Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

Lis­ten: MP3

Side 1  Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the instal­la­tion in the Ukraine of a gov­ern­ment com­posed large­ly of polit­i­cal forces evolved from, and man­i­fest­ing ide­o­log­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity with, the fas­cist OUN/B.

Hav­ing staffed the 14th Waf­fen SS (Gali­cian) Divi­sion and the Ein­satz­grup­pen (mobile exe­cu­tion squads) in the Ukraine, the OUN/B was a piv­otal ele­ment in the post­war Gehlen spy out­fit in its CIA and BND incar­na­tions, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations and the GOP eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion.

OUN/B has been deeply involved with covert oper­a­tions and fig­ures in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, as well as the de-sta­bi­liza­tion of the Sovi­et Union dur­ing the cli­mac­tic phase of the Cold War. With a pro­found pres­ence in the GOP’s Eth­nic divi­sion, as well as the con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, the OUN/B is any­thing but an his­tor­i­cal rel­ic. The devel­op­ment of the OUN/B in both the U.S. and the Ukraine is explained in great his­tor­i­cal depth in AFA #37.

In the past we have not­ed that Yka­te­rina Chu­machenko, head of the OUN/B’s lead­ing front orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. and Ronald Reagan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son, went on to mar­ry Vik­tor Yuschenko and become First Lady of the Ukraine after the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.”

With the Yuschenko regime in pow­er, OUN/B founder Stephan Ban­dera was named a hero of the Ukraine.

In this pro­gram, we begin with anoth­er very impor­tant post from german-foreign-policy.com that flesh­es out our under­stand­ing of the role of Swo­bo­da and oth­er OUN/B‑descended groups in the new Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

Clar­i­fy­ing the roles of Dymytro Yarosh of Pravy Sek­tor and Andriy Paru­biy of Swo­bo­da in the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the arti­cle high­lights the appoint­ment of Ihor Teniukh as Defense Min­is­ter. Teniukh was for­mer­ly the head of Ukraine’s fleet and is at the point of inter­face with Rus­sia over the Ukraine.

The arti­cle also notes that there is a very real pos­si­bil­i­ty that the snipers who fired on the crowd may have been agents-prova­ca­teurs work­ing for the forces includ­ed in the new gov­ern­ment.

Ukrain­ian Jews are ter­ri­fied of the forces man­i­fest in the new gov­ern­ment, and are receiv­ing self-defense coun­sel­ing from an Israeli agency.

Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Bar­roso is call­ing for imme­di­ate cuts in tar­rifs and aus­ter­ity in return for loans described as “win­dow dress­ing” and that won’t real­ly be used to sup­port the bud­get any­way. Just imag­ine, years from now, how thank­ful Ukraini­ans will be about their rev­o­lu­tion when those same aus­ter­ity pro­grams are still in place because they sent their econ­omy into the same aus­ter­i­ty-induced death-spi­ral we’ve come to know in the EU.

A sting­ing arti­cle in Forbes mag­a­zine has opined that Yatseniuk–“Washington’s man in the Ukraine”–will ruin the Ukraine.

The agree­ment with the EU would have been eco­nom­i­cally destruc­tive for Rus­sia, as well as putting NATO mil­i­tary forces at Russia’s bor­der.

Among the fac­tors pro­pelling many young, edu­cat­ed Ukraini­ans into the arms of Swo­bo­da and oth­er OUN/B heirs is the fact that the Ukrain­ian econ­o­my is des­ti­tute. Eco­nom­ic depri­va­tion is a key fac­tor in the resur­gence of fas­cist and far-right polit­i­cal par­ties in Europe. The eco­nom­ic hard­ship fig­ures to increase sig­nif­i­cant­ly in the Ukraine under the EU/IM­F/Ger­man-dic­tat­ed aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram.

Cen­tral to the EU/German goals int the Ukraine is exploita­tion of the Ukrain­ian nat­ur­al gas reserves. Ukraine has a quar­ter of the world’s proven nat­ur­al gas reserves. Suc­cess­ful exploita­tion of those reserves would free Ger­many and the EU from ener­gy depen­dence on Rus­sia, as well as enrich­ing West­ern fos­sil-fuel com­pa­nies.

Much of the sec­ond side of the pro­gram notes sig­nif­i­cant areas of over­lap between the covert oper­a­tion under­tak­en in the Ukraine and the milieu behind “L’Af­faire Snow­den,” Wik­iLeaks and the Arab Spring.

The broad­cast also notes that ele­ments pres­sur­ing Oba­ma have roots in the OUN/B milieu that was ensconced in the Rea­gan and both Bush admin­is­tra­tions.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the com­mit­ment by the U.S. of $5 bil­lion to polit­i­cal activ­i­ty in the Ukraine; review of the role of Glenn Green­wald’s finan­cial angel Pierre Omid­yar in financ­ing the Ukraine “op;” review of the influx of Swedish and Euro­pean neo-Nazis into the Ukraine; review of the role of Pirate Bay/WikiLeaks sug­ar dad­dy Carl Lund­strom’s links to the Swedish neo-Nazi milieu; review of the role of Gene Sharp’s ide­o­log­i­cal man­i­festo in the Arab Spring; review of the role of Gene Sharp’s ide­o­log­i­cal pro­nounce­ments in the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion;” review of the role of Michael Milken’s right-hand man Peter Ack­er­man in financ­ing Gene Sharp, as well as his sup­port for the Mul­sim-Broth­er­hood-linked Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive; Rea­gan and George W. Bush appointee Paula Dobri­an­sky’s links to the OUN/B milieu.

1. Anoth­er very impor­tant post from german-foreign-policy.com flesh­es out our under­stand­ing of the role of Swo­bo­da and oth­er OUN/B‑descended groups in the new Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

Clar­i­fy­ing the roles of Dymytro Yarosh of Pravy Sek­tor and Andriy Paru­biy of Swo­bo­da in the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, the arti­cle high­lights the appoint­ment of Ihor Teniukh as Defense Min­is­ter. Teniukh was for­mer­ly the head of Ukraine’s fleet and is at the point of inter­face with Rus­sia over the Ukraine.

The post also notes that there is a very real pos­si­bil­i­ty that the snipers who fired on the crowd may have been agents-prova­ca­teurs work­ing for the forces includ­ed in the new gov­ern­ment.

Ukrain­ian Jews are ter­ri­fied of the forces man­i­fest in the new gov­ern­ment, and are receiv­ing self-defense coun­sel­ing from an Israeli agency.

“The Kiev Esca­la­tion Strat­e­gy”; german-foreign-policy.com; 3/06/2014.

The Eston­ian for­eign min­is­ter expressed his sus­pi­cion that “some­body from the new coali­tion” in Kiev could have been behind the sniper shoot­ings on the Maid­an, accord­ing to a tapped tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, which has gone online. Sniper fire had pre­ced­ed Berlin’s mas­sive­ly pro­mot­ed putsch in Kiev. In the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion, the Eston­ian Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs, Urmas Paet, report­ed to the chief of EU for­eign affairs, Cather­ine Ash­ton that a med­ical doc­tor in Kiev assumes that the mor­tal wounds to police­men and demon­stra­tors had the same hand­writ­ing and could have come from the same assas­sins. The fact that Kiev’s gov­ern­ment has yet to ini­ti­ate an inves­ti­ga­tion could arouse the sus­pi­cion that ele­ments from its own ranks could have been respon­si­ble for those assas­si­na­tions. Videos, in fact, have already doc­u­ment­ed that snipers had been shoot­ing at both sides. The putschist gov­ern­ment, incrim­i­nat­ed by Paet’s remarks and still enjoy­ing strong Ger­man gov­ern­ment sup­port, is com­prised also of rightwing extrem­ist forces, for exam­ple sev­er­al Svo­bo­da Par­ty politi­cians, as well as the com­man­der of the armed mili­tia on the Maid­an and the leader of the para­mil­i­tary “Pravi Sek­tor” (Right Sek­tor). Both have been giv­en high-lev­el posts as Sec­re­tary and Deputy Sec­re­tary in the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense Coun­cil of the Ukraine, under the per­son­al lead­er­ship of the Pres­i­dent.

