While it’s very unclear when or how the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine can be resolved, one of the key objec­tives for all the par­ties involved should be to avoid mak­ing a bad sit­u­a­tion worse. Any­thing that makes the lives of Ukraini­ans worse going for­ward and damp­ens their prospects for rebuild­ing their econ­o­my and heal­ing the social con­tract and eth­nic ten­sions should be avoid­ed at costs. That’s just a no-brain­er.

So, with that in mind, check out the plans for Ukraine’s “bailout”:

Kyiv Post
EU’s long-await­ed $15 bil­lion pack­age may add to government’s aus­ter­i­ty pro­gram
March 5, 2014, 6:30 p.m. | Ivan Ver­styuk

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.

So Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Bar­roso is call­ing for imme­di­ate cuts in tar­rifs and aus­ter­i­ty in return for loans are described as “win­dow dress­ing” that won’t real­ly be used to sup­port the bud­get any­ways. 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. The pub­lic in gen­er­al might not be super pleased with that fate but those that want to reshape Ukraine’s soci­ety in rad­i­cal far-right ways prob­a­bly won’t mind:

Forbes
Wash­ing­ton’s Man Yat­senyuk Set­ting Ukraine Up For Ruin
2/27/2014 @ 4:58PM
Ken­neth Rapoza Con­trib­u­tor

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.”

Well, at least Ukraine can deval­ue its cur­ren­cy in the mid­dle of all this to help smooth out the com­ing eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions. It could be worse!

There are some very inter­est­ing pic­tures with this post, that make it worth­while to click the link to check it out.

V

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554

The U.S. has Installed a Neo-Nazi Gov­ern­ment in Ukraine
By Prof Michel Chos­su­dovsky
Glob­al Research, March 02, 2014

Accord­ing to the New York Times, “The Unit­ed States and the Euro­pean Union have embraced the rev­o­lu­tion here as anoth­er flow­er­ing of democ­ra­cy, a blow to author­i­tar­i­an­ism and klep­toc­ra­cy in the for­mer Sovi­et space.” ( After Ini­tial Tri­umph, Ukraine’s Lead­ers Face Bat­tle for Cred­i­bil­i­ty, NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, empha­sis added)

“Flow­er­ing Democ­ra­cy, Rev­o­lu­tion”? The grim real­i­ties are oth­er­wise. What is a stake is a US-EU-NATO spon­sored coup d’Etat in bla­tant vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.

The for­bid­den truth is that the West has engi­neered –through a care­ful­ly staged covert oper­a­tion– the for­ma­tion of a proxy regime inte­grat­ed by Neo-Nazis.

Con­firmed by Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland, key orga­ni­za­tions in the Ukraine includ­ing the Neo-Nazi par­ty Svo­bo­da were gen­er­ous­ly sup­port­ed by Wash­ing­ton: “We have invest­ed more than 5 bil­lion dol­lars to help Ukraine to achieve these and oth­er goals. … We will con­tin­ue to pro­mote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”

The West­ern media has casu­al­ly avoid­ed to ana­lyze the com­po­si­tion and ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of the gov­ern­ment coali­tion. The word “Neo-Nazi” is a taboo. It has been exclud­ed from the dic­tio­nary of main­stream media com­men­tary. It will not appear in the pages of the New York Times, the Wash­ing­ton Post or The Inde­pen­dent. Jour­nal­ists have been instruct­ed not to use the term “Neo-Nazi” to des­ig­nate Svo­bo­da and the Right Sec­tor.

Com­po­si­tion of the Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment

We are not deal­ing with a tran­si­tion­al gov­ern­ment in which Neo-Nazi ele­ments inte­grate the fringe of the coali­tion, for­mal­ly led by the Father­land par­ty.

The Cab­i­net is not only inte­grat­ed by the Svo­bo­da and Right Sec­tor (not to men­tion for­mer mem­bers of defunct fas­cist UNA-UNSO), the two main Neo-Nazi enti­ties have been entrust­ed with key posi­tions which grant them de fac­to con­trol over the Armed Forces, Police, Jus­tice and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty.

While Yatsenuyk’s Father­land Par­ty con­trols the major­i­ty of port­fo­lios and Svo­bo­da Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyah­ny­bok was not grant­ed a major cab­i­net post (appar­ent­ly at the request of assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland), mem­bers of Svo­bo­da and the Right Sec­tor occu­py key posi­tions in the areas of Defense, Law Enforce­ment, Edu­ca­tion and Eco­nom­ic Affairs.

Andriy parubiy.jpgAndriy Paru­biy [right] co-founder of the Neo-Nazi Social-Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine (sub­se­quent­ly renamed Svo­bo­da) was appoint­ed Sec­re­tary of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Nation­al Defense Com­mit­tee (RNBOU). (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key posi­tion which over­seas the Min­istry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforce­ment, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Intel­li­gence. The RNBOU is cen­tral deci­sion-mak­ing body. While it is for­mal­ly head­ed by the pres­i­dent, it is run by the Sec­re­tari­at with a staff of 180 peo­ple includ­ing defense, intel­li­gence and nation­al secu­ri­ty experts.

Paru­biy was one of the main lead­ers behind the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion in 2004. His orga­ni­za­tion was fund­ed by the West. He is referred to by the West­ern media as the “kom­man­dant” of the Euro­Maid­an move­ment. Andriy Paru­biy togeth­er with par­ty leader Oleh Tyah­ny­bok is a fol­low­er of Ukrain­ian Nazi Stepan Ban­dera, who col­lab­o­rat­ed in the mass mur­der­er of Jews and Poles dur­ing World War II. Reuters / Gleb Garanich

Neo-Nazi march hon­or­ing Stepan Ban­dera

In turn, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sec­tor del­e­ga­tion in the par­lia­ment, has been appoint­ed Parubiy’s deputy Sec­re­tary of the RNBOU.

Yarosh was the leader of the Brown Shirt Neo-Nazi para­mil­i­tary dur­ing the Euro­Maid­an “protest” move­ment. He has called for dis­band­ing the Par­ty of the regions and the Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

Dmytro Yarosh speech at Euro­maid­an (Cen­tre)

The Neo Nazi par­ty also con­trols the judi­cial process with the appoint­ment of Oleh Makhnit­sky of the Svo­bo­da par­ty to the posi­tion of pros­e­cu­tor-gen­er­al of Ukraine. What kind of jus­tice will pre­vail with a reknown Neo-Nazi in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine?

Cab­i­net posi­tions were also allo­cat­ed to for­mer mem­bers of the Neo-Nazi fringe orga­ni­za­tion Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assem­bly – Ukrain­ian Nation­al Self Defense (UNA-UNSO):

“Tetyana Cher­no­vol, por­trayed in the West­ern press as a cru­sad­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist with­out ref­er­ence to her past involve­ment in the anti-Semit­ic UNA-UNSO, was named chair of the government’s anti-cor­rup­tion com­mit­tee. Dmytro Bula­tov, known for his alleged kid­nap­ping by police, but also with UNA-UNSO con­nec­tions, was appoint­ed min­is­ter of youth and sports.

