A resident of Donetsk has posted a photo of soldiers on a social networking service site. The soldiers, outside a local military enlistment office, were armed with sub-machineguns and light-weight machineguns and spoke English. They wore the uniform that was obviously not Ukrainian.
The coordinator of the Self-Defence of Donbass united organization of the activists of Donetsk told reporters earlier that a plane with 200 foreign mercenaries had landed at Donetsk airport. According to him, the legionnaires speak neither Russian, nor Ukrainian.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on April 7th that Kiev is amassing Interior Ministry troops and Ukraine’s National Guards, as well as fighters of the ‘Right Sector’ illegal armed group, in the southeast of Ukraine, including in Donetsk. The Russian Foreign Ministry points out that it is especially concerned over the fact that taking part in the forthcoming operation are some 150 US experts from the Greystone private military organization, dressed in the uniform of the Sokol (Falcon) police task force.
The White House has refuted the report, insisting in its Tuesday’s statement with reference to a Greystone official that US mercenaries are not involved in suppressing unrest in the south-east of Ukraine, Interfax reports.
The Foreign Ministers of Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU are due to meet for talks on Ukraine next week, according to the press service of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.
Peace initiatives do in no way prevent the US from beefing up its military presence off Ukraine’s coast. Another US naval ship, USS Donald Cook, has entered the Black Sea, according to Rossiya-24 TV channel.
According to The Daily Telegraph British newspaper, the objective of the ship, armed with an air defence system and Tomahawk cruise missiles is to show support for Kiev. Another US naval ship has been in the area since March this year.
Russia is not conducting any unusual or unplanned military activities on its territory in the area of the Ukrainian border, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“The US and Ukraine have no reasons for concerns. Russia has said many times that it is not conducting any unusual or unplanned activities significant in terms of military issues on its territory in the area of the Ukrainian border,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary posted on its website.
“The daily activities by the Russian troops on its national territory do not threaten the security of the US and other OSCE countries. The attempts to accuse Russia of beefing up its armed forces are groundless,” the ministry said.
Washington employs thousands private military contractors (PMCs). They’re mercenaries. They’re hired guns.
Peter Dale Scott once said they’re “authorized to commit violence in the the name of their employers.” They’re “predatory bandits.”
They operate extrajudicially. They’re unrestricted by US, international, or local governments’ laws. They’re free from civil or criminal accountability.
Under Article 47 of the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions:
“A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities:
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of the Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.”
Washington substitutes them for Pentagon forces however. At multiples more in cost. Using them gives US authorities cover for whatever crimes they commit. Doing so avoids accountability.
They’re an integral part of America’s imperial agenda. Apparently they’re operating in Ukraine. Perhaps hundreds will increase to thousands.
Maybe in other Ukrainian cities. Maybe covertly in Crimea. If not now, maybe later. Expect East/West tensions to escalate. Expect the risk for open conflict to increase.
Like government leaders everywhere, Russia’s Vladimir Putin often lies. But when he tells an uncomfortable truth, few people in the US or Europe bother to listen. Take what he said about Ukraine back in 2007, when Time magazine interviewed him as their “Person of the Year.”
The Russians subsidize Ukraine, Putin explained. They sell it natural gas and other energy resources at $3 billion to $5 billion a year below international market prices. At the same time, the US “somehow decided that part of the political elite in Ukraine is pro-American and part is pro-Russian, and they decided to support the ones they consider pro-American, the so-called orange coalition.”
Why, Putin asked, should Russia continue to subsidize Ukraine? “If you want to support someone, you pay for it. Nobody wants to pay.”
Putin had it right. In their proposed economic agreement with Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, the Europeans offered very little money. In their negotiations with him during the Euromaidan protests, they and their allies in Washington continued to offer far less than the estimated $20 billion to $35 billion that the country needed.
In February, about a week before Yanukovych ran away, the Christian Science Monitor summed up the situation. Ukraine’s international currency reserves were falling at a vertiginous rate. The national currency, the hryvnia, had lost value, and the international credit rating agency Fitch had downgraded the country’s sovereign debt. How would Ukraine pay what it owed – primarily to Western banks and Russia’s Gasprom? How would it pay salaries, pensions, and social benefits?
The EU agreement looked to a major infusion of capital from the International Monetary Fund. But that would come only after the Ukrainians agreed to what IMF managing director Christiane Lagarde later called a “profound transformation,” especially of its fiscal policy, monetary policy, and policies on energy.
“Nobody is willing to give economic support, from the United States or from the IMF or from Europe, to an unreformed Ukraine,” US State Department’s Victoria Nuland said in Kiev on February 7.
