Putin Channels Zero Hedge
@libertylynx reminded me of one of the whoppers that went unnoticed because of all the even bigger whoppers in Putin’s presser 10 days back:
Now, the stock market. As you may know, the stock market was jumpy even before the situation in Ukraine deteriorated. This is primarily linked to the policy of the US Federal Reserve, whose recent decisions enhanced the attractiveness of investing in the US economy and investors began moving their funds from the developing markets to the American market. This is a general trend and it has nothing to do with Ukraine. I believe it was India that suffered most, as well as the other BRICS states. Russia was hit as well, not as hard as India, but it was. This is the fundamental reason.
Some simple facts. Since the beginning of March, the Russian market is down 13.74 percent. The largest decline, of over 10 percent, occurred on the Monday after the upper chamber of the Duma authorized an invasion of Ukraine. In the same time, the MSCI Emerging Market Index was down 2.55 percent: since Russia is included, non-Russian EM stocks were down less than 2.55 percent. The MSCI EM Index also includes Turkey, which is lurching into chaos. As for India, it is up about 6 percent, and was down less than 1 percent on the day the Russian market crashed 10 percent.
So who you gonna believe? VVP or those lying charts? Obviously what has hit the Russian markets is not a Fed-driven phenomenon common to BRICs or emerging markets. This was a Russia-specific phenomenon. Which means it’s all about Putin and Ukraine.
But the most revealing thing is that Putin can say such readily falsified things with such confidence and panache. Has he convinced himself it’s true? Or does he know that his real target audiences, Russians dependent on TV for news, and useful idiots in the West, will just swallow his swill as Gospel and won’t bother to check?
I’m guessing the latter, but I can’t rule out the former.
http://www.kasparov.ru/note.php?id=4615F630DD466
Under the Constitution, the President can be removed from the post by the Rada in the impeachment in case of high treason or other crimes. The removal of the President from Office by the procedure of impeachment is initiated by the majority of the constitutional composition of the Verkhovna Rada.
To investigate, the Verkhovna Rada must create an ad hoc temporary Commission of inquiry, which includes the Special Prosecutor and special investigators. If there are grounds for impeachment, there must be no less than two-thirds of the constitutional composition for the prosecution of the President of Ukraine.
After that, this case must be examined by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which must give an opinion on compliance with the constitutional procedures of investigation.
After that, the Supreme Court must considers the case. It should draw the conclusion that the acts attributable to the Ukrainian President, contain signs of treason or other crimes.
After that, decision to remove the President from Office by impeachment must be adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of not less than three quarters of its constitutional composition.
Comment by vladislav — March 15, 2014 @ 11:51 pm
>> Ukraine’s Jewish leaders state that antisemitism isn’t increasing in Ukraine, that they feel generally safe (although they need to be wary)
That’s very true. Look at the number of hate crimes in Ukraine over the years, compiled by the organization that your own beloved Josef Zissels:
http://www.eajc.org/page451
You will see that this number skyrocketed in the last years of Yuscvehnko’s rule, after he made OUN/UPA mass murderers “Heroes of Ukraine” and even glorified OUN’s second in command, Mr. Yaroslav “I am going to exterminate Jews the way the Germans are doing” Stetsko. It was 88 in 2007 and 84 in 2008. In the last 2 years of Yanukovich’s rule the number of hate crimes dropped to 19 in 2012 and 18 in 2013.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 12:05 am
Yanukovich made Ukraine almost hate-free.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 12:09 am
Yanukovich is a thief (like almost all politicians, especially in Ukraine and Russia), a fool and a coward, but he was a uniter not a divider, an includer not an excluder.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 12:12 am
BTW, NBC reports that the 2014 Paralymic Games in Russia were an even greater success than the 2014 Olympics. It has received much more spectators than ever, including the 2010 Paralymic Games in in Canada. Of course, it helped that Russian handicapped people, as always, have won an incredible, mind-blowing number of gold medals.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 12:18 am
Congratulations to the US handicapped hockey team for winning its second gold in a row and to Russia for winning silver, including a prelims victory over the USA. Amazingly, handicapped hockey in Russia started only 5 years ago. I think the Russian Olympic hockey coaches made a terrible mistake selecting to the Russian team various gutless prima donnas like Ovechkin and Malkin, instead of using the high-spirited courageous Russian paralympic hockey players.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 12:25 am
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-ukraine-feud-over-sniper-carnage-203319580.html
A former top security official with Ukraine’s main security agency, the SBU, waded into the confusion, in an interview published Thursday with the respected newspaper Dzerkalo Tizhnya. Hennady Moskal, who was deputy head of the agency, told the newspaper that snipers from the Interior Ministry and SBU were responsible for the shootings, not foreign agents.
“In addition to this, snipers received orders to shoot not only protesters, but also police forces. This was all done in order to escalate the conflict, in order to justify the police operation to clear Maidan,” he was quoted as saying.’
Links have been posted before Quisling Vlad, as usual you are too lazy to follow them
Comment by Andrew — March 16, 2014 @ 12:51 am
Thanks, Andrew, for this link. Why did you pluck just one paragraph? Ashamed of the rest of the article? So that the readers don’t think that the article says that it was Yanokovich or Puitn who hired the snipers, let me list all of the evidence and factual testimonies presented in this article (omitting baseless speculation), so that the resaders can jusge for themselves, who is the likeliest culprit and what right the Rada had to impeach Yanukovich, claiming that it was he who hired the snipers, for sure.
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-ukraine-feud-over-sniper-carnage-203319580.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — One of the biggest mysteries hanging over the protest mayhem that drove Ukraine’s president from power: Who was behind the snipers who sowed death and terror in Kiev?
Ukrainian authorities are investigating the Feb. 18-20 bloodbath, and they have shifted their focus from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — pursuing the theory that the Kremlin was intent on sowing mayhem as a pretext for military incursion. Russia suggests that the snipers were organized by opposition leaders trying to whip up local and international outrage against the government.
The government’s new health minister — a doctor who helped oversee medical treatment for casualties during the protests — told The Associated Press that the similarity of bullet wounds suffered by opposition victims and police indicates the shooters were trying to stoke tensions on both sides and spark even greater violence, with the goal of toppling Yanukovych.
“I think it wasn’t just a part of the old regime that (plotted the provocation), but it was also the work of Russian special forces who served and maintained the ideology of the (old) regime,” Health Minister Oleh Musiy said.
This much is known: Snipers firing powerful rifles from rooftops and windows shot scores of people in the heart of Kiev. Some victims were opposition protesters, but many were civilian bystanders clearly not involved in the clashes. Among the dead were medics, as well as police officers. A majority of the more than 100 people who died in the violence were shot by snipers; hundreds were also injured by the gunfire and other street fighting.
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov signaled that investigators may be turning their attention away from Ukrainian responsibility.
“I can say only one thing: the key factor in this uprising, that spilled blood in Kiev and that turned the country upside down and shocked it, was a third force,” Avakov was quoted as saying by Interfax. “And this force was not Ukrainian.”
The next day, Prosecutor General Oleh Makhntisky said officials have found sniper bullet casings on the National Bank building a few hundred yards up the hill from Maidan, the square that became the center and the symbol of the anti-government protests. He said investigators have confirmed snipers also fired from the Hotel Ukraine, directly on the square, and the House of Chimeras, an official residence next to the presidential administration building.
Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Velichkovych told AP that commanders of sniper units overseen by the Berkut police force and other Interior Ministry subdivisions have denied to investigators that they had given orders to shoot anyone.
Musiy, who spent more than two months organizing medical units on Maidan, said that on Feb. 20 roughly 40 civilians and protesters were brought with fatal bullet wounds to the makeshift hospital set up near the square. But he said medics also treated three police officers whose wounds were identical.
Forensic evidence, in particular the similarity of the bullet wounds, led him and others to conclude that snipers were targeting both sides of the standoff at Maidan — and that the shootings were intended to generate a wave of revulsion so strong that it would topple Yanukovych and also justify a Russian invasion.
Russia has used the uncertainty surrounding the bloodshed to discredit Ukraine’s current government. During a news conference Tuesday, Putin addressed the issue in response to a reporter’s question, suggesting that the snipers in fact “may have been provocateurs from opposition parties.”
That theory gained currency a day later when a recording of a Feb. 26 private phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was leaked and broadcast by the Russian government-controlled TV network, Russia Today. In the call, Paet said he had heard from protesters during a visit to Kiev that opponents of Yanukovych were behind the sniper attacks.
Paet said another physician who treated victims, Dr. Olha Bogomolets, told him that both police and protesters were killed by the same bullets — and “there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new (government) coalition.”
