Ukraine Is On the Verge Of War And Putin Is To Blame

[Muzh]

Ukraine Is On the Verge Of War And Putin Is To Blame
 
Corpses littered the streets of Kiev today and the man to blame for Ukraine’s crisis is none other than the king of Sochi himself.   
 
Corpses are piling up in the capital city of a European country again, and the main beneficiary of the ongoing Grand Guignol is now the celebrated master of ceremonies at an international sporting competition.
 
As of this writing, Ukraine is drawing to a close the bloodiest day of a 72-hour pogrom. Dozens have been killed. The government of Viktor Yanukovych, having lost all credibility weeks ago, has decided to behave as if it now has nothing to lose and no one, outside of Moscow, to impress.
 
“Government” may in fact be too strong a term to use to describe what’s left of power structures. Yanukovych already appears more warlord than president. His police force has been firing indiscriminately into the crowds with automatic weapons, joined by roving gangs of loyalist paramilitary units—titushki—who are conspicuous by their own automatic weapons and their yellow arm bands, the latter to keep the police from shooting at them. Hotels have become field hospitals. Bodies of protestors have been found without heads; others have been laid out in rows reminiscent of Aleppo.
 
Two Ukrainian journalists were recently yanked out of taxis and beaten savagely, one shot in the chest and killed. Evidence of execution-style gunshots with armor-piercing bullets has emerged. Ukrainian authorities, too, have been shot and killed in what now threatens to become all-out civil war and certainly has the telltale signs of one. Barricades erected line the Maidan, or Independence Square in Kiev, as they do in other cities around the country, sometimes with World War II cannons-cum-monuments. Tires and government buildings have been set alight with Molotov cocktails, their fires burning through the night amidst strangely playful green laser light shows. Before long, this mood suggests, someone’s tanks will be rolling into city streets in a replay of Hungary in 1956 or Prague in 1968.

Perhaps the most salient development today was the report that Russia’s spetsnaz (special forces) have been deployed by Putin to help put down what was once a peaceful protest movement, but now is seen as a mayhem of Molotov cocktails and riots. According to Tyzhden, a Ukrainian weekly, one such officer was “captured” by protestors and displayed before the Euromaidan masses today, his martial insignia of a double-headed eagle, proof to many, if proof were needed, of where he came from and who’s actually running the show in Kiev.  (Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, who knows something about Russia’s infiltration of its next-door neighbors, credited this report as plausible and tweeted a link to the Tyzhden article. The Russian embassy in Tallinn accused him of spreading “lying tweets”—before deleting the accusation.)
 
Why did I say it was alarming that this present state of affairs was not foreseen by the West? Because Putin told us what was imminent. He always has the courtesy to notify in advance, even if we choose not to listen.
 
Sergei Glazev is his right-hand-man on Russia’s “integration” with Ukraine, which is more properly understood as re-colonization. Yanuykovych “has a choice,” Glazev last month told the house organ of Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned gas company and, up until now, Putin’s preferred tool for getting what he wants out of Europe. “Either he defends Ukrainian statehood and puts down the insurrection…or he risks losing power, in which case Ukraine faces growing chaos and internal conflict with no escape to be seen.”
 
The consequences for not putting down the “insurrection” were further spelled out by the Kremlin. When Yanukovych appeared to go wobbly and offered conciliatory gestures to the opposition late last month (like an Arab dictator in trouble, he sacked and swapped his cabinet, mainly for cosmetic effect, in January), Putin threatened to withhold the $15 billion loan which first enticed Yanukovych to defy the majority of Ukrainians by quashing a very modest but symbolically important association agreement with the European Union. Was it a coincidence, then, that the first day the shooting started—Monday—was also the day that Putin’s Finance Ministry announced that Yanukovych’s punishment would not be meted out and that $2 billion of that loan would instead be dispensed after all?  Dialogue may get you trade agreements with Brussels, but crushing skulls gets keeps the bribes coming from Moscow.
 
It pays to remember that while Putin was, since his St. Petersburg days, always an obvious Chekist and mafioso, he didn’t really start to become one in the Western imagination until the end of his first term, after the so-called “color revolutions” kicked off in the former Soviet states, including and especially in Ukraine. This is because his response to these democratic ferments was to eliminate any and all possibility that they might flourish where they started or, god forbid, spread to Russia itself. His scapegoats then, as now, were the United States and Europe, which he blamed for mucking about in his backyard. So began a gradual and fitful process of re-Sovietization which, since Putin’s return to the presidency, has accelerated rapidly. That return, and that acceleration, are not coincidences either.
 
