor a few years later.

Now the fight over Ukraine's federalization is shaping up to be his last. In late March, as he continued demanding more autonomy for Ukraine's eastern regions, the state re-opened its case against him for alleged kidnapping and torture, which he has always denied. The charges, he says, are part of a campaign against all politicians in Ukraine who support the restoration of civil ties with Russia. "They don't want to listen to reason," he says.

But one way or another, the country will still have to let its eastern regions to do business with the enemy next door, "because that's where the money is," Kernes says. No matter how much aid Ukraine gets from the IMF and other Western backers, it will not be enough to keep the factories of Kharkov alive. "They'll just be left to rot without our steady clients in Russia." Never mind that those clients may have other plans for Ukraine in mind.


 
 #18
Antiwar.com
April 9, 2015
Politics, Bullshit, and Ukraine
by Vladimir Golstein
Vladimir Golstein is a professor of Slavic Studies at Brown University.

Once in a while a book appears that forces us to rethink the previous cognitive patterns. To use the celebrated phrase from Thomas S. Kuhn's influential, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), it introduces the paradigm shift. Kuhn's explored scientific revolutions and the shifts produced by, say, Newtonian or quantum physics. The realm of social ideas is not immune to similar breakthroughs. In the twentieth century, Orwell's analysis of a doublespeak and the mutual corruption of politics and language has clearly changed the way we look at modern politics.

Recently, Harry C. Frankfurt's little pamphlet, with its beguilingly simple title, On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005) has pushed Orwell's insights into a higher degree of conceptualization. While written in Orwellian vein and addressing the abuse and manipulation of language, Frankfurt's analysis offers a new way of looking at the old problem.  The book open with the following, by now well-known observation: "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows it. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves."  

Without proper understanding of its functions and purposes, we are left, frankly, unarmed to confront and understand bullshit, despite our confidence to recognize it. For Frankfurt, BS is a greater enemy of truth then a lie because a liar does care about truth and thus tries to pass falsehood for truth, while BS artists do not really care about the truthfulness of their statements - they just make assertions to impress, while disguising their real agenda. There are obvious mechanisms to challenge lies: just produce facts. But how does one challenges bullshit and understands its secret agenda? There is no cognitive frame, no intellectual traps into which the bullshitter can be caught.

Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, the novel written at the height of Stalin's bullshit, reveals Bulgakov's awareness that one, in fact, needs to possess supernatural abilities to expose it. Devil, called Voland in the novel, visits Moscow and appears to be scandalized by the amount of  "claptrap" ("bullshit" would surely be a better term) that he encounters. A liar himself, Voland does show a peculiar fondness for facts. It is the bullshitters with their blatant disregard for the very concept of truth, that illicit Voland's particular ire. Such is the barman, Andrei Fokich, whose head is clawed by a demonic cat, and who is punished by the factual, nonnegotiable knowledge of his impending death from cancer. One of the barman's crimes was to sell "the sturgeon of the second degree of freshness." Second degree of freshness is a misguiding concept deliberately intended to deflect the accusations of lying, while achieving the goal of selling rotten product.

Now we can understand why there is so much bullshit in politics. To be caught in lying is tantamount to political suicide. But why lie when one can bullshit one's way to the top? Frankfurt quotes a hero of Eric Ambler's novel, whose father has indeed taught him: "never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through."

Before we proceed further, let me point to a pattern of bullshit that dominates the western coverage of the Ukrainian crisis.  For starters, Russian policy toward Ukraine - as Secretary Kerry pointed out - is still rooted in 19th century. It recognizes truths and lies. There are no green men in Crimea; yes, there were green men in Crimea. There are no military supplies; yes we provide military supplies to the Eastern Ukraine. These statements clearly operate on the level of truths or lies. Secretary of State, however, drenched in American bullshit, was clearly surprised that Russian president still resorts to lies. Why lie, when you can bullshit: this is twenty first century, after all.

