FTR #1023 Ukrainian Fascism, The Maidan Snipers and Possible Implications for the Syrian War

In this pro­gram we con­tin­ue and expand analy­sis of the Euro­Maid­an sniper killings which led to the ouster of the Yanuukovych gov­ern­ment. A sto­ry from BNE Intellinews, since tak­en down but avail­able via the Way Back Machine, details Paul Man­afort’s net­work­ing with the Haps­burg Group milieu, pro­vid­ing more details that sup­ple­ment pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship.

Most impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, the arti­cle pro­vides impor­tant infor­ma­tion on Man­afort’s post-Maid­an doings in Ukraine! He spent more time in post-Maid­an Ukraine than before the coup.

Even more impor­tant­ly, the arti­cle pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant details on Man­afort’s pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tors in arrang­ing the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster.

Before dis­cussing the sig­nif­i­cant details of Man­afort and his asso­ciates’ pos­si­ble roles in the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster, we present the first part of the arti­cle, in order to flesh out the Man­afort-Haps­burg net­work­ing.

Key points of infor­ma­tion include:

1.-Manafort’s close rela­tion­ship with Ser­hiy Lovochkin, a key aide to Vik­tor Yanukovich and own­er of a pre­mier Ukrain­ian TV sta­tion, and his sis­ter Yulia Lovochk­i­na, who owns an air­line whose planes fer­ried Man­afort in his deal­ings with the Haps­burg group.
2.-The impor­tant role of Ser­hiy Lovochkin and his sis­ter in pro­mot­ing the EU Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. It was Yanukovich’s even­tu­al rejec­tion of that agree­ment that led to the demon­stra­tions that led up to the Maid­an coup.
3.-The dual role played by Haps­burg Group mem­ber Alexan­der Kras­niews­ki, who was ran the EU’s Ukraine Obser­va­tion Group.
4.-The pro­found degree of involve­ment of Man­afort with the Haps­burg Group.
5.-Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pos­es, is the behav­ior of Man­afort, Lovochkin, Lovochk­i­na, Dmytro Fir­tash and Vic­to­ria Nuland.

Not­ing the pro­found rela­tion­ship between Man­afort, Ser­hii Lovochkin, Yulia Lovochk­i­na, the Haps­burg Group and the EU, it is impor­tant to eval­u­ate the Manafort/Lovochkin rela­tion­ship in the con­text of the Maid­an snipers. (In FTR #‘s 982, 993, we not­ed evi­dence that the Maid­an shoot­ings may have been a provo­ca­tion.)

1.-” . . . . The pri­vate jet flights and per­son­al con­nec­tions show that Manafort’s part­ner in this lob­by­ing effort was Yanukovych’s chief of staff Lovochkin. . . . Manafort’s Ukraine engage­ments actu­al­ly increased fol­low­ing Yanukovych’s ouster in Feb­ru­ary 2014. In March to June 2014, he spent a total of 27 days in Ukraine, where­as dur­ing the four pre­ced­ing Euro­maid­an months, Novem­ber-Feb­ru­ary 2014, Man­afort only vis­it­ed Ukraine three times for a total of nine days. . . .”
2.-” . . . . Lovochkin is the junior part­ner of bil­lion­aire oli­garch Dmytro Fir­tash . . . . Lovochkin and Fir­tash togeth­er also con­trol Ukraine’s largest TV chan­nel, Inter. . . .”
3.-” . . . . Manafort’s con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in post-Yanukovych Ukraine also points to his ties to Lovochkin and Fir­tash. While most mem­bers of the Yanukovych admin­is­tra­tion fled to Rus­sia or were arrest­ed after Feb­ru­ary 2014, Lovochkin has con­tin­ued his polit­i­cal career with impuni­ty, despite hav­ing served at the heart of Yanukovych’s regime for four years. . . .”
4.-” . . . . Euro­maid­an was trig­gered by events in Kyiv on the night of Novem­ber 29, when police vio­lent­ly dis­persed a small demon­stra­tion of pro-EU stu­dents who were protest­ing after Yanukovych refused to sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. The vio­lence prompt­ed a huge demon­stra­tion occu­py­ing the heart of Kyiv on Decem­ber 1. . . .”
5.-” . . . . Accord­ing to mes­sages between the sis­ters dis­cussing Manafort’s actions in Ukraine, it was Manafort’s idea ‘to send those peo­ple out and get them slaugh­tered. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not […] As a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine.’ Manafort’s daugh­ter called her father’s mon­ey ‘blood mon­ey.’ . . .”
6.-” . . . . The remarks were made by those privy to the deep­est secrets of Manafort’s per­son­al life. They evoke the sus­pi­cion that Man­afort manip­u­lat­ed the Maid­an protests and the police vio­lence to influ­ence inter­na­tion­al opin­ion. The appear­ance of the Man­afort mes­sages in 2016 reignit­ed spec­u­la­tion in Ukraine that none oth­er than Lovochkin insti­gat­ed the attack on the stu­dents’ demon­stra­tion on Novem­ber 29, 2013, to trig­ger out­rage against Yanukovych. . . .”
7.-” . . . . Some of the time­line fits this inter­pre­ta­tion: On the day before the police attack, reporters not­ed Yulia Lovochk­i­na open­ly frater­nising with the stu­dents on the Maid­an. Lovochkin’s TV crews cov­ered the 4am events close­ly, and Lovochkin imme­di­ate­ly ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in protest at the police vio­lence. . . .”
8.-” . . . . The next day, Lovochkin’s TV chan­nel played footage of the worst of the police vio­lence on heavy rota­tion on prime time news. News anchors intoned that Yanukovych had ‘shed the blood of Ukrain­ian chil­dren.’ Where­as the stu­dent protests had attract­ed hun­dreds, protests on Sun­day Decem­ber 1 against the police vio­lence attract­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands. This was the start of Euro­maid­an. . . .”