Street Bat­tles instead of Par­lia­men­tary Debates

At least British and US media are now open­ly men­tion­ing the role played by the rightwing extrem­ists in the Kiev putsch. As a Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist wrote in a US online pub­li­ca­tion, this role should, by no means, be “under­es­ti­mat­ed.” When “two months of protests in the streets” did not bring resound­ing results, “it was the far right” that was “the first to throw Molo­tov cock­tails and stones at police and to mount real and well-for­ti­fied bar­ri­cades.” Fas­cists were also among those, who burned two mil­i­tary per­son­nel car­ri­ers on Feb­ru­ary 18. “The Euro­maid­an won thanks to the res­olute­ness of peo­ple, who were ready to fight rather than to nego­ti­ate in par­lia­ment,” the author concludes.[1] This esca­la­tion strat­e­gy, sup­port­ed by the extreme right, falls in line with a remark in an alleged Vitaly Klitschko email, which has been avail­able online for sev­er­al days. In the email, dat­ed Jan­u­ary 9, one can read, “I think we have paved the road for a more rad­i­cal esca­la­tion of the sit­u­a­tion. Is it not high time to con­tin­ue with more res­olute actions?” Klitschko has always been in close con­tact with Berlin’s for­eign pol­i­cy estab­lish­ment, which, at the time, had not uttered a word of crit­i­cism con­cern­ing the rightwing extrem­ist activ­i­ties in the Ukraine.

Extreme­ly Anti-Russ­ian

Prime Min­is­ter Arseniy Yat­senyuk’s Deputy, Olek­san­dr Sych, and sev­er­al min­is­ters of the putschist gov­ern­ment are mem­bers of the Svo­bo­da Par­ty, which, even before the begin­ning of the recent mass protests, had already won one third of the votes in sec­tors of west­ern Ukraine. The leader of the par­ty had per­son­al­ly coop­er­at­ed with the Ger­man for­eign min­is­ter dur­ing the uprisings.[2] Sych recent­ly became known, when he sug­gest­ed all abor­tions be banned, even those for preg­nan­cies result­ing from rape. He rec­om­mend­ed that women “lead the kind of lifestyle to avoid the risk of rape, includ­ing one from drink­ing alco­hol and being in con­tro­ver­sial company.”[3] Svo­bo­da mem­bers Andriy Mokhnyk became Min­is­ter for Ecol­o­gy, Ihor Shvai­ka, Min­is­ter for Agri­cul­ture and Ihor Teniukh, Min­is­ter for Defense. Teniukh had pre­vi­ous­ly com­mand­ed Ukraine’s fleet from 2006 to 2010 and is now in charge of han­dling the Crimean con­flict. This is sig­nif­i­cant because Svo­bo­da is, by far, the most anti-Russ­ian force rep­re­sent­ed in the putschist gov­ern­ment. Svo­bo­da’s Oleh Makhnit­skiy became par­lia­men­tary inspec­tor of the Attor­ney Gen­er­al’s Office.

Strug­gle against “Rus­sians and Jews”

On the oth­er hand, this should draw atten­tion because Svo­bo­da hon­ors Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, Stepan Ban­dera and his Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN), respon­si­ble for hav­ing com­mit­ted mas­sacres par­tic­u­lar­ly of Jew­ish Ukraini­ans and Poles.[4] Svo­bo­da, accord­ing to activists in Kiev, still dis­pos­es of an ille­gal armed wing known as “C14.”[5] This has been con­firmed a few days ago by the BBC, which reports “C14’s” size alleged­ly at 200 mem­bers — and took over the head­quar­ters of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, an act that turns the spot­light on the con­cept of rule of law applied now in the pro-West­ern Ukraine. The name “C14” (“Com­bat 14”) is prob­a­bly a seman­tic flirt with the name “C18” (“Com­bat 18”) one of the inter­na­tion­al net­works of neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, with which the “C14,” of course, shares no orga­ni­za­tion­al ties. At the same time, the name points to the num­ber “14.” In fas­cist cir­cles this refers to the “four­teen word” slo­gans of com­mit­ment to the “white race.” As the leader of Svo­bo­da’s ally “C14” explained, his orga­ni­za­tion is in a “strug­gle” with “eth­nic groups” that are wield­ing, among oth­er things, “eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er.” The “eth­nic groups” he is refer­ring to are “Rus­sians and Jews.”[6]

Sec­re­tary in the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil

The fas­cist’s struc­tur­al influ­ence can also be pri­mar­i­ly seen in Ukraine’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense Coun­cil. The Pres­i­dent of the Ukraine pre­sides over the coun­cil. Mem­bers of the coun­cil include the Prime Min­is­ter, the Min­is­ters of For­eign Affairs and of Defense (Svo­bo­da), the direc­tor of the SBU Intel­li­gence Ser­vice and high-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cials. The chair of the coun­cil des­ig­nates a sec­re­tary. Since a few days ago, Andriy Paru­biy has filled this posi­tion. Paru­biy, togeth­er with Oleh Tiah­ny­bok, had found­ed the neo-Nazi “Social Nation­al Par­ty of the Ukraine” in 1991, which they renamed “Svo­bo­da” in 2004, which is still under Tiah­ny­bok’s lead­er­ship. In 2004, Paru­biy had been one of the lead­ing per­son­al­i­ties of the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.” How­ev­er, over the suc­ceed­ing years, he had grav­i­tat­ed toward the for­mer rul­ing “Our Ukraine Par­ty,” at the time, pro-West­ern Vik­tor Yushchenko was pres­i­dent of the coun­try. Paru­biy was then elect­ed to par­lia­ment in 2012 on the elec­toral list of Yulia Tymoshenko’s “Father­land Par­ty.” He became inter­na­tion­al­ly famous when he, as the “Com­man­der of Maid­an” was the head of the armed mili­tias in Kiev. The mili­tias were “not 100% but a large per­cent­age” com­prised of fas­cists, accord­ing to activists.[7] The “Pravi Sek­tor” (“Right Sek­tor”), a sort of alliance of vio­lence-prone right-wing extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tions, has wide rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­in its ranks.

Homo­sex­u­al Bash­ing

Accord­ing to esti­mates, the “Pravi Sek­tor,” which received strong rein­force­ment through the Maid­an protests, today nation­al­ly num­bers up to 5,000 mil­i­tants. In Kiev, it patrols the city in armed squads of up to a dozen mem­bers. Their weapons are usu­al­ly base­ball bats, but some­times also pis­tols. Even the Ger­man media, which open­ly shows sym­pa­thy toward these protests, char­ac­ter­izes this orga­ni­za­tion as “para­mil­i­tary,” and obvi­ous­ly in pos­ses­sion of numer­ous firearms and ammu­ni­tion. Its leader Dmytro Yarosh joined the right-wing extrem­ist “Tryzub” (“Tri­dent”) orga­ni­za­tion in 1994, which he has been com­mand­ing since 2005. Dur­ing the Maid­an protests, the “Tryzub” has main­ly become known for its attacks on homo­sex­u­als and as par­tic­i­pants in the “Pravi Sek­tor.” [No men­tion of this in the West­ern press, which was res­olute in bash­ing Rus­sia for its poli­cies toward gays.–D.E.] Yarosh, the leader of “Tryzub” and “Pravi Sek­tor” claims that an appeal pub­lished on a social net­work web­site with his pro­file, call­ing on the infa­mous Chechen ter­ror­ist, Doku Umarov to sup­port the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists in their strug­gle against Rus­sia, is a coun­ter­feit cre­at­ed by hack­ers. A few days ago, Yarosh was named assis­tant to Sec­re­tary of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Defense Coun­cil of the Ukraine, Andriy Paru­biy.