The Westerners had good reason for being tight-fisted. They knew that the incredibly corrupt Yanukovych and the Ukrainian oligarchs would take the money and stay put. That is how the country’s oligarchic system works, with or without Yanukovych. Most of the new billionaires – including the leading candidate to become the new president, Petro Poroshenko – made their first big money by “privatizing” formerly state-owned enterprises.
“Ukraine’s oligarchs got rich during the privatization sales of former Soviet-owned industries and factories shortly after independence in 1991,” explained the Monitor. “The country’s main industries of mining, metals, chemical production, and energy distribution were snatched up by individuals, who then reaped millions in profits.”
The Monitor did not mention one significant fact. Privatization only came about the way it did with what one academic study called “the support and cajoling of Western donors.” Will foreign meddlers never learn?
Nor did the Western-backed rip-off stop with the original sin. Several analysts tell the same story, none more succinctly than the Monitor. “Many of the oligarchs’ businesses – particularly in the mining, heavy industry, and energy distribution industries – operate in dilapidated, Soviet-era facilities that are extremely energy-inefficient, and heavily dependent on government subsidies.”
In other words, when would-be reformers talk about Ukraine’s corruption, they mean the oligarchic system. Not necessarily personal corruption, but a pervasive systemic corruption.
“Corruption and politics have always had a close relationship in Ukraine,” explains the Monitor. “The oligarchs have benefitted for two decades from close relations with government officials, who have at times turned a blind eye to the activities in exchange for support. At other times, politicians have enabled their oligarch supporters to get richer through key government appointments and a lack of transparency in government contracts.”
Systemic corruption also gobbled up foreign assistance. Ukraine has gotten far more aid than any county in the former Soviet Union, energy specialist Emily Holland told Bloomberg Businessweek. And where has it gone? “Into the pockets of an incredibly corrupt political elite and oligarchs.”
The Russians, with their own oligarchic system, continued to subsidize Ukraine’s energy imports. They also agreed in December to buy $15 billion in Ukrainian Eurobonds, and actually laid out the first $3 billion.
“The economy of Ukraine was going into the wall and was heading for disaster,” the IMF’s Lagarde told PBS Newshour. “Without the support that they were getting from this lifeline that Russian had extended a few months ago, Ukraine was heading nowhere.”
Mounting violence from the protesters, continuing refusal of Brussels and Washington to come up with serious money, and increasing loss of support from the oligarchs convinced Yanukovych to jump ship. Putin responded by stopping the subsidies, which meant raising the price Ukraine had to pay for its energy imports.
Brussels and Washington were left holding the bag, as Putin had suggested they should. So, at warp speed, the IMF and Ukraine’s Western-backed interim government came to terms. The Ukrainians would agree to “profound transformation.” The IMF would give them something between $14 billion and $18 billion over time.
Having worked as a private banker, central banker, and Minister of Economy, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk knew from the start what lay ahead. “To be in this government is to commit political suicide,” he predicted even before the Russians moved into Crimea.
The biggest challenge, he told an investor’s conference in Kiev last week, will be to sell Ukrainians on the need for “painful economic reforms.” Unpegging the hryvnia from the dollar will likely cause a 3% drop in GDP, he explained. Cutting the public sector by 10% will put a lot of people out of work. Losing the Russian subsidy on energy and simultaneously cutting domestic fuel subsidies will greatly increase the cost of living, though the government would provide “some sort of subsidy” to the poorest five to eight million households.
Yats understood how this would breed discontent, especially in the east and south, where people lean more toward Russia. He knew Moscow was telling them that they would enjoy higher living standards in Russia, with higher wages and better pensions and without the austerity that the Kiev government was now offering. “They’re saying: if you go to Russia, you’ll be happy, smiling, and not living in a Western hell.”
That is Russian propaganda, no doubt. But the message rings true, doesn’t it?
Yats has a much bigger problem. He and his Western-backed interim government have gone to great lengths to give the oligarchs even greater power – far more than to the Svoboda Party or followers of Stepan Bandera in Yatsenyuk’s Fatherland Party. In one of their first acts in office, they appointed oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoisky and Serhiy Taruta as governors in Eastern Ukraine, and are already working closely with the country’s likely new president, Petro Poroshenko.
Many in the West welcome “the Chocolate King’s” presence, especially since he was the highest-profile oligarch to support the Euromaidan protest. Western “deciders” have looked kindly on him for years, as journalist Andriy Skumin wrote in March 2012, just after Yanukovych appointed Poroshenko Minister of Trade and Economic Development.
“European circles, blindly searching for any adequate Western-thinking individuals within Ukraine’s establishment, have a favorable opinion of Poroshenko as a person who is reliable, can be charged with introducing changes in Ukraine and ending the deadlock in EU–Ukraine relations” Skumin wrote. But “the preservation of the monopolistic oligarchy will not allow for any European integration or even domestic transformations using European patterns. The only thing that could be done is perhaps only an outward European appearance.”