Let's consider on the other hand, the statements that dominate the western coverage of the crisis. US involvement in Ukrainian affairs is well documented, from Asst. Sec. of State, Victoria Nuland's assertion that US invested 5 billion dollars into Ukrainian project, to the conversation between Nuland and Ambassador Pyatt on who should be in charge of the new Ukraine, to the current decision to provide Ukraine with military equipment and training. What are we doing in Ukraine and why - could and should be the subject of public debate; what we get instead is the endless criticism of Putin and Russian politics. This is clearly intended to obfuscate. How else does one interpret this explosion of interest in ethnic or sexual minorities' rights, whose violations we never bothered to criticize in our close allies, such as Israel or Saudi Arabia? But more importantly, how does one challenge this obfuscation? It is hard to call criticism directed at Russia a lie: Russian politics and domestic situation is clearly far from perfect, and the country is mired in most of the things that the critics attribute to it. But yet, these accusations are nothing but political bullshit, exactly of the kind that I experienced in Soviet Russia, when Soviet military would interfere in, say, Czechoslovakia, but would deflected the criticism of its actions by attacking US racism, its policy in Vietnam and so on. Of course, there were a blatant racism in US, and of course, US was engaged in various military adventures, but what does it have to do with Soviet invasions?

Once again, my purpose is not to discuss Putin's politics. One can approve of it, or condemn it, but it is squarely rooted in rather traditional concepts - Russia was unhappy about Western expanding of NATO into its backyard, and it was clear about it, both in case of Georgia and Ukraine. Russian politics might be discussed as legal or illegal, rational or irrational, but anyone free of hysterical russophobia would hardly detect any secret agenda in Putin's actions. Does anyone really believe that he set up a whole overthrow of Yanukovich government to establish an excuse for land grabbing? Being a shrewd politician, Putin clearly utilizes the escalation of hostilities for his purposes. But only a fool would claim that Putin started his Ukrainian campaign simply to camouflage his domestic record. Why did he get Crimea and not Donbass if that raises the popularity? Why get anything? If his intent was to deflect the scrutiny of bad domestic situation; saber-rattling and amplifying Western threats would do.

In other words, while one can catch Russian president in lies, it is much harder to detect bullshit in his words. With the west, the very opposite is true. To label as "lies" western media' and politicians' attempt to camouflage their involvement in Ukraine through Putin-bashing would be wrong and therefore ineffective. To call this deflecting tactics "propaganda" would be imprecise. Nor does the word "doublespeak" really capture it. That's why we need the term introduced into modern political discourse by professor Frankfurt.

Since it is vested in language and obfuscations, bullshit is not a new phenomenon. When a Biblical Devil tempted Eve with an apple, did he really want her to try the fruit, or be like gods, or know good and evil? Of course not! The nature of his enterprise was to engineer the fall, to provoke an act of disobedience punished by exile and death. But this enterprise must have been couched into beautiful bullshit rhetoric, giving rise to Milton's or Byron's flights of fancy.

King Lear's older daughters - when asked about their love for their father -embarked on a classic manifestation of bullshit. Cordelia, who loved her father, was so shocked by their verbal pyrotechnics that she couldn't come up with anything better than to remain silent. Hers was a perfectly reasonable response. Seeing the language abused to such a degree that there was no way to catch her sisters in lies, she decided to avoid language altogether. But understandable as her behavior is, it is hardly ineffective. When Cordelias are silenced, the treacherous Gonerils and Regans take over. In the absence of supernatural interference - as was the case with Bulgakov's Voland, - the only way to see the end of bullshitters appears to let them destroy each other, as did Goneril and Regan. King Lear, the sovereign of England, proved helpless when confronted with demagogues. Are the sovereigns of this land, also known as "we, the people" better equipped to deal with Gonerils, Reagans, Clintons and other demagogues? If we don't have a visiting devil on call, nor do we want to wait, what do we do? How do we challenge bullshit?

Frankfurt stresses that "bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its representational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to... Bullshitter is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are... he does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up to suit his purpose."