Self-Defense

Under these cir­cum­stances, Jew­ish orga­ni­za­tions are becom­ing increas­ing­ly wor­ried about the safe­ty of the 200,000 Ukrain­ian Jews. These orga­ni­za­tions — regard­less of their polit­i­cal dif­fer­ences with one anoth­er — are “won­der­ing whether their lives — whether Jew­ish life — has a secure future in Ukraine,” accord­ing to a report. After all, orga­ni­za­tions of right-wing extrem­ist thugs “are, at the moment, in con­trol of the streets of Kiev.”[8] At the begin­ning of the week, a group of Israeli self-defense spe­cial­ists land­ed in the Ukrain­ian cap­i­tal, on the ini­tia­tive of the chair of Kiev’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, to begin train­ing mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. This is not only about meth­ods of com­bat, but also about how to behave in cri­sis sit­u­a­tions, it was reported.[9] The “Jew­ish Agency,” the Israeli gov­ern­men­t’s offi­cial immi­gra­tion orga­ni­za­tion, is already prepar­ing emer­gency measures.[10] Through its undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed back­ing for even fas­cists with­in the Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment has helped cre­ate the sit­u­a­tion mak­ing these mea­sures nec­es­sary. Demands to iso­late Svo­bo­da and oth­er rightwing extrem­ists have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ignored both in Berlin and by Berlin’s prox­ies at the Maid­an.

2. Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Bar­roso is call­ing for imme­di­ate cuts in tar­rifs and aus­ter­ity in return for loans described as “win­dow dress­ing” and that won’t real­ly be used to sup­port the bud­get any­way. Just imag­ine, years from now, how thank­ful Ukraini­ans will be about their rev­o­lu­tion when those same aus­ter­ity pro­grams are still in place because they sent their econ­omy into the same aus­ter­i­ty-induced death-spi­ral we’ve come to know and love in the EU.

“EU’s Long-await­ed $15 Bil­lion Pack­age May Add to Government’s Aus­ter­ity Pro­gram” by Ivan Ver­styuk; Kyiv Post; 3/5/2014.

The Euro­pean Union has promised $15 bil­lion of finan­cial help to Ukraine as the nation tight­ens its belt amid a loom­ing cash crunch.

Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Jose Manuel Bar­roso told reporters in Brus­sels on March that the mon­ey would come via var­i­ous instru­ments over sev­eral years.

Ukraine will receive $1.4 bil­lion in the form of loans, paid from the EU bud­get. Anoth­er $2 bil­lion will come as EU grants over the next sev­en years. The Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank is to con­tribute $4.2 bil­lion over 2014–2016 and the Euro­pean Bank for Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment is to add $7 bil­lion through 2020.

Mean­while, Bar­roso added that the macro-finan­cial aid and some $840 mil­lion in new grants can be dis­bursed “very fast … with­in a mat­ter of weeks.”

Ear­lier on Feb. 5 Finance Min­is­ter Olek­sandr Shla­pak said that Ukraine must pay out $10 bil­lion by end of this year to ser­vice all of its debt oblig­a­tions.

“The $15 bil­lion (of EU mon­ey) men­tioned was just win­dow dress­ing and lit­tle of this will be dis­bursed as bal­ance of payments/budget sup­port,” said Tim­o­thy Ash, head of research for emerg­ing mar­kets at Stan­dard Bank in Lon­don.

“Every­thing will depend on how this mon­ey will be used. It could be used for fix­ing the bal­ance of pay­ments, the cen­tral bank’s reserves, or the bud­get gap,” said Igor Burakovsky, head of the Insti­tute for Eco­nomic Research and Pol­icy Analy­sis.

Bar­roso also pro­posed that EU coun­tries should imme­di­ately apply low­er trade tar­iffs on Ukrain­ian imports, as envis­aged in a future free trade agree­ment that ex-Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych had orig­i­nally shunned on Nov. 21.

...

Aus­ter­ity on the part of gov­ern­ment has already begun. It cut a num­ber of social pro­grams and oth­er projects to save $5.1 bil­lion. These mea­sures include a ban for state bod­ies to pur­chase auto­mo­biles, mobile phones and lap­tops. More­over, some state-owned auto­mo­biles will be sold through the pub­licly held auc­tions.

3. The pub­lic in gen­eral might not be super pleased with the EU’s des­ig­nat­ed fate for Ukraine, but those that want to reshape Ukraine’s soci­ety in rad­i­cal far-right ways prob­a­bly won’t mind.

“Washington’s Man Yat­senyuk Set­ting Ukraine Up For Ruin” by Ken­neth Rapoza; Forbes; 2/27/2014.

Ukraine’s inter­im prime min­is­ter, Arseniy “Yats” Yat­senyuk, may prove to be arsenic to the belea­guered nation.

“Recall the phone exchange between the Ukraine ambas­sador and Vic­to­ria Nuland (Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean Affairs) that got leaked out, where she basi­cally said ‘we want Yats in there.’ They like him because he’s pro West­ern,” says Vladimir Sig­norelli, pres­i­dent of bou­tique invest­ment research firm Bret­ton Woods Research LLC in New Jer­sey. “Yat­senyuk is the the kind of tech­no­crat you want if you want aus­ter­ity, with the veneer of pro­fes­sion­al­ism,” Sig­norelli said. “He’s the type of guy who can hob­nob with the Euro­pean elite. A Mario Mon­ti type: unelect­ed and will­ing to do the IMFs bid­ding,” he said.

Mario Mon­ti was a cen­trist Ital­ian tech­no­crat who passed an aus­ter­ity pack­age that called for increased tax­es, pen­sion reform and mea­sures to fight tax eva­sion.

...

Ukraine’s new 450-seat par­lia­ment approved the appoint­ment of the for­mer Cen­tral Banker Yat­senyuk on Thurs­day by a vote of 371 to 1. Odd­ly enough, ear­lier this month, the pro-West­ern Yats trailed behind pop­u­lar oppo­si­tion lead­ers such as for­mer heavy­weight box­er Vil­tali Klitschko and the leader of the nation­al­ist, Svo­boda Par­ty, Oleh Tyah­ny­bok. But Yats had friends in high places and while he does not have strong sup­port of the elec­torate, and would have no chance of win­ning an elec­tion, he is pro-IMF aus­ter­ity and appar­ently the bulk of par­lia­ment is as well.

“Yat­senyuk was say­ing that what the Greeks did to them­selves we are going to do our­selves,” said Sig­norelli. “He wants to fol­low the Greek eco­nomic mod­el. Who the hell wants to fol­low that?”

Also today, Yat­senyuk promised to imple­ment “very unpop­u­lar mea­sures” to sta­bi­lize the country’s finances. The gov­ern­ment said it needs $35 bil­lion to sup­port the coun­try over the next two years. His lan­guage in a news report broad­cast by Bloomberg today indi­cates he is head­ing toward a poten­tially desta­bi­liz­ing aus­ter­ity cam­paign:

“The trea­sury is emp­ty. We will do every­thing not to default. If we get the finan­cial sup­port from the IMF, the U.S., we will do it. I’m going to be the most unpop­u­lar prime min­is­ter in the his­tory of my coun­try,” he said. “But this is the only solu­tion. I would nev­er promise any kind of huge achieve­ments. First and the most impor­tant issue is to sta­bi­lize the sit­u­a­tion.”

