To understand the events in Ukraine you must understand the "first" Maidan - Orange Revolution 2004

[newthinking]

[font size="2"]To understand how we got to where we are now: You must understand that this effort has been ongoing since at least the beginning of the new century.

The first attempt at affecting "Regime Change" was the orchestration, mostly by neo-cons, of the "Orange Revolution".

The Wests choice in 2004? A man by the name of Victor Yuschenko.

His wife? An American Citizen and Far Right Republican who had worked for the Reagan Administration, had been director at a NeoCon think tank (New Atlantic Initiative) (Victor also worked with this group) and also worked for the far right think tank the Heritage Foundation. "Katherine Chumachenko Yushenko worked in the White House Public Liaison Office where she conducted outreach to various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States.

A very good summary from a post on an older version of DU Tinoire
There are links on the original page:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2870381


Ukraine, Yushchenko, his wife (Bush employee), the US and Soros

"After hearing that the NED had pumped $65 million dollars into this election and that his wife was an American citizen, I thought I'd research this a little. I don't know this handsome US-backed Yushchenko but I'm suspecting that he is going to dismantle the Ukraine Boris-Yeltsin style and sell if off to US & European corporate interests. Germany, France and the US already have their deals in place with him over pipelines, utility companies and national resources.

Just thought I'd throw this information out there so that people can see how these things are done and how the media cooperates into presenting these changes as "spontaneous" changes that the US had nothing to do with.

So here we go. First some of the "meddling" that the media hasn't covered and then in my second post, Yushchenko's "dedicated conservative" US State Department wife.

$61 million for the Ukraine elections to back Yushchenko and $100,000 to the Tsunami victims. Just shameful.
==========================================================

Bush Adminstration Spent $65 Million to Help Opposition in Ukraine

December 10, 2004

By: Matt Kelley
Associated Press

Printer Friendly Version

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won last month's disputed runoff election.

(snip)

But officials acknowledge some of the money helped train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government candidate — people who now call themselves part of the Orange revolution.

For example, one group that got grants through U.S.-funded foundations is the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, whose Web site has a link to Yushchenko's home page under the heading "partners." Another project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development brought a Center for Political and Legal Reforms official to Washington last year for a three-week training session on political advocacy.

(snip)
The four foundations involved included three funded by the U.S. government: The National Endowment for Democracy, which gets its money directly from Congress; the Eurasia Foundation, which gets money from the State Department, and the Renaissance Foundation, part of a network of charities funded by billionaire George Soros that gets money from the State Department. Other countries involved included Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

Grants from groups funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development also went to the International Center for Policy Studies, a think tank that includes Yushchenko on its supervisory board. The board also includes several current or former advisers to Kuchma, however.

IRI, Craner's Republican-backed group, used U.S. money to help Yushchenko arrange meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney , Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage and GOP leaders in Congress in February 2003.

(snip)

the U.S. government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the U.S.-based Freedom House. (note: Very hawkish / Dan Quayle is one of their trustees / other names just as disturbing: http://www.freedomhouse.org/aboutfh/bod.htm )

PAUCI then sent U.S. government funds to numerous Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This would be bad enough and would in itself constitute meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. But, what is worse is that many of these grantee organizations in Ukraine are blatantly in favor of presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko.

Consider the Ukrainian NGO International Center for Policy Studies. It is an organization funded by the U.S. government through PAUCI. On its Web site, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros' Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board!

(reluctant snip)

This May, the Virginia-based private management consultancy Development Associates, Inc., was awarded $100 million by the U.S. government "for strengthening national legislatures and other deliberative bodies worldwide." According to the organization's Web site, several million dollars from this went to Ukraine in advance of the elections.

(snip)

Note from the USAID page on Ukraine: "Beyond the power sector, USAID plans to identify and assist in removing the obstacles of proper market functioning in other segments of the energy sector such as the privatization of the oil and gas transportation systems."
https://web.archive.org/web/20040826143304/http://www.usaid.gov/pubs/cbj2003/ee/ua/121-0150.html

==================


Yushenko administration lost the presidency 15 months later:

Notably, one of the things that lost him the Presidency only 15 months later was his turn toward the same brand of extreme nationalism. He elevated Stephen Bandera, (a very controversial figure who is revered by extreme factions that Europe and others warned were tied to Social Nationalist Fascist groups) to "Hero" status.