In other words, if we really want to debunk a bullshitter we need to forget the concepts of lies or truths, and concentrate on the "nature of bullshitter enterprise." Of course, people have been doing it ever since the proliferation of BS began. Such people are known as "conspiracy theorists." One therefore, can complement Frankfurt observation on the growth of bullshit with the parallel observation on the growth of conspiracy theories. What is a conspiracy theory, after all, as not an attempt to decipher the nature of a bullshitter's agenda? One proof of this correlation between bullshit and conspiracy theories is the tendency of politicians themselves to look for "vast conspiracies." Of all people, politicians should know. Their search for secrete agendas should alert us that it is precisely hidden agenda that generates so much bullshit in politics.

If we trust Frankfurt observation on BS proliferation, we should not be surprised to read about corresponding growth of conspiracy theories, as observed in a recent essay on the subject: "Experts say the number and significance of conspiracy theories are reaching levels unheard-of in recent times, in part because of ubiquitous and faster communications offered by Internet chat rooms, Twitter and other social media... 'We seem to have crossed a threshold,' says Eric Oliver, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago."

In fact, the amount of bullshit generated by a political event seem to provoke a similar amount of conspiracy theories in response. Thus, the overabundance of conspiracy theories connected with 9/11. The ensuing War on Terror, generated the flood of conspiracy theories precisely because it was accompanied by a similar deluge of political and military actions and concomitant bullshit. Are we really fighting terrorists in all the countries that we invade or help to invade? If not, what are we up to? From a distance the war on terror reminds me of the war on fat bellies. There is a giant diet industry that thrives on our insecurity, and while claiming to accomplish its mission, it generates as many fatties, as it does the amount of diets. I would not be surprised that the battle on the bulge and the battle on terror are waged from the same headquarters.

I, for example, believe that the hidden agenda in Ukrainian crisis is the one that has always the case of the US European foreign policy, formulated from the start of the Cold War: "to keep Germany down and Russia out." Thus, the main epicenter of the Ukrainian crisis has been Angela Merkel and her policies. But we rarely hear about it, behind the barrage of anti-Putin bullshit.

Besides Germany, there might be thousands of other reasons for US to get involved in the Ukraine, and conspiracy theorists are clearly busy coming up with theories: be it a defense of a weakening dollar, or the needs of military-industrial complex, or the desire to outsmart China, or the need to punish Russia for harboring Snowden or for interfering in the Middle East, or the need for Vice President Biden to provide his son with a cushy job. Unfortunately, by the time some records would be leaked and some light shed on the project, the power players, whoever they are, will be off to Libya, Cuba, Iran, or Yemen.

What remains clear about Ukraine, however, is all the talk about expanding democracy into Ukraine, or letting Ukrainian people join the free markets of Europe, or the need to stand up to non-existing threat from Russia and defend the recently NATO-cized East European countries from the Russian expansion, is just that - bullshit. Not a lie, not a true, but a politically useful rhetoric based on our country's values and ideals, the rhetoric that could be easily generated by a computer.

While examples of political bullshit peddled by the mainstream media abound, it is worthy to recall in this context the revelations of one of the great practitioners of the trade (later identified as Karl Rove), who confessed to the reporter Ron Suskind: "We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality - judiciously, as you will -we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Another Bush advisor explains: "Let me clue you in. We don't care."

Frankfurt reminded us that: "one who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable." Modern politicians of the type quoted above, do not really care about facts. They act like admen who sell   products, and by the time public discover that a particular product contains a health-damaging ingredient, the admen have moved to peddling another product.

How do we then go about trying to detect the hidden intention behind the words? In good old days of Cold war, there were scholars of Soviet politics, known as "Kremlinologists," whose task to decipher what the Soviet leadership was up to. These Kremlinologists were, in fact, conspiracy theorists on the payroll of universities and think tanks. Maybe it is time to resurrect this honorable profession, capable of unraveling any kind of political demagoguery. Come to think of it, maybe we all should become Kremlinologists diligently studying the words, actions, and agendas of our politicians. After all, that's what the clause, "we, the people," demands, if it is to remain truth, and not bullshit.


 
 #19
Counterpunch.org
April 14, 2015
It's Becoming Apparent
Ukraine: The Truth
By GARY LEUPP
GARY LEUPP is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion.