The Russian Putin blames the most for bungling Ukraine’s Orange Revolution is Dmitry Medvedev, erstwhile placeholder president, now relegated to the position of sinecurist premier and scapegoat for of Russia’s expanding domestic problems. Medvedev is further burdened with being the meek fool who botched the Russo-Georgian summer war of 2008 (he started it too late and finished it too early, according to Putin) and allowed NATO to depose Muammar Gaddafi with a no-fly zone. Never again, Dima.
 
Medvedev’s antithesis is a man named Vladislav Surkov, the variously and sporadically employed “grey cardinal” of the Kremlin, who is credited with consolidating Putin’s power, post-Orange Revolution, and conceiving of the concept of “sovereign democracy,” now Russia’s second largest export after oil. Indeed, Surkov has become the Scarlet Pimpernel of Euromaidan, allegedly spotted here, there and everywhere in Ukraine, yet existing only (so far) as a sinister rumor.
 
Surkovian is an adjective that Westerners would do well acquaint themselves with when trying to understand what’s happening in either Kiev or Moscow. It means politics taken to the level of a retrovirus: co-opt anything organic, trick it into thinking it’s still healthy, then liquidate it by slow measures. It means agents provocateurs and pseudo-oppositions and just enough meaningless liberty to make society not care about the real thing. It means fashioning loyalist youth-mobs which set upon a very green and very limited genuine opposition by depicting it as a Nazi fifth column of the U.S. State Department. It means unleashing hell when the moment is right and then presenting the aftermath as a warning of what happens if the status quo is not maintained. There’s also an element of Byzantine absurdity to the Surkovian, a combination of the ludic and the vicious. Holding the most expensive and corrupt Winter Olympics in history as a PR coup, then letting Cossacks horsewhip Russia’s most famous female dissidents in between bobsled races is one example. Phone-tapping American statesmen badmouthing their European counterparts may be pure KGB “tradecraft,” but releasing the audio for all the world to hear is a Surkovian triumph.
 
Events now unfolding in Ukraine threaten to be yet another, and the options to prevent civil war or the breakup of the country are dwindling. Still, there are options. My friend Edward Lucas has laid out two in Britain’s Daily Telegraph. First, help protect Georgia and Moldova, the other two former Soviet republics now in the “Kremlin’s firing line,” and strengthen our alliance with the Baltic states that keep getting mock-invaded or cyber-attacked by Russia. Second, freeze the U.S. and European-based assets of Yanukovych and his ruling “family”. These are actually very well known to sanctions monitors, and if they require additional assistance, a good place to start is at yanukovich.info.
  I’d add to Lucas’ list that Washington and Brussels ought to exploit the cracks now beginning to appear in the Yanukovych monolith. His own functionaries and partisans all seem to realize their man is finished as anything other than a satrap of a revanchist empire-in-the-remaking. More and more of them are resigning, going over to the other side, or declaring their independence. The mayor of Kiev, Volodymyr Makeenko, has left the Party of Regions and promised to re-start the city’s stalled subway system. “None of the oligarchs have died, none of the politicians died. I, as head of the city administration, am taking care of burying tens of bodies of common people every day,” Makeeno said in a letter addressed to Yanukovych. He also said that he planned to assume “personal responsibility for the livelihood of the city of Kiev,” which may mean that the capital, and the country’s centre of finance, will become a semi-autonomous city-state before long, one that could theoretically parlay with the U.S., E.U. and U.N. directly.
 
Yanukovych also seems to have lost his own Foreign Ministry, which has now put out a statement endorsing the association agreement with the EU as a measure that “can unite us all.”
Meanwhile, Putin’s own method of minatory agitprop should be used against him, repeatedly and without the usual happy-talk hedging. Failed statehood is what happens when you sell out your own people to do a deal with the czar. And this has a habit of affecting not just the politicized man in the street but also the establishment fat-cat or illicitly enriched bureaucrat with real estate and bank accounts everywhere but Russia.
 
The Daily Beast

[steveboy]

You have been watching way to much bullshit on the TV the US pumps out daily about Putin

[jone]

The Ukrainian Opposition is a little smarter than most give them credit for.  What is the one period of time that Putin can't respond? 

Hmm?  Could it be that the entire military confrontation occurred during the middle of the Olympics when all eyes of the world were scrutinizing the Russian President?

Ukrainian People:  1

Vladimir Putin:  0

[steveboy]

The Ukrainian Opposition is a little smarter than most give them credit for.  What is the one period of time that Putin can't respond? 

Hmm?  Could it be that the entire military confrontation occurred during the middle of the Olympics when all eyes of the world were scrutinizing the Russian President?

Ukrainian People:  1

Vladimir Putin:  0

More US TV propaganda? Its a little like why didn't Obama go to the games? Some shit over gay rights. lol.
Its funny how he is very happy shaking hands with a saudi sheik! They execute homosexuals, lol.

I wonder when the day will come when stupid people keep poking Putin?

