We’re Sorry

Exclusive: Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland engineered Ukraine's "authorities change" in early 2014 without weighing the likely anarchy and consequences. Now, equally neo-Nazis plow their guns on the government, information technology's hard to see how anyone can clean upwards the mess that Nuland made, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

As the Ukrainian army squares off against ultra-right and neo-Nazi militias in the w and violence against ethnic Russians continues in the e, the obvious folly of the Obama administration's Ukraine policy has come up into focus fifty-fifty for many who tried to ignore the facts, or what you might call "the mess that Victoria Nuland made."

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs "Toria" Nuland was the "mastermind" backside the February. 22, 2014 "regime alter" in Ukraine, plotting the overthrow of the democratically elected authorities of President Viktor Yanukovych while convincing the ever-gullible U.Due south. mainstream media that the coup wasn't actually a coup but a victory for "commonwealth."

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine insurrection and helped pick the post-coup leaders.

To sell this latest neocon-driven "regime change" to the American people, the ugliness of the coup-makers had to be systematically airbrushed, peculiarly the cardinal office of neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists from the Correct Sektor. For the U.S.-organized propaganda campaign to piece of work, the insurrection-makers had to wear white hats, non brown shirts.

So, for nearly a year and a one-half, the W'due south mainstream media, specially The New York Times and The Washington Post, twisted their reporting into all kinds of contortions to avoid telling their readers that the new authorities in Kiev was permeated by and dependent on neo-Nazi fighters and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who wanted a pure-claret Ukraine, without ethnic Russians.

Any mention of that sordid reality was deemed "Russian propaganda" and anyone who spoke this inconvenient truth was a "stooge of Moscow." Information technology wasn't until July seven that the Times admitted the importance of the neo-Nazis and other ultra-nationalists in waging state of war against indigenous Russian rebels in the east. The Times also reported that these far-right forces had been joined past Islamic militants. Some of those jihadists take been called "brothers" of the hyper-brutal Islamic State.

Though the Times sought to spin this remarkable military brotherhood neo-Nazi militias and Islamic jihadists every bit a positive, the reality had to exist jarring for readers who had bought into the Western propaganda most noble "pro-democracy" forces resisting evil "Russian aggression."

Perchance the Times sensed that it could no longer keep the hat on the troubling truth in Ukraine. For weeks, the Right Sektor militias and the neo-Nazi Azov battalion take been warning the civilian government in Kiev that they might plough on it and create a new lodge more than to their liking.

Clashes in the West

Then, on Saturday, violent clashes broke out in the western Ukrainian town of Mukachevo, allegedly over the control of cigarette-smuggling routes. Correct Sektor paramilitaries sprayed police officers with bullets from a belt-fed machinegun, and constabulary backed by Ukrainian regime troops returned fire. Several deaths and multiple injuries were reported.

Tensions escalated on Monday with President Petro Poroshenko ordering national security forces to disarm "armed cells" of political movements. Meanwhile, the Correct Sektor dispatched reinforcements to the expanse while other militiamen converged on the capital of Kiev.

While President Poroshenko and Correct Sektor leader Dmitry Yarosh may succeed in tamping down this latest flare-up of hostilities, they may exist only postponing the inevitable: a conflict betwixt the U.S.-backed authorities in Kiev and the neo-Nazis and other right-fly fighters who spearheaded last yr'south coup and have been at the front end lines of the fighting against indigenous Russian rebels in the due east.

The Ukrainian right-wing extremists feel they have carried the heaviest burden in the war confronting the ethnic Russians and resent the politicians living in the relative safe and comfort of Kiev. In March, Poroshenko also fired thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky every bit governor of the southeastern province of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Kolomoisky had been the primary distributor of the Right Sektor militias.

And so, as has get apparent across Europe and fifty-fifty in Washington, the Ukraine crisis is spinning out of command, making the State Department'south preferred narrative of the conflict that it's all Russian President Vladimir Putin'southward fault harder and harder to sell.

How Ukraine is supposed to pull itself out of what looks like a expiry spiral a possible two-front end war in the east and the west forth with a crashing economy is hard to comprehend. The Eu, confronting budgetary crises over Greece and other European union members, has little money or patience for Ukraine, its neo-Nazis and its socio-political chaos.

America's neocons at The Washington Post and elsewhere all the same bluster virtually the need for the Obama administration to sink more billions upon billions of dollars into mail-coup Ukraine because it "shares our values." Just that argument, too, is collapsing as Americans see the heart of a racist nationalism beating within Ukraine'southward new order.

Another Neocon 'Regime Alter'

Much of what has happened, of course, was anticipated and indeed was predicted, only neocon Nuland couldn't resist the temptation to pull off a "regime modify" that she could telephone call her ain.

Her husband (and curvation-neocon) Robert Kagan had co-founded the Project for the New American Century in 1998 around a need for "government change" in Iraq, a projection that was accomplished in 2003 with President George Westward. Bush's invasion.

Equally with Nuland in Ukraine, Kagan and his swain neocons thought they could engineer an piece of cake invasion of Iraq, oust Saddam Hussein and install some paw-picked client in Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi was to be "the guy." Only they failed to have into account the harsh realities of Iraq, such equally the fissures betwixt Sunnis and Shiites, exposed by the U.Due south.-led invasion and occupation.