Reuters headline, April 29: "Ukraine sets sights on joining NATO."

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headline, April 29: "Far-Right Leader Names Ukrainian Military Adviser."

Moscow's official line on Ukraine-and it should not be dismissed just because that's what it is-is that the U.S. has spent about $ 5 billion backing "regime change" in that sad, bankrupt country, ultimately resulting in a coup d'etat (or putsch) in Kiev in February 2014 in which neo-fascists played a key role. The coup occurred because the U.S. State Department and Pentagon hoped to replace the democratically elected administration with one that would push for Ukraine's entry into NATO, a military alliance designed from its inception in 1949 to challenge Russia. The ultimate intent was to evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the bases it's maintained on the Crimean Peninsula for over 230 years.

Personally, I believe this interpretation is basically true, and that any rational person should recognize that it's true. Victoria Nuland, the neocon thug who serves as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and is the key official shaping U.S. Ukraine policy, openly admitted to an "international business conference on Ukraine" in December 2013 that Washington had "invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine achieve [the development of democratic institutions] and other goals."

She repeated this assertion in an CNN interview, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has proudly reiterated it as well on cable news. The unspoken goal was Ukraine's membership in NATO.

(Imagine if a top-ranking official in the Russian Foreign Ministry were to boast of a $ 5 billion Russian investment in undermining the Mexican or Canadian government, with an aim towards incorporating one of those countries into an expanding military alliance. John McCain and Fox News would be demanding the immediate nuking of Moscow.)

Russia, as you know, has relatively few naval bases for a country its size. These face the Barents and Baltic Seas to the north, surrounding Scandinavia. In 1904, when Russian forces were attacked by the Japanese navy at Port Arthur in Manchuria, Russia had to dispatch the Baltic fleet to the region in a voyage requiring six months (and ending in the disastrous Battle of Tsushima). Russian geography poses obstacles to a strong navy.

There is one Russian naval base in Astrakhan on the landlocked Caspian Sea (which is really a vast lake, from which one can sail to Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran or Azerbaijan but nowhere beyond). And there are several bases in or near Vladivostok on the Siberian Pacific coast, which is iced over part of the year, as well as bases on the Kamchatka Peninsula north of Japan. Russia has a modest naval base at Tartus on the Syrian coast, and a logistics base in Cam Rahn Bay in Vietnam. But the only bases with ready access to the Mediterranean and thence the Atlantic or Indian oceans are those in and around Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea.

Compare the U.S. with over 30 major naval bases on its east and west coasts and Hawaii, and others-some of them huge-in Japan, Italy, Cuba, Bahrain, Diego Garcia and elsewhere! There are more naval bases in the state of California than in the entirety of the Russian Federation.

The U.S. has military personnel stationed in about 130 countries in the world-that is, in two-thirds of the countries who are members of the UN. In contrast, Russia has military forces stationed in, by my count, ten foreign countries, eight of them on its borders. And yet the U.S. press and political class depict Russia and specifically its president Vladimir Putin, a threatening juggernaut. (Just as they once did Saddam Hussein, that lame creature demonized as-as the warmongers always do, before attacking and destroying him-"a new Hitler.")

Any student at a U.S. university, enrolled in an interdisciplinary program in "international relations" (and educated, as is the norm, by political scientists of the "realist" school) is likely to conclude that-leaving aside the vilified personality of Putin-any Russian leader would insist on retaining the Crimean military assets. Anyone at all! Retention of that historic real estate is a no-brainer. Any outsiders with designs on it (which would include the hawks leading the U.S. Republican Party) are simply unrealistic if not brain-dead.

How could any Russian leader say to Victoria Nuland, "Fine, go ahead, take it," and hand over this ethnic-Russian region-locus of the Crimean War of 1853-56 and some of the bloodiest battles against the Nazis in World War II, locus of the fateful Yalta meeting between Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in February 1945-to forces overtly hostile to Russia? Forces that moreover are inclined to praise Ukrainian fascists who during World War II collaborated with the Nazis, even rounding up Jews for the slaughter at their bidding?