He also said that, “We want Rus­sia to have trans­par­ent and fair rela­tions with Ukraine. We want to be part­ners with Russia…we strong­ly believe it will nev­er inter­vene with a mil­i­tary force in Ukraine.”

Under the brew­ing divide-and-con­quer polit­i­cal cri­sis lies Ukraine’s eco­nomic prob­lems. The Ukrain­ian cur­rency, the hryv­nia, is down over 16% year-to-date, a record decline against the dol­lar.

It is unclear the kind of mea­sures Yat­senyuk will tol­er­ate, but it appears aus­ter­ity is the path for­ward. That includes a reg­i­men of tax increas­es, inter­est rate hikes and fur­ther cur­rency deval­u­a­tion.

Yanukovych resist­ed the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund’s demand to raise tax­es and deval­ue the cur­rency. Yat­senyuk doesn’t mind. For econ­o­mists who think aus­ter­ity is a dis­as­ter, Ukraine is on a path to ruin.

“We saw this in the 90s and what the IMF did to Rus­sia with Yeltsin. They’ll do that to Ukraine,” said Sig­norelli. Remem­ber Slo­bo­dan Miloše­vic in Yugoslavia? After the IMF fin­ished with Yugoslavia it was only a mat­ter of time before the sep­a­ratist move­ments gained trac­tion,” he said. “I think things in Ukraine can get real­ly real­ly bad.”

4a. Ger­many Watch–which feeds along the right-hand side of the front page of this web site–notes that the poten­tial agree­ment with the EU would have been eco­nom­i­cal­ly destruc­tive for both the Ukraine and Rus­sia, as well as putting NATO mil­i­tary forces at Rus­si­a’s bor­der. The post excerpt­ed below also notes that some 350 jihadists fight­ing for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed ele­ments in Syr­ia joined the street fight­ing on behalf of the Swoboda/Pravy Sek­tor com­bat­ants.

We note in pass­ing that Ger­many Watch is a con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tion, not “left­ist” at all.

“Ukraine Nazis–Another Coun­try Falls to the Axis”; Ger­many Watch; 2/26/2014.

In his for­mal remarks at Munich and a week ear­li­er at the World Eco­nom­ic Forum at Davos, Switzer­land, Russ­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Sergei Lavrov assailed West­ern gov­ern­ments for sup­port­ing neo-Nazi ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions in their zeal to place Ukraine under Euro­pean Union and Troi­ka con­trol to tight­en the NATO noose around Rus­sia.

If any­thing, Lavrov under­stat­ed the case.

Ever since Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych announced that Ukraine was with­draw­ing its plans to sign the Euro­pean Union’s Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment on Nov. 21, 2013, West­ern-backed orga­ni­za­tions made up of rem­nants of the wartime and imme­di­ate post­war Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN‑B) and their suc­ces­sors have launched a cam­paign of provo­ca­tions aimed at not only at bring­ing down the gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Myko­la Azarov, but at over­throw­ing the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Yanukovych.

The EU East­ern Part­ner­ship was ini­ti­at­ed in Decem­ber 2008 by Carl Bildt and Radek Siko­rs­ki, the for­eign min­is­ters of Swe­den and Poland, in the wake of Geor­gia’s mil­i­tary show­down with Rus­sia in South Osse­tia. The East­ern Part­ner­ship tar­get­ed six coun­tries that were for­mer­ly republics with­in the Sovi­et Union: three in the Cau­ca­sus region (Arme­nia, Azer­bai­jan, Geor­gia) and three in East Cen­tral Europe (Belarus, Moldo­va, Ukraine). They were not to be invit­ed to full EU mem­ber­ship, but drawn into an EU vise through so-called Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ments, each one cen­tered on a Deep and Com­pre­hen­sive Free Trade Agree­ment (DCFTA). The prime tar­get of the effort was Ukraine.

Under the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment nego­ti­at­ed with Ukraine, but not signed, the indus­tri­al econ­o­my of Ukraine would have been dis­man­tled, trade with Rus­sia would have been sav­aged (with Rus­sia end­ing its free-trade regime with Ukraine, to pre­vent its own mar­kets from being flood­ed via Ukraine), and the Euro­pean mar­kets’ play­ers would have grabbed for Ukraine’s agri­cul­tur­al and raw mate­ri­als exports. The same dead­ly aus­ter­i­ty regime as has been imposed on the Mediter­ranean states of Europe under the Troi­ka bailout swin­dle would have been imposed on Ukraine.

Fur­ther­more, the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment man­dat­ed “con­ver­gence” on secu­ri­ty issues, with inte­gra­tion into Euro­pean defense sys­tems. Under such an upgrad­ed arrange­ment, the long-term treaty agree­ments on the Russ­ian Navy’s use of the cru­cial Crimean Black Sea ports would have been ter­mi­nat­ed, ulti­mate­ly giv­ing NATO for­ward bas­ing on Rus­si­a’s imme­di­ate bor­der.

While West­ern news accounts pro­mot­ed the demon­stra­tions in Kiev’s Inde­pen­dence Square (Maid­an Neza­lezhnesti, or Euro­maid­an as it is now called), as ini­tial­ly peace­ful, the fact is that, from the out­set, the protests includ­ed hard­core avowed neo-Nazis, right-wing “soc­cer hooli­gans” and “Afghan­sy” com­bat vet­er­ans of the wars in Afghanistan, Chech­nya, and Geor­gia. Accord­ing to Ukrain­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­an Oleh Tsary­ov, 350 Ukraini­ans returned to the coun­try from Syr­ia in Jan­u­ary 2014, after fight­ing with the Syr­i­an rebels, includ­ing al-Qae­da-linked groups such as the al-Nus­ra Front and the Islam­ic State of Iraq and Syr­ia (ISIS). . . .

4b. A fac­tor that is cen­tral to the Ukrain­ian sit­u­a­tion is that coun­try’s nat­ur­al gas reserves. The Ukraine has a quar­ter of the world’s proven nat­ur­al gas reserves. Ger­many no doubt sees those reserves as the answer to the EU’s ener­gy sit­u­a­tion.

“This Oil Giant Could Get Crushed by Ukraine” by Lawrence Lewitinn; Yahoo News; 3/06/2014.

 Once known as the “Bread­bas­ket of Rus­sia”, Ukraine is now also Rus­si­a’s fuel tank. And, one Amer­i­can com­pa­ny has 10 bil­lion rea­sons to hope noth­ing goes wrong.

Ukraine sits on 39 tril­lion cubic feet of nat­ur­al gas reserves. That’s about one-quar­ter the world’s entire proven reserves. . . .

5. A recent post from the Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times illus­trates and defines what might be termed “the ideological/political bou­quet” of the oppo­si­tion forces that oust­ed Yanukovych (who, like most of the lead­ers who have come to pow­er in the for­mer Sovi­et republics and a pletho­ra of lead­ers else­whate, was man­i­festly incom­pe­tent and cor­rupt.)

Writer Palash Ghosh notes that Swoboda–the largest of these groups–has gen­er­ated con­sid­er­able grav­i­tas from young, edu­cated Ukraini­ans who are dis­gusted with the mori­bund econ­omy. His­tor­i­cally, eco­nomic depri­va­tion has lent pop­u­lar sup­port to the ranks of fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions.

“Euro­maidan: The Dark Shad­ows of the Far-Right  in Ukraine Protests” by Palash Ghosh; Inter­na­tional Busi­ness Times; 2/25/2014.

