Robert Parry: The State Department's Ukraine Fiasco

[Tommy_Carcetti]

71. Are you daft?

What Parry wrote in the article that you posted:

"However, when the police were withdrawn, the neo-Nazi militias completed their putsch on Feb. 22, seizing control of government buildings and forcing Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives."

First of all, the accuracy of all of those statements (for example, that there was in fact a "putsch" and the bit about "neo-Nazi militias&quot are seriously, seriously in doubt. But even if you assume all of that was true, the cause/effect just doesn't match up with the facts. Supposedly protesters seized government buildings on February 22nd, which caused Yanukovych to flee.

In reality, however, by the afternoon of February 21st, Yankoyvch was already two days into packing up his valuable possessions. And by that night, he was ready to fly off in his fleet of helicopters, before the vote of impeachment took place on February 22nd. Videos don't lie:

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Then your claim that "Russia owned Crimea." No, actually it did not. The 1994 Budapest memorandum, to which Russia, Ukraine and the United States were all signatories, stated that Russia was to respect Ukrainian sovereignty within its existing borders--which included Crimea, like it or not. An exception was carved out to allow Russia to maintain its existing naval base in Sevastopol, but Crimea itself was Ukrainian territory (like it or not) and the Russians violated the agreements by moving their military beyond the naval base and into Crimea proper.

You simply cannot dodge those facts by claiming blatant falsehoods. You have to admit that Parry was being disingenuous when he claimed that the Russian presence on the naval base gave them authority to invade all of Crimea.