Of great sig­nif­i­cance as well, is the maneu­ver­ing around a war­rant for the arrest of Ukrain­ian oli­garch and Lovochkin part­ner Dmytro Fir­tash. The role of Vic­to­ria Nuland in this maneu­ver­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant: ” . . . . On Octo­ber 30 2013 — as Yanukovych was waver­ing over the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment with the EU — the US issued an arrest war­rant for Fir­tash. The US with­drew the arrest war­rant four days lat­er — after US deputy sec­re­tary of state Vic­to­ria Nuland met Yanukovych in Kyiv, and received assur­ances that Yanukovych would sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment, Fir­tash said dur­ing extra­di­tion hear­ings in Vien­na in 2015 that first revealed the details of the case. But come the Vil­nius Sum­mit, Yanukovych failed to sign. The arrest war­rant was reis­sued in March 2014, and Fir­tash was arrest­ed in Vien­na on March 12, 2014. . . . .”

Cana­di­an aca­d­e­m­ic Ivan Katchanovs­ki has done a deep, detailed foren­sic study of the evi­dence in the Maid­an sniper attacks. He has a rig­or­ous, suc­cinct dig­i­tal mul­ti­me­dia ‘poster’ (an ‘iPoster’) for his find­ing that the Maid­an sniper attacks were a false flag oper­a­tion. That poster was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the 2018 Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion con­fer­ence in Boston. It gives a high lev­el overview of his research and is heav­i­ly embed­ded with sub­stan­tive, doc­u­men­tary videos. Here are the con­tents of the poster. Be sure to check out the numer­ous images and videos includ­ed in the actu­al iPoster online.

“ . . . . Maid­an mas­sacre tri­al and inves­ti­ga­tion evi­dence have revealed var­i­ous evi­dence that at least the absolute major­i­ty of 49 killed and 157 wound­ed Maid­an pro­test­ers on Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 were mas­sa­cred by snipers in Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. Such evi­dence includes tes­ti­monies of the major­i­ty of wound­ed pro­test­ers and many wit­ness­es, foren­sic med­ical and bal­lisitic exam­i­na­tions, and inves­ti­ga­tion own find­ing that about half of Maid­an pro­test­ers were wound­ed from oth­er loca­tions than the Berkut police. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of stonewalling of the Maid­an mas­sacre inves­ti­ga­tions and the tri­als by the Maid­an gov­ern­ment offi­cials and by far right orga­ni­za­tions. Var­i­ous indi­ca­tions of the cov­er-up of much of the key evi­dence of the mas­sacre. Such rev­e­la­tions from the Maid­an mas­sacre tri­als and inves­ti­ga­tions cor­rob­o­rate pre­vi­ous stud­ies find­ings that this mas­sacre was a false flag mass killing with involve­ment of ele­ments of Maid­an lead­er­ship and the far right and that it includ­ed the mas­sacre of the police. The puz­zling mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Maid­an mas­sacre, its inves­ti­ga­tion, and the tri­al by West­ern media and gov­ern­ments require fur­ther research con­cern­ing rea­sons for such mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion . . . . ”

Note: Since FTR #1023 was record­ed pro­fes­sor Katchanovs­ki has post­ed a 59-minute-long video of the Maid­an shoot­ings. The video fea­tures TV footage from that day, with many clips clear­ly show­ing snipers oper­at­ing from Maid­an-con­trolled build­ings. It also includes Eng­lish sub­ti­tles and foren­sic descrip­tions of scenes. The footage includes a num­ber of peo­ple being shot and killed–a griz­zly 59-min­utes, but absolute­ly invalu­able in terms of estab­lish­ing what actu­al­ly hap­pened.

This descrip­tion con­cludes with mate­r­i­al that will be dis­cussed in future pro­grams. It is pre­sent­ed here for perusal and con­sid­er­a­tion by the read­ers in light of con­tin­ued alarm­ing devel­op­ments in Syr­ia.

Against the back­ground of the Maid­an snip­ing as a prob­a­ble false flag provo­ca­tion, the impend­ing Syr­i­an offen­sive to re-cap­ture the last ter­ri­to­r­i­al enclave of the Islamists in Syr­ia should be viewed with appre­hen­sion. As not­ed in the arti­cle below, the so-called “rebels” are Al-Qae­da off­shoots. Omi­nous­ly, they have appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cut­ed false-flag chem­i­cal weapons attacks before, includ­ing in Idlib province.