. . . .How­ever, despite its extrem­ist rhetoric, Svo­boda can­not be called a “fringe” par­ty – indeed, it cur­rently occu­pies 36 seats in the 450-mem­ber Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, grant­ing it sta­tus as the fourth-largest par­ty in the coun­try. Fur­ther, Svo­boda is linked to oth­er far-right groups across Europe through its mem­ber­ship in the Alliance of Euro­pean Nation­al Move­ments, which includes the British Nation­al Par­ty (BNP) of the Unit­ed King­dom and Job­bik, the neo-fas­cist, anti-Semit­ic and anti-Roma par­ty of Hun­gary. The leader of Svo­boda, Oleh Tyah­ny­bok, who has appeared at the Kiev protests, has a long his­tory of mak­ing inflam­ma­tory anti-Semit­ic state­ments, includ­ing the accu­sa­tion dur­ing a 2004 speech before par­lia­ment that Ukraine is con­trolled by a “Mus­covite-Jew­ish mafia.” [Swo­boda Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Ihor] Mirosh­ny­chenko also called the Ukrain­ian-born Amer­i­can film actress Mila Kunis a “dirty Jew­ess.”

Tyah­ny­bok has also claimed that “orga­nized Jew­ry” dom­i­nate Ukrain­ian media and gov­ern­ment, have enriched them­selves through crim­i­nal activ­i­ties and plan to engi­neer a “geno­cide” upon the Chris­t­ian Ukrain­ian pop­u­la­tion. Anoth­er top Svo­boda mem­ber, Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn, a deputy in par­lia­ment, often quotes Nazi Pro­pa­ganda Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels, as well as oth­er Third Reich lumi­nar­ies like Ernst Rohm and Gre­gor Strass­er. . . .

. . . . Found­ed in 1991 as the Social-Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine,Svo­boda has appar­ently appealed to hun­dreds of thou­sands of Ukraini­ans tired of eco­nomic woes and ram­pant cor­rup­tion in gov­ern­ment. Reports also sug­gest that the par­ty has derived sig­nif­i­cant sup­port from the well edu­cated and the young, who suf­fer from high unem­ploy­ment. . . . .

6. We review the fact that for­mer George W. Bush State Depart­ment offi­cial (now a Deputy Sec­re­tary of State) main­tained that the U.S. had $5 bil­lion invest­ed in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty in the Ukraine.

“Is the US Back­ing neo-Nazis in the Ukraine?” by Max Blu­men­thal [Alter­net]; Salon.com; 2/25/2014.

. . . In a leaked phone con­ver­sa­tion with Geof­frey Pyatt, the US ambas­sador to Ukraine, Nuland revealed her wish for Tyah­ny­bok to remain “on the out­side,” but to con­sult with the US’s replace­ment for Yanukovich, Arseniy Yat­senyuk, “four times a week.” At a Decem­ber 5, 2013 US-Ukraine Foun­da­tion Con­fer­ence, Nuland boast­ed that the US had invest­ed $5 bil­lion to “build demo­c­ra­tic skills and insti­tu­tions” in Ukraine, though she did not offer any details. . . . .

7. Pierre Omid­yar–Glenn Greenwald’s finan­cial angel–helped finance the Ukrain­ian coup, along with AID. The lat­ter is a fre­quent cov­er for U.S. intel­li­gence activ­i­ties.

We note that Oleh Rybachuk, the recip­i­ent of Omidyar’s funds, was the right-hand man for Vik­tor Yuschenko in the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.

 “Pierre Omid­yar Co-fund­ed Ukraine Rev­o­lu­tion Groups with US gov­ern­ment, Doc­u­ments Show” by Mark Ames;Pan­do Dai­ly; 2/28/2014.

. . . . Pan­do has con­firmed that the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment – in the form of the US Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment (USAID) – played a major role in fund­ing oppo­si­tion groups pri­or to the rev­o­lu­tion. More­over, a large per­cent­age of the rest of the fund­ing to those same groups came from a US bil­lion­aire who has pre­vi­ously worked close­ly with US gov­ern­ment agen­cies to fur­ther his own busi­ness inter­ests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evi­dence shows that US invest­ment was a force mul­ti­plier for many of the groups involved in over­throw­ing Yanukovych. But that’s not the shock­ing part. What’s shock­ing is the name of the bil­lion­aire who co-invest­ed with the US gov­ern­ment (or as Wheel­er put it: the “dark force” act­ing on behalf of “Pax Amer­i­cana”). Step out of the shad­ows…. Wheeler’s boss, Pierre Omid­yar. Yes, in the annals of inde­pen­dent media, this might be the strangest twist ever: Accord­ing to finan­cial dis­clo­sures and reports seen by Pan­do, the founder and pub­lisher of Glenn Greenwald’s gov­ern­ment-bash­ing blog,“The Inter­cept,” co-invest­ed with the US gov­ern­ment to help fund regime change in Ukraine. * * * * When the rev­o­lu­tion came to Ukraine, neo-fas­cists played a front-cen­ter role in over­throw­ing the country’s pres­i­dent. But the real polit­i­cal pow­er rests with Ukraine’s pro-west­ern neolib­er­als. Polit­i­cal fig­ures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of the State Depart­ment, DC neo­cons, EU, and NATO—and the right-hand man to Orange Rev­o­lu­tion leader Vik­tor Yushchenko. Last Decem­ber, the Finan­cial Times wrote that Rybachuk’s “New Cit­i­zen” NGO cam­paign “played a big role in get­ting the protest up and run­ning.” New Cit­i­zen, along with the rest of Rybachuk’s inter­lock­ing net­work of west­ern-backed NGOs and cam­paigns— “Cen­ter UA” (also spelled “Cen­tre UA”), “Ches­no,” and “Stop Cen­sor­ship” to name a few — grew their pow­er by tar­get­ing pro-Yanukovych politi­cians with a well-coor­di­nat­ed anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign that built its strength in Ukraine’s regions, before mass­ing in Kiev last autumn. The efforts of the NGOs were so suc­cess­ful that the Ukraine gov­ern­ment was accused of employ­ing dirty tricks to shut them down. In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, the groups were the sub­ject of a mas­sive mon­ey laun­der­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the eco­nom­ics divi­sion of Ukraine’s Inte­rior Min­istry in what many denounced as a polit­i­cally moti­vated move. For­tu­nately the groups had the strength – which is to say, mon­ey – to sur­vive those attacks and con­tinue push­ing for regime change in Ukraine. The source of that mon­ey? Accord­ing to the Kyiv Post, Pier­rie Omidyar’s Omid­yar Net­work (part of the Omid­yar Group which owns First Look Media and the Inter­cept) pro­vided 36% of “Cen­ter UA”’s $500,000 bud­get in 2012— near­ly $200,000. USAID pro­vided 54% of “Cen­ter UA”’s bud­get for 2012. Oth­er fun­ders includ­ed the US gov­ern­ment-backed Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­racy. . . .

. . . .