On Wednesday Paet confirmed the recording was authentic, and told reporters in Tallinn that he was merely repeating what Bogomolets had told him. He said he had no way of verifying the claims, though he called Bogomolets “clearly a person with authority.”
Bogomolets couldn’t be immediately reached by the AP for comment. She did not answer repeated calls to her cellphone or respond to text messages.
In an interview earlier this week with a correspondent from British newspaper The Telegraph, Bogomolets said she didn’t know if police and protesters were killed by the same bullets, and called for a thorough investigation.
“No one who just sees the wounds when treating the victims can make a determination about the type of weapons,” she was quoted as saying. “I hope international experts and Ukrainian investigators will make a determination of what type of weapons, who was involved in the killings and how it was done. I have no data to prove anything.”
On Thursday, Russia’s U.N. envoy said he discussed the leaked phone call during a closed-door meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
If the call represents the truth, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters, “it is hard to imagine how such a parliament … can be regarded as a legitimate parliament that can pass legitimate decisions on the future of Ukraine.”
A former top security official with Ukraine’s main security agency, the SBU, waded into the confusion, in an interview published Thursday with the respected newspaper Dzerkalo Tizhnya. Hennady Moskal, who was deputy head of the agency, told the newspaper that snipers from the Interior Ministry and SBU were responsible for the shootings, not foreign agents.
“In addition to this, snipers received orders to shoot not only protesters, but also police forces. This was all done in order to escalate the conflict, in order to justify the police operation to clear Maidan,” he was quoted as saying.
One of the victims of the snipers was Alexander Tonskikh, 57. He told AP that at around 10 a.m. on Feb. 20, he and dozens of opposition fighters moved south out of the main battleground on Maidan.
Riot police withdrew suddenly, he said, and an instant later snipers began firing from at least two different directions, from what seemed to be the rooftops of government buildings, between 200 and 300 yards away.
He said dozens of people were “mown down like grass” as he and others crouched behind a waist-high stone wall, holding wooden clubs and metal riot shields.
At least 10 people, he said, were killed instantly, and many others wounded. The bodies piled up on top of each other like fallen tree branches.
Shooting then began from a third direction, he said. As he crouched with his back to a tree, he was hit by a bullet that entered his right arm, went through his right side, punctured his lung and lodged just below his heart.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 1:44 am
New education for children in the new pro-American pro-European Kiev, Ukraine: “Cut Russians’ heads off!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrJC6rU9lG0
Notice OUN/UPA flags.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 3:13 am
Because you asked for the citation moron.
note most of the article points at Yanukovich government or Russian involvement.
It also gives lie to your claim the new administration is not investigating.
Your hero worship of the real fascists and racists in moscow is pretty disgusting.
BTW, both Kuban and Tuman oblasts are over 70% ethnic Ukrainians, it looks like they are now agitating to join Ukraine despite the Nazi style Russian federal law that makes even discussing separatism from Russia a federal crime with a 5 year prison sentence.
I presume you support their right to leave fascist Russia and will support their desire for a referendum on joining Ukraine?
Comment by Andrew — March 16, 2014 @ 4:12 am
A very sympathetic video portraying the new people that are in charge of Ukraine now, from the European Journal from Brussels by Deutsche Welle:
http://www.dw.de/program/european-journal/s-3065-9798
http://www.dw.de/european-journal-the-magazine-from-brussels-2014-03-12/e-17444519-9798
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 4:24 am
Published on March 15, 2014
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD – ADVANTAGE: RUSSIA
Putin: The Mask Comes Off, But Will Anybody Care?
Russia appears to be deliberately fomenting more violence in Ukraine, possibly in advance of an invasion. Putin is no Hitler, but Hitler would recognize his moves.
Violence is spreading throughout Ukraine on a course that looks exactly like conscious and deliberate Russian preparation for a wider war. Without telepathic powers it is impossible to know what is going on in the mind of the one man who can control developments in Ukraine, but overnight the chances of additional Russian military action against its helpless neighbor appeared to grow. On Friday in Donetsk conflict between pro-and anti-Russia groups left one man dead and 26 injured. Now in Kharkiv two more are dead in a similar way as clashes spread through the city. Pro-Russian groups, including it is said ‘rent-a-mob’ demonstrators bussed in from Russia, seem to be behind the violence.
Moreover, there were scattered signs today that the next step is already upon us. Unconfirmed reports from local sources claim Russian troops landed in the Kherson region today—and were repelled. The story is starting to get picked up by news agencies, but rumors run rife at times like this. If true, it would mark the first direct military action by Russia outside Crimea and would be a major escalation of the most serious European international crisis since the Yugoslav wars. Here’s how the FT is reporting it:
Ukraine’s foreign ministry described the events as a “military invasion by Russia” and called on Russia to “immediately withdraw its military forces from the territory of Ukraine”.
“Ukraine reserves the right to use all necessary measures to stop the military invasion by Russia,” the ministry added in a statement.
If that is what is happening, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that it is, Putin appears to be following the Adolf Hitler strategy manual pretty much to the letter.
Putin is no Hitler, and from the standpoint of power he isn’t even a Brezhnev. Still, his actions in Ukraine have been following Adolf’s playbook pretty closely. Adolf wanted to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. Putin is attempting to rip up the post-Cold War settlement in Europe and Central Asia. Like Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia is much weaker than its opponents, so it can’t achieve its goal through a direct military challenge against its primary enemies. Like Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia must be clever until it grows strong, and it must play on its enemies’ hesitations, divisions and weaknesses until and unless it is ready to take them on head to head.
“Keep them guessing” is rule number one. Nobody was better than Hitler at playing with his enemies’ minds. For every warlike speech, there was an invitation to a peace conference. For every uncompromising demand, there was a promise of lasting tranquillity once that last little troublesome problem had been negotiated safely away. He was so successful at it (and Stalin, too was good at this game) in part because his opponents so desperately wanted peace. French politicians like Leon Blum and British leaders like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were as hungry for peace (it was the Depression after all, and both countries had suffered immensely in World War One) as Barack Obama and Francois Hollande are today. Commendably and properly, they wanted to fix their domestic economies, create a more just society at home, repair their infrastructure and cut their defense budgets. They were not in the mood for trouble overseas, and so a cold blooded con man found them to be easy marks.
Putin has played on western illusions very successfully for a very long time. Remember all those ‘experts’ (many, alas, in government service) who thought that the Medvedev presidency represented a real shift in Russian politics? How shocked and disappointed people were when Putin stepped smoothly back into the top job? It is the oldest trick in the book: bait and switch. Humiliate John Kerry by making him cool his heels for three hours in the Kremlin, and then dangle hope of a cooperative relationship. Hold out a ‘helping hand’ when the Obama administration has gotten itself into an embarrassing predicament over its Syria red line, then kick Uncle Sam in the teeth at Geneva.
There was never a good reason to believe any of Putin’s talk of peace and cooperation. After the Cold War, America and its allies jammed NATO expansion down Russia’s throat. The European Union worked to expand right up to Russia’s frontiers while making it crystal clear that Russia could never be a member. Putin is no Hitler, but neither is he a Konrad Adenauer, determined to accept defeat and to cooperate wholeheartedly in building his country’s future within the lines drawn by the victors. And the US made Adenauer’s Germany a much better offer than it made Putin’s Russia. You would have to be living in what the Germans call das Wolkenkuckkucksheim,cloud-cuckoo-land, to believe that a man like Putin would passively accept the post-Cold War order.
But cloud-cuckoo-land is exactly where many westerners live, in a resolutely post-historical world where foreign policy is about development, human rights, non-proliferation and trade. If Putin tells us he lives there too, we are hungry to believe him. We don’t want to live in a difficult world. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were having a fabulous time in cloud-cuckoo-land back in the 1930s and many of them clung to their illusions until the last possible moment. We want to live in a stable and secure world order but we don’t want to make the sacrifices world order requires—and so we will gaze deeply into the eyes of anybody who is willing to tell us what we most want to hear.
Hitler’s situation was like Putin’s in another way. Like Russia now, Germany in the 1930s was weaker than its western opponents, but its leader had much more power to change course. Hitler’s Germany was an opportunistic predator; it could move quickly, change direction on a dime, and lay plans in secret. His western opponents ran democratic governments where everything moved very slowly, secrets were regularly published in the press and big foreign policy moves were telegraphed well in advance. Hitler used what he had, and took advantage of his supreme personal power and control of the press to make Germany a much more aggressive and dynamic international actor than his lazy, contented and slow-moving opponents. Hitler could move at speed that made his rivals’ heads spin and frequently left them gaping in flat footed amazement at his quick strikes and rapid changes of course. He knew that surprise was one of his chief advantages and he used it to the hilt.