Rus­sia has warned that such a provo­ca­tion is in the wings–an unre­mark­able deduc­tion in light of past his­to­ry. In turn, the West has warned of retal­ia­to­ry action if such actions are under­tak­en.

The stage appears set for an Islamist/Al-Qae­da chem­i­cal weapons false flag/provocation, upon which U.S., British and French mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion will be pred­i­cat­ed.

In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that Chech­nyan Islamist vet­er­ans of the Syr­i­an war have already made their appear­ance in the com­bat in East­ern Ukraine, part­ner­ing with Pravy Sek­tor in their deploy­ments. (The Chechen/Right Sector/Islamist link is dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 857, 862, 863, 872, 878, 893, 911.)

FTR #1022 “Edwin” Manafort, the Coming of Fascism to Ukraine and the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op

In the wake of the high-pro­file con­vic­tion of for­mer Trump cam­paign aide Paul Man­afort, we present infor­ma­tion which great­ly flesh­es out his deal­ings with the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment of Vik­tor Yanukovich and the “Haps­burg Group” of Euro­pean politi­cians that were work­ing to tease Ukraine from the Russ­ian sphere of influ­ence into the West­ern orbit.

For pur­pos­es of this pro­gram, we have nick­named Man­afort “Edwin Man­afort,” cit­ing him in the con­text of the oper­a­tions of Edwin Wil­son, whose exploits we ana­lyzed at length in AFA #4.

Far from being the “rogue” crim­i­nal he was report­ed as being, Wil­son was actu­al­ly oper­at­ing on behalf of ele­ments of the CIA in his ter­ror­ist sup­port oper­a­tions. Short­ly before Wilson’s death, a judge sup­port­ed that con­clu­sion and Wil­son was even­tu­al­ly released from prison.

Far from being a “Russ­ian agent,” Paul Man­afort is a U.S. spook who was work­ing with a group of Euro­pean politi­cians known as the Haps­burg Group, as dis­cussed in FTR #1008.

A sto­ry from BNE Intellinews, since tak­en down but avail­able via the Way Back Machine, details Man­afort’s net­work­ing with the Haps­burg Group milieu, pro­vid­ing more details that sup­ple­ment pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship.

Most impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, the arti­cle pro­vides impor­tant infor­ma­tion on Man­afort’s post-Maid­an doings in Ukraine! He spent more time in post-Maid­an Ukraine than before the coup.

Even more impor­tant­ly, the arti­cle pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant details on Man­afort’s pos­si­ble col­lab­o­ra­tors in arrang­ing the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster.

Before dis­cussing the sig­nif­i­cant details of Man­afort and his asso­ciates’ pos­si­ble roles in the vio­lence that led to Yanukovy­ch’s ouster, we present the first part of the arti­cle, in order to flesh out the Man­afort-Haps­burg net­work­ing.

Key points of infor­ma­tion include:

1.–Manafort’s close rela­tion­ship with Ser­hiy Lovochkin, a key aide to Vik­tor Yanukovich and own­er of a pre­mier Ukrain­ian TV sta­tion, and his sis­ter Yulia Lovochk­i­na, who owns an air­line whose planes fer­ried Man­afort in his deal­ings with the Haps­burg group.
2.–The impor­tant role of Ser­hiy Lovochkin and his sis­ter in pro­mot­ing the EU Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. It was Yanukovich’s even­tu­al rejec­tion of that agree­ment that led to the demon­stra­tions that led up to the Maid­an coup.
3.–The dual role played by Haps­burg Group mem­ber Alexan­der Kras­niews­ki, who was ran the EU’s Ukraine Obser­va­tion Group.
4.–The pro­found degree of involve­ment of Man­afort with the Haps­burg Group.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pos­es, is the behav­ior of Man­afort, Lovochkin, Lovochk­i­na, Dmytro Fir­tash and Vic­to­ria Nuland.

Not­ing the pro­found rela­tion­ship between Man­afort, Ser­hii Lovochkin, Yulia Lovochk­i­na, the Haps­burg Group and the EU, it is impor­tant to eval­u­ate the Manafort/Lovochkin rela­tion­ship in the con­text of the Maid­an snipers. (In FTR #‘s 982, 993, we not­ed evi­dence that the Maid­an shoot­ings may have been a provo­ca­tion. This infor­ma­tion will be reviewed in our next pro­gram.)