“Profound transformation” requires killing the oligarchic system, which no one in the game – least of all Poroshenko – has come close to suggesting. This is the IMF’s big lie. Lagarde talks of changing Ukraine, but the people she has entrusted to make those changes are the precisely the ones whose power the country most needs to curtail.
To crib from Vladimir Putin, Poroshenko and his fellow oligarchs are neither pro-American, pro-European, nor pro-Russian. They are not even necessarily pro-Ukrainian, though a bit of patriotic fervor may help them shove austerity down the throats of their underlings. Ukrainian oligarchs, like American plutocrats, are simply pro-themselves.
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, “Big Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold.”
Three weeks ago Mikael Skillt worked for a construction company in Stockholm, Sweden. Today, he is a volunteer in a nationalist organization in Kiev. In an interview with Fria Tider, Skillt tells the story of a Ukraine where the role of the police has been assumed by paramilitary Right-wing groups.
At the end of February, mere days after Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown, Mikael Skillt boarded a plane bound for Kiev. He left behind a relationship that had just ended, a terrace house in a Stockholm suburb and a well-paid job as a planner at a construction company.
The purpose of his trip was to volunteer for one of the nationalist organizations which, as a result of their central role in the Ukrainian revolution, have gone from being relatively marginal to controlling the streets of Kiev.
It was not an easy decision to make, Skillt said when Fria Tider spoke to him over Skype. His former employer, also a personal friend, was not happy when Skillt suddenly quit his job to go to Ukraine. Skillt said he went anyway because of a sense of solidarity with the Ukrainian nationalists. “Nationalists have died on the streets of Kiev,” he recounted. “And I was able to help them. That is more important than my personal well-being.”
Skillt is 37 years old and has been involved in various Swedish nationalist groups for more than a decade. Between 2002 and 2010 he was active in the National Socialist organization Svenska motståndsrörelsen (Swedish Resistance Movement). Today, he is a member of a small, nationalist political party, Svenskarnas parti (Party of the Swedes), but holds no official position within it. He says he is no longer a National Socialist and describes himself as an “ethnic nationalist.” “You are born Swedish,” he explained. “It’s not something you can become.”
After arriving in Ukraine, Skillt joined the organization C14, also known as Sich, which is closely affiliated with the nationalist party Svoboda. In an interview with the BBC, C14′s leader, Yevhen Karas, says that his organization has approximately 200 members and that its main objective is to sever all ties between Ukraine and Russia. Some have called him a Nazi, but he firmly denies that accusation. “I don’t think I’m a Nazi, I’m a Ukrainian nationalist,” Karas told the BBC. “The main confrontation is about that some ethnic groups have control of many business structures, some economical and political forces.”
When asked which ethnic groups he was referring to, Karas clarified, “Russians and Jews. Some non-Ukrainian groups control a huge percent of the economic and political power. And of course, in this situation you have some tension with the Ukrainian people.”
According to Skillt, C14 has been in existence for quite some time. Prior to the revolution, C14 often intervened to protect tenants threatened by illegal eviction. “Ukrainian landlords, similar to so-called ‘slum lords’ in America, have often evicted tenants illegally in order to tear down an existing building and put up something newer and more profitable in its place. They often do that by bribing corrupt politicians. In many cases, C14 has occupied such buildings and chased away the police when they arrive to evict the tenants.”
When the protests against Yanukovych’s government began last autumn, C14 was one of the groups that fought the riot police, Berkut, as they tried to drive the protesters off the Maidan Square. “Most of the members of C14 have been very active in the Maidan riots. If you sit down and talk to these guys, I can give you ten names right off the bat of people who have lost a friend in the fighting. So, they’ve been on the front lines,” Skillt said. “I have never heard anyone here call himself a National Socialist. They fight for a Ukraine based on ethnic unity.”
Today, C14 is a force to be reckoned with. Together with the so-called Right Sector, C14 patrols the streets of Kiev, fights crime and guards public buildings. Skillt and several other Swedish volunteers participate in the patrols. “The police force still exists, but isn’t seen much,” he said. “Most of the police officers you see on the streets are only traffic police. Maintaining order is primarily being done by C14 and the Right Sector.”
The reason why there is a power vacuum that is currently being filled by these groups is that the special police force, Berkut, was disbanded following the overthrow of Yanukovych, and many officers of the regular police force were also sacked. “Corruption among the police has been massive and many have been dismissed,” Skillt explained. “Some have fled for their lives because they were guilty of corruption, or otherwise behaved like bastards. The officers that remain are pro-Ukrainian and not corrupt. But because of their low-life former comrades, people don’t have much confidence in them either.”