In Ukraine, Nuland and her neocon and liberal-interventionist friends saw the chance to poke Putin in the heart past encouraging tearing protests to overthrow Russian federation-friendly President Yanukovych and put in place a new regime hostile to Moscow.

Carl Gershman, the neocon president of the U.S.-taxpayer-funded National Endowment for Democracy, explained the plan in a Post op-ed on Sept. 26, 2013. Gershman called Ukraine "the biggest prize" and an of import interim step toward toppling Putin, who "may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself."

For her part, Nuland passed out cookies to anti-Yanukovych demonstrators at the Maidan square, reminded Ukrainian business organization leaders that the U.S. had invested $5 billion in their "European aspirations," declared "fuck the EU" for its less aggressive approach, and discussed with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who the new leaders of Ukraine should be. "Yats is the guy," she said, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Nuland saw her big chance on Feb. 20, 2014, when a mysterious sniper apparently firing from a building controlled past the Correct Sektor shot and killed both police and protesters, escalating the crunch. On Feb. 21, in a desperate bid to avert more violence, Yanukovych agreed to a European-guaranteed programme in which he accepted reduced powers and called for early on elections so he could be voted out of role.

But that wasn't plenty for the anti-Yanukovych forces who led by Right Sektor and neo-Nazi militias overran government buildings on February. 22, forcing Yanukovych and many of his officials to abscond for their lives. With armed thugs patrolling the corridors of power, the terminal path to "regime alter" was clear.

Instead of trying to save the Feb. 21 agreement, Nuland and European officials bundled for an unconstitutional procedure to strip Yanukovych of the presidency and declared the new regime "legitimate." Nuland'south "guy" Yatsenyuk became prime number minister.

While Nuland and her neocon cohorts celebrated, their "authorities change" prompted an obvious reaction from Putin, who recognized the strategic threat that this hostile new regime posed to the celebrated Russian naval base of operations at Sevastopol in Crimea. On Feb. 23, he began to take steps to protect those Russian interests.

Ethnic Hatreds

What the coup as well did was revive long pent-upward antagonisms betwixt the ethnic Ukrainians in the westward, including elements that had supported Adolf Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Spousal relationship during Globe War Two, and ethnic Russians in the s and e who feared the anti-Russian sentiments emanating from Kiev.

Commencement, in Crimea then in the and then-called Donbas region, these indigenous Russians, who had been Yanukovych's political base of operations, resisted what they viewed as the illegitimate overthrow of their elected president. Both areas held referenda seeking separation from Ukraine, a movement that Russian federation accepted in Crimea but resisted with the Donbas.

However, when the Kiev government announced an "anti-terrorism operation" against the Donbas and dispatched neo-Nazi and other extremist militias to be the tip of the spear, Moscow began quietly profitable the embattled ethnic Russian rebels, a move that Nuland, the Obama administration and the mainstream news media chosen "Russian aggression."

Amid the Western hysteria over Russia's supposedly "imperial designs" and the thorough demonizing of Putin, President Barack Obama essentially authorized a new Cold State of war against Russia, reflected now in new U.S. strategic planning that could cost the U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars and risk a possible nuclear confrontation.

Yet, despite the extraordinary costs and dangers, Nuland failed to capeesh the applied on-the-footing realities, much equally her husband and other neocons did in Iraq. While Nuland got her mitt-picked client Yatsenyuk installed and he did oversee a U.Southward.-demanded "neo-liberal" economic plan slashing pensions, heating assistance and other social programs the anarchy that her "government change" unleashed transformed Ukraine into a financial blackness hole.

With few prospects for a lucent victory over the ethnic Russian resistance in the east and with the neo-Nazi/Islamist militias increasingly restless over the stalemate the chances to restore whatever meaningful sense of lodge in the state announced remote. Unemployment is soaring and the government is essentially bankrupt.

The last best hope for some stability may accept been the Minsk-ii agreement in February 2015, calling for a federalized system to give the Donbas more autonomy, merely Nuland'south Prime Minister Yatsenyuk sabotaged the deal in March by inserting a poison pill that essentially demanded that the indigenous Russian rebels first surrender.

Now, the Ukraine anarchy threatens to screw even farther out of control with the neo-Nazis and other correct-wing militias supplied with a bounty of weapons to kill indigenous Russians in the east turning on the political leadership in Kiev.

In other words, the neocons have struck again, dreaming up a "regime change" scheme that ignored practical realities, such as ethnic and religious fissures. And so, equally the blood flowed and the suffering worsened, the neocons just sought out someone else to blame.

Thus, information technology seems unlikely that Nuland, regarded past some in Washington as the new "star" in U.S. foreign policy, will be fired for her dangerous incompetence, simply equally most neocons who authored the Iraq disaster remain "respected" experts employed by major think tanks, given prized space on op-ed pages, and consulted at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

[For more on these topics, come across Consortiumnews.com's "Obama's Truthful Foreign Policy Weakness" and "A Family unit Business of Perpetual War."]

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest volume, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here  or every bit an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com ). Yous also can order Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush-league Family unit and its connections to various right-fly operatives for merely $34. The trilogy includes America's Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click hither .

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Source: https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/

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