[steveboy]

Wouldn't it be a good idea to congratulate the president of Russia for hosting an out standing winter Olympics.?
Despite all the criticism he has taken over the event, the lack of security?? the bad food?? the stray dogs?? and all the other petty reasons so many idiots from the West have thrown at him. lol He has given one of the best winter Olympics for many years. good man!!

He deserves a GOLD medel himself ??

[jone]

More US TV propaganda? Its a little like why didn't Obama go to the games? Some shit over gay rights. lol.
Its funny how he is very happy shaking hands with a saudi sheik! They execute homosexuals, lol.

I wonder when the day will come when stupid people keep poking Putin?

Who said anything about the US?   Quite frankly, the opposition leaders out thought the US and the European leaders as well as the Russians.  My observation was that Putin has been tooling the people of Ukraine.  The only time that they could operate a significant military operation against Yanokovych was during the Olympics. 

You are so myopic and marginalized in your thinking that you couldn't get your brain around this.  Quit showing your ignorance.  Instead show some respect for the people of Ukraine who were able to come out of this with their country intact and the displacement of Yanokovych.

This is not about Putin.  It is not about the Olympics.  It is about an entire country trying to re-invent themselves one more time, hoping to get it right.  You want to talk about the Olympics, try another thread where that is the topic.

[JayH]

This is not about Putin.  It is not about the Olympics.  It is about an entire country trying to re-invent themselves one more time, hoping to get it right.  You want to talk about the Olympics, try another thread where that is the topic.

Exactly

[steveboy]

Nothing wrong with a little diversification:)

[I/O]

Steve - Put the bottle down, you're looking ridiculous across several threads.

[steveboy]

Thanks for informing me)) I didn't realise!!

[cc3]

Wouldn't it be a good idea to congratulate the president of Russia for hosting an out standing winter Olympics.?
Despite all the criticism he has taken over the event, the lack of security?? the bad food?? the stray dogs?? and all the other petty reasons so many idiots from the West have thrown at him. lol He has given one of the best winter Olympics for many years. good man!!

He deserves a GOLD medel himself ??

He should have given a good Olympics, considering that he had the Russian state spend more for this Olympics than all other previous winter Olympics combined. Of that expenditure, it is conservatively estimated that at least 60% was devoted to corruption.

[steveboy]

Where did you get those figures from? the US state department?? I mean where could you get that sort of precise information?

[jone]

I didn't particularly like the Daily Beast article.  I have nothing but admiration for V.P.  Especially with business interests still in Mother Russia.  However, more and more, I have to take a back seat as foreign entities are considered bad. 

What I saw, as did many others on this forum and other public forums, is that Yanukovych bled his country dry.  I would have been just as supportive of an uprising against him if he had been an ally of the West rather than Russia.  Unfortunately, most of the puppet regimes still are looking to Moscow for their support.  Tymoshenko was correct when she stated tonight that other satellite (and former Soviet) countries are looking at what Ukraine did and will be thinking about rebellion.

One only has to look to the North to see one of the last bastions of old style Soviet control.  In as much as I have substantial associations there, I will not elaborate.

This Ukrainian rebellion was never about East or West.  It was never about the Old Game.  It was, instead,  simply about corruption - so bad that even someone like myself, living there for only two months, could discern it first hand.

Obviously, Tymoshenko has been thinking about that speech she gave tonight for the past two years, sitting alone down in Kharkiv.   I can only hope that the lady who hijacked the Ukrainian gas lines and other Ukrainian utilities will think twice this time before she assumes (if she assumes) the mantle of power.  Otherwise the country will once again spiral into a cycle of upheaval that, this time, I'm not sure it can evolve from.

In reality, this version of the Ukrainian government is the last evolution.  If the government fails this time, I have great reason to believe that the country will be, once again, divided - and 'on the edge'.

[cc3]

Where did you get those figures from? the US state department?? I mean where could you get that sort of precise information?

http://www.smh.com.au/world/putins-winter-olympics-have-featured-corruption-cost-overrurns-terrorist-threats-and-political-shenanigans-20140131-31sse.html

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/02/economist-explains-2

http://www.businessinsider.com/sochis-allegedly-collosal-corruption-2014-1

http://www.fairobserver.com/article/winter-olympics-subtropics-corruption-abuse-sochi-part-1?page=10

[steveboy]

That says it all. lol 

[steveboy]

Im not saying Putin is mr perfect nor his government. But you can be sure if he was on a boat and dived over board to rescue a drowning person, the Western media would have you believe he threw that person overboard in the first place. lol

[Misha]

Where did you get those figures from? the US state department?? I mean where could you get that sort of precise information?

Steve, it is not exactly a state secret in Russia. Even the Russian media is reporting the cost of the Olympics and most people in Russia know the cost of the Olympics. Even when reading the comments made my Russians following their final hockey game, one noted that they had spent $50 billion on the Olympics and that they could not do any better in hockey...