President Putin is not a stupid man. He knows that Russia faces stronger but slower moving opponents. He knows that deception, misdirection and surprise are among his most effective tools. We must expect him to use them often and to use them well. The west ended up looking utterly flatfooted and clueless as Putin moved into Crimea just as it did in 2008 when he moved into Georgia. That is the way Russia wants it.
This use of surprise, by the way, can be very far reaching. Hitler stunned the west by signing his famous non-aggression pact with Stalin, dividing eastern Europe between them. He then surprised Stalin again by attacking him in June of 1941. For people like Hitler and, in his very different way, Putin, blitzkrieg is a tactic for diplomacy and not just for war. We would be total fools not to suppose that Putin and his closest associates are looking for game changing diplomatic moves that would spoil America’s day.
Putin is using another one of Hitler’s favorite methods in Ukraine: turn your ethnic minorities in other countries into a Trojan horse— whether or not that is what those people actually want. Hitler did this with the Sudeten Germans in what is now the Czech Republic. The FT again:
Russia said on Saturday it was looking at requests for help from civilians in Ukraine, a statement which appeared to resemble those made two weeks ago in justification of its military incursion into Crimea.
“Russia is receiving numerous requests for protecting civilians. These requests will be given consideration,” the foreign ministry said. It added a string of claims that Ukrainian militants and mercenaries were threatening civilians, which could not immediately be verified.
There is nothing here that couldn’t have been taken directly out of Adolf’s Guide for Aspiring Hegemons.
Using another instrument that Putin shares with the German, a well tuned, centrally controlled and well funded state propaganda machine with international outlets, you then elevate the ‘mistreatment’ of that minority into a major issue. You scream and rant and rave, demand redress, and fill the airwaves with your warnings and your laments. You can always organize at least some of them to march and wave flags. When the other country’s police (or, better yet, angry counter-mobs) respond, you raise the temperature. Oppression! Murder! Genocide!
It worked for Hitler in the Munich crisis, and it is exactly the card Putin has played in Crimea and perhaps will play in other parts of the ex-Soviet space. After using the German minority in Czechoslovakia as a tool, Hitler gave the west a brief respite (more soft talk about peace) before turning to his next target: Poland. Once again, it was the German minority that gave him his opening. Polish thugs were trampling on their rights. Their protests were being crushed by heartless barbarians. Babies were being ripped from their mothers’ wombs by bloodthirsty Polish mobs. Whatever.
Again, it was Hitler’s propagandist Goebbels who taught the world an important lesson: when you lie, go big. This has been exactly what Russian propaganda over Ukraine has done. And if it works here, we can expect to see the same kind of thing tried elsewhere: in Central Asia, perhaps, when Putin decides the time has come to reunite the Russian motherland with the gas and oil wealth of countries like Kazakhstan. The Baltic republics, already familiar with Putin’s play of the Russian minority card, are braced for more trouble, and well they should be.
This is why the latest news from eastern Ukraine is so ominous: in the Adolf Hitler playbook, stirring up ethnic strife is something you do when the time has come to intervene. If Putin’s plan was to send troops into eastern Ukraine, we’d see Russian speakers in the streets protesting, sometimes with violence, and demanding ‘protection’. “Defending Russian nationals from fascist mobs when the Ukrainian government is unwilling or unable to do so” is just the kind of fig leaf Putin needs; as of today, he’s got it.
But when dealing with a calculating player who has read people like Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, studied under the grandmasters of the old KGB and knows how Adolf did it, we shouldn’t be too confident that we know what’s coming next. Deception, disinformation and disguise are vital to Putin’s kind of foreign policy, and it is very much in his interest to keep us off-base and baffled as much as he can. With that caveat, it’s worth noting what the three likeliest alternatives are.
First, the violence could be a preparation for an invasion that has already been decided in the Kremlin. This is unlikely to happen before the referendum in Crimea — Russia won’t want to upstage its own propaganda spectacle. Let a thumping majority (however acquired) vote for annexation, and then more violence takes place in eastern Ukraine… then boom. More riots, more incursions, more referendums.
Second, it could be that no invasion is intended or wanted at this time. Instead, Russia wants both to demonstrate its power to create crises inside Ukraine and to make the country as ungovernable as possible. A number of western commentators have been consoling themselves with the ‘Putin is trapped’ approach to Ukraine, but looking at the west’s situation the trap may be on our end. We are the ones who now have some kind of obligation to keep Ukraine’s corrupt and incompetent government alive and to keep its chronically lame, oligarch-dominated economy from withering away. We are also the ones who will be blamed if (when) economic miracles fail to occur.
We can also be blackmailed. Are we going to pay Gazprom’s outrageous gas bill for Ukraine, or are we going to let the country freeze in the dark next winter? If the West has taken on the role of paymaster and protector of the Ukrainian state, do we expect Putin to make this any cheaper or easier for us?
Meanwhile, unrest in the east can make Ukraine a much, much more expensive and difficult client for the west — and also increases the nervousness in the Baltic republics and former Warsaw Pact countries. Putin may think that a destabilized Ukraine where he can stir the pot at will is a pretty good thing for Russia — and he can quietly wait to see what develops as he plans his next steps. If nothing else, Ukraine’s is going to make people in places like Kazakhstan pay a lot more attention to Russia’s wishes than before. Let Ukraine simmer and flip your Soviet reconstruction focus to the east. The west didn’t lift a finger to protect Ukraine; the Kazhaks and others will feel very much left alone in a small room with a large bear.
Third, it’s also possible that Moscow is moving opportunistically. It may not have a long term plan, but sees the advantages of stirring things up in eastern Ukraine. Scaring Ukraine and the west is a good thing in itself. And who knows— it may turn out that further opportunities develop.
Any one of these scenarios is plausible, and any one of them offers Putin the prospect of a clear, prestige-enhancing win. The second two look like the smartest plays from the Kremlin’s point of view, but the west would be foolish to assume that Putin calculates the odds in the same ways we do.
We must hope that western leaders finally wake up to the nature of the opponent they face. Putin, I say again, is no Hitler. He isn’t as powerful as Hitler and he isn’t as evil as Hitler. Compared to Stalin, he’s a choirboy. But he’s a smart and able adversary of the west who believes that world politics is a zero sum game. He believes that Russia can only survive and thrive by reconstituting a great power between China and Germany, and that this can only be done by rolling back the post-Cold War expansion of western power across the old Warsaw Pact and the former Soviet Union.
Dealing effectively with Putin doesn’t require a new Cold War. American foreign policy doesn’t have to become, and shouldn’t become Russo-centric. But unless we take counsel with our allies and put the kind of intellectual and political energy into blocking Russian moves that Russia puts into thinking them through and making them, the world will become a significantly uglier place and it will be much harder to get some important things done.
The biggest cost to Putin of his Crimean adventure may not be the western sanctions, but rather the way that his Ukraine policy makes it harder for him to go back to gulling a complacent west. Not that he won’t try. Once he’s taken as much of Ukraine as he thinks he can get at this point, he is likely to launch a peace offensive, aiming to separate the Germans and the other Europeans from the Americans and let time weaken the outrage that now rolls through the west. Unfortunately, there will be people who are ready to be gulled yet again, but the quick vision the world has seen of the real nature of Putin’s policy and his ruthlessness will make at least some of the people harder to fool once more.
Comment by Peter M Todebush — March 16, 2014 @ 8:07 am
Published on March 15, 2014
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD – ADVANTAGE: RUSSIA
Putin: The Mask Comes Off, But Will Anybody Care?
Russia appears to be deliberately fomenting more violence in Ukraine, possibly in advance of an invasion. Putin is no Hitler, but Hitler would recognize his moves.
Violence is spreading throughout Ukraine on a course that looks exactly like conscious and deliberate Russian preparation for a wider war. Without telepathic powers it is impossible to know what is going on in the mind of the one man who can control developments in Ukraine, but overnight the chances of additional Russian military action against its helpless neighbor appeared to grow. On Friday in Donetsk conflict between pro-and anti-Russia groups left one man dead and 26 injured. Now in Kharkiv two more are dead in a similar way as clashes spread through the city. Pro-Russian groups, including it is said ‘rent-a-mob’ demonstrators bussed in from Russia, seem to be behind the violence.
Moreover, there were scattered signs today that the next step is already upon us. Unconfirmed reports from local sources claim Russian troops landed in the Kherson region today—and were repelled. The story is starting to get picked up by news agencies, but rumors run rife at times like this. If true, it would mark the first direct military action by Russia outside Crimea and would be a major escalation of the most serious European international crisis since the Yugoslav wars. Here’s how the FT is reporting it:
Ukraine’s foreign ministry described the events as a “military invasion by Russia” and called on Russia to “immediately withdraw its military forces from the territory of Ukraine”.