The Reuters article referenced above confirms the intention of the U.S-installed regime to formally apply for NATO membership. It cites Oleksander Turchynov, head of the new regime's national security council, as stating to the parliament that NATO membership was "the only reliable external guarantee" of Ukrainian "sovereignty and territorial integrity." (As though Russia, which had a cordial relationship with the previous President Viktor Yanukovich-who, let us repeat, was elected in a poll universally regarded as legitimate and democratic in 2010-has in recent times challenged the "territorial integrity" of Ukraine or any other country!)

It thus validates the key Russian charge that this is all about NATO-the NATO that, following George H. W. Bush's promise to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989 that the alliance would not advance "one inch" towards Russia's borders has in fact advanced to surround European Russia since 1999. NATO now includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Albania, all expected by group rules to devote 2% of their GDPs to the mutual "defense" effort.

If it does not include Russia's other neighbors, Belarus, Moldova and Georgia, it is not for lack of trying. The "National Endowment for Democracy" (a "private, non-profit organization" used by the State Department to fund regime change abroad) has sought to draw all of them into NATO. As though this were the most natural thing in the world, for all peoples living in countries bordering Russia to aspire to join an anti-Russian alliance!

Nuland's talking points for popular consumption on Ukraine include the assertion that the U.S. supports "the Ukrainian people's European aspirations." She ignores the fact that the country is deeply divided between east and west, and that in the east there are substantial "Russian aspirations" deeply rooted in a history she does not and indeed disdains to even try to understand. She also conceals the fact that U.S. support for regime change in Ukraine, leading up to the February 22, 2014 coup, was not really based on U.S. support for Ukraine's entry in the European Union.

The EU is a trading bloc that challenges the U.S. and NAFTA. In a world of imperialist competition for markets and resources, the EU and the U.S. often disagree. Washington is angry that EU members Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg are all joining the Chinese-led investment bank Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), mainly because it's likely to boost the Chinese currency and contribute to the decline of the dollar as the international reserve currency. Congress fumes over the EU's refusal to allow importation of Monsanto's genetically modified food products. The U.S. State Department is not in the business of promoting EU membership. That's not what this is about.

In 2003 Hillary Clinton's State Department seized on the decision made by ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich to back away from a deal he'd initialed with the EU. His advisors told him the austerity regime the EU would impose would be unacceptable, while Russia offered a generous aid package including continued supply of cheap gas.

Yanukovich's decision to opt for the latter option was based on economic logic, and eminently defensible in economic terms. But the U.S. actively fanned the flames of a movement which depicted Yanukovich's decision as a betrayal of Ukrainian nationhood and a statement of fealty to Russia. Hence Nuland's oft repeated sound bite about "European aspirations." As though Ukraine hadn't always been part of Europe! As though "Europe" were some shining star, and all those horrible inflictions of terror on the Ukrainian Socialist Republic by European fascists during the 1940s were irrelevant. And as though submission to a Greek-style EU-inspired austerity regime would bring relief to the suffering Ukrainian masses.

In fact, Nuland's own thoughts on "European aspirations" were sweetly summarized in her phone conversation with U.S. ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt just before the putsch in early February 2014. Quite probably leaked by Russian intelligence, and never disavowed by the State Department, the recording shows how Nuland had hand-picked the current prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, for his post over rivals Oleh Tyanybok (leader of the neo-fascist Svoboda Party, who has publically inveighed against the "Moscow-Jewish mafia ruling Ukraine" and referred to "Muscovites" and Jews as "scum) and Vitali Klitschko, a former boxer and sometimes anti-corruption activist.

In the phone call, Pyatt tells her "I think we're in play," meaning everything's set for a coup. "The Kitschko piece is obviously the complicated electron here, especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister...I'm glad you sort of put him on the spot as to where he fits into this scenario." Pyatt had apparently informed Kitschko that despite some EU backing, he was not a suitable candidate for the U.S. (In the call, Nuland blandly asserts that he needs more time "to do his homework.")