[steveboy]

Yes we all know what the cost was! But where does the precise information come from about 60% of the money spent went on corruption??

[JayH]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26304129

22 February 2014 Last updated at 13:17 Share this pageEmailPrint

Ukraine crisis: No talk of split in eastern city of Kharkiv
By Yuri Maloveryan
BBC News, Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine
Kharkiv (22 Feb)
Thousands of pro-opposition demonstrators staged a rally close to a congress of pro-Yanukovych politicians


Here in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, the most important thing coming out of a congress of pro-Yanukovych politicians is the sentiment that they don't want Ukraine to split but to remain united.

Kharkiv's regional governor, Mikhaylo Dobkin, told the meeting of MPs from predominantly Russian-speaking areas of eastern Ukraine and Crimea : "We're not preparing to break up the country. We want to preserve it."

However, they have refused to recognise developments in the national parliament. They are calling "fascist" those who have taken power in Kiev, and do not want armed fighters to come to their towns.

In a resolution they determined to "take responsibility for safeguarding the constitutional order, legality, citizens' rights and their security on our territories".

Near the sports palace where the congress is taking place, there is a big rally of thousands of people in support of Kiev's opposition protesters. But power has shifted in Kiev and the authorities' mood here has changed with it.

Previously, the demonstrators were beaten and dispersed. But now they are being protected by police from several hundred pro-Russians who are shouting at them.

The audience listens to speeches at a congress of deputies at Kharkiv on 22 Feb
The audience listens to speeches at a congress of deputies at Kharkiv on Saturday
At the time of writing, it is unclear where President Viktor Yanukovych is. His aide Hanna Herman has said he is here in Kharkiv. He's not going to take part in the congress but will make a statement on TV, she says. She suggests he will visit other regions of Ukraine before returning to Kiev.

Ms Herman is attempting to present everything as under control and in the president's hands. But the truth is rather different.

The obvious question is: where would the president stay if he returned to the capital? What then of the prospect of a split between pro-Russian areas such as Crimea and the rest of Ukraine?

The congress in Kharkiv is clearly rejecting the idea of separation. One of the speakers clearly condemned Crimean deputies for raising the very prospect of a split?

But what do they want?

They are talking about protecting themselves from the "gangs" from Ukraine's west.

And they have denounced Kiev's opposition politicians for regarding any contacts with Moscow that Crimeans or eastern Ukrainians have had as treason and an attempt at separation.

Strong rhetoric is often used in Ukraine when discussing internal problems. In the end, not even pro-Russian Ukrainians want to be subject to Moscow.

[JayH]

There are a couple of pieces being pushed by pro-Russian minority propoganda  disspelled.

Ukraine to stay undivided.

"Strong rhetoric is often used in Ukraine when discussing internal problems. In the end, not even pro-Russian Ukrainians want to be subject to Moscow."

That accords with views I have often heard expressed.

[Shadow]

Interesting how some people seem to think the Olypics is the correct time to disrupt anything to do with Russia.

However as was shown during the Beijing Games, if really needed, action will be taken.
Russia does not wish to interfere in political troubles inside a country. Unlike the EU, so it seems.

[Shadow]

When the new leaders show to be letting down the people as much as they previously did, I doubt Ukraine can remain united.

[Misha]

Yes we all know what the cost was! But where does the precise information come from about 60% of the money spent went on corruption??

There more than a few Russians who have written in this topic as well, but let me guess, you will write that they were all bought and paid for by the USA...

[Shadow]

There more than a few Russians who have written in this topic as well, but let me guess, you will write that they were all bought and paid for by the USA...

If the source of the money is Russia, they stole it. If the source is the USA, they do not need to. 

[cc3]

Yes we all know what the cost was! But where does the precise information come from about 60% of the money spent went on corruption??

Corruption, cronyism in contract awards, non-competitive contract bidding and pricing, and flagrant embezzlement took the initial $12 billion estimate to more than $50 billion actual.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2014/02/sochi-olympics-russia-corruption#
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/20/sport/russia-sochi-putin/index.html
http://sochi2014.imrussia.org/en/
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/30/us-olympics-sochi-corruption-idUSBRE94T0RU20130530
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/10469999/The-film-Russia-tried-to-block-The-threats-and-corruption-behind-Sochi-Olympics.html

From the telegraph article: " And how did a subtropical Black Sea resort with little snow become a winter Olympic venue, in a country with a Siberian hinterland much better suited to cold weather sports?

'Putin likes Sochi, he likes skiing there,' Ms Baumann said. 'He is building his own palace down there. It is his personal choice and he is completely behind it.' "

Cowardly Yanukovich was such a pale reflection of the majestic corruption of his idol, Vlad.