In 1992, after the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union, Rybachuk moved to the new­ly-formed Ukraine Cen­tral Bank, head­ing the for­eign rela­tions depart­ment under Cen­tral Bank chief and future Orange Rev­o­lu­tion leader Vik­tor Yushchenko. In his cen­tral bank post, Rybachuk estab­lished close friend­ly ties with west­ern gov­ern­ment and finan­cial aid insti­tu­tions, as well as pro­to-Omid­yar fig­ures like George Soros, who fund­ed many of the NGOs involved in “col­or rev­o­lu­tions” includ­ing small dona­tions to the same Ukraine NGOs that Omid­yar backed. (Like Omid­yar Net­work does today, Soros’ char­ity arms—Open Soci­ety and Renais­sance Foundation—publicly preached trans­parency and good gov­ern­ment in places like Rus­sia dur­ing the Yeltsin years, while Soros’ finan­cial arm spec­u­lated on Russ­ian debt and par­tic­i­pated in scan­dal-plagued auc­tions of state assets.)In ear­ly 2005, Orange Rev­o­lu­tion leader Yushchenko became Ukraine’s pres­i­dent, and he appoint­ed Rybachuk deputy prime min­is­ter in charge of inte­grat­ing Ukraine into the EU, NATO, and oth­er west­ern insti­tu­tions. Rybachuk also pushed for the mass-pri­va­ti­za­tion of Ukraine’s remain­ing state hold­ings. Over the next sev­eral years, Rybachuk was shift­ed around Pres­i­dent Yushchenko’s embat­tled admin­is­tra­tion, torn by inter­nal divi­sions. In 2010, Yushchenko lost the pres­i­dency to recent­ly-over­thrown Vik­tor Yanukovych, and a year lat­er, Rybachuk was on Omidyar’s and USAID’s pay­roll, prepar­ing for the next Orange Rev­o­lu­tion. As Rybachuk told the Finan­cial Times two years ago:

“We want to do [the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion] again and we think we will.”  

Some of Omidyar’s funds were specif­i­cally ear­marked for cov­er­ing the costs of set­ting up Rybachuk’s “clean up par­lia­ment” NGOs in Ukraine’s region­al cen­ters. Short­ly after the Euro­maidan demon­stra­tions erupt­ed last Novem­ber, Ukraine’s Inte­rior Min­istry opened up a mon­ey laun­der­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into Rybachuk’s NGOs, drag­ging Omidyar’s name into the high-stakes polit­i­cal strug­gle. Accord­ing to a Kyiv Post arti­cle on Feb­ru­ary 10 titled, “Rybachuk: Democ­ra­cy-pro­mot­ing non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion faces ‘ridicu­lous’ inves­ti­ga­tion”:

“Police are inves­ti­gat­ing Cen­ter UA, a pub­lic-sec­tor watch­dog fund­ed by West­ern donors, on sus­pi­cion of mon­ey laun­der­ing, the group said. The group’s leader, Oleh Rybachuk, said it appears that author­i­ties, with the probe, are try­ing to warn oth­er non­govern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions that seek to pro­mote democ­racy, trans­parency, free speech and human rights in Ukraine. “Accord­ing to Cen­ter UA, the Kyiv eco­nomic crimes unit of the Inte­rior Min­istry start­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion on Dec. 11. Recent­ly, how­ever, inves­ti­ga­tors stepped up their efforts, ques­tion­ing some 200 wit­nesses. “… Cen­ter UA received more than $500,000 in 2012, accord­ing to its annu­al report for that year, 54 per­cent of which came from Pact Inc., a project fund­ed by the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment. Near­ly 36 per­cent came from Omid­yar Net­work, a foun­da­tion estab­lished by eBay founder Pierre Omid­yar and his wife. Oth­er donors include the Inter­na­tional Renais­sance Foun­da­tion, whose key fun­der is bil­lion­aire George Soros, and Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­racy, fund­ed large­ly by the U.S. Con­gress.”

8. Swedish and oth­er neo-Nazis from oth­er parts of Europe are stream­ing into the Ukraine to join with the Swo­boda and Pravy Sek­tor fas­cists. The Swedish fas­cists are part of the same milieu as Carl Lund­strom, the finan­cial angel of the PRQ serv­er on which Wik­iLeaks was host­ed.

“Neo-Nazis Pour Into Kiev” by Michael Moyni­han; Dai­ly Beast; 2/28/2014.

In ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, Fredrik Hag­berg stood at the ros­trum in Kiev’s City Hall, offer­ing fra­ter­nal and com­radely greet­ings from Swe­den to the sweaty, bruised, and exhaust­ed Ukrain­ian insur­rec­tion­ists scat­tered through­out. The place was fes­tooned with flags—some celtic cross­es, a stray Con­fed­er­ate ban­ner, a stan­dard for the polit­i­cal par­ty Svo­boda, whose mem­bers essen­tially con­trolled the building—reflecting the dubi­ous pol­i­tics of its occu­piers.

Rev­o­lu­tion­ary tourists, thrill seek­ers, and para­chute jour­nal­ists suf­fused Kiev. Sen. John McCain, actress Hay­den Panet­tiere, and French intel­lec­tual Bernard Hen­ri-Levy roused mas­sive crowds with paeans to free­dom and nation­al sov­er­eignty, while offer­ing moral sup­port to the oppo­si­tion forces led by for­mer box­ing cham­pion Vitaly Klitschko.

But Hag­berg, a square-jawed and baby-faced mem­ber of the Swedish armed forces, had a dark­er mes­sage.

“I stand before your forces of rev­o­lu­tion to tell you about what your future might be if you fail your glo­ri­ous endeav­our,” he said in flu­id-but-clipped Eng­lish. “I stand here as a Swede. How­ever where I come from is no longer Swe­den.” Hag­berg warned Ukraini­ans that a suc­cess­ful rev­o­lu­tion must chart a path that care­fully avoid­ed the evils of abor­tion and eth­nic mon­gre­liza­tion, one that harsh­ly pun­ished wel­fare abuse and reject­ed the nor­mal­iza­tion of homo­sex­u­al­ity. “Offi­cials in Swe­den like to calls us the most mod­ern coun­try in the world. I say to you, broth­ers, this is what awaits you if you choose to fol­low our exam­ple. You now have the oppor­tu­nity to choose and cre­ate your own future. Do not accept the trap of choos­ing either the West or Rus­sia.”

It’s unclear who, if any­one, invit­ed him, but Hag­berg was speak­ing as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Nordisk Ung­dom (Nordic Youth), a Swedish neo-Nazi group that cel­e­brates “a tra­di­tional ide­al of a bet­ter man, striv­ing for some­thing greater and more noble than his own per­sonal ben­e­fit; an ide­al­is­tic man who fights for Europe’s free­dom.” Vis­i­tors to the group’s Eng­lish-lan­guage web­site are met with with a Bar­bara Kruger-like adver­tise­ment beseech­ing vis­i­tors to “help us to help the rev­o­lu­tion! Sup­port a free Ukraine! Donate Now...” Because Hag­berg is try­ing to pro­voke his fel­low neo-Nazis into trav­el­ling to Kiev to help shape a new, fas­cist-friend­ly Ukraine.

Amongst the fas­cists, ultra-nation­al­ists, and racists in Europe, there has been much grip­ing that the revolt in Ukraine has been over­taken, if not con­trolled from the out­set, by “CIA/ZOG [Zion­ist Occu­pied Government]/Soros-sponsored” forces. The Euroscep­ti­cism of the continent’s far-right move­ments has pro­duced a skep­ti­cism of the uprising’s much-dis­cussed Europhile main­stream.

But Pro-Yanukovych forces and the for­mer president’s Krem­lin allies have heav­ily pro­moted an alter­na­tive narrative—one that Hag­berg and his allies hap­pily embrace—suggesting that the protest move­ment is in fact hon­ey­combed with dan­ger­ous neo-Nazis affil­i­ated with the extrem­ist Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal par­ties Svo­boda and Right Sec­tor. There­fore, West­ern sup­port­ers of the protests, like John Mccain, are agi­tat­ing on behalf of vio­lent Ukrain­ian fas­cism.

It’s a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the Kremlin’s argu­ment against West­ern sup­port for Syr­ian rebel groups, which it says has amount­ed to mate­r­ial sup­port for al-Qae­da-spon­sered ter­ror­ism. And like with Syria—and the Span­ish Civ­il War before it—sympathetic Euro­pean extrem­ists are trav­el­ling to pro­vide sup­port to their ide­o­log­i­cal brethren.