“Ukraine reserves the right to use all necessary measures to stop the military invasion by Russia,” the ministry added in a statement.
If that is what is happening, and the preponderance of evidence suggests that it is, Putin appears to be following the Adolf Hitler strategy manual pretty much to the letter.
Putin is no Hitler, and from the standpoint of power he isn’t even a Brezhnev. Still, his actions in Ukraine have been following Adolf’s playbook pretty closely. Adolf wanted to tear up the Treaty of Versailles. Putin is attempting to rip up the post-Cold War settlement in Europe and Central Asia. Like Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia is much weaker than its opponents, so it can’t achieve its goal through a direct military challenge against its primary enemies. Like Hitler’s Germany, Putin’s Russia must be clever until it grows strong, and it must play on its enemies’ hesitations, divisions and weaknesses until and unless it is ready to take them on head to head.
“Keep them guessing” is rule number one. Nobody was better than Hitler at playing with his enemies’ minds. For every warlike speech, there was an invitation to a peace conference. For every uncompromising demand, there was a promise of lasting tranquillity once that last little troublesome problem had been negotiated safely away. He was so successful at it (and Stalin, too was good at this game) in part because his opponents so desperately wanted peace. French politicians like Leon Blum and British leaders like Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were as hungry for peace (it was the Depression after all, and both countries had suffered immensely in World War One) as Barack Obama and Francois Hollande are today. Commendably and properly, they wanted to fix their domestic economies, create a more just society at home, repair their infrastructure and cut their defense budgets. They were not in the mood for trouble overseas, and so a cold blooded con man found them to be easy marks.
Putin has played on western illusions very successfully for a very long time. Remember all those ‘experts’ (many, alas, in government service) who thought that the Medvedev presidency represented a real shift in Russian politics? How shocked and disappointed people were when Putin stepped smoothly back into the top job? It is the oldest trick in the book: bait and switch. Humiliate John Kerry by making him cool his heels for three hours in the Kremlin, and then dangle hope of a cooperative relationship. Hold out a ‘helping hand’ when the Obama administration has gotten itself into an embarrassing predicament over its Syria red line, then kick Uncle Sam in the teeth at Geneva.
There was never a good reason to believe any of Putin’s talk of peace and cooperation. After the Cold War, America and its allies jammed NATO expansion down Russia’s throat. The European Union worked to expand right up to Russia’s frontiers while making it crystal clear that Russia could never be a member. Putin is no Hitler, but neither is he a Konrad Adenauer, determined to accept defeat and to cooperate wholeheartedly in building his country’s future within the lines drawn by the victors. And the US made Adenauer’s Germany a much better offer than it made Putin’s Russia. You would have to be living in what the Germans call das Wolkenkuckkucksheim,cloud-cuckoo-land, to believe that a man like Putin would passively accept the post-Cold War order.
But cloud-cuckoo-land is exactly where many westerners live, in a resolutely post-historical world where foreign policy is about development, human rights, non-proliferation and trade. If Putin tells us he lives there too, we are hungry to believe him. We don’t want to live in a difficult world. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers were having a fabulous time in cloud-cuckoo-land back in the 1930s and many of them clung to their illusions until the last possible moment. We want to live in a stable and secure world order but we don’t want to make the sacrifices world order requires—and so we will gaze deeply into the eyes of anybody who is willing to tell us what we most want to hear.
Hitler’s situation was like Putin’s in another way. Like Russia now, Germany in the 1930s was weaker than its western opponents, but its leader had much more power to change course. Hitler’s Germany was an opportunistic predator; it could move quickly, change direction on a dime, and lay plans in secret. His western opponents ran democratic governments where everything moved very slowly, secrets were regularly published in the press and big foreign policy moves were telegraphed well in advance. Hitler used what he had, and took advantage of his supreme personal power and control of the press to make Germany a much more aggressive and dynamic international actor than his lazy, contented and slow-moving opponents. Hitler could move at speed that made his rivals’ heads spin and frequently left them gaping in flat footed amazement at his quick strikes and rapid changes of course. He knew that surprise was one of his chief advantages and he used it to the hilt.
President Putin is not a stupid man. He knows that Russia faces stronger but slower moving opponents. He knows that deception, misdirection and surprise are among his most effective tools. We must expect him to use them often and to use them well. The west ended up looking utterly flatfooted and clueless as Putin moved into Crimea just as it did in 2008 when he moved into Georgia. That is the way Russia wants it.
This use of surprise, by the way, can be very far reaching. Hitler stunned the west by signing his famous non-aggression pact with Stalin, dividing eastern Europe between them. He then surprised Stalin again by attacking him in June of 1941. For people like Hitler and, in his very different way, Putin, blitzkrieg is a tactic for diplomacy and not just for war. We would be total fools not to suppose that Putin and his closest associates are looking for game changing diplomatic moves that would spoil America’s day.
Putin is using another one of Hitler’s favorite methods in Ukraine: turn your ethnic minorities in other countries into a Trojan horse— whether or not that is what those people actually want. Hitler did this with the Sudeten Germans in what is now the Czech Republic. The FT again:
Russia said on Saturday it was looking at requests for help from civilians in Ukraine, a statement which appeared to resemble those made two weeks ago in justification of its military incursion into Crimea.
“Russia is receiving numerous requests for protecting civilians. These requests will be given consideration,” the foreign ministry said. It added a string of claims that Ukrainian militants and mercenaries were threatening civilians, which could not immediately be verified.
There is nothing here that couldn’t have been taken directly out of Adolf’s Guide for Aspiring Hegemons.
Using another instrument that Putin shares with the German, a well tuned, centrally controlled and well funded state propaganda machine with international outlets, you then elevate the ‘mistreatment’ of that minority into a major issue. You scream and rant and rave, demand redress, and fill the airwaves with your warnings and your laments. You can always organize at least some of them to march and wave flags. When the other country’s police (or, better yet, angry counter-mobs) respond, you raise the temperature. Oppression! Murder! Genocide!
It worked for Hitler in the Munich crisis, and it is exactly the card Putin has played in Crimea and perhaps will play in other parts of the ex-Soviet space. After using the German minority in Czechoslovakia as a tool, Hitler gave the west a brief respite (more soft talk about peace) before turning to his next target: Poland. Once again, it was the German minority that gave him his opening. Polish thugs were trampling on their rights. Their protests were being crushed by heartless barbarians. Babies were being ripped from their mothers’ wombs by bloodthirsty Polish mobs. Whatever.
Again, it was Hitler’s propagandist Goebbels who taught the world an important lesson: when you lie, go big. This has been exactly what Russian propaganda over Ukraine has done. And if it works here, we can expect to see the same kind of thing tried elsewhere: in Central Asia, perhaps, when Putin decides the time has come to reunite the Russian motherland with the gas and oil wealth of countries like Kazakhstan. The Baltic republics, already familiar with Putin’s play of the Russian minority card, are braced for more trouble, and well they should be.
This is why the latest news from eastern Ukraine is so ominous: in the Adolf Hitler playbook, stirring up ethnic strife is something you do when the time has come to intervene. If Putin’s plan was to send troops into eastern Ukraine, we’d see Russian speakers in the streets protesting, sometimes with violence, and demanding ‘protection’. “Defending Russian nationals from fascist mobs when the Ukrainian government is unwilling or unable to do so” is just the kind of fig leaf Putin needs; as of today, he’s got it.
But when dealing with a calculating player who has read people like Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, studied under the grandmasters of the old KGB and knows how Adolf did it, we shouldn’t be too confident that we know what’s coming next. Deception, disinformation and disguise are vital to Putin’s kind of foreign policy, and it is very much in his interest to keep us off-base and baffled as much as he can. With that caveat, it’s worth noting what the three likeliest alternatives are.
First, the violence could be a preparation for an invasion that has already been decided in the Kremlin. This is unlikely to happen before the referendum in Crimea — Russia won’t want to upstage its own propaganda spectacle. Let a thumping majority (however acquired) vote for annexation, and then more violence takes place in eastern Ukraine… then boom. More riots, more incursions, more referendums.
Second, it could be that no invasion is intended or wanted at this time. Instead, Russia wants both to demonstrate its power to create crises inside Ukraine and to make the country as ungovernable as possible. A number of western commentators have been consoling themselves with the ‘Putin is trapped’ approach to Ukraine, but looking at the west’s situation the trap may be on our end. We are the ones who now have some kind of obligation to keep Ukraine’s corrupt and incompetent government alive and to keep its chronically lame, oligarch-dominated economy from withering away. We are also the ones who will be blamed if (when) economic miracles fail to occur.