1.–” . . . . The pri­vate jet flights and per­son­al con­nec­tions show that Manafort’s part­ner in this lob­by­ing effort was Yanukovych’s chief of staff Lovochkin. . . . Manafort’s Ukraine engage­ments actu­al­ly increased fol­low­ing Yanukovych’s ouster in Feb­ru­ary 2014. In March to June 2014, he spent a total of 27 days in Ukraine, where­as dur­ing the four pre­ced­ing Euro­maid­an months, Novem­ber-Feb­ru­ary 2014, Man­afort only vis­it­ed Ukraine three times for a total of nine days. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Lovochkin is the junior part­ner of bil­lion­aire oli­garch Dmytro Fir­tash . . . . Lovochkin and Fir­tash togeth­er also con­trol Ukraine’s largest TV chan­nel, Inter. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Manafort’s con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion in post-Yanukovych Ukraine also points to his ties to Lovochkin and Fir­tash. While most mem­bers of the Yanukovych admin­is­tra­tion fled to Rus­sia or were arrest­ed after Feb­ru­ary 2014, Lovochkin has con­tin­ued his polit­i­cal career with impuni­ty, despite hav­ing served at the heart of Yanukovych’s regime for four years. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Euro­maid­an was trig­gered by events in Kyiv on the night of Novem­ber 29, when police vio­lent­ly dis­persed a small demon­stra­tion of pro-EU stu­dents who were protest­ing after Yanukovych refused to sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment. The vio­lence prompt­ed a huge demon­stra­tion occu­py­ing the heart of Kyiv on Decem­ber 1. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Accord­ing to mes­sages between the sis­ters dis­cussing Manafort’s actions in Ukraine, it was Manafort’s idea ‘to send those peo­ple out and get them slaugh­tered. Do you know whose strat­e­gy that was to cause that Revolts [sic] and what not […] As a tac­tic to out­rage the world and get focus on Ukraine.’ Manafort’s daugh­ter called her father’s mon­ey ‘blood mon­ey.’ . . .”
6.–” . . . . The remarks were made by those privy to the deep­est secrets of Manafort’s per­son­al life. They evoke the sus­pi­cion that Man­afort manip­u­lat­ed the Maid­an protests and the police vio­lence to influ­ence inter­na­tion­al opin­ion. The appear­ance of the Man­afort mes­sages in 2016 reignit­ed spec­u­la­tion in Ukraine that none oth­er than Lovochkin insti­gat­ed the attack on the stu­dents’ demon­stra­tion on Novem­ber 29, 2013, to trig­ger out­rage against Yanukovych. . . .”
7.–” . . . . Some of the time­line fits this inter­pre­ta­tion: On the day before the police attack, reporters not­ed Yulia Lovochk­i­na open­ly frater­nising with the stu­dents on the Maid­an. Lovochkin’s TV crews cov­ered the 4am events close­ly, and Lovochkin imme­di­ate­ly ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion in protest at the police vio­lence. . . .”
8.–” . . . . The next day, Lovochkin’s TV chan­nel played footage of the worst of the police vio­lence on heavy rota­tion on prime time news. News anchors intoned that Yanukovych had ‘shed the blood of Ukrain­ian chil­dren.’ Where­as the stu­dent protests had attract­ed hun­dreds, protests on Sun­day Decem­ber 1 against the police vio­lence attract­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands. This was the start of Euro­maid­an. . . .”
8.–Of great sig­nif­i­cance as well, is the maneu­ver­ing around a war­rant for the arrest of Ukrain­ian oli­garch and Lovochkin part­ner Dmytro Fir­tash. The role of Vic­to­ria Nuland in this maneu­ver­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant: ” . . . . On Octo­ber 30 2013 — as Yanukovych was waver­ing over the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment with the EU — the US issued an arrest war­rant for Fir­tash. The US with­drew the arrest war­rant four days lat­er — after US deputy sec­re­tary of state Vic­to­ria Nuland met Yanukovych in Kyiv, and received assur­ances that Yanukovych would sign the Asso­ci­a­tion Agree­ment, Fir­tash said dur­ing extra­di­tion hear­ings in Vien­na in 2015 that first revealed the details of the case. But come the Vil­nius Sum­mit, Yanukovych failed to sign. The arrest war­rant was reis­sued in March 2014, and Fir­tash was arrest­ed in Vien­na on March 12, 2014. . . . .”

We also review (in the descrip­tion only) the rela­tion­ship between mem­bers of the Haps­burg fam­i­ly and Euro­pean inte­gra­tion, the Cold War against the Sovi­et Union, con­tem­po­rary Ukraine and the OUN/B.

FTR #993 Update on Ukraine (Preparations for WWIII?)

High­light­ing recent, alarm­ing aspects of the Ukraine cri­sis, the broad­cast under­scores how past and present may sig­nal the begin­ning of World War III in a man­ner not unlike how frac­tious events in the Balka­ns trig­gered the First World War.

With Ukraine now receiv­ing U.S. arms, includ­ing mod­i­fied stinger anti-air­craft mis­siles, the Nazi “pun­ish­er” bat­tal­ions in that coun­try’s East may be in a posi­tion to trig­ger one or more provo­ca­tions that could lead to con­flict between nuclear-armed Rus­sia, NATO and the U.S.

Since the Don­bass mili­tias have no air force, the stingers would appear to be deployed in the event of a wider, Ukraine/Russia war.

Nazi ele­ments active in the Maid­an coup spawned the Azov and oth­er “pun­ish­er” units. With more infor­ma­tion sur­fac­ing that indi­cates that the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings were a provo­ca­tion-derived event, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Svo­bo­da and Pravy Sek­tor-linked ele­ments could dri­ve devel­op­ments in the Don­bass toward World War III is one that deserves more atten­tion than it will receive.

