Robert Parry: The State Department's Ukraine Fiasco

[Tommy_Carcetti]

23. Parry "found" jack shit. I doubt he's been in Ukraine over the past year, if at all.

He's simply regurgitating a hastily strung along narrative of the Russian state press that acts as if there was a grand western conspiracy to sponsor a "coup" in Ukraine. And yet there was no actual coup. None. A coup is a very specifically defined term wherein a small group conspires to overthrow the ruling leader by violence, threat of violence, or detention. That did not happen. Yanukovych left on his own terms and under his own power. He casually packed up various valuables from his mansion over the course of several days and flew away in his own fleet of helicopters. It's all on video for you to see, if you don't believe my word.

There are blatant out-and-out falsehoods in that Parry piece that you posted, including:

*Claims that EU officials had concluded that the snipers that shot and killed dozen of Maidan protesters were members of Maidan themselves creating a provocation. Never happened. Russia Today severely twisted the words of a single Estonian official who had zero firsthand knowledge of the situation.

* Yanukovych fled after "neo-Nazi" militia seized government buildings on February 22nd. Not true. Yanukovych fled on the night of February 21-22, before police pulled back and the impeachment vote was had. He had actually been packing for two days before that, meaning that even as it relates to the initial negotiated deal that would have kept him in power but would have called for early elections--he apparently had no desire to stay in Ukraine and honor that.

* Russia never invaded Crimea because it already had troops there. False and disgustingly unprofessional journalism on Parry's part. Pre-annexation and pursuant to treaty, Russia had been allowed to keep its Soviet era naval base in Sevastapol, and naturally, Russia was allowed to have troops *ON THAT BASE*. That does not account for the well-armed and equipped uniformed men who appeared throughout Crimea and *OFF THE BASE* following the events in Maidan--troops Putin initially denied were Russian, but after annexation was achieved, he unequivocally admitted were in fact Russian military. Incredible chutzpah for Parry to lie about that.

This has nothing to do with Watergate, or Iran Contra, or anything else. This has to do with Parry's "reporting" for his own web outfit Consortium News in 2014, "reporting" that is nothing more than regurgitating red herrings and innuendoes and passing them off as fact for gullible persons who still think Parry has an unstained pedigree.

Decades ago he might have been an investigative journalist. Today, he's nothing more than a keyboard commando with no inside knowledge or investigative skills, undistinguishable from millions of other keyboard commandos on the internet.