We can also be blackmailed. Are we going to pay Gazprom’s outrageous gas bill for Ukraine, or are we going to let the country freeze in the dark next winter? If the West has taken on the role of paymaster and protector of the Ukrainian state, do we expect Putin to make this any cheaper or easier for us?
Meanwhile, unrest in the east can make Ukraine a much, much more expensive and difficult client for the west — and also increases the nervousness in the Baltic republics and former Warsaw Pact countries. Putin may think that a destabilized Ukraine where he can stir the pot at will is a pretty good thing for Russia — and he can quietly wait to see what develops as he plans his next steps. If nothing else, Ukraine’s is going to make people in places like Kazakhstan pay a lot more attention to Russia’s wishes than before. Let Ukraine simmer and flip your Soviet reconstruction focus to the east. The west didn’t lift a finger to protect Ukraine; the Kazhaks and others will feel very much left alone in a small room with a large bear.
Third, it’s also possible that Moscow is moving opportunistically. It may not have a long term plan, but sees the advantages of stirring things up in eastern Ukraine. Scaring Ukraine and the west is a good thing in itself. And who knows— it may turn out that further opportunities develop.
Any one of these scenarios is plausible, and any one of them offers Putin the prospect of a clear, prestige-enhancing win. The second two look like the smartest plays from the Kremlin’s point of view, but the west would be foolish to assume that Putin calculates the odds in the same ways we do.
We must hope that western leaders finally wake up to the nature of the opponent they face. Putin, I say again, is no Hitler. He isn’t as powerful as Hitler and he isn’t as evil as Hitler. Compared to Stalin, he’s a choirboy. But he’s a smart and able adversary of the west who believes that world politics is a zero sum game. He believes that Russia can only survive and thrive by reconstituting a great power between China and Germany, and that this can only be done by rolling back the post-Cold War expansion of western power across the old Warsaw Pact and the former Soviet Union.
Dealing effectively with Putin doesn’t require a new Cold War. American foreign policy doesn’t have to become, and shouldn’t become Russo-centric. But unless we take counsel with our allies and put the kind of intellectual and political energy into blocking Russian moves that Russia puts into thinking them through and making them, the world will become a significantly uglier place and it will be much harder to get some important things done.
The biggest cost to Putin of his Crimean adventure may not be the western sanctions, but rather the way that his Ukraine policy makes it harder for him to go back to gulling a complacent west. Not that he won’t try. Once he’s taken as much of Ukraine as he thinks he can get at this point, he is likely to launch a peace offensive, aiming to separate the Germans and the other Europeans from the Americans and let time weaken the outrage that now rolls through the west. Unfortunately, there will be people who are ready to be gulled yet again, but the quick vision the world has seen of the real nature of Putin’s policy and his ruthlessness will make at least some of the people harder to fool once more.
Comment by Peter M Todebush — March 16, 2014 @ 8:07 am
http://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right
How the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum
In the new Ukrainian government politicians linked to the far-right have taken posts from deputy prime minister to head of defence. We profile the nationalists filling the power vacuum.
The man facing down Putin’s aggression as secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council is Andriy Parubiy. He oversees national security for the nation having previously served as security commandant during the anti-government protests in Kiev.
Parubiy was the founder of the Social National Party of Ukraine, a fascist party styled on Hitler’s Nazis, with membership restricted to ethnic Ukrainians.
The Social National Party would go on to become Svoboda, the far-right nationalist party whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok was one of the three most high profile leaders of the Euromaidan protests – negotiating directly with the Yanukovych regime.
Overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector – a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters, who previously boasted they were ready for armed struggle to free Ukraine.
Inside Right Sector was an alliance of hardline nationalist groups including Patriot of Ukraine and the paramilitary group UNA-UNSO, who have fought against Russian troops in Chechnya and Moldova. Their members paraded in balaclavas and wore uniforms bearing far-right insignia, including the wolfsangel.
In 1989 he joined the moderate nationalist group People’s Movement of Ukraine but from there went on to join the right wing Trizub organisation in 1994 and has been its leader since 2005, preaching and preparing for a Ukrainian “national revolution”.
He told Time magazine in a recent interview: “Russia has pursued a systematic, targeted policy of subjugation toward Ukraine…So of course we will prepare for a conflict with them”.
The new Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych is a member of the far-right Svoboda party, which the World Jewish Congress called on the EU to consider banning last year along with Greece’s Golden Dawn.
The party, which has long called for a “national revolution” in Ukraine, has endured a long march from relative obscurity in the early 90s. Their declaration that Ukraine is controlled by a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” has raised fears for the safety of the country’s Jewish population.
Svoboda now controls the ecology and agricultural ministry with Andriy Mokhnyk, the deputy head of Svoboda, running ecology and Ihor Shvaika as agriculture minister.
Associate professor at Lund University Pers Anders Rudling, an expert on Ukrainian extremists, told Channel 4 News that there are other ministers who are also closely in the orbit of Svoboda.
“Two weeks ago I could never have predicted this. A neo-fascist party like Svoboda getting the deputy prime minister position is news in its own right.
“There are seven ministers with links to the extreme right now. It began with Svoboda getting 10 per cent of the vote in the last election, it is certainly a concern in the long run.”
Mr Rudling warned that Europe should pay greater attention to the politics of the new regime, while warning that this in no way endorsed the actions of Russia.
“It doesn’t help Ukraine to be selective and ignore this problem. Russia is using this to legitimise their unjustified aggression, I am not backing up that aggression by speaking about the rise of Svoboda.”
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 1:39 pm
AP wrote:
> Vladislav seems to have a lot of contempt for Ukraine’s Jewish leaders and their opinions.
That’s a lie. There are many different Jewish organizations in Ukraine (even though few Jews). Some are headed by former West Ukrainians who don’t mind Social-Nationalists, some – otherwise. As the traditional saying goes, for every 2 Jews, there are at least 3 opposing political parties.
I am not familiar with the personal details of Jewish leaders in Ukraine, but I certainly support most American and international Jewish organizations. And here is their position on the people who are now in charge of Ukraine:
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/World-Jewish-Congress-urges-ban-on-neo-Nazi-parties-312395
WJC calls for European ban on ‘neo-Nazi parties
– European governments should consider a ban on neo-Nazi parties, the World Jewish Congress announced on Tuesday, the final day of the global Jewish umbrella organization’s 14th plenary assembly. Delegates representing Jewish communities in more than 100 countries approved the resolution calling for the ban due to the rise of far-right nationalist movements in Greece, Hungary and the Ukraine.
The WJC noted what it termed the “lack of appropriate and energetic action on the part of German democrats that led to the rise to power of the Nazis,” as a motivating factor for the resolution urging “parliaments and governments in countries in Europe to enact and enforce legislation, against threats of violence, racist hate and insults and the denial of the Holocaust.”
Parties like the Greek Golden Dawn, Ukrainian Svoboda and Hungarian Jobbik shocked European Jews as they gained unprecedented representation in their respective countries’ parliaments.
——————————–
How about you, AP? Do you support the World Jewish Congress in calling to ban Svoboda (or at least reduce its control over the new Ukrainian government and the number of seats that they and their allies have in it), or do you have “contempt for the world’s Jewish leaders and their opinions”?
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 1:57 pm
Andrew,
> note most of the article points at Yanukovich government or Russian involvement.
Really? Provide the counts.
And what evidence is there that it was the “Russian government” that hired these snipers? What would be their motivation and logic?
> BTW, both Kuban and Tuman oblasts…
There no such thing as “Tuman oblast”. “Tuman” means “fog” in Russian. Do you mean “Tyumen”, oh “Russia-expert” who claims to have lived in Russia for many years.
> … are over 70% ethnic Ukrainians,
1. Provide citations for these statistics.
2. What difference does it make what their ancestral ethnicity is? The official definition of a Russian, originated with the great encyclopedist Vladimir Dahl, is: “A Russian is somebody who thinks in Russian and who considers himself a Russian”. The vast majority of the ethnic Ukrainians for many centuries living in Kuban, Tyumen, Moscow and the rest of Russia and Crimea are thus Russians.
> it looks like they are now agitating to join Ukraine
1. Which large political groups are doing this?
2. I would wholeheartedly welcome free and binding referendae in Kuban, Tyumen, Moscow and all other regions with large ethnic Ukrainian population on the question as to whether these regions want to remain in Russia or join fascist Ukraine. Which regions do you expect to vote to join Ukraine, oh our “Russia-expert”? Tyumen? Kuban?
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 2:40 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyumen_Oblast#Demographics
Ethnic groups
Russians:(73.3%)
Tatars:(7.5%)
Ukrainians:(4.9%)
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 2:46 pm
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/16/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA1Q1E820140316
With over half the votes counted, 95.5% had chosen the option of annexation by Moscow, two hours after polls closed. Turnout was 83 percent – a high figure given that many who opposed the move had said they would boycott the vote.