A Fascist Hero in Democratic Kiev
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/feb/24/a-fascist-hero-in-democratic-kiev/
[/font]

[sabrina 1]

1. Thank you, the neocons are running this country's foreign policy. Nuland and McCain

were over there last December, Nuland, married to a Neocon, stirring up yet another revolution. The last one didn't go very well, and this one seems to be falling apart also.

Until the War Criminals, ALL OF THEM are put behind bars, they will continue to stir up brutal conflicts wherever they can.

Good post, thank you. I remember the Orange Revolution. We knew it was fake. Too bad we seem to ignore the writing on the wall these days for some reason.

[MattSh]

2. Thanks for this...

I'm hoping we're finally beginning to break down the wall of propaganda about this year's "revolution". But the wall of propaganda surrounding these events is unlike anything I've ever seen before. But still, we're making progress. I hope...

And all of this is precisely why we're seeing the Nazis out this time. The last one got reversed. This time, they're either going to make the changes stick or destroy the country (Ukraine and maybe even the USA) in the process.

[KoKo]

3. Fascinating...Thanks for this...

[jamzrockz]

4. In before the pro Kiev

faction on DU starts making excuses for American interventionism. That is if they show up at all.

Big K & R

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. Well, except that the fraud and irregularities in the original 2004 election was well-documented.

Meaning--just like at Maidan--Ukrainians had good cause to take to the streets.

But what the Ukrainian people want has never gotten in the way of what the Western armchair tinfoil crowd sees as a good conspiracy theory.

[KoKo]

6. Do you support: "The Hidden Hand in the Ukraine"

The hidden hand in the Ukraine / By William Blum

The hidden hand in the Ukraine
By William Blum | Special to the Vermont Guardian

It should come as no surprise at all that the Bush administration has spent more than $65 million in the past two years to aid political organizations in Ukraine, to train groups and individuals opposed to the Russian-backed government candidate, to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet US leaders, and to help generate an exit poll indicating that he won the Nov. 21 disputed election (thus seizing the initiative in the propaganda battle with the regime).

All the usual suspects were involved: the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Agency for International Development (AID), George Soros, Freedom House, et al.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States has undertaken a relentless campaign to bring Moscow’s former republics and satellites into the fold of globalization and U.S. military outposts, and in some cases to be part of highly-prized oil pipelines. In the early 1990s, the governments of Bulgaria and Albania were overthrown for not appearing to be suitable enough candidates for such honors. In 1999, Yugoslavia was bombed for much the same reasons. Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Washington has used the weapons of political and economic subversion.

The standard operating procedure in a particular country has been to send in teams of specialists from U.S. government agencies, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, or private organizations funded by U.S. corporations and foundations. These teams go in with as much financial resources as needed and numerous carrots and sticks to wield; they hold conferences and seminars, hand out tons of material, and fund new NGOs, newspapers, and other media, all to educate government employees and other selected portions of the population on the advantages and joys of privatizing and deregulating the economy, teaching them how to run a capitalist society, how to remake the country so that it’s appealing to foreign investors, how to fall happily into the embrace of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

(snip) UPDATED LINK:
http://www.vermontguardian.com/global/122004/Ukraine1224.shtml

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower

[newthinking]

22. Hmmm In Ukraine the Republicans are the ones with the honest vote counting...

But in Ukraine Neocon run candidates would *never* do such a thing...... Amazing stuff

Most people here knew little about Ukraine except what they were told on TV at that time.

Having been there, I was watching the entire thing, including the Nasty ethnic tensions that were pouring out from our selected parties.
Being a Democrat and knowing that a neocon funded group was not likely to be high on the cleanliness scale; I was checking all the claims carefully.

There were claims on both sides of vote tampering in the first runoff; Which, knowing the system at the time was credible. But after the first election runoff and the heavy propaganda that overwhelmed the media; it left the final election where Yushenko could pull off quite a bit of vote shenanigans and the Party of Regions (Yanukovish) could do nothing about it.
.
And that is what happened. In strongholds of the party regions entire high density apartment blocks dissappeared and many thousands of people could not vote. I know that for a fact as my relatives were affected. They vote every election and they were complaining for weeks about what happened.