Nuland wanted to marginalize Klitschko, who in the coup's aftermath was awarded (as consolation prize) the post of Kiev mayor, She wanted to make sure that the former Minister of the Economy, Yatsenyuk, advocate of severe austerity measures and proponent of NATO membership, succeeded Yanukovich.

The phone call makes clear that Nuland had recruited UN officials to endorse the regime change.

Towards the end of the conversation, Nuland tells Pyatt "OK," signaling that the two agreed on the general strategy. She then alludes to the welcome complicity of several other assets: Jeff Feltman, Robert Serry, and Ban Ki-moon.

She reports that Jeff Feltman has "now gotten both Serry and Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday." Meaning: to help facilitate the coup and validate it afterwards.

Who are these people? Geoffrey Feltman, a career U.S. diplomat, was at the time the UN Under Secretary-General of Political Affairs. He is perhaps best known for his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Lebanon between 2004 and 2008 when he exercised so much influence that Hizbollah-echoed by other parties-referred to the Fouad Siniora government as the "Feltman government."

Robert Serry is a Dutch diplomat who served as NATO's Assistant Secretary-General of Foreign Crisis Management and Operations between 2003 and 2005 and also had been Dutch ambassador to Ukraine. An advocate of Dutch participation in the Iraq War based on lies, he was a reliable U.S. ally.

Ban Ki-moon is of course the UN Secretary-General who, as South Korea's foreign minister, pressed for the deployment of South Korean troops in that same Iraq war based on lies. We know from Wikileaks that, prompted by the U.S., he urged the UN Security Council to ignore the UN Board of Inquiry's report on the Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2008-2009 to avoid U.S. and Israeli embarrassment. It's safe to call him a reliable U.S. puppet.

Towards the end of the intercepted phone call Nuland signs off: "So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU." Fuck them, that is to say, if their ideas about Ukraine's future differ from our own.

So much for respect for anybody's "European aspirations."

In the same phone call, Nuland notes that Yatsenyev "will need Klitschko and Tyahnybok on the outside, he needs to be talking to them four times a week." One has to ask: what's more disgusting, the fact that the U.S. State Department would so attempt to micro-manage a regime change in a sovereign state, or that this neocon Nuland (who just so happens to be Jewish) representing the U.S. government, would urge the U.S. puppet to routinely network with a neo-fascist who describes Jews as "scum"?

In this case, commitment to the expansion of NATO cause plainly trumps the resistance to anti-Semitism cause. Nuland ought to be ashamed of herself.

When confronted last May in a House hearing by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher with photographic evidence of the role of neo-Nazis in the Maidan events, Nuland acknowledged that "there were many colors of Ukraine involved including very ugly colors." She didn't mention her own photos with Tyahnybok, all smiles, or her instruction to "Yats" to be on the phone with him four times a week.

The Radio Free Europe article referenced above begins: "The controversial leader of Ukraine's ultranationalist Right Sector paramilitary group has been named an army adviser.  Ukrainian Armed Forces spokesman Oleksey Mazepa announced on April 6 that Dmytro Yarosh would 'act as a link between volunteer battalions and the General Staff.' Yarosh's Right Sector militia claims to have some 10,000 members, but so far has not officially registered with the government as other paramilitary forces have done. The Right Sector militia is fighting alongside Ukrainian government troops against pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country."

The neo-fascist Right Sector was formed in 2013 during the Maidan protests in Kiev, amalgamating a number of groups aligned to the Svoboda Party. As the latter was striving for international respectability, its leaders meeting with Nuland and John McCain among others, the Right Sector functioned as its violent activist contingent. It was almost certainly involved in sniper fire on the square, attributed to the regime and used to validate its overthrow.

Now its head is awarded a government post, to coordinate the actions of the right-wing militias (most notoriously the Azov Battalion, which proudly sports Nazi insignia and has attacked civilian targets in east Ukraine). Does this not validate the Russian charge that there is a strong fascist component to the regime?

The situation is complicated. The neo-fascist shock troops deployed to pull off the putsch are not in favor of EU membership. They don't want its tolerance for diversity, its immigration rules. They have a vision of White Power manifest in their varied symbols, that include Confederate flags, certain Celtic crosses, and swastikas. They might not even favor NATO membership. But as the Radio Free Europe article indicates, their support is valued and needed by the regime.