Yegor Sobolev, leader of a civic group in Inde­pen­dence Maid­an and polit­i­cal­ly close to Yat­senyuk, was appoint­ed chair of the Lus­tra­tion Com­mit­tee, charged with purg­ing fol­low­ers of Pres­i­dent Yanukovych from gov­ern­ment and pub­lic life. (See Ukraine Tran­si­tion Gov­ern­ment: Neo-Nazis in Con­trol of Armed Forces, Nation­al Secu­ri­ty, Econ­o­my, Jus­tice and Edu­ca­tion, Glob­al Research, March 02, 2014

The Lus­tra­tion Com­mit­tee is to orga­nize the Neo-Nazi witch-hunt against all oppo­nents of the new Neo-Nazi regime. The tar­gets of the lus­tra­tion cam­paign are peo­ple in posi­tions of author­i­ty with­in the civ­il ser­vice, region­al and munic­i­pal gov­ern­ments, edu­ca­tion, research, etc. The term lus­tra­tion refers to the “mass dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion” of peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the for­mer gov­ern­ment. It also has racial over­tones. It will in all like­li­hood be direct­ed against Com­mu­nists, Rus­sians and mem­bers of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

It is impor­tant to reflect on the fact that the West, for­mal­ly com­mit­ted to demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, has not only spear­head­ed the demise of an elect­ed pres­i­dent, it has instat­ed a polit­i­cal regime inte­grat­ed by Neo-Nazis.

This is a proxy gov­ern­ment which enables the US, NATO and the EU to inter­fere in Ukraine’s inter­nal affairs and dis­man­tle its bilat­er­al rela­tions with the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. It should be under­stood, how­ev­er, that the Neo-Nazis do not ulti­mate­ly call the shots. The com­po­si­tion of the Cab­i­net broad­ly coin­cides with U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland ” rec­om­men­da­tions” con­tained in the leaked tele­phone call to the U.S. ambas­sador to Ukraine.

Wash­ing­ton has cho­sen to spear­head Neo-Nazis into posi­tions of author­i­ty. Under a “regime of indi­rect rule”, how­ev­er, they take their orders on cru­cial mil­i­tary and for­eign pol­i­cy issues –includ­ing the deploy­ment of troops direct­ed against the Russ­ian fed­er­a­tion– from the the US State Depart­ment, the Pen­ta­gon and NATO.

The World is at a dan­ger­ous cross­roads: The struc­tures and com­po­si­tion of this proxy gov­ern­ment installed by the West do not favor dia­logue with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary.

A sce­nario of mil­i­tary esca­la­tion lead­ing to con­fronta­tion of Rus­sia and NATO is a dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. The Ukraine’s Nation­al Secu­ri­ty and Nation­al Defense Com­mit­tee (RNBOU) which is con­trolled by Neo-Nazis plays a cen­tral role in mil­i­tary affairs. In the con­fronta­tion with Moscow, deci­sions tak­en by the RNBOU head­ed by Neo-Nazi Paru­biy and his brown Shirt deputy Dmytro Yarosh –in con­sul­ta­tion with Wash­ing­ton and Brus­sels– could poten­tial­ly have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences.

How­ev­er, it goes with­out say­ing that “sup­port” to the for­ma­tion of a Neo-Nazi gov­ern­ment does not in any way imply the devel­op­ment of “fas­cist ten­den­cies” with­in the White House, the State Depart­ment and the US Con­gress.

“The flow­er­ing of democ­ra­cy” in Ukraine –to use the words of the New York Times– is endorsed by Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats. It’s a bipar­ti­san project. Lest we for­get, Sen­a­tor John McCain is a firm sup­port­er and friend of Neo Nazi Svo­bo­da leader Oleh Tyah­ny­bok (Image right).

It appears that the snipers dur­ing the protests were run by the lead­ers of the coup:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573923/Estonian-Foreign-Ministry-confirms-authenticity-leaked-phone-call-discussing-Kiev-snipers-shot-protesters-possibly-hired-Ukraines-new-leaders.html

Eston­ian For­eign Min­istry con­firms authen­tic­i­ty of leaked phone call dis­cussing how Kiev snipers who shot pro­test­ers were pos­si­bly hired by Ukraine’s new lead­ers

Leaked phone call sug­gests anti-gov­ern­ment pro­test­ers hired the snipers

Call between EU’s for­eign affairs chief Cather­ine Ash­ton and Esto­ni­a’s for­eign affairs min­is­ter Urmas Paet

Paet appears to claim oppo­si­tion lead­ers hired the snipers that killed 94

————–
More at link

@Swamp: There’s some more details on info relayed to Esto­ni­a’s for­eign min­is­ter pub­lished in the Kyiv Post. It sounds like there’s also spec­u­la­tion that a “third par­ty” could have been behind the attacks.

Kyiv Post
Eston­ian for­eign min­is­ter, in leaked phone call, rais­es sus­pi­cions about Ukraine’s new gov­ern­ment and sniper killings

March 5, 2014, 9:18 p.m. | Ukraine — by Bri­an Bon­ner, Katya Gorchin­skaya

A leaked con­ver­sa­tion between Eston­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Urmas Paet and Euro­pean Union for­eign pol­i­cy chief Cather­ine Ash­ton relays explo­sive sus­pi­cions that the same snipers are respon­si­ble for the Feb. 18–20 killings of both Euro­Maid­an demon­stra­tors and police offi­cers.

Paet goes fur­ther by rais­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the gun­men may have been work­ing for sup­port­ers of Ukraine’s new inter­im gov­ern­ment, not oust­ed Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych, and that Ukraine’s cur­rent rulers are not inter­est­ed in ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ing who is behind the killings of some 90 peo­ple in the three-day peri­od.

Paet also says that civ­il soci­ety lead­ers of Euro­Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion dis­trust the new Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment because they are taint­ed by cor­rup­tion and have “a dirty past.”

He relays sus­pi­cions of coali­tion gov­ern­ment involve­ment in the sniper killings after a con­ver­sa­tion he had with Dr. Olga Boho­mo­lets, a physi­cian who attend­ed to dead and wound­ed Euro­Maid­an pro­test­ers and who recent­ly refused a min­is­te­r­i­al appoint­ment in the new gov­ern­ment.