He who controls the narrative can get away with a lot.

[NYC_SKP]

7. Recommended. (nt)

[malaise]

8. Good post

Rec

[joshcryer]

9. It all comes together perfectly. Putin said Tymoshenko did nothing wrong.

Tymoshenko, after all, allowed Ukraine to have a gas contract deal that put Ukraine at the behest of Russian gas hegemony and allowed Russia to leverage the gas in a way that weakened Ukraine completely. Basically, Tymoshenko was the cause for this. Yanukovych came on the scene and with the right bribes from Moscow, followed suit, but it caused a big old headache to Russia because it showed that the Ukranian people were going to get tired of the corruption eventually.

When Maidan started to gain traction, with a million of people protesting in Kiev, Yanukovych was ordered to illegally pass an "anti-protest law," which forbid anyone from protesting, thus allowing Yanukovych to crack down and kill protesters. Another huge headache for Putin, he needs the Ukrainian people complacent like the Baltic states were.

Now you go look at that post by Tinoire, outraged over the ouster of Tymoshenko, and it comes together perfectly. The very first post mentions Ron Paul. Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute is leading a huge number of daily talking points on Ukraine.

It's all about corruption. And Libertarians, by their very nature, embrace corruption. It helps that there are so called liberals or leftists cheering on fascist Putin, of course.

[newthinking]

10. How can you support these governments then? Maybe we should not have pushed for our own corrupt lead

ers. But that is the problem, the neocons and neoliberals don't really care much about corruption; in fact they embrace it.

I don't think you intended to, but you just evidenced the problem. Indeed the Ukrainian people have hopes of changing the system and removing corrupt leaders. But each time the west used the very valid desire of the country to install another set of corrupt leadership.

As many here know, most of the regime change we do these days is not about Democracy, but rather, exploitation of resources and markets and personal enrichment.

Despite the fact that the majority of the population in Ukraine are not far right politically, we very easily could have reversed the situation and calmed the populace by using our influence with the people who came into power to make them implement a more balanced government and replace the neo-nazi factions from the executive *immediately*.

That would have not only have been better for Ukraine, but would have served the Wests interests in the stability of Europe.

But "strangely" enough that did not happen. Maybe because anti-corruption, Democracy and the welfare of the Ukrainian people was never really the interests nor the purpose of the heavy investments?

[joshcryer]

11. The west didn't "install" corrupt leaders.

The west just funded and supported the ouster of the previous leaders (as well as others, like Soros, who support western style culture and spreading it to the rest of the world). You'll note that neither of the ousted leaders led to a better outcome for the United States or Ukraine, only Russia. In the first case Russia was able to leverage gas, the second it was able to annex Crimea. So if we're going to play "cui bono" then in reality Russia benefits the most. Especially because, as Bush showed, wars make President's popular (hey, both Bush and Putin were unelected, too! That's a fantastic parallel).

Anti-corruption was at the core of EU's interest and the US's interests, whether you want to believe it or not. EU and the US have the lowest relative level of corruption on the planet. Russia ranks so high up there it's absurd. Russia is a mafia state. The EU agreement with Ukraine in fact had specific measures with regards to financial transactions that stop corruption.

The Madian had a process, they couldn't just oust the right sector people, they had to vote on an executive with the elected parliament, and of course, what happened was the communists and Russia apologists abstained in parliament so the right sector people got elected. The Maidan had no control over this whatsoever. None.

I suppose they could've installed a dictatorship without right sector in the cabinet, but I suspect, and it's a small suspicion, an itty bitty one, but I suspect you and other anti Madian posters would still have had a problem with that. What remains to be the case is that right sector didn't get elected in the last elections and they won't in any future elections. It is about corruption, it is about fixing their government, and it's not about some paternalistic CIA boogie men who somehow manage to mind control protesters into doing whatever we want.

[newthinking]

12. That is not going to work here. Most on this site know all about the taped phone call

Not to mention you are on a site with liberals, most of whom are already aware that we do regime change. The general argument on liberal sites is whether our intentions are well founded, not whether or not we are doing it.

You might be more effective making this argument on facebook or some other general discussion area.