Comment by vladislav — March 16, 2014 @ 3:30 pm
Vladislav, you call for citations when you already posted the article I linked to in full? Your low level of intelligence and reading comprehension is so sad to see. Your lack of basic humanity must make your social life hell as well.
But in order to assist with your severely impaired intellect….
‘Ukrainian authorities are investigating the Feb. 18-20 bloodbath, and they have shifted their focus from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — pursuing the theory that the Kremlin was intent on sowing mayhem as a pretext for military incursion. Russia suggests that the snipers were organized by opposition leaders trying to whip up local and international outrage against the government.
The government’s new health minister — a doctor who helped oversee medical treatment for casualties during the protests — told The Associated Press that the similarity of bullet wounds suffered by opposition victims and police indicates the shooters were trying to stoke tensions on both sides and spark even greater violence, with the goal of toppling Yanukovych.
“I think it wasn’t just a part of the old regime that (plotted the provocation), but it was also the work of Russian special forces who served and maintained the ideology of the (old) regime,” Health Minister Oleh Musiy said.
This much is known: Snipers firing powerful rifles from rooftops and windows shot scores of people in the heart of Kiev. Some victims were opposition protesters, but many were civilian bystanders clearly not involved in the clashes. Among the dead were medics, as well as police officers. A majority of the more than 100 people who died in the violence were shot by snipers; hundreds were also injured by the gunfire and other street fighting.
On Tuesday, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov signaled that investigators may be turning their attention away from Ukrainian responsibility.
“I can say only one thing: the key factor in this uprising, that spilled blood in Kiev and that turned the country upside down and shocked it, was a third force,” Avakov was quoted as saying by Interfax. “And this force was not Ukrainian.”
The next day, Prosecutor General Oleh Makhntisky said officials have found sniper bullet casings on the National Bank building a few hundred yards up the hill from Maidan, the square that became the center and the symbol of the anti-government protests. He said investigators have confirmed snipers also fired from the Hotel Ukraine, directly on the square, and the House of Chimeras, an official residence next to the presidential administration building.
Deputy Interior Minister Mykola Velichkovych told AP that commanders of sniper units overseen by the Berkut police force and other Interior Ministry subdivisions have denied to investigators that they had given orders to shoot anyone.
Musiy, who spent more than two months organizing medical units on Maidan, said that on Feb. 20 roughly 40 civilians and protesters were brought with fatal bullet wounds to the makeshift hospital set up near the square. But he said medics also treated three police officers whose wounds were identical.
Forensic evidence, in particular the similarity of the bullet wounds, led him and others to conclude that snipers were targeting both sides of the standoff at Maidan — and that the shootings were intended to generate a wave of revulsion so strong that it would topple Yanukovych and also justify a Russian invasion.’
Don’t bother asking for a link retard….
Comment by Andrew — March 16, 2014 @ 8:46 pm
Andrew, you are re-posting the text that is a subset of what’s I posted earlier. What’s the point of that? To delete the passages that you don’t like?
Let us consider the three possible scenarios outlines in that yahoo article:
1. The opposition hired/sent those snipers.
2. Yanukovich’s government hired/sent those snipers.
and (amazingly!):
3. Putin hired/sent those snipers in order to get Yanukovich impeached; fascists come to power; the Rada cancel the rights of the speakers of regional Russian, Romanian and Hungarian speakers; and have a pretext to re-annex Crimea.
Let me ask you the follow-up questions to these scenarios. please answer if you want our discussion on this topic to continue:
2. What hard evidence did the Rada have to blame Yanukovich’s government for these snipers and to impeach him?
3. If Putin did it, how in the world could he predict all these events that would happen? And what hard evidence is there that he hired them?
Comment by vladislav — March 17, 2014 @ 12:55 am
somebody yanked 105 billion out of the Fed
http://qz.com/188160/and-now-it-looks-like-russia-may-be-messing-with-the-fed/
Comment by elmer — March 17, 2014 @ 7:25 am
@ vladislav
AP, could you please quote a passage from any of my posts in which I claimed that the new government of Turchinov is “Nazi”?
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/?p=8171#sthash.ASQkL9j3.dpuf
You wrote: “What a the lay listener doesn’t grasp is something much more sinister is the fact that one of the tree is a neo-nazi leader of the Socialist-National Party of Ukraine(not to confuse with the National-Socialist Party of Germany whose name it borrowed) Tyanibok, who praised the extermination of Jews, Poles and Russians during the WWII. This Socialist-National Party is of course a key player in yesterdays provocations of bloodshed on Maydan.
In other words, the US government is happy to work towards spreading Nazism and promoting Nazis into leadership positions as long as this spites the Russian Federation.”
Turchinov’s government includes 4 Svoboda members – whom you consider to be Nazis.
Why are you and so many others here so preoccupied with what Ukrainian Jews think?
Because they ultimately are the judges about Jewish experiences in Ukraine. Unless you have contempt for the opinions of Ukraine’s own Jews.
Look at the number of hate crimes in Ukraine over the years, compiled by the organization that your own beloved Josef Zissels:
http://www.eajc.org/page451
You will see that this number skyrocketed in the last years of Yuscvehnko’s rule, after he made OUN/UPA mass murderers “Heroes of Ukraine” and even glorified OUN’s second in command, Mr. Yaroslav “I am going to exterminate Jews the way the Germans are doing” Stetsko. It was 88 in 2007 and 84 in 2008. In the last 2 years of Yanukovich’s rule the number of hate crimes dropped to 19 in 2012 and 18 in 2013.
Rather selective in your numbers, aren’t you?
In 2006 (Yushchenko president) total hate crimes were 14. Lower than in any year of Yanukovich’s presidency. They spiked in 2007 and 2008 (88 and 84) but in 2009 dropped to 37. They continued to drop under Yanukovich’s presidency, spiked up to 54 in 2011 (funny how you forgot that number) but never got down to Yushchenko’s 2006 figure. The downward trend began under Yushchenko.
Why does the USA make so much noise about Ahmadinijad’s antisemitism, but Tyahnybok’s antisemitism is viewed as perfectly acceptable
Ahmadihijad threatened to nuke Israel; Tiahnybok merely opposes Jewish and Russian oligarchs controlling Ukraine, and praised people fighting against Jewish partisans, and uses the traditional non-Russian and pre-Russian word for “Jew” when speaking his own language. Tiahnybok’s antisemitism is Jesse Jackson-like mild, Ahmadinijad’s is genocidal. You don’t see the difference?
“How about you, AP? Do you support the World Jewish Congress in calling to ban Svoboda (or at least reduce its control over the new Ukrainian government and the number of seats that they and their allies have in it), or do you have “contempt for the world’s Jewish leaders and their opinions”
World Jewish leaders not in Ukraine are not familiar with Ukraine, as local Ukrainian Jewish leaders are. Local Ukrainian Jewish leaders state that there is no increase in antisemitism under the new government and that attributing antisemitism to it are lies and smears. In your contempt for Ukraine’s Jewish leaders you ignore such statements.
http://www.ejpress.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48269&catid=11
Vadim Rabinovitch : I have been in Kiev since the very first day of the current unrest and have been following the situation closely, both on the national and local levels. I have been in regular contact with regional Jewish community leaders, representatives of the government, and law enforcement agencies. As a result of these consultations, I can confirm that there is no evidence whatsoever of a rise in anti-Semitism or xenophobia in the country as a result of the protests. Reports in the international media which claim that the Ukrainian protest movement has led to a surge in anti-Semitism are simply lies and examples of incitement which do great damage to the reputation of the Jewish community in Ukraine. Sadly, it seems that people outside Ukraine who are not familiar with the political situation in the country are seeking to make political capital out of the current upheavals.
Comment by AP — March 17, 2014 @ 8:34 am
Beautiful example of the rogue’s gallery who served as observers of the referendum in Crimea:
http://anton-shekhovtsov.blogspot.de/2014/03/pro-russian-extremists-observe.html#more
Comment by AP — March 17, 2014 @ 9:34 am
Vladislav, I posted the parts where it talked about the possibility of Russian involvement. No need to re post the whole thing.
I know you are not so good history wise, but the Russian government, as well as Russian culture, have little or no consideration for human rights, civilian lives, laws either local or international.
It is quite possible the Russians wanted to take advantage of any overthrow or removal of Yanukovich.
After all they moved to depose the Crimean parliament as soon as Yanukovich ran from Kiev, forcing the previous PM of the autonomous region to resign at gun point.
Comment by Andrew — March 17, 2014 @ 10:16 am
> It is quite possible the Russians wanted to take advantage of any overthrow or removal of Yanukovich.