“What was dis­turb­ing is that the same snipers ...killed peo­ple on both sides. She (Boho­mo­lets) showed me some pho­tos. She said that as a med­ical doc­tor she could tell it was the same hand­writ­ing, the same type of bul­lets and it’s real­ly dis­turb­ing that now the new coali­tion, they don’t want to inves­ti­gate what exact­ly hap­pened,” Paet tells Ash­ton. “There is now stronger and stronger under­stand­ing that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych. It was some­body from the new coali­tion.”

The authen­tic­i­ty of the Feb. 25 tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion was con­firmed to the Kyiv Post by Eston­ian Ambas­sador to Ukraine Sulev Kan­nike, speak­ing by tele­phone from Tallinn, the Eston­ian cap­i­tal.

Boho­mo­lets, how­ev­er, did not respond to a phone call or text mes­sage seek­ing com­ment. How­ev­er, the Lon­don Tele­graph report­ed on March 5 that Boho­mo­lets did not tell Kan­nike. “I think you can only say some­thing like this on the basis of fact,” the Lon­don news­paer quot­ed her as say­ing. “It’s not cor­rect and it’s not good to do this. It should be based on fact.”

Kan­nike, Estonia’s ambas­sador to Ukraine, said that the 11-minute con­ver­sa­tion took place on Feb. 25 while Paet was in Tallinn and Ash­ton was in Brus­sels, the Euro­pean Union’s admin­is­tra­tive cap­i­tal.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s true. Yeah. That’s fact-based,” Kan­nike said. “We are doing dam­age con­trol.”

Kan­nike, how­ev­er, cau­tioned against reach­ing con­clu­sions based on one tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion and said that Paet’s relayed sus­pi­cions do not rep­re­sent any offi­cial Eston­ian posi­tion. He said it’s pos­si­ble that “a third par­ty” is respon­si­ble for the killings, mak­ing it all the more impor­tant for author­i­ties to iden­ti­fy the killers and form who they were work­ing.

...

Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arseniy Avakov in Kharkiv on March 5 raised sus­pi­cions that a third par­ty – nei­ther Yanukovych nor the oppo­si­tion lead­ers – was involved in the shoot­ings. Espe­cial­ly after Russia’s inva­sion of Crimea, spec­u­la­tion about Russ­ian involve­ment in the dead­ly shoot­ings has increased.

“The full record­ing is also avail­able in Eng­lish,” Kan­nike said, so the pub­lic “can track and check what the min­is­ter actu­al­ly said.”

The Paet-Ash­ton exchanges marks the sec­ond leaked con­ver­sa­tion in the last 31 days between high-lev­el West­ern offi­cials dis­cussing Ukraine. The first came with the leaked Feb. 4 con­ver­sa­tion between U.S. Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland and U.S. Ambas­sador to Ukraine Geof­frey R. Pyatt, who were dis­cussing the strengths and weak­ness­es of then-opposi­ton polit­i­cal lead­ers. The con­ver­sa­tion is most famous for Nuland’s blurt­ing out “you know, fu ck the EU!” in frus­tra­tion with the 28-nation bloc’s inac­tion in solv­ing Ukraine’s cri­sis.

Here is a par­tial tran­script of the con­ver­sa­tion:

Paet: “Impres­sions are sad...my impres­sion is that there is not trust towards those politi­cians in those coali­tion from peo­ple on Maid­an and the civ­il soci­ety. They say they know all these peo­ple, and these peo­ple have a dirty past, that they made some pro­pos­als to the same Olga (Boho­mo­lets) and some oth­er from civ­il soci­ety to join the new gov­ern­ment. Olga, for exam­ple, she says direct­ly that she is ready to go to the gov­ern­ment only in the case if she can take with her her team, for­eign experts to start real health­care reforms. I thought, basi­cal­ly, that the trust lev­el is absolute­ly low. On the oth­er hand, all these secu­ri­ty prob­lems, integri­ty prob­lems, Crimea – all this stuff. Regions Par­ty was absolute­ly upset. They say they accept that there will be a new gov­ern­ment, there will be extra­or­di­nary elec­tions, but there is enor­mous pres­sure against mem­bers of par­lia­ment, there are unin­vit­ed vis­i­tors to par­ty mem­bers. Some jour­nal­ists ... saw dur­ing the day that one mem­ber of par­lia­ment was beat­en in front of the par­lia­ment build­ing by these guys with guns on the streets. All this mess is still there, and of course, this Olga and oth­ers from civ­il soci­ety were absolute­ly sure that peo­ple will not leave the streets before they see that the real reforms will start. It’s not enough that just have a change of gov­ern­ment. This is the main impres­sion from EU’s and Esto­ni­a’s point of view. We should get ready to put togeth­er a finan­cial pack­age, also togeth­er with oth­ers. A clear mes­sage is need­ed: it’s not enough that there is change of gov­ern­ment, that there is real reforms and real action (need­ed) to increase the lev­el of trust, oth­er­wise it will end bad­ly. The Regions Par­ty is say­ing that we will see that peo­ple from the east­ern parts of the coun­try will wake up and start to demand their rights. Some peo­ple also admit there were in Donet­sk, where peo­ple said well, we can’t wait how long still will the occu­pa­tion will last in Donet­sk, that it’s a real Russ­ian city and they would like to see Rus­sia will take over...short impres­sions.”

Ash­ton: “…very, very interesting...we’re work­ing on pack­ages short, medi­um and long term, every­thing from how we’d get mon­ey in quick­ly, how we spoke with IMF and how we would get invest­ment pack­ages from busi­ness lead­ers and so on...

...

Paet: (Paet said that the only per­son who got a lot of pos­i­tive men­tions from the Maid­an and civ­il soci­ety peo­ple was for­mer Min­is­ter Petro Poroshenko, who has a lot of trust.)

“Sec­ond, what was quite dis­turb­ing is that the same Olg shwow all the evi­dence shows that the same snipers ...killed peo­ple on both sides... she also showed me some pho­tos. She said that as a med­ical doc­tor she could tell it was the same hand­writ­ing, the same type of bul­lets and it’s real­ly dis­turb­ing that now the new coali­tion, that they don’t want to inves­ti­gate what exact­ly hap­pened. There is now a stronger and stronger under­stand­ing that behind snipers it was not (oust­ed Pres­i­dent Vik­tor) Yanukovych, but that it was some­body from the new coali­tion.”

(Paet said it was very dis­turb­ing that the new gov­ern­ment was dis­cred­it­ed from the very start.)

Ash­ton: “...I think they do want to investigate...They also the need to let the Rada func­tion. If the Rada does­n’t func­tion, it will be com­plete chaos. Being an activist and a doc­tor is very, very impor­tant, but if it means you’re not a politi­cian.”