I am surprised you would not already realize this. Do you consider yourself a liberal? Just curious?

[joshcryer]

13. It's not really relevant.

It's really not relevant. Nuland was taking advantage of a situation that was spurred into action, but it still took a million protesters spending days and nights in the freezing winter to do it. Nuland doesn't have a mind control device over a million people, I am sorry, but think logically.

Liberals and leftists support people protesting, a million people protesting, they don't malign them as some sort of Nazi conspiracy.

I know when there were protests against the Russian elections Russia's propagandists called them anti-government terrorists. Of course, since then, Russia has passed many anti-protest laws, many laws against bloggers, many laws.

I am a post-left anarchist. You don't get any more left. No leftist would support Russia's imperialism.

[leftstreet]

15. What on earth is a 'post-left anarchist?'

[joshcryer]

18. Use Google?

Jason McQuinn has the best writing on the subject, but the Wikipedia page is good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-left_anarchy

[newthinking]

19. Interesting

(by the way, 200000 on some weekends, not a million; though certainly a fair amount of people). I could also ask you how it is you can partition your support so that you only support large numbers of protesters in this case and not recognize the large numbers of people who have protested against the junta and that came out in support of Crimean unification with Russia?


I suppose this may explain why you are less concerned about right wingers / fundamentalist Christians in power than whether that power represents a "powerful state". If that is the case I think you will be disappointed. You are naive and don't know the parties and the country (I do). The neo-nazi's may be anarchists (they consider themselves such), but the other parties that came into power are right wing authoritarians.

So do you see something like Social Nationalism, as being less "destructive" than the other institutionalized elite power structures? Maybe a "distorted" form of anarchism? I guess I just am having trouble understanding why an anarchist would be comfortable with the government in Ukraine; which has been co-opted by economic elites.

And why the heck is an anarchist not supporting what the east initially was after (more local control)? You don't seem consistant.

Now I am going to have to talk to my anarchist friend and get his take.

[joshcryer]

20. The east never had a popular movement.

There were never more than a thousand people at any of the uprisings. It's interesting that you dismiss this numbers thing. I mean, Cliven Bundy, and his 100 or so supporters, can't just annex Clark county, can they? They aren't supported by most people. Yet that's essentially what these New Russia people are trying to do. Annex about 2/3rds of a country and give it over to Russia, implement Russia's fascist laws, and all in all turn it into another client state of Russia ala the Baltics. Now they have confirmed Russian fighters working for them, and Russian wives and mothers are protesting against their sons going to die in a ghost war.

As far as Crimea, that wasn't such a big deal, though the pretext was as bad as Iraq WMDs (no ethnic cleansing was going on in Crimea). I expressed great acknowledgement that only one person died in that event and it was a relatively clean coup. I do not believe it was honest, though, and I believe like when the Baltic states were colonized, the people did so peacefully, because what else are they going to do? The Eastern Bloc also had referendums, you know, but they endured some 50 years or so of Russian oppression, and yet I don't see anyone calling for a return to that.

Well, other than Dugin, whose roadmap fascist Putin is following to the tee.

[joshcryer]

24. The fact that Slavyansk fell so trivially is proof.

Donesk likewise will fall once the ranks are broke, that's all it takes.

It'll take 130k soldiers at minimum to occupy Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR/DNR). This is simply not within any realm of possibility or reason. The people following this "civil war" are simply out of touch with the military reality. All Russia or the rebels can do it prolong the inevitable. They're not going to "liberate" the DPR/DNR. And that alone is proof that it's not a popular movement, because popular movements have families contributing directly to the war effort. You don't see that outside of RT-style photo ops. Again. Slavyansk is proof. The headquarters, the main operating center for the rebels, fell within a day, once they got scared, and then the people there said it was a living nightmare being subject to the rebel atrocities and that they were played all along.

That being said, are you one of my previous stalkers? Maybe the one creaming on Twitter about dead Ukrainian civilians at the hands of fascist Russian mercenaries? The neo-Stalinists over at The Bell Forum totally hyped for Putin's grand power play, posting daily reports of pro-Russian fascists murdering people wholesale?

I don't have to go into details about my political ideology with internet warriors who want to make things personal. I explain it, if you understand it, then you can point out inconsistencies with what I say I believe and what various events I support or condemn.