“We just got boots on the ground and are dis­cussing with Svo­boda rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­er nation­al­ists what we can assist with,” Mag­nus Söder­man, the neo-Nazi orga­nizer of the Swedish Ukraine Vol­un­teers (Sven­ska Ukrainafriv­il­liga), told me. “Our mes­sage to them is that we will assist with what­ever; clear­ing the streets, secu­rity, mak­ing food.”

On the group’s web­site, stuffed with hack­neyed neo-Nazi pro­pa­ganda, poten­tial vol­un­teers are told that “we do not orga­nize any para­mil­i­tary force because our involve­ment is of a civ­il nature, as aid work­ers. Of course, should vio­lence break out we will make use of our right of self-defense.” (The site advis­es recruits to “improve your phys­i­cal fit­ness” before trav­el­ling to Kiev.) Ukraine, the group says, is fac­ing an exis­ten­tial threat and “we must secure the exis­tence of our peo­ple and the future of our white chil­dren!”

Accord­ing to the group’s new­ly con­sti­tuted Face­book page, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Swedish Ukraine Vol­un­teers recent­ly “vis­ited the par­lia­ment and estab­lished ??impor­tant con­tacts” amongst local politi­cians, pre­sum­ably those affil­i­ated with ultra-nation­al­ist par­ties Svo­boda and Right Sec­tor. The idea of for­eign vol­un­teers is “a good ini­tia­tive,” said one mem­ber of a fas­cist mes­sage board in Swe­den, “and I give my full sup­port to Mikael Skillt and oth­er par­ty com­rades who are trav­el­ling down to help our broth­ers in the east.”

Mikael Skillt is well-known in Swedish neo-Nazi cir­cles. A spokesman for the vig­i­lante group Stop the Pedophiles and a vet­eran of var­i­ous now-defunct fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions, Skillt is cur­rently affil­i­ated with the Par­ty of the Swedes (SvP), a neo-Nazi group found­ed by mem­bers of the less cam­era-friend­ly Nation­al Social­ist Front. Accord­ing to its web­site, SvP “has good con­tact with [Svo­boda] who were guests at our con­fer­ence Vision Europe just under a year ago.”

When I con­tacted Skillt he was in Moscow, on his way to agi­tat­ing in Kiev. So why does Ukraine need a fas­cist inter­na­tional brigade? “We are scan­ning the needs of the Ukraini­ans, but we will be offer­ing [them] our help in what­ever they need,” he told me. “We have mem­bers with expe­ri­ence in most fields, rang­ing from mil­i­tary to truck dri­vers to jour­nal­ists.”

When I asked if he had can­vassed the opin­ions of Russ­ian neo-Nazi groups while in Moscow, Skillt told me, with pre­dictable oblique­ness, that he had “heard some [Russ­ian] nation­al­ists who have spo­ken of a rev­o­lu­tion inspired by Ukraine.”

So how large is the inter­na­tional brigade of ultra-nation­al­ists? A Euro­pean jour­nal­ist who fol­lows the move­ment of Euro­pean jihadists to Syria—and now fas­cists migrat­ing towards Kiev—told me that there was indeed scat­tered evi­dence that neo-Nazi groups out­side Swe­den were mak­ing pil­grim­ages to Ukraine. When I asked Mag­nus Söder­man if there was a net­work of oth­er Nazis on the ground, he told me that “com­rades from oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries are also prepar­ing to assist if it is need­ed.”

9a. Con­sid­er­able insight into the machi­na­tions under­ly­ing the Arab Spring oop­er­a­tion can be gleaned from a New York Times pro­file of Gene Sharp. (The Arab Spring oper­a­tion, over­lap­ping the Wik­iLeaks “op,” is cov­ered at length and in detail, in FTR #‘s 733  through 739, as well as FTR #745.)

“Shy U.S. Intel­lec­tual Cre­ated Play­book Used in a Rev­o­lu­tion” by Sheryl Gay Stol­berg; The New York Times; 2/16/2011.

. . . . When the non­par­ti­san Inter­na­tional Cen­ter on Non­vi­o­lent Con­flict, which trains democ­racy activists, slipped into Cairo sev­eral years ago to con­duct a work­shop, among the papers it dis­trib­uted was Mr. Sharp’s “198 Meth­ods of Non­vi­o­lent Action,” a list of tac­tics that range from hunger strikes to “protest dis­rob­ing” to “dis­clos­ing iden­ti­ties of secret agents.”

Dalia Zia­da, an Egypt­ian blog­ger and activist who attend­ed the work­shop and lat­er orga­nized sim­i­lar ses­sions on her own, said trainees were active in both the Tunisia and Egypt revolts. She said that some activists trans­lated excerpts of Mr. Sharp’s work into Ara­bic, and that his mes­sage of “attack­ing weak­nesses of dic­ta­tors” stuck with them.

Peter Ack­er­man, a one­time stu­dent of Mr. Sharp who found­ed the non­vi­o­lence cen­ter and ran the Cairo work­shop, cites his for­mer men­tor as proof that “ideas have pow­er.”

Mr. Sharp . . . . has had no con­tact with the Egypt­ian pro­test­ers, he said, although he recent­ly learned that the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood had “From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­racy” post­ed on its Web site. . . .

. . . . Mr. Ack­er­man, who became wealthy as an invest­ment banker after study­ing under Mr. Sharp, con­tributed mil­lions of dol­lars and kept it afloat for years. But about a decade ago, Mr. Ack­er­man want­ed to dis­sem­i­nate Mr. Sharp’s ideas more aggres­sively, as well as his own. He put his mon­ey into his own cen­ter, which also pro­duces movies and even a video game to train dis­si­dents. An annu­ity he pur­chased still helps pay Mr. Sharp’s salary. . .

9b. Sharp has enjoyed appoint­ments at Har­vard University’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies.

“Gene Sharp”; wikipedia.org

. . . . . Sharp has been a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Mass­a­chu­setts Dart­mouth since 1972. He simul­ta­ne­ously held research appoint­ments at Har­vard University’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Affairs since 1965.[1] . . . .

9c. The Har­vard Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies was found­ed by Robert R. Bowie, an indi­vid­ual with numer­ous con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

“Robert R. Bowie”; wikipedia.org.

Robert R. Bowie (born August 24, 1909) is an Amer­i­can diplo­mat and schol­ar who served as CIA Deputy Direc­tor from 1977–1979. . . .

. . . . .  The youngest pro­fes­sor of the school, he was a trust­ed con­fi­dant to John J. McCloy the “unof­fi­cial chair­man of the Amer­i­can estab­lish­ment”. Dur­ing peri­ods of leave from Har­vard between 1950 and 1952 Bowie worked for McCloy as one of his legal advis­ers in Germany.[1]

He served as Direc­tor of Pol­icy Plan­ning from 1953–1957; co-founder of Harvard’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Affairs (1958); Coun­selor for the State Depart­ment from 1966–1968. He is a mem­ber of the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, and the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Diplo­macy. He is a recip­i­ent of the Legion of Mer­it and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Mer­it of the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many. . . .

9d. Ack­er­man has served as an advi­sor to the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace, whose Mus­lim World Ini­tia­tive has  been cit­ed by crit­ics as a the­ater of Islam­ic extrem­ist pen­e­tra­tion and activ­i­ty.

“Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace”; Source­watch.

Peter Ack­er­man is on “the U.S. Advi­sory Coun­cil of the Unit­ed States Insti­tute of Peace.” [4]

9e.  Ackerman’s resume is inter­est­ing, for a pro­moter of social jus­tice.

“Peter Ack­er­man”; Source­watch.