Those are rather extra­or­di­nary events. All the more inter­est­ing to me as my wife is from Crimea. About the aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures planned, there have been news that pen­sion pay­ments would be halved in Ukraine. Pen­sions in Ukraine are typ­i­cal­ly a frac­tion of what they are in Rus­sia. Con­trast this with anoth­er piece of infor­ma­tion from a pri­vate source in Crimea, where the bank­ing sys­tem has been seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed in the past few weeks and some pen­sions have not been paid last month; yet they were this month, and appar­ent­ly the pay­ments came, amaz­ing­ly, from Rus­sia. Crimeans have also been promised pen­sion rais­es. It should be quite obvi­ous to any­body that Rus­sia will not let go of Crimea. We are told, futher­more, con­trary to what the media say, that there has been no surge of Russ­ian troops on the ground (although it can be assumed there are troops some­where near­by in readi­ness). A lot has already been said else­where and I will stop here, but the lev­el of dis­in­for­ma­tion and infan­tiliza­tion of their audi­ence from the West­ern lead­ers and the media in this Inter­net age is quite stun­ning. It should take even a 12-year-old only a few min­utes, for instance, to under­stand how attempt­ing to strip Rus­sia of its access to the Mediter­ranean may be a big deal to Putin. And how about an unelect­ed gov­ern­ment offi­cial meet­ing with the Nato chief and mak­ing tac­it com­mit­ments on behalf of Ukraine? Is that in accor­dance with inter­na­tion­al law? Etc., etc. All the best to you all,
goelette

The “he said, she said” over secret snipers is con­tin­u­ing to make the prospect of any future Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment obtain­ing a man­tle of legit­i­ma­cy increas­ing­ly unlike­ly:

Rus­sia, Ukraine feud over sniper car­nage
By MIKE ECKEL, Asso­ci­at­ed Press | March 7, 2014 | Updat­ed: March 7, 2014 2:49pm

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — One of the biggest mys­ter­ies hang­ing over the protest may­hem that drove Ukraine’s pres­i­dent from pow­er: Who was behind the snipers who sowed death and ter­ror in Kiev?

That rid­dle has become the lat­est flash­point of feud­ing over Ukraine — with the nation’s fledg­ling gov­ern­ment and the Krem­lin giv­ing stark­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of events that could either under­mine or bol­ster the legit­i­ma­cy of the new rulers.

Ukrain­ian author­i­ties are inves­ti­gat­ing the Feb. 18–20 blood­bath, and they have shift­ed their focus from oust­ed Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovy­ch’s gov­ern­ment to Vladimir Putin’s Rus­sia — pur­su­ing the the­o­ry that the Krem­lin was intent on sow­ing may­hem as a pre­text for mil­i­tary incur­sion. Rus­sia sug­gests that the snipers were orga­nized by oppo­si­tion lead­ers try­ing to whip up local and inter­na­tion­al out­rage against the gov­ern­ment.

The gov­ern­men­t’s new health min­is­ter — a doc­tor who helped over­see med­ical treat­ment for casu­al­ties dur­ing the protests — told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press that the sim­i­lar­i­ty of bul­lets wounds suf­fered by oppo­si­tion vic­tims and police indi­cates the shoot­ers were try­ing to stoke ten­sions on both sides and spark even greater vio­lence, with the goal of top­pling Yanukovych.

“I think it was­n’t just a part of the old regime that (plot­ted the provo­ca­tion), but it was also the work of Russ­ian spe­cial forces who served and main­tained the ide­ol­o­gy of the (old) regime,” Health Min­is­ter Oleh Musiy said.

Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has pushed the idea that the sniper shoot­ings were ordered by oppo­si­tion lead­ers, while Krem­lin offi­cials have point­ed to a record­ing of a leaked phone call between Esto­ni­a’s for­eign min­is­ter and the Euro­pean Union’s for­eign pol­i­cy chief as evi­dence to back up that ver­sion.

This much is known: Snipers fir­ing pow­er­ful rifles from rooftops and win­dows shot scores of peo­ple in the heart of Kiev. Some vic­tims were oppo­si­tion pro­test­ers, but many were civil­ian bystanders clear­ly not involved in the clash­es. Among the dead were medics, as well as police offi­cers. A major­i­ty of the more than 100 peo­ple who died in the vio­lence were shot by snipers; hun­dreds were also injured by the gun­fire and oth­er street fight­ing.

On Tues­day, Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov sig­naled that inves­ti­ga­tors may be turn­ing their atten­tion away from Ukrain­ian respon­si­bil­i­ty.

“I can say only one thing: the key fac­tor in this upris­ing, that spilled blood in Kiev and that turned the coun­try upside down and shocked it, was a third force,” Avakov was quot­ed as say­ing by Inter­fax. “And this force was not Ukrain­ian.”

The next day, Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al Oleh Makhn­tisky said offi­cials have found sniper bul­let cas­ings on the Nation­al Bank build­ing a few hun­dred yards up the hill from Maid­an, the square that became the cen­ter and the sym­bol of the anti-gov­ern­ment protests. He said inves­ti­ga­tors have con­firmed snipers also fired from the Hotel Ukraine, direct­ly on the square, and the House of Chimeras, an offi­cial res­i­dence next to the pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion build­ing.

Deputy Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Myko­la Velichkovych told AP that com­man­ders of sniper units over­seen by the Berkut police force and oth­er Inte­ri­or Min­istry sub­di­vi­sions have denied to inves­ti­ga­tors that they had giv­en orders to shoot any­one.

Musiy, who spent more than two months orga­niz­ing med­ical units on Maid­an, said that on Feb. 20 rough­ly 40 civil­ians and pro­test­ers were brought with fatal bul­let wounds to the makeshift hos­pi­tal set up near the square. But he said medics also treat­ed three police offi­cers whose wounds were iden­ti­cal.

Foren­sic evi­dence, in par­tic­u­lar the sim­i­lar­i­ty of the bul­let wounds, led him and oth­er to con­clude that snipers were tar­get­ing both sides of the stand­off at Maid­an — and that the shoot­ings were intend­ed to gen­er­ate a wave of revul­sion so strong that it would top­ple Yanukovych and also jus­ti­fy a Russ­ian inva­sion.

Rus­sia has used the uncer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the blood­shed to dis­cred­it Ukraine’s cur­rent gov­ern­ment. Dur­ing a news con­fer­ence Tues­day, Putin addressed the issue in response to a reporter’s ques­tion, sug­gest­ing that the snipers in fact “may have been provo­ca­teurs from oppo­si­tion par­ties.”

That the­o­ry gained cur­ren­cy a day lat­er when a record­ing of a Feb. 26 pri­vate phone call between Eston­ian For­eign Min­is­ter Urmas Paet and Euro­pean Union for­eign pol­i­cy chief Cather­ine Ash­ton was leaked and broad­cast by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment-con­trolled TV net­work, Rus­sia Today. In the call, Paet said he had heard from pro­test­ers dur­ing a vis­it to Kiev that oppo­nents of Yanukovych were behind the sniper attacks.