A fright­en­ing devel­op­ment, vir­tu­al­ly unre­port­ed in the U.S., con­cerns uni­lat­er­al moves by the Poroshenko gov­ern­ment to move away from the Min­sk peace plan and to rebrand the con­flict in East­ern Ukraine as “occu­pa­tion” by an “aggres­sor” Rus­sia.

This appears to pave the way for a wider, deep­er con­flict which could, ulti­mate­ly, draw in the U.S. and NATO: ” . . . . Accord­ing to [Dmitri] Kise­ly­ov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s sig­na­ture, makes prepa­ra­tions for war and includes lan­guage indi­cat­ing a bel­li­cose new approach to the con­flict. The mis­sion in Don­bass is no longer described as an ‘anti-ter­ror­ist oper­a­tion.’ Rather, the mis­sion now is to send armed forces against ‘mil­i­tary for­ma­tions of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion’ in Don­bass.

Mil­i­tary head­quar­ters are estab­lished to coor­di­nate the oper­a­tion to be waged in Don­bass. While up until now the self-declared republics of Donet­sk and Lugan­sk were con­sid­ered under the Min­sk Accords as nego­ti­at­ing par­ties, now there are only ‘occu­pa­tion admin­is­tra­tions’ of the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion on these ter­ri­to­ries, with Rus­sia iden­ti­fied as an ‘aggres­sor.’ . . . .”

The dan­ger of Poroshenko seek­ing to play the “war card” to dis­tract from Urkaine’s dire eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances and his own failed gov­ern­ment are real. Con­flict with Rus­sia could also deflect from Trump’s and the GOP’s fail­ures at home: ” . . . . On the eco­nom­ic front, the Euro­pean Union has refused to extend 600 mil­lion euros of cred­it to Ukraine due to cor­rup­tion. The Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund recent­ly refused a tranche of $800 mil­lion over fail­ure to intro­duce reforms. Mean­while, in 2019 Ukraine is due to start repay­ing ear­li­er loans. This will come to $14 bil­lion a year, which amounts to half the state bud­get of Ukraine.

Due to dire eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, Poroshenko and oth­er gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Kiev have become deeply unpop­u­lar, and with dimin­ished chances for elec­toral suc­cess may see war as polit­i­cal­ly advan­ta­geous. . . .”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion just approved the sale of sniper rifles and, more sig­nif­i­cant­ly, anti-tank Javelin mis­siles to Ukraine. This should be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of the recent moves by Kiev (increas­ing the dan­ger for an esca­lat­ed con­flict) as well as  the activ­i­ties of Kurt Volk­er, the “ex”-CIA offi­cer, NATO func­tionary, George W. Bush State Depart­ment offi­cial and Atlantic Coun­ci­cl Senior advi­sor serv­ing as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s point-man in Ukraine.

Might anti-air­craft mis­siles be next? As the arti­cle below notes, the Don­bass sep­a­ratists don’t actu­al­ly have an air force, so it would be a curi­ous deci­sion to start send­ing them anti-air­craft weapons. ” . . . . The pro­posed trans­fer — which also would include anti­air­craft arms that would be defined as defen­sive weapon­ry — comes as fight­ing between Ukrain­ian troops and Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists. . . . The util­i­ty of anti­air­craft weapon­ry, for exam­ple, is unclear, as the Russ­ian-backed rebel army has no air force. The war is fought along a line of trench­es that has not moved much since Feb­ru­ary 2015. . . .”

Accord­ing to a report back in June, the Pen­ta­gon recent­ly mod­i­fied shoul­der-fired stinger mis­siles to shoot small down drones that are dif­fi­cult for reg­u­lar Stinger mis­siles to hit. It’s not at all incon­ceiv­able that the anti-air­craft weapons the Pen­ta­gon and State Depart­ment have in mind are those Stinger mis­siles, mod­i­fied for the pur­pose of shoot­ing down sep­a­ratist drones.

Also keep in mind that the shoul­der-launched stringer mis­siles are among the weapons that ter­ror­ists would love to obtain and the Ukrain­ian troops get­ting trained on these sys­tems may include the neo-Nazis fight­ing in Ukraine’s army get­ting trained by US mil­i­tary advi­sors like the Azov batal­lion. ” . . . . The Amer­i­can train­ing at the Yavoriv base in west­ern Ukraine is focused on forg­ing a dis­ci­plined, pro­fes­sion­al mil­i­tary from the mix of vol­un­teer groups that first fought the Russ­ian incur­sion, rather than plac­ing bets on any high-tech weapons sys­tems. . . .”

When you read that, remem­ber that the “mix of vol­un­teers groups” includes neo-Nazis, includ­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion.

In oth­er words, if Stinger mis­siles real­ly are part of the mil­i­tary pack­age, and just not yet announced, those lit­tle night­mares could eas­i­ly end up in neo-Nazi hands and the US mil­i­tary could even be the ones train­ing them on how to use them. We’ll see if that’s how it plays out, but we can’t rule it out.