No matter that Dmytro Yarosh is wanted by Interpol for "public incitement to terrorist activities" for threatening to destroy Russian pipelines in Ukraine. He's a necessary part of a team, and Washington backs the team. And the State Department and captive media pooh-pooh any suggestion that there's any fascism here, or any underhanded effort to encircle Russia. It's all about Ukrainian "freedom," supported by its benign self, which has in recent memory visited such memorable liberations on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

There is a fascist-friendly regime in Ukraine, ushered into power by the U.S. State Department. And it does want to enter NATO, and weaken Russia-if possible, by re-establishing control over Crimea and booting the Russian fleet out. Given German opposition to its admission into the alliance, it is doubtful that will occur short-term.

But with crazies running the U.S. State Department, successfully promoting a bogus narrative about what's happened in Ukraine over the last two years-a narrative echoed slavishly by a clueless mainstream media-it's just barely conceivable that there might come a day in which U.S. forces join the Azov Battalion in battling forces of the People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.

It won't have anything to do with "freedom," any more than the last few U.S. wars have had anything to do with that abstraction. It will be about imperial expansion, which while it might serve the .01% that rules this country, is not in your interest at all.
 
 #20
DJ: This individual is active in business in Kyiv and Moscow and requests anonymity

Subject: Re: 2015-#72-Johnson's Russia List/#45. Rossiyskaya Gazeta: Senior Russian judge claims legal justification for Crimea annexation. (Valeriy Zorkin)
Date:     Mon, 13 Apr 2015
From:     Anonymous
To:     [email protected]

1. I am a putinista, albeit not a passionate/blind one.

2. I am a doctor and a professor of international law.

3. I was an expert of the Badinter Commission which formulated the
modern law of cession in international relations.

5. I read the last item on your 13/04 issue.

6. It is overemotional and polemical and while I agree with the majority
of facts stated therein (particularly the author's assessment of the
legality of Decree 1400) these facts do not constitute legal basis for
(to my UTMOST REGRET!!!!!) Russia's seizure (annexation, occupation,
re-unification, please choose as see fit) of Crimea.

7. To summarise the modern law of cession inhabitants of a territory
have the right to cede from their state on the following conditions:
A. They have control of a clearly defined part of the original state;
B. They have expressed their wish to cede from that state in an open
public referendum held with no foreign influence and interference;
C. Presence of foreign troops (even confined to their bases) is usually
considered to be deemed interference into the referendum process making
the same flawed;
D. On that basis there is a very strong argument to consider the March
18th referendum illegal from the point of view of public international
law. This point of view was re-inforced by the recent statements of the
Russian President who admitted that Russian troops stationed in Crimea
had a role in the referendum process.
E. The counter argument is that the coalition troops in Kosovo performed
a very similar role to that the Russians performed in Crimea. A lot of
international law is built on precedents and it could be argued that the
Kosovo precedent could be applicable to Crimea. HOWEVER! There is a
difference with the Kosovo situation - the referendum there was not
about joining any state (let alone any state which was a member of the
coalition). Thus it may be argued that Kosovo precedent does not apply
to Crimea.

8. The principle of humanitarian intervention is the most controversial
novelty of public international law and is seen as being widely abused
(as the author rightly pointed out). HOWEVER, in all situations where it
was used as justification for military intervention, the intervention
came AFTER situation in the target state went out of control and the
state (or a clearly defined part thereof) was the scene of some
considerable and well documented violence. This was not the case in
Crimea, where the situation was tense but non violent at the time of the
referendum. It would be very difficult to use that principle to justify
Russia's interference in Crimea PRIOR to any violence there actually
taking place.

This is a very short and simplified summary of the position under
current international law of cession. If and when the ICJ would hear
this case it would be a huge headache for any non-prejudiced judge
involved.

The complicating  factor (one of many) is the legal history of Crimea
and the 1992 referendum..... And the clear and unequivocal desire of the
qualified majority of Crimeans to be re-united with Russia.