Paet said anoth­er physi­cian who treat­ed vic­tims, Dr. Olha Bogo­mo­lets, told him that both police and pro­test­ers were killed by the same bul­lets — and “there is now stronger and stronger under­stand­ing that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was some­body from the new (gov­ern­ment) coali­tion.”

On Wednes­day Paet con­firmed the record­ing was authen­tic, and told reporters in Tallinn that he was mere­ly repeat­ing what Bogo­mo­lets had told him. He said he had no way of ver­i­fy­ing the claims, though he called Bogo­mo­lets “clear­ly a per­son with author­i­ty.”

Bogo­mo­lets could not be imme­di­ate­ly reached by the AP for com­ment; she did not answer repeat­ed calls to her cell phone or respond to text mes­sages.

Musiy, the health min­is­ter, said “her com­ments do not cor­re­spond with real­i­ty.”

On Thurs­day, Rus­si­a’s U.N. envoy said he dis­cussed the leaked phone call dur­ing a closed-door meet­ing of the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

If the call rep­re­sents the truth, Ambas­sador Vitaly Churkin told reporters, “it is hard to imag­ine how such a par­lia­ment ... can be regard­ed as a legit­i­mate par­lia­ment that can pass legit­i­mate deci­sions on the future of Ukraine.”

...

More on the snipers: If we can trust the sourc­ing in this report, they may be part of a Glad­io-type oper­a­tion:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-secretive-neo-nazi-military-organization-involved-in-euromaidan-snyper-shootings/5371611

Ukraine: Secre­tive Neo-Nazi Mil­i­tary Orga­ni­za­tion Involved in Euro­maid­an Snyper Shoot­ings

By F. William Eng­dahl
Glob­al Research, March 03, 2014
21st Cen­tu­ry Wire and Glob­al Research

(excerpts)

“A secre­tive neo-nazi mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion report­ed linked to NATO played a deci­sive role in tar­get­ed sniper attacks and vio­lence that led to the col­lapse of the elect­ed gov­ern­ment.”

***

The ques­tion unan­swered until now is who deployed the snipers? Accord­ing to vet­er­an US intel­li­gence sources, the snipers came from an ultra-right-wing mil­i­tary orga­ni­za­tion known as Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assem­bly – Ukrain­ian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).
Strange Ukraine ‘Nation­al­ists’

The leader of UNA-UNSO, Andriy Shk­il, ten years ago became an advis­er to Julia Tymoshenko. UNA-UNSO, dur­ing the US-insti­gat­ed 2003–2004 “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion”, backed pro-NATO can­di­date Vik­tor Yushchenko against his pro-Russ­ian oppo­nent, Yanukovich. UNA-UNSO mem­bers pro­vid­ed secu­ri­ty for the sup­port­ers of Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko on Inde­pen­dence Square in Kiev in 2003–4.[4]

UNA-UNSO is also report­ed to have close ties to the Ger­man Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP). [5]

Ever since the dis­so­lu­tion of the Sovi­et Union in 1991 the crack-para-mil­i­tary UNA-UNSO mem­bers have been behind every revolt against Russ­ian influ­ence. The one con­nect­ing thread in their vio­lent cam­paigns is always anti-Rus­sia. The orga­ni­za­tion, accord­ing to vet­er­an US intel­li­gence sources, is part of a secret NATO “GLADIO” orga­ni­za­tion, and not a Ukraine nation­al­ist group as por­trayed in west­ern media. [6]

Accord­ing to these sources, UNA-UNSO have been involved (con­firmed offi­cial­ly) in the Lithuan­ian events in the Win­ter of 1991, the Sovi­et Coup d’etat in Sum­mer 1991, the war for the Prid­nis­ter Repub­lic 1992, the anti-Moscow Abk­hazia War 1993, the Chechen War, the US-orga­nized Koso­vo Cam­paign Against the Serbs, and the August 8 2008 war in Geor­gia. Accord­ing to these reports, UNA-UNSO para-mil­i­tary have been involved in every NATO dirty war in the post-cold war peri­od, always fight­ing on behalf of NATO. “These peo­ple are the dan­ger­ous mer­ce­nar­ies used all over the world to fight NATO’s dirty war, and to frame Rus­sia because this group pre­tends to be Russ­ian spe­cial forces. THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS, for­get about the win­dow dress­ing nation­al­ists, these are the men behind the sniper rifles,” these sources insist. [7]

If true that UNA-UNSO is not “Ukrain­ian” oppo­si­tion, but rather a high­ly secret NATO force using Ukraine as base, it would sug­gest that the EU peace com­pro­mise with the mod­er­ates was like­ly sab­o­taged by the one major play­er exclud­ed from the Kiev 21 Feb­ru­ary diplo­mat­ic talks—Victoria Nuland’s State Department.[8] Both Nuland and right-wing Repub­li­can US Sen­a­tor John McCain have had con­tact with the leader of the Ukrain­ian oppo­si­tion Svo­bo­da Par­ty, whose leader is open­ly anti-semit­ic and defends the deeds of a World War II Ukrain­ian SS-Gali­cia Divi­sion head.[9] The par­ty was reg­is­tered in 1995, ini­tial­ly call­ing itself the “Social Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine” and using a swasti­ka style logo. Svo­bo­da is the elec­toral front for neo-nazi orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine such as UNA-UNSO.[10]

One fur­ther indi­ca­tion that Nuland’s hand is shap­ing lat­est Ukraine events is the fact that the new Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment is expect­ed to nom­i­nate Nuland’s choice, Arse­ny Yat­senyuk, from Tymoshenko’s par­ty, to be inter­im head of the new Cab­i­net.

What­ev­er the final truth, clear is that Wash­ing­ton has pre­pared a new eco­nom­ic rape of Ukraine using its con­trol over the Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

***

Writer F. William Eng­dahl is a geopo­lit­i­cal ana­lyst and the author of “Full Spec­trum Dom­i­nance: Total­i­tar­i­an Democ­ra­cy in the New World Order”.

notes

[1] F. William Eng­dahl, US-Außen­min­is­teri­um in fla­granti über Regimewech­sel in der Ukraine ertappt, Kopp Online.de, Feb­ru­ary 8, 2014, accessed in http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/enthuellungen/f‑william-engdahl/us-aussenministerium-in-flagranti-ueber-regimewechsel-in-der-ukraine-ertappt.html

[2] Bertrand Benoit, Lau­rence Nor­man and Stephen Fidler , Euro­pean Min­is­ters Bro­kered Ukraine Polit­i­cal Com­pro­mise: Ger­man, French, Pol­ish For­eign Min­is­ters Flew to Kiev, The Wall Street Jour­nal, Feb­ru­ary 21, 2014, accessed in http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579397351862903542?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303636404579397351862903542.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-protests-snipers-firing-live-3164828