The arms sales described above are being real­ized under the super­vi­sion of Trump’s new point man for Ukraine, “ex”-CIA, State Depart­ment and NATO func­tionary Kurt Volk­er. From Volk­er’s Wikipedia entry: ” . . . . Volk­er began his career in for­eign affairs as an ana­lyst at the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency in 1986. . . . In July 2005, Volk­er became the Deputy Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for Euro­pean and Eurasian Affairs, serv­ing in that posi­tion until he was appoint­ed Unit­ed States Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to NATO in July 2008 by Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. . . . and a Senior Advi­sor at the Atlantic Coun­cil since Octo­ber 2009. . . . .”

We note that the arms sales to Ukraine effect­ed on Volk­er’s watch come after the removal of John Cony­ers (D‑MI), one of the most vocif­er­ous Con­gres­sion­al oppo­nents of arm­ing and train­ing the Azov Bat­tal­ion and sim­i­lar Nazi units.

Next, we take stock of how Cony­ers, “The Krem­lin’s Man in Con­gress,” was removed fol­low­ing a gam­bit by “Alt-Right” blog­ger, Trump ally and misog­y­nist Mike Cer­novich to finance the solic­i­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al­ly dam­ag­ing infor­ma­tion about polit­i­cal oppo­nents. “. . . . In Novem­ber, the Trump-back­ing social media agi­ta­tor Mike Cer­novich offered to pay $10,000.00 for details of any con­gres­sion­al sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ments, and said on Twit­ter that he would cov­er the expens­es of ‘any VICTIM of a Con­gress­man who wants to come for­ward to tell her sto­ry.’ Short­ly before post­ing that offer, a source pro­vid­ed Mr. Cer­novich with a copy of a sex­u­al harass­ment set­tle­ment that led in Decem­ber to the res­ig­na­tion of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John Cony­ers Jr., Demo­c­rat of Michi­gan, until then the longest-serv­ing mem­ber of the House. . . .”

In FTR #981, we exam­ined the Ukrain­ian fas­cist foun­da­tion of much of the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op,” fol­low­ing that with detailed exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Paul Man­afort may have actu­al­ly been work­ing as a U.S./Western intel­li­gence asset or agent, delib­er­ate­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Maid­an sniper fire that sound­ed the death knell for the Yanukovich regime.

This pro­gram updates the boil­ing sew­er that is Ukraine, uti­liz­ing infor­ma­tion from Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy (which feeds along the low­er right-hand page of this web­site.) We take note of sev­er­al key points:

1.–Corruption in Ukraine remains ram­pant and “rule by oli­garch” con­tin­ues unabat­ed under Poroshenko, an oli­garch him­self and the for­mer finance min­is­ter for Yanukovich.
2.–Supporters of Maid­an have been high­ly crit­i­cal of the con­tin­u­a­tion of this grotesque sta­tus quo.
3.–Among the per­pe­tra­tors of ongo­ing, insti­tu­tion­al­ized cor­rup­tion in Ukraine has been the son of Arsen Avakov, the inte­ri­or min­is­ter and a patron of the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion. ” . . . . Cor­rup­tion con­tin­ues at high lev­els. For exam­ple, the case of Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Arsen Avakov’s son, who sold back­packs to the army at six times their nor­mal price, alleged­ly caus­ing dam­age in the six-dig­it euros. . . .”
4.–Investigation of Avakov, jr’s activ­i­ties has been [pre­dictably] inter­dict­ed. ” . . . .When the Nation­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion Bureau searched the man’s house, the Nation­al Guard, under the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the inte­ri­or min­is­ter inter­vened and halt­ed the search — under the pre­text of hav­ing to vacate the build­ing because of a bomb threat. . . .”
5.–The two arti­cle series sets forth greater detail on the sniper shoot­ings at the Maid­an, which look more and more to be a provo­ca­tion. ” . . . . In Feb­ru­ary 2016, Maid­an activist Ivan Bubenchik con­fessed that in the course of the mas­sacre, he had shot Ukrain­ian police offi­cers. Bubenchik con­firmed this in a film that had attract­ed inter­na­tion­al attention.[10] . . . .”
6.–An Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary alleges that eth­nic Geor­gian snipers were involved in the Maid­an shoot­ings, fur­ther indi­cat­ing that the Maid­an sniper shoot­ings were a pos­si­ble provo­ca­tion. (The doc­u­men­tary does come from a Berlus­coni-con­trolled out­let, how­ev­er it dove­tails cred­i­bly with oth­er avail­able infor­ma­tion. UNA-UNSO, the lat­est iter­a­tion of the UPA was very active in the cau­ca­sus and Chechens have been work­ing with Pravy Sek­tor and ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Azov Bat­tal­ion. As dis­cussed in FTR #850, for­mer Geor­gian pres­i­dent Mikhail Saakashvili became the gov­er­nor of Odessa province and is very close to Ihor Kolo­moisky, anoth­er patron of the Azov Bat­tal­ion.) “In an Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary on the Feb­ru­ary 20, 2014 Maid­an mas­sacre, seri­ous accu­sa­tions were made against sev­er­al politi­cians in Ukraine. . . .  In the doc­u­men­tary, three Geor­gians, incrim­i­nat­ing them­selves for their own par­tic­i­pa­tion, report that some of the lead­ers of the protests, who are today mem­bers of Kiev’s par­lia­ment, had sup­plied weapons to the snipers, who, at the time, indis­crim­i­nate­ly killed police­men and demon­stra­tors. Offi­cial­ly, this mas­sacre is still being attrib­uted to Ukrain­ian repres­sive organs or to unspec­i­fied Rus­sians. The Geor­gians also report that the cur­rent speak­er of the par­lia­ment, Andriy Paru­biy, was often seen in the hotel, from where the snipers were fir­ing that day. As ‘Maid­an Commander,‘Parubiy had been in charge of con­trol­ling armed gangs on that square. The man, whose real role at the time remains unclear, was a guest at a con­fer­ence held by the Kon­rad Ade­nauer Foun­da­tion and a speak­er at NATO events. . . .”
7.–Parubiy was one of the main orga­niz­ers of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, which brought Vik­tor Yuschenko to pow­er and installed OUN/B deriv­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in Ukraine, sort of a “pre-Maid­an” Maid­an.” . . . .  Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the par­ty, this expe­ri­enced protest activist became one of the main orga­niz­ers of the 2004 ‘Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.’  . . .”
8.–Andriy Paru­biy was the first defense min­is­ter of the Ukraine inter­im gov­ern­ment and a mem­ber of the OUN/B‑redux Svo­bo­da Par­ty. His role in the events dove­tails with the pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion of fas­cist and Nazi snipers who were to par­tic­i­pate in the Azov Bat­tal­ion. “. . . . The Geor­gians’ accu­sa­tions also impli­cate, at least indi­rect­ly, the ‘Com­man­der of the Maid­an,’ Andriy Paru­biy. Paru­biy comes from the Ukrain­ian fas­cist scene. In the ear­ly 1990s he was one of the founders of the extreme right-wing Social Nation­al Par­ty of Ukraine. Since 1996, he was the leader of its mil­i­tarist street fight­ing sub­sidiary ‘Patri­ot of Ukraine.’ Fol­low­ing his retire­ment from the par­ty, this expe­ri­enced protest activist became one of the main orga­niz­ers of the 2004 ‘Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.’ In 2013, he assumed the same func­tion at the Maid­an, where he was respon­si­ble for none oth­er than secu­ri­ty and the ‘self-defense units,’ which were often made up of heav­i­ly armed thugs. In the Ital­ian TV doc­u­men­tary, it was report­ed that Paru­biy was going in and out of Hotel Ukraina, from where numer­ous dead­ly shots were being fired. Paru­biy, claims that the hotel from which these shots were being fired — which was firm­ly under the Maid­an demon­stra­tors’ con­trol — had been tak­en over ‘by snipers who arrived from Rus­sia and who were con­trolled by Rus­sia.’ . . .”

We con­clude with anoth­er exam­ple of just what the con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment is man­i­fest­ing. Ukraine’s offi­cial under­stand­ing of its own WWII his­to­ry and the Holo­caust had anoth­er man­i­fes­ta­tion of Orwellian his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. This time it was by Poroshenko rein­forc­ing the Orwellian revi­sion. ” . . . . As we report­ed back in Octo­ber, Ukrain­ian media out­let Radio Svo­bo­da — the Ukrain­ian arm of the US Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed arm of RFERL — post­ed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um. It is an image of Pol­ish Jews being deport­ed to a death camp. There was just one prob­lem. Radio Svo­bo­da claimed the pic­ture was from 1949 of Ukraini­ans being deport­ed to Siberia. In fact, so effec­tive was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that Pres­i­dent Poroshenko him­self tweet­ed it claim­ing it showed Ukraini­ans being deport­ed. . . . Today it emerged that a major Ukrain­ian media out­let has struck again. In a Decem­ber 20th arti­cle about the hor­rors of the NKVD (Sovi­et fore­run­ner of the KGB), media out­let “Ukrin­form” also bor­rowed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um, this time of Ukrain­ian Aux­il­iary Police­men shoot­ing a Jew­ish child and moth­er — and fraud­u­lent­ly claimed it was actu­al­ly of the NKVD shoot­ing peo­ple. The cap­tion reads in trans­la­tion: ‘Atroc­i­ties of the Chekhists: the exe­cu­tion of a moth­er and child by the NKVD’. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of the pos­si­ble role of Nazi hack­er, Glenn Green­wald asso­ciate and Ukraine res­i­dent Andrew “Weev” Aueren­heimer in the high-pro­file hacks: ” . . . . [Peter W.] Smith also reached out to ‘Guc­cifer 2.0’—an alias the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has linked to Russ­ian state hackers—and was advised to seek the help of a white nation­al­ist hack­er who lives in Ukraine. . . . [Pax] John­son said he also sug­gest­ed that Smith get in touch with Andrew Auern­heimer, a hack­er who goes by the alias “Weev” and has col­lab­o­rat­ed with John­son in the past. . . .” We note that Charles C. John­son, an asso­ciate of Mike Cer­novich, was involved with this maneu­ver.
2.–Review of Atlantic Coun­cil fel­low Dmitri Alper­ovitch (co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer of Crowd­strike, the cyber-secu­ri­ty firm that led the charge to attribute the high-pro­file hacks to Rus­sia. Kurt Volk­er is also close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the Atlantic Coun­cil. ” . . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. . . . The con­nec­tion between [Crowd­strike co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Dmitri] Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . . ”