[newthinking]

26. Maybe you shouldn't spend so much time at the "bell forum" (whereever that is)?

you did not post this to me, but just for the record while I disagree with you; I don't want to see anyone dead. Even the Right Sector and Svoboda thugs. I don't believe in the death penalty.

They should, however, be reigned in, put in jail, taken out of the executive branch, and Neo-Nazi parties should be made illegal.

And you really do misrepresent people of the region. Do I need to go back and find the USAID surveys that clearly show it. Eastern Ukraine has very different attitudes and orientation towards Russia vs the EU. Almost the exact opposite of West Ukraine. The majority polled did not want to align trade with Europe and they actively wanted to enter the Eurasian Customs Union. The differences are quite stark.

The same polls also showed that the majority of Ukraine feel connected to Russia and really never have had a problem with Russia. It is only a minority that prefer to not have anything to do with Russia. The country as a whole had a preference toward the Eurasian Union in 2009, and then since then it shifted towards the EU, but not by a lot, just a few percentage points.

Of course West Ukraine had a much larger difference. But the majority of the population preferred to maintain cultural and share economic ties with both entities. When the EU first tried to condition their agreement as exclusive was one of the things that caused tensions to boil. That was not the approach the country wanted.

You keep trying to create an illusion that the country was all represented by the particular approach and government that was put in place and that simply is not the truth. While people were fairly accommodating and lived without tension for the most part, there were significant statistical differences especially between West/Central vs East/South.

Just the FACT that the vast majority of refugees are now in border regions of Russia is itself indicative of their preferences.

[joshcryer]

27. The Eurasian Union is Dugin's fascist roadmap.

You lose all credibility when it's a fact that Yanukovych ran on a pro EU platform and that most Ukranians just want to get rid of corruption. The majority see going with the EU is anti-corruption. In fact the EU agreement had financial transaction standards that would've got rid of a lot of oligarchy based corruption which is what Ukraine wants.

The irony is that most Maidan protesters came out not because they wanted to join EU (I have posted polls to that effect) but because they wanted to get rid of the corruption. The anti-protest law, which Yanukovych illegally passed, was what caused the thing to escalate further. If it wasn't for that law it's very possible the Maidan would've gone the way of Occupy and just petered out over time. Instead it invigorated the protesters.

If there was popular support for the rebels in the east, then there would not be a need for Russian military involvement. It's really that simple. This thing will be over eventually, because Russia can't afford to do a total invasion and occupation. It's only a matter of time. The rebels are not making things better for the cities that they occupy and people will tire of it.

That being said, it's very important to follow the propaganda talking points, because then you know what the days nonsense will be. And as I established, a lot of talking points are actually coming right out of the head of the Ron Paul Institute. They see Russia's mafia state as an ideal approach to capitalism.

[newthinking]

25. You know how it goes... If it was not on our TV it never happened

And LOTS of things seem to have "never happened" in Ukraine in the last 9 months.

[pampango]

28. Here's a link to the "phone call". It doesn't say what you seem to think it says.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26079957

[newthinking]

30. It is an important piece. For heaven's sake Victoria Nuland is the wife of Dick Cheney's favorite

war maker and one of the cabal who architected the war in Iraq (PNAC). The group as responsible as G. Bush for the everything we loath (or at least most of us loath).

The OP clearly lays it out. We have been nurturing and choosing these guys.

Even worse, we are letting the International Republican Institute recruit them.."these guys" are right wingers" at the best, and aligned with the people that everyone on this site sees as enemy number one.

How much will people contort? Just out with it. Admit the seedy part and then make make a case why it is worth it to get in bed with neocons for this.

[newthinking]

16. Yatsenyuk Foundation investors

[joshcryer]

17. And? I support internationalism.

Western culture is good. Gay rights, abortion rights, we still have a ways to go, equal pay, getting rid of racism, but we're going in the correct direction, progressiveness.

[LiberalAndProud]

14. I meant to reply to this earlier today.

Thank you for taking the time to put this together, to help us understand this event beyond the soundbite surface we find ourselves living in.

Many, many thanks.

[Corey_Baker08]

21. I Remember This Clearly, Even Though I Was Only 14

I was shocked & I still am shocked that they got away with this assassination...