[4] Alek­san­dar Vaso­vic , Far right group flex­es dur­ing Ukraine rev­o­lu­tion, Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Jan­u­ary 3, 2005, Accessed in http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20050103&slug=ukraine03

[5] Wikipedia, Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assem­bly Ukrain­ian Nation­al Self Defence, Wikipedia, the free ency­clo­pe­dia, accessed in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_National_Assembly_%E2%80%93_Ukrainian_National_Self_Defence

[6] Source report, Who Has Ukraine Weapons, Feb­ru­ary 27, 2014, pri­vate to author.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Max Blu­men­thal, Is the US back­ing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?, Alter­Net Feb­ru­ary 25, 2014, accessed in

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/

[9] Chan­nel 4 News, Far right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US sen­a­tor, 16 Decem­ber 2013, accessed in

http://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests

It’s not very clear how a pop­u­la­tion that just revolt­ed over the cor­rup­tion of their oli­garch-run gov­ern­ment is going to respond to this move:

Ukraine oli­garchs get key posts in bid for uni­ty

By MARIA DANILOVA March 7, 2014 8:52 AM

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — In a sur­pris­ing move after Rus­sia flexed its mil­i­tary might in the Crimean Penin­su­la, Ukraine’s new lead­er­ship has reached out to oli­garchs for help — appoint­ing them as gov­er­nors in east­ern regions where loy­al­ties to Moscow are strong.

With their wealth, influ­ence and self-inter­est in pre­vent­ing fur­ther con­flict, the oli­garchs could be the key to calm­ing ten­sions and main­tain­ing Ukraine’s con­trol in areas where pro-Russ­ian activists have stoked sep­a­ratist ten­sions.

But the deci­sion to appoint the coun­try’s rich­est men as region­al admin­is­tra­tors has its risks. Some believe the oli­garchs, who have a his­to­ry of manip­u­lat­ing gov­ern­ments, may become too entrenched in their new jobs and could use their posts for per­son­al gain.

The unex­pect­ed move drew instant ire from Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, who called one of the oli­garchs, Ukraine’s third-rich­est man, Ihor Kolo­moisky, a “swindler.”

“They name oli­garchs, bil­lion­aires as gov­er­nors of east­ern regions,” Putin said dur­ing a news con­fer­ence ear­li­er this week. “Nat­u­ral­ly, peo­ple don’t accept that.”

Under Ukrain­ian law, gov­er­nors are appoint­ed by the coun­try’s pres­i­dent instead of being elect­ed. After Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych fled for Rus­sia last month in the wake of mass protests against his gov­ern­ment and dead­ly clash­es with police, act­ing Pres­i­dent Olek­san­dr Turchynov fired Yanukovy­ch’s appointees and replaced them with his own.

Kolo­moisky, a met­als, bank­ing and media tycoon, was named gov­er­nor of his native region of Dnipropetro­vsk, while Ser­hiy Taru­ta, the coun­try’s 16th-rich­est man, accord­ing to Forbes Ukraine, was named gov­er­nor of his home Donet­sk region. Both oli­garchs are seen as pro-Euro­pean and Kolo­moisky’s media have pro­vid­ed sym­pa­thet­ic cov­er­age of the pro-West­ern protests.

The move comes after oth­er top oli­garchs, includ­ing the coun­try’s rich­est man and a key backer of Yanukvoy­ch’s Par­ty of Regions, Rinat Akhme­tov, called for pre­serv­ing Ukraine’s uni­ty.

Experts said the appoint­ments demon­strat­ed that despite its strong ties to Rus­sia, indus­try lead­ers in east­ern Ukraine who pro­vide jobs to tens of thou­sands of Ukraini­ans are against a split-up.

“The oli­garchs tak­ing on this respon­si­bil­i­ty is a demon­stra­tion of their com­mit­ment to an inde­pen­dent, sov­er­eign and ter­ri­to­ri­al­ly inte­grat­ed Ukraine,” for­mer U.S. Ambas­sador John Edward Herb­st told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

For the head of a Kiev think tank, the deci­sion to appoint the tycoons was a shrewd move.

“It’s a cre­ative solu­tion, which was dic­tat­ed by the cur­rent cir­cum­stances,” said Ihor Burakovsky, of the Insti­tute for Eco­nom­ic Research and Pol­i­cy Con­sult­ing. “A rev­o­lu­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion requires rev­o­lu­tion­ary actions.”

Kolo­moisky, worth $2.4 bil­lion, accord­ing to Forbes, told the AP his task would be to quell any pos­si­ble unrest in his region, which he said was being foment­ed by agents from Rus­sia.

“I hope that my pres­ence in the region will help cool the few hot­heads that are present here and sta­bi­lize the sit­u­a­tion, to bring calm so that the cit­i­zens of Ukraine liv­ing in the Dnipropetro­vsk region would feel safe,” Kolo­moisky said in a tele­phone inter­view.

Asked whether he feared Russ­ian troops in east­ern Ukraine, Kolo­moisky voiced hope there would be no vio­lence.

“We do have those con­cerns, but we hope that con­flict between the Ukrain­ian peo­ple and the Russ­ian peo­ple can­not take place,” Kolo­moisky said. “I believe it is absolute­ly impos­si­ble.”

The appoint­ment of Kolo­moisky, who is a promi­nent leader of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in Ukraine, also belies Moscow’s claim that pow­er in Kiev has been seized by ultra­na­tion­al­ist mil­i­tants. The new gov­ern­ment appoint­ed last week promised quick reforms to achieve clos­er ties with the Euro­pean Union.

In Donet­sk, a coal-min­ing region that bor­ders Rus­sia, Taru­ta said he had nev­er planned to serve in the gov­ern­ment, but accept­ed the gov­er­nor’s post because his coun­try was find­ing itself “in dan­ger­ous times.”

“My deci­sion is a desire to pro­tect our coun­try,” said Taru­ta, who is the leader of a large indus­tri­al group and the head of a soc­cer club. “We Ukraini­ans have the right to a strong and unit­ed Ukraine.”

A test in Taru­ta’s new job was quick to present itself. Clash­es between pro­test­ers and police broke out ear­ly Thurs­day in Donet­sk as police cleared pro-Russ­ian demon­stra­tors from the region­al admin­is­tra­tion cen­ter who had raised a Russ­ian flag over the build­ing. The Ukrain­ian flag was once again hoist­ed over it.

With all the oli­garchs’ patri­o­tism, self-inter­est was also a big fac­tor in tak­ing the gov­er­nors’ jobs. With hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars invest­ed in their indus­tries, based most­ly in east­ern Ukraine, their empires could crum­ble were the coun­try to split up or plunge into war.