FTR #826 Bringing It All Back Home, Ukrainian Style, Part 2

In FTR #824, we not­ed the deci­sive role played by the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra in the events unfold­ing in East­ern Europe. Petro Poroshenko is imple­ment­ing a legal gam­bit to per­mit for­eign nation­als to assume cab­i­net posi­tions in his new gov­ern­ment. In par­tic­u­lar, Poroshenko expressed the desire to incor­po­rate cit­i­zens of the U.S., Geor­gia and Lithua­nia in Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment. In short order, Ukrainian/American State Depart­ment Offi­cer Natal­ie Jaresko, Lithuan­ian-born U.S. cit­i­zen Air­vas Abramovi­cius and Geor­gian Alek­san­dre Kvi­tashvili assumed the posts of finance min­is­ter, eco­nom­ic and devel­op­ment and trade min­is­ter and health min­is­ter respec­tive­ly. All three were edu­cat­ed in the Unit­ed States. Jaresko is a for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cer with close links to the US Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment. The appoint­ments come as Ukraine is close to default­ing on a $17bn IMF loan and mem­bers of Ukraine’s fas­cist vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions are lob­by­ing Con­gress for mil­i­tary aid. Poroshenko is also grant­i­ng cit­i­zen­ship to for­eign-born neo-Nazis, as well as insti­tut­ing an infor­ma­tion min­istry that crit­ics have com­pared to The Min­istry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984.

FTR #818 Can You Put Lipstick on a Nazi? (Part 3): Update on Ukraine and Timeline of Ukrainian Fascism

Fur­ther ana­lyz­ing the recent Ukrain­ian elec­tions, the broad­cast high­lights the incor­po­ra­tion of fas­cist and Nazi per­son­nel into the so-called “mod­er­ate” forces in that unfor­tu­nate coun­try. In turn, the “mod­er­ates” have imple­ment­ed polit­i­cal steps advo­cat­ed by the fas­cists. Exem­plary of this dynam­ic is Petro Poroshenko’s sup­port for “lus­tra­tion laws.” Osten­si­bly designed to root out the mar­row-deep cor­rup­tion that has plagued Ukraine and spurred social unrest, the laws are a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al prin­ci­ple and appear to be aimed at fur­ther purg­ing Russ­ian influ­ence in that coun­try. Poroshenko’s “point per­son” push­ing sup­port of the lus­tra­tion laws is Svit­lana Zal­ishchuk, who received finan­cial sup­port from Pierre Omid­yar, Glenn Green­wald’s finan­cial angel. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, includ­ing its com­man­der Andriy Bilet­sky, have been elect­ed to Par­lia­ment. The deputy com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion is the new chief of police in Kiev.

FTR #817 Can You Put Lipstick on a Nazi? (Part 2): Update on Ukraine

The Ukrain­ian elec­tion results have pro­duced hosan­nas in the West about the far-right par­ties hav­ing been mar­gin­al­ized in the vote. Noth­ing could be far­ther from the truth. Svoboda–one of the OUN/B heirs on the Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal landscape–has rep­re­sen­ta­tion in par­lia­ment, as does the Rad­i­cal Par­ty of Oleg (“Oleh”) Lyashko, who helped form many of the fas­cist mili­tias active in the civ­il war in the nation’s East­ern sec­tion. Dimytro Yarosh, head of Pravy Sek­tor also won a seat in par­lia­ment, though Pravy Sek­tor fared poor­ly at the polls. What has received lit­tle cov­er­age is the fact that the so-called “mod­er­ate,” “pro-EU” par­ties such as Poroshenko’s par­ty and Arseniy Yat­senyuk’s Peo­ple’s Front have incor­po­rat­ed some of the worst of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists. Poroshenko has OUN/B wartime pres­i­dent Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary (Roman Svarych) as an advis­er, along with Oleh Makhnit­sky, the for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter from Svo­bo­da. Yat­senyuk has peo­ple from the fas­cist Azov Bat­tal­ion in the ranks of his orga­ni­za­tion. The effects of hav­ing peo­ple from Svo­bo­da in charge of the judi­cial process can be sam­pled from the attempt to pin the sniper killings in the Maid­an demon­stra­tions on a leader of Yanukovich’s secu­ri­ty forces. “Pho­tographed” hold­ing a sniper rifle with two hands–supposedly the “proof”–Dmytro Sadovnyk only has ONE hand, hav­ing lost the oth­er to a grenade in a train­ing acci­dent years ago. The Poroshenko gov­ern­ment has been using clus­ter muni­tions against its own cit­i­zens.