The overthrow or removal of Yanukovich was NOT beneficial to Putin. Before the overthrow all of Ukraine was joining Russia’s Custom’s Union. Now only tiny Crimea is.
And how could Putin expect that if his, Putin’s snipers shot and killed 100 demonstrators, Yanukovich would be impeached? On the contrary, you would expect that such mass shootings would scare Maidan, disband it and successfully get rid of the demonstrations, wouldn’t you?
And even if Putin could predict that Yanukovich would be impeached, so what? Had Yanukovich been impeached in the constitutional way, there would have been no pretext for Putin to re-annex Crimea. Are you suggesting that Putin knew that the Rada would remove Yanukovich in an illegal way? How?
Comment by vladislav — March 17, 2014 @ 2:50 pm
“The overthrow or removal of Yanukovich was NOT beneficial to Putin. Before the overthrow all of Ukraine was joining Russia’s Custom’s Union. Now only tiny Crimea is.
The action that sparked the overthrow (which would not have happened if not for long-term factors such as Yanukovich’s total usurpation of power preventing a legal expression of the majority of voters’ will, his epic corruption and mismanagement, etc.) was his turning Ukraine towards the Custom’s Union. No Custom’s Union, no overthrow in late 2013/early 2014. So Ukraine as a whole joining the Custom’s Union was probably not happening. However, as a consolation prize to having lost Ukraine in its entirety, thanks to Ukraine’s chaos, Putin at least got Crimea. In so doing, Russia has for at least a generation if not permanently lost Kiev and central Ukraine (these areas were solidly pro-Western but are now closer to Galicia than before and are totally gone), with anti-Russia sentiment probably spreading into areas such as Dnipropetrovsk (whose population mostly identify as Ukrainians but have traditionally been friendly to Russia). Before one could be pro-Ukrainian state and pro-Russian state. This position has become much more difficult.
The new swing regions are Odessa and Kharkiv.
Comment by AP — March 17, 2014 @ 3:20 pm
AP, do you REALLY think that it is possible that Putin anticipated all these events and sent the snipers to shoot at the Maidan?
What do you think of this news:
“Ukrainian authorities are investigating the Feb. 18-20 bloodbath, and they have shifted their focus from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — pursuing the theory that the Kremlin was intent on sowing mayhem as a pretext for military incursion.”
So, they admit that at first, their “focus” was to try to frame Yanukovich. But now that Yanukovich is irrelevant while Putin is the enemy, they are now trying to frame Putin. Why wouldn’t they even admit that it is quite possible that these snipers were hired by somebody in the opposition? And why do they refuse to give their “focus” to the investigation of this possibility? Sounds like a cheap political hatchet job, doesn’t it?
Think how bizarre it is. There exists ample evidence and motive for the opposition to hire the snipers. There exists no evidence and no motive Putin to hire the snipers. Yet, the new authorities, having failed to frame Yanukovich, are now “focusing” on the “Putin” theory and not on the “opposition” theory. What kind of an “investigation” is it?
Comment by vladislav — March 17, 2014 @ 4:22 pm
AP,
> Beautiful example of the rogue’s gallery who served as observers of the referendum in Crimea
Why do you ask? Did anybody complain (like many did after Ukraine’s elections and after Putin’s and Yeltsin’s elections) that there was significant fraud?
Comment by vladislav — March 17, 2014 @ 4:31 pm
“AP, do you REALLY think that it is possible that Putin anticipated all these events and sent the snipers to shoot at the Maidan
Possible, though unlikely. However he has benefited.
Ukrainian authorities are investigating the Feb. 18-20 bloodbath, and they have shifted their focus from ousted President Viktor Yanukovych’s government to Vladimir Putin’s Russia — pursuing the theory that the Kremlin was intent on sowing mayhem as a pretext for military incursion.”
So, they admit that at first, their “focus” was to try to frame Yanukovich.
Why frame? If the first focus of a murder investigation is the widower, does that mean at first the police tried to frame him? Yanukovich is a likely culprit.
But now that Yanukovich is irrelevant while Putin is the enemy, they are now trying to frame Putin. Why wouldn’t they even admit that it is quite possible that these snipers were hired by somebody in the opposition? And why do they refuse to give their “focus” to the investigation of this possibility? Sounds like a cheap political hatchet job, doesn’t it?
So has Mossad been formally investigated for 9-11? Putin for those apartment bombings? These are as likely as opposition snipers targeting its own members.
Think how bizarre it is. There exists ample evidence and motive for the opposition to hire the snipers. There exists no evidence and no motive Putin to hire the snipers.
No motive? Weakling Yanukovich didn’t want to crush the opposition with blood, Putin did the job for him. Or, things were going too peacefully, why not escalate the violence by provoking the opposition to shoot back? I am not claiming Putin did it, but he certainly had motive and means.
Comment by AP — March 17, 2014 @ 5:59 pm
Most likely culprit would be Yanukovich or the interior minister being proactive.
Comment by AP — March 17, 2014 @ 7:05 pm
Vladislav, you don’t really seem to understand anything the Russians do now do you?
Their ‘excuse’ for annexing Crimea is that the population is 58% ethnic Russians. According to Russia that is all the excuse they need. About time for the baltic republics to repatriate all those ethnic Russians as undesirable aliens. Too much of a risk.
As shown in Egypt, Syria etc, firing on the crowd often pushes protesters into full revolution. I suspect Putin wanted civil strife in Kiev, enough at least to force Yanukovich to ask for military assistance.
Furthermore, what makes you think he is stopping with Crimea?
Comment by Andrew — March 17, 2014 @ 9:14 pm
Let me make some predictions about the near future:
1. The US and EU economic sanctions will be negligible. The Russian economic retaliation – equally small.
2. Russia will pump money into Crimea like into Sochi. It will quadruple the pensions, bringing them up to the level of the rest of RF. It will build new factories and create good jobs. Crimea’s standard of living will gradually rise to that of the rest of RF.
3. A pro-Western democrat will win the Ukrainian elections in May. He will have no choice but to continue to give 33% of all ministerial jobs to right-wing extremists. He will also clam down on the rights of the residents of Novorossiya (New Russia) – i.e., East and South Ukraine that the Russian Emperor Catherine the Great annexed from Turks and their allies. But he will be cautious not to go to far.
4. Right-wing extremists will be highly unhappy and will re-escalate their demonstrations demanding full power and the persecution of pro-Russian Novorossiyans.
5. Ukraine will sign the cooperation agreement with EU that Yanukovich had refused earlier, and will join NATO.
6. Georgia will join NATO too. Abkahzia will hold a referendum on joining RF, and S. Ossetia – on joining the rest of Ossetia in RF. Both referendae will pass with at least a 98% vote. RF will recognize both and re-accept these two republics.
7. The EU and NATO conditions that Ukraine must immediately stop producing its Soviet-era aerospace, military and all other industrial standards, will come into power, and Ukriane will be forced to buy all its aerospace, military and high-tech equipment from NATO countries, giving some boost to EU and US economies. This will cause total economic collapse of the economies of Novorossiya and a near-collapse of Kiev’s economies. Agricultural and welfare-based economy of West Ukraine that is currently living off of taxing Kiev and East Ukraine, will feel huge economic pain.
8. Ukraine and RF will impose bans on mutual exports on each other, somewhat damaging Russian economy and turning Ukraine’s economy into that of Rwanda circa 1990 and making Germany circa the Great Depression look like paradise. EU and US will come to the rescue by giving Ukraine loans worth about $20 billion ($500 per Ukrainian capita) and imposing draconian measure on Ukraine’s pensions, civil servants’s salaries, and social programs, as promised.
9. Taking advantage of desperation, starvation and disappointment with the West’s stinginess among the Ukrainian, right-wing extremists will come to power and start massive ethnic cleansing. The world will be aghast. Even the West.
10. Novorossiya will explode in self-defence.
This will all take place over the period of next 6 to 10 years.
11. You can figure out what will happen next.
Comment by vladislav — March 18, 2014 @ 3:00 am
Funny Vladislav, the only ethnic cleansing/genocide in the FSU has been carried out by Russians…..
Transdenistr, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Chechnya et all….
Comment by Andrew — March 18, 2014 @ 6:14 am
@ Vladislav,
What is the cliche about data – no matter how good the processor, “garbage in, garbage out?” Although you are intelligent, your predictions, based on silly presumptions about western Ukrainians, Svoboda, etc. end up being quite silly themselves. I’ll offer my own. They are based on the assumption that Putin’s land grab ends with Crimea (I think there is a good 30%-40% chance that he takes more territory).
1. I agree with you here. “The US and EU economic sanctions will be negligible. The Russian economic retaliation – equally small.”