“The oli­garchs under­stand very well that a sig­nif­i­cant part of their wealth is locat­ed and is formed in Ukraine,” Burakovsky said. “And if events start hap­pen­ing in the coun­try ... the prob­lems that exist today, of course they affect the val­ue of the busi­ness of our Ukrain­ian oli­garchs.”

The deci­sion car­ries long-term risks, because the tycoons may want to use their posts to pro­mote their busi­ness inter­ests. Kolo­moisky, for exam­ple, is seen as an ally of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Yulia Tymoshenko, who was recent­ly released from jail and who is believed to be wield­ing con­sid­er­able influ­ence through Turch­nynov, her right-hand man. When Tymoshenko was prime min­is­ter in 2005, she was accused of lob­by­ing for Kolo­moisky’s inter­ests.

...

Well, the oli­garchs may not be super pop­u­lar, but hey, could be worse!

Dmytro Yarosh is throw­ing his hat into Ukraine’s pres­i­den­tial race. While he does­n’t real­ly stand a chance of win­ning he does look pret­ty well posi­tioned to help nor­mal­ize far-right ideas in Ukraine’s pol­i­tics:

The New York Times
Front and Cen­ter in Ukraine Race, a Leader of the Far Right

By ANDREW E. KRAMERMARCH 11, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine — Dur­ing the Inde­pen­dence Square protests, Dmytro Yarosh made a name for him­self as an expert with fire­bombs. Now, just weeks lat­er, Mr. Yarosh, leader of the right-wing coali­tion known as Right Sec­tor, says he is run­ning for pres­i­dent.

When Russia’s politi­cized state media talk about the “neo-fas­cists” and “anti-Semi­tes” who pulled off what the Krem­lin calls a coup in Kiev and are now sup­pos­ed­ly threat­en­ing Rus­sians in Crimea and east­ern Ukraine, they have men like Mr. Yarosh in mind.

But who these men real­ly are and what they stand for, out­side the car­i­ca­tures in the Russ­ian media’s fun-house mir­ror, are not always clear.

Oth­er than his unstint­ing nation­al­ism, pen­chant for secre­cy and lead­er­ship role in the street fight­ing, lit­tle is pub­licly known of Mr. Yarosh, beyond that he is 42, a grad­u­ate of a teach­ers col­lege and a man who has been active in Ukraine’s once-fringe right-wing pol­i­tics for most of his life.

In one of his first pub­lic appear­ances over the week­end, Mr. Yarosh, who has the buzz cut and tight­ly coiled man­ner­isms of a mil­i­tary man, arrived at a hotel con­fer­ence room in a scrum of body­guards with pis­tols, all dressed in black. New­ly appoint­ed to the posi­tion of deputy direc­tor of Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty coun­cil, he is clear­ly rid­ing the pop­u­lar­i­ty of the street fight­ers to stake a claim to a role in the polit­i­cal future of Ukraine.

Mr. Yarosh has hint­ed at a role for his group in bal­anc­ing the influ­ence of a long­time play­er in Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics, Yulia V. Tymoshenko, the for­mer prime min­is­ter who emerged from prison after the fall of the old gov­ern­ment with mem­bers of her polit­i­cal par­ty, Father­land, already hold­ing the posi­tions of act­ing pres­i­dent and prime min­is­ter.

Before the protests, the nation­al­ist par­ty Svo­bo­da had occu­pied the nation­al­ist niche to the right of Ms. Tymoshenko. But Svo­bo­da and Father­land are now allied. Mr. Yarosh’s ambi­tions, observers of Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics say, fall well short of win­ning a nation­al elec­tion but do include sup­plant­i­ng Svo­bo­da as the lead­ing right-wing par­ty.

Mr. Yarosh’s bid for office, polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tors here say, is best under­stood as the lat­est maneu­ver in the cease­less churn and infight­ing among the lead­er­ship of west­ern Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups — White Ham­mer, Patri­ots of Ukraine and the Tri­dent of Stepan Ban­dera, the orga­ni­za­tion Mr. Yarosh helped found in the ear­ly 1990s. Set­ting this con­test, between Svo­bo­da and Right Sec­tor, apart are the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high geopo­lit­i­cal stakes today in a cri­sis the British for­eign min­is­ter called the worst in Europe of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

“A lot of peo­ple fear that Maid­an brought to pow­er the old estab­lish­ment,” said Vadim Kara­sev, direc­tor of the Insti­tute of Glob­al Strat­e­gy, a pol­i­cy research orga­ni­za­tion in Kiev, refer­ring to the protest site. In that atmos­phere, he added, Mr. Yarosh has a dis­tinct advan­tage: “He popped out of the square like a jack-in-the-box.”

...

The Svo­bo­da par­ty, mean­while, has mod­er­at­ed, and did not open­ly endorse the tac­tic of throw­ing fire­bombs when street fight­ing began in Jan­u­ary. Svo­bo­da was found­ed in 1991 under the name the Social­ist-Nation­al­ist Par­ty of Ukraine, with a sym­bol that resem­bled a swasti­ka. Its leader, Oleg Tyag­ni­bok, met Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry on Tues­day and in Decem­ber appeared onstage with Sen­a­tor John McCain, Repub­li­can of Ari­zona. Svo­bo­da holds 37 seats in Par­lia­ment.

Even with the wide­spread admi­ra­tion for its role in top­pling the loathed for­mer pres­i­dent, Vik­tor F. Yanukovych, Right Sec­tor is not like­ly to win more than about 5 per­cent in any nation­al elec­tion, polit­i­cal experts say.

Recent polls show that Petro Poroshenko, an oli­garch and own­er of the Roshen con­fec­tionary com­pa­ny, lead­ing in the pres­i­den­tial race, with the elec­tion sched­uled for May 25. He is fol­lowed by the for­mer cham­pi­on box­er Vitali Klitschko, Ms. Tymoshenko and Ser­hei Tihip­ko, a for­mer chair­man of the nation­al bank.

...

“The Svo­bo­da par­ty, mean­while, has mod­er­at­ed”. LOL.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nazi-hunters-identify-living-members-of-death-squads-9768317.html
Nazi hunters iden­ti­fy liv­ing mem­bers of death squads

The Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­tre has iden­ti­fied dozens of for­mer mem­bers of Nazi mobile death squads who might still be alive, and is push­ing the Ger­man gov­ern­ment for an inves­ti­ga­tion.

The Wiesen­thal Centre’s top Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, said that in Sep­tem­ber he sent the Ger­man Jus­tice and Inte­ri­or min­istries a list of 76 men and four women who served in the so-called Ein­satz­grup­pen.

The Ein­satz­grup­pen, made up of pri­mar­i­ly SS and police per­son­nel, fol­lowed Nazi Germany’s troops as they bat­tled their way east­ward in the ear­ly years of the war, round­ing up and shoot­ing Jews before the death camp sys­tem was up and run­ning.