. . . . After his grad­u­a­tion he joined the junk-bond deal­ers, Drex­el Burn­ham Lam­bert, and for most of the next fif­teen years, he was the right-hand man to Michael Milken the “Junk-Bond King”. He became the key deal-mak­er and strate­gist for the com­pany, and his inno­v­a­tive approach to deal-mak­ing, togeth­er with his unusu­al aca­d­e­mic qual­i­fi­ca­tions, earned him the nick­name “the absent­minded pro­fes­sor”. But the record shows that he was far from absent mind­ed. . . .

9f. Gene Sharp’s ide­o­log­i­cal jot­tings played a key role in the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.” His ide­ol­o­gy also was uti­lized else­where in the for­mer Sovi­et Union, co-habit­ing that polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal land­scape with the fas­cists of the Free Con­gress Foun­da­tion.

“Gene Sharp”; Wikipedia

. . . . Sharp’s 1993 hand­book From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy^[29] was first pub­lished in Bur­ma, fourth edi­tion in 2010. It has since been trans­lat­ed into at least 31 oth­er lan­guages.^[30] It has served as a basis for the cam­paigns of Ser­bia’s Otpor (who were also direct­ly trained by the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tute), Geor­gia’s Kmara, Ukraine’s Pora, Kyr­gyzs­tan’s KelKel and Belarus’ Zubr. Pora’s Oleh Kyriyenko said in a 2004 inter­view with Radio Nether­lands,

“The bible of Pora has been the book of Gene Sharp, also used by Otpor, it’s called: From Dic­ta­tor­ship to Democ­ra­cy. Pora activists have trans­lat­ed it by them­selves. We have writ­ten to Mr Sharp and to the Albert Ein­stein Insti­tute in the Unit­ed States, and he became very sym­pa­thet­ic towards our ini­tia­tive, and the Insti­tu­tion pro­vid­ed fund­ing to print over 12,000 copies of this book for free.”^[31]

Sharp’s writ­ings on “Civil­ian-Based Defense”^[32] were used by the Lithuan­ian, Lat­vian, and Eston­ian gov­ern­ments dur­ing their sep­a­ra­tion from the Sovi­et Union in 1991. Lithuan­ian Defence Min­is­ter Audrius Butke­vi­cius declared at the time, “I would rather have this book than the nuclear bomb”.^[16] . . . .

 9g. After review­ing infor­ma­tion about non­vi­o­lent the­o­reti­cian Gene Sharp, the pro­gram notes that the PORA move­ment in the Ukraine was one of the insti­tu­tions that took their cues from Sharp’s writ­ings. Ini­tially a big sup­porter of Vladimir Yuschenko, PORA turned against him.

As not­ed in FTR #529, Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­rina Chu­machenko, the point per­son for the OUN/B. Lat­er, Yuschenko named Ban­dera a hero of the Ukraine.

One won­ders if the Pirate Bay/Pirate Party/Anonymous milieu will turn out to be sim­i­larly, cyn­i­cally manip­u­lated in the case of the Pig­gy-Back Coup in the Mid­dle East. Youth­ful ide­al­ists, that milieu may well have helped install the fas­cist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in pow­er in Egypt and  else­where in the Mid­dle East.

“Is PORA Turn­ing Against Yuschenko”; The Kiev Ukraine News Blog; 9/24/2005.

PORA, the non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion that played a deci­sive role in Ukraine’s Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, has adopt­ed a high­ly crit­i­cal stance towards the ten-point mem­o­ran­dum signed last week by Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko and the leader of the Par­ty of Regions, for­mer prime min­is­ter Vik­tor Yanukovych. . . .

9h. Peter Ack­er­man, part­ner of con­victed junk-bond king Michael Milken, asso­ciate of intel­li­gence ele­ments con­nected to the sup­pos­ed­ly-spon­ta­neous “Arab Spring,” is the dri­ving force behind Amer­i­cans Elect, an Internet/electoral orga­ni­za­tion that seeks “greater trans­parency” in polit­i­cal nom­i­nat­ing using the Inter­net. Amer­i­cans Elect has been very kind indeed to the overt­ly Nazi-linked Ron Paul.

10. The New York Times not­ed that Oba­ma has not react­ed to the “demo­c­ra­t­ic” devel­op­ments in the Ukraine in the way that George W. Bush react­ed to the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion”

“Wary Stance from Oba­ma on Ukraine” by Peter Bak­er; The New York Times; 2/24/2014.

Tele­vi­sions around the White House were aglow with pic­tures of Ukraini­ans in the streets, demand­ing to be heard and top­pling a gov­ern­ment aligned with Rus­sia. It was an invig­o­rat­ing moment, and it spurred a pres­i­dent already rethink­ing his approach to the world.

That was a dif­fer­ent decade and a dif­fer­ent pres­i­dent. While George W. Bush was inspired by the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion of 2004 and weeks lat­er vowed in his sec­ond inau­gur­al address to pro­mote democ­ra­cy, Barack Oba­ma has approached the rev­o­lu­tion of 2014 with a more clin­i­cal detach­ment aimed at avoid­ing insta­bil­i­ty.

 Rather than an oppor­tu­ni­ty to spread free­dom in a part of the world long plagued by cor­rup­tion and oppres­sion, Mr. Oba­ma sees Ukraine’s cri­sis as a prob­lem to be man­aged, ide­al­ly with a min­i­mum of vio­lence or geopo­lit­i­cal upheaval. While cer­tain­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the pro-West­ern pro­test­ers who pushed out Pres­i­dent Vik­tor F. Yanukovychand hope­ful that they can estab­lish a rep­re­sen­ta­tive­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment, Mr. Oba­ma has not made glob­al aspi­ra­tions of democ­ra­cy the ani­mat­ing force of his pres­i­den­cy.

“I just think this pres­i­dent is not going to lean for­ward on his skis with regard to democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion,” said John Lewis Gad­dis, a Yale Uni­ver­si­ty his­to­ri­an who advised the Bush White House as speech­writ­ers worked on the for­mer president’s Jan­u­ary 2005 inau­gur­al address promis­ing to com­bat tyran­ny abroad. “If any­thing, he’s going to lean back and let nat­ur­al forces take us there, if they do.” . . . . “The administration’s Ukraine pol­i­cy is emblem­at­ic of a broad­er prob­lem with today’s for­eign pol­i­cy — absence of a strate­gic vision, dis­in­ter­est in democ­ra­cy pro­mo­tion and an unwill­ing­ness to lead,” said Paula J. Dobri­an­sky, an under sec­re­tary of state for Mr. Bush. . . .

11. Note that the rhetor­i­cal pres­sure on Oba­ma com­ing from Paula Dobri­an­sky is com­ing from some­one con­nect­ed to the OUN/B milieu and its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the GOP and Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion.

“Is the US Back­ing neo-Nazis in the Ukraine?” by Max Blu­men­thal [Alter­net]; Salon.com; 2/25/2014.

. . . In Wash­ing­ton, the OUN‑B recon­sti­tuted under the ban­ner of the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­ica (UCCA), an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion com­prised of “com­plete OUN‑B fronts,” accord­ing to Bel­lant. By the mid-1980’s, the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion was hon­ey­combed with UCCA mem­bers, with the group’s chair­man Lev Dobri­an­sky, serv­ing as ambas­sador to the Bahamas, and his daugh­ter, Paula, sit­ting on the Nation­al Secu­rity Coun­cil. Rea­gan per­son­ally wel­comed Stet­sko, the Ban­derist leader who over­saw the mas­sacre of 7000 Jews in Lviv, into the White House in 1983.“Your strug­gle is our strug­gle,” Rea­gan told the for­mer Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor. “Your dream is our dream.” . . . .