2. Russia will bring pensions and state salaries up, but the tourism industry will be wrecked (70% of Crimea’s tourists came from Ukraine). Investment will not be on the scale of Sochi. Crime and corruption will rise – have you seen “Goblin” Aksyonov’s background? Black Sea Fleet will be modernized and expanded, which will be good for Sevastopol.
3. Ukraine will compensate for the theft of Ukraine-owned industries/military equipment in Crimea by nationalizing Russia-owned factories in Ukraine.
4. A moderate becomes president of Ukraine. Hopefully, and the most likely one, will be Poroshenko. Klitschko would not be a bad choice either. Hopefully, not Tymoshenko.
5. New parliamentary elections. Svoboda and the (rebranded?) Party of Region lose. Either the moderate Western parties are able to form a government on their own without Svoboda, or Svoboda with 5% or so of the parliament will have a reduced role in the cabinet.
6. A language law in line with Western standards will be adopted. It will be a compromise between Yanukovich’s law and no status for Russian.
7. EU Association Agreement signed. The Russian invasion of Crimea has made NATO more popular (previously it would have been off the table), this may happen also.
8. Loss of Russian trade will mean some economic hardship in the east. This will be compensated with cooperation with the West, such as this: http://defense-update.com/20131108_poland-interested-ukraine-anti-tank-missiles.html Serving as supplier to the West will cushion the blow for Ukraine’s defense industry: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2011/10/13/Poland-Ukraine-good-for-defense-firms/UPI-40521318526937/ (note that some of the naval industry is in Crimea and thus lost, but the shipyards and design bureaus in Mykolayiv remain)
9. Integration with the West will enable Ukraine to grow as an outsourcing destination. Lviv is the country’s 3rd largest IT outsourcing center (first per capita). Lviv, already 3rd most educated oblast in Ukraine, with the 4th highest disposable income in Ukraine, will grow wealthier. Industries will be bought and modernized by Western companies; double the current Ukrainian salary is still about 1/4 of the current Polish salary. Parasitical laws screwing small and medium sized businesses in favor of the oligarchs will be eliminated.
10. Ease of travel will make “surplus” poor people – such as those from rural non-Lviv western Ukrainian areas – more likely to work in the west as laborers, sending money back home, further cushioning economic blows. New factories and improved economy will mean this this will not be a mass exodus, however.
11. The “Russian Idea” in Ukraine will go the way of Communism, just a generation later. Already the dividing point in Ukraine between pro-EU and pro-Customs Union is about age 50. Today, even in Donetsk the EU is very slightly more popular than the Customs Union among 18-25 year olds. In ten years places such as Dnipropetrovsk will be as solidly Ukrainophile as Kiev is now, and Kharkiv and Odessa will be strongly leaning westward.
12. In ten years Ukraine becomes a poorer version of Poland, a Poland with Belarus’ income (it currently has less than half of Belarus’ income), worst case Romania’s income – still much higher than it is now. I wonder if poor migrants from Crimea will come to Ukraine? EU membership on the horizon.
:::::::::::::::::
Ironically, if Russia invades and grabs more territory all of the above will still happen after the dust settles, with the exception of the language law. Income might eventually be more like Romania than like Belarus. Such a Ukraine will then be a very large Galicia, with 25 million people. Loss of Donbas wouldn’t be a big deal – it is a parasite – but loss of Kharkiv would be bad – it has a lot of legitimate industry and is the most highly educated region after Kiev. Russians are deluding themselves if they believe that solidly ethnic Ukrainian Dnipropetrovsk would go with Russia.
Comment by AP — March 18, 2014 @ 7:36 am
Andrew, you are conveniently forgetting your own Georgia:
http://sojcc.ru/eng_news/295.html
«Tragedy of South Ossetia. Boundless genocide». Vasso Abaev
Genocide has been committed with impunity for several years already by the authorities of the Christian Georgian republic against one of the national minorities, against Christian population of Ossetia. Monstrous cruelty of the planned extermination of the population of South Ossetia, plundering and ravaging houses, social and cultural institutions shocked everyone who heard about it from the eye-witnesses and TV programs. Neither Hilter’s criminals, nor Saddam Hussein’s brutalities in Kuwait and Kurdistan are comparable with them. Provincial center the town of Tskhinval in winter is subjected to blockade and deprived of all sources of life support: electricity, warmness, food, even water according to the classical practice of genocide: “deliberate creation of living conditions intended for full extermination of these groups” (see above). New born children freeze to death in the maternity hospital. Old people die in the Retirement home… People are subjected to all kinds of tortures and outrages….
1991
Comment by vladislav — March 18, 2014 @ 1:02 pm
There was no genocide of Ossetians in 1991 Vladislav.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991%E2%80%9392_South_Ossetia_War
Both sides blockaded towns during that 1991 to 1992 conflict.
Also note that cutting off of electricity or gas supplies during a war does not constitute genocide or ethnic cleansing.
The deliberate forcing of civilians from their homes by Russian forces and Russian led separatists, mass murder of civilians in an otganised manner, and the refusal of the right of return of refugees due to their ethnicity, along with the banning of language and deliberate destruction of towns, villages, historical, cultural, and religious monuments, are ethnic cleansing however. As carried out by Russia and it’s proxies in Transdenistr, Abkhzia, and in 2008 in South Ossetia.
Comment by Andrew — March 18, 2014 @ 10:25 pm
Vladislav, why so selective?
As Mr Abayev said, there was a very specific reason for the conflict.
Also note he wanted reconciliation between Georgians and Ossetians in one country.
‘But I wouldn’t like to be overflowed with a wave of emotions, wave of protest and indignation. I’d like to show objectiveness and peer if there were any hasty insufficiently considered actions which provoked and sharpened the confrontation. And I must recognize that they had place. I mean proclaiming the independence with orientation exceptionally on Moscow with the perspective of joining South and North Ossetia. Bent of south Ossets for their northern co-tribes is understood. But in the geo-political aspect it is mistaken. The main Caucasus spire – natural border between Georgia and Ossetia and every trial to wash it out will result in a state of permanent conflict between Ossets and Georgians.
Two years ago the editors of the radio “Svoboda” asked me to have a speech on the topic of the situation in South Ossetia. I’ll let myself to give extracts from that speech.
International conflict in South Ossetia is a tragic mistake. It is time to come to the senses to return the relation between two peoples in the way of traditional friendship. First of all with this aim it is necessary to finish with the talks about separating of South Ossetia from Georgia. None of the Georgian governments will agree with it and will be right since it’ll mean violation of the territorial integrity of Georgia. I’ll give an example for comparison. There is a national okrug of Basques on the south-west of France. These Basques have full cultural autonomy, save their language, have their own schools, keep in touch with their brothers on the Iberian Peninsula. But if they wished together with their territory to join to Spain, France would have never agreed as it would be a violation of territorial integrity of the state. The Iberian spire is the only border between France and Spain and it stays unchangeable. The same matter is with the border between South and North Ossetia, Russia and Georgia. Those who want peace between south Ossets and Georgians must reject this idea of unifying South Ossetia to the North. Those who want peace between Georgia and Russia must reject it either. This is the reality.’
Comment by Andrew — March 18, 2014 @ 11:39 pm
> There was no genocide of Ossetians in 1991 Vladislav.
Andrew, are you calling your hero, Vasilij Abayev, a liar for saying that there WAS a genocide (BTW, the second one; the first took place circa 1920) and explaining in detail why he says so?
Comment by vladislav — March 19, 2014 @ 12:23 am
Both sides blockaded each other in 1991-92.
I will also point out the the leader of the Ossetian forces in 1991-92 and later PM of South Ossetia until he and the President Chibirov were deposed by Russia and replaced by Kokoity for daring to come to an agreement with Georgia, Dmitry Sanakoyev (ethnic Ossetian), later became head of the pro Georgian administration of Georgian controlled villages north of Tskinvali. He has always maintained there was no genocide on either side during the first war. He is also highly critical of Russian led ethnic cleansing in the second war.
Comment by Andrew — March 19, 2014 @ 8:21 am
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2012-0507+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN
European Parliament resolution of 13 December 2012 on the situation in Ukraine 2012/2889(RSP))
8. Is concerned about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada; recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_presidential_election,_2014
Ukrainian presidential election, 2014
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In May 2013, Batkivshchyna (Tymoshenko and current President Turchinov), UDAR (Klitschko), and “Svoboda” (Tyahnybok) vowed to coordinate their actions during the presidential campaign, and they promised “to support the candidate from among these parties who wins a place in the run-off election.[4] In case the election format changes to a single round, the three parties have vowed to agree on a single candidate.[4]
Comment by vladislav — March 20, 2014 @ 3:03 am