Accord­ing to the US Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um, they had killed more than a mil­lion Sovi­et Jews and tens of thou­sands of oth­ers by the spring of 1943.

“In the death camps the actu­al act of mur­der was car­ried out by a very small num­ber of peo­ple – the peo­ple who put the gas into the gas cham­bers – but the actu­al act of mur­der in the Ein­satz­grup­pen was car­ried out indi­vid­u­al­ly,” Mr Zuroff said. “Almost every per­son in the Ein­satz­grup­pen was a mur­der­er, a hands-on mur­der­er.”

‘Time is run­ning out,’ says Efraim Zuroff ‘Time is run­ning out,’ says Efraim Zuroff (AP)

Mr Zuroff nar­rowed down the list of pos­si­ble sus­pects by choos­ing the youngest from a list of some 1,100 men with dates of birth known to his organ­i­sa­tion, from the esti­mat­ed 3,000 mem­bers of the death squads.

All 80 would be very old if still alive, born between 1920 and 1924, Mr Zuroff said.

“Time is run­ning out,” he said in a tele­phone inter­view from Jerusalem. “Some­thing has to be done.”

Because of Germany’s strict pri­va­cy laws, the Wiesen­thal Cen­tre has been unable to con­firm where the sus­pects live, but Mr Zuroff said that task, and deter­min­ing if they’re still alive, should be rel­a­tive­ly easy for police or pros­e­cu­tors.

“The hope is as many as pos­si­ble will be alive, but there’s no guar­an­tee, obvi­ous­ly,” he said. “But every per­son alive today is a vic­to­ry of sorts.”

Germany’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry had no imme­di­ate com­ment, but the Jus­tice Min­istry said it had passed the details of the let­ter to the spe­cial fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors’ office that inves­ti­gates Nazi-era crimes.

This should be trag­i­cal­ly inter­est­ing: Dmitro Yarosh is head­ing to par­lia­ment:

Poroshenko claims land­slide vic­to­ry for pro-west­ern par­ties in Ukraine elec­tions
Over 75% of vot­ers sup­port­ed Ukraine’s ‘course towards Europe,’ says Poroshenko.
By Andreas Stein, Niko­laus von Twick­el Oct. 27, 2014 | 12:22 AM

REUTERS — Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko on Sun­day claimed a landl­side vic­to­ry for pro-west­ern par­ties in the coun­try’s key par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

More than half of the votes went to pro-gov­ern­ment par­ties, and “a con­sti­tu­tion­al major­i­ty” of more than 75 per cent of vot­ers sup­port­ed the coun­try’s course towards Europe, Poroshenko said in a state­ment.

“The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment won a com­pelling vote of con­fi­dence from the peo­ple,” he said, adding that he will speed up reforms in the cri­sis-hit coun­try.

And exit poll released after polls closed on Sun­day said that the Pres­i­den­t’s new­ly formed par­ty, the Poroshenko Bloc, stands to get 23 per cent, fol­lowed by prime min­is­ter Arseniy Yat­senyuk’s Nation­al Front with 21.3 per cent. The pro-Euro­pean Samopomich par­ty, led by the may­or of the west­ern city of Lviv, came in third with 13.2 per cent.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Yulia Tymoshenko’s Pro-west­ern Father­land par­ty man­aged to just meet the 5‑per-cent hur­dle for stay­ing in the leg­is­la­ture by get­ting 5.6 per cent, accord­ing to the nation­al exit poll con­duct­ed by three polling insti­tutes.

Yat­senyuk and many oth­er promi­nent fig­ures left the Father­land par­ty in August.
Also in par­lia­ment, accord­ing to the poll, are: the nation­al­ist Svo­bo­da par­ty (6.3 per cent); the Rad­i­cal Par­ty of pop­ulist politi­cian Oleh Lyashko (6.4 per cent); and the Rus­sia-lean­ing Oppo­si­tion Bloc par­ty (7.6 per cent).

Among those who failed to get in are the Com­mu­nists with 2.9 per cent and the nation­al­ist Right Sec­tor par­ty with 2.4 per cent. How­ev­er, exit polls pre­dict that Right Sec­tor leader Dmytro Yarosh won a direct seat in his native Dnipropetro­vsk region, accord­ing to Svy­atoslav Oliynyk, a deputy region­al gov­er­nor.

The Ukrain­ian Elec­tion Com­mis­sion said that the turnout stood at 52.9 per cent per cent, based on fig­ures from 115 of the 198 vot­ing dis­tricts, the Inter­fax Ukraine news agency report­ed.

A dom­i­nance of pro-West­ern groups in the 450-seat uni­cam­er­al par­lia­ment, the Verk­hov­na Rada, means a sharp break with the pre­vi­ous Rada, elect­ed for a five-year peri­od in 2012, which was dom­i­nat­ed by Rus­sia-lean­ing forces.

Poroshenko has said he hopes that the snap elec­tion will bring more sta­bil­i­ty to the cri­sis-hit coun­try, where more than 3,600 peo­ple have been killed in a con­flict with pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the east.

“I vot­ed for Ukraine — sin­gle, indi­vis­i­ble, Euro­pean,” Poroshenko said on Twit­ter after cast­ing his bal­lot in Kiev Sun­day after­noon.

Ear­li­er, the pres­i­dent showed up dressed in fatigues in a polling sta­tion in Kram­a­torsk, a city in the east­ern Donet­sk region that was recap­tured by gov­ern­ment forces in July.

Poroshenko said that he aimed to pro­tect the right to vote of the more than 10,000 sol­diers serv­ing in the region.

Observers doubt, how­ev­er, that a new gov­ern­ment — expect­ed to be formed as ear­ly as next week — will be able to end the fight­ing with pro-Russ­ian sep­a­ratists in the east quick­ly.

Secu­ri­ty was tight on Sun­day, and some 84,000 police offi­cers were on duty through­out Ukraine to ensure a peace­ful vote, the Inte­ri­or Min­istry said.

Vot­ing did not take place in the dis­tricts con­trolled by the sep­a­ratists, whose lead­ers have vowed to ignore Sun­day’s polls because they con­sid­er Ukraine a neigh­bour­ing state. They have set their own elec­tions for Novem­ber 2.

Turnout in the Donet­sk and Luhan­sk regions, which are part­ly rebel-held, was much low­er than else­where — just 31 per cent in Donet­sk and 27 per cent in Luhan­sk, accord­ing to offi­cial fig­ures.

Some 1.83 mil­lion vot­ers were reg­is­tered in both regions — only a frac­tion of their com­bined peace­time pop­u­la­tion of almost 7 mil­lion.

Over­all, 36 mil­lion Ukraini­ans are eli­gi­ble to cast a bal­lot.

...