“Berkut was really disgusting,” he continued. “I have met some people who were arrested by them. They were tortured, sometimes even maimed. People had toes and fingers cut off. Some were doused in gasoline, while police officers stood next to them, smoking. Others had water poured over them and were then thrown out into -10 degrees C temperatures.”
The nationalist groups, rather than the police, enjoy a great deal of confidence among the public, Skillt told us. “They have acted in an exemplary manner, as far as the people are concerned. They have stood up to armed police officers, in many cases while unarmed, and at great risk to their own lives. This won the confidence of the people.”
When the Ukrainian parliament convened on March 17 to discuss the situation in Crimea, C14 and the Right Sector provided security. Skillt was part of the group that C14 sent to guard the parliament. A photo showed him wearing a uniform, a bulletproof vest, a ski mask and sunglasses. He carried a gun case on his back, but he didn’t want to tell us what it contained. “A fishing pole,” he said.
Other photographs from the parliament, however, show uniformed, masked men openly carrying automatic rifles. Skillt confirms that both C14 and the Right Sector possess firearms, even though guns are not part of their standard equipment. The ability to handle guns safely varies widely from person to person. “Some of the guys in the Right Sector are like monkeys with guns,” he said. “You put your life at risk just by being near them, when they’re armed. It’s pure slapstick, they have guns but handle them carelessly, as if they were wooden sticks. In C14, safety routines are much better. It’s almost up to the standard of the Swedish military.”
Skillt described C14 as a more professional and disciplined unit than the Right Sector. Before Skillt was approved for service in C14 his physical fitness and marksmanship were tested. Candidates are expected to be able to run five kilometers in under 25 minutes while wearing a full uniform, a bulletproof vest and carrying other personal equipment. “It’s not as easy as it sounds,” Skillt said. “Part of the course is a steep uphill slope. I made it in 24 minutes and a few seconds.”
The Right Sector was formed last autumn, when the protests began. It first functioned as an umbrella organization for various nationalist groups that wanted to stop the police from driving the protesters from their encampments on the Maidan in central Kiev. Its members range from soldiers with combat experience from Afghanistan and Chechnya, to students and soccer hooligans.
According to Skillt, the different groups within the Right Sector have now coalesced into one organization with a common leadership. Its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, has announced his candidacy in the upcoming presidential election in May. He opposes integration with the European Union, which he described as a “monster” that imposes “anti-Christian and anti-national laws” upon its members. In a widely-distributed promotional video, the Right Sector has claimed to fight against “totalitarian liberalism” and for the “rebirth of Europe.”
One incident from last week illustrates the influence of these paramilitary, Right-wing groups in post-revolutionary Ukraine. Skillt told us that he was one of approximately 20 activists from C14 who went to the office of the Ukrainian prison authorities in Kiev. The purpose of the visit was to secure the release of one of the organization’s members, who had been jailed for participating in the street-fighting with the police while Yanukovych was still in power.
“There were four guards there,” Skillt said. “They locked themselves in a sentry booth as soon as we got there. We told the head of the prison authority that if he wouldn’t come outside and talk to us, we would come inside and talk to him. He actually did come outside and, after a brief discussion, promised the C14 activists that he would do what was necessary to have their comrade released.”
A great way to get people excited about their new debt serfdom
Ukraine is raising the price of gas for domestic consumers by more than 50 per cent from May 1 and will implement further rises under a fixed timetable until 2018, an official of state energy company Naftogaz said on Wednesday.
The step, which will be widely unpopular with ordinary Ukrainians who have grown used to subsidised gas prices from the Soviet era, were taken in response to demands by the International Monetary Fund.
The interim government of Arseny Yatseniuk is in the final stages of talks with the Fund to secure $15-20 billion in a new aid package.
The group of five major emerging national economies known as the BRICS has rejected the Western sanctions against Russia and the “hostile language” being directed at the country over the crisis in Ukraine.
“The escalation of hostile language, sanctions and counter-sanctions, and force does not contribute to a sustainable and peaceful solution, according to international law, including the principles and purposes of the United Nations Charter,” foreign ministers of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – said in a statement issued on Monday.
The group agreed that the challenges that exist within the regions of the BRICS countries must be addressed within the framework of the United Nations.
“BRICS countries agreed that the challenges that exist within the regions of the BRICS countries must be addressed within the fold of the United Nations in a calm and level-headed manner,” the statement added.
The White House said earlier on Monday that US President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan decided to end Russia’s role in the G8 over the crisis in Ukraine and the status of Crimea.
Meanwhile, the G7 group of top economic powers has snubbed a planned meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin was due to host in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in June.
The G7 said they would hold a meeting in Brussels without Russia instead of the wider G8 summit, and threatened tougher sanctions against Russia.
Russia brushed off the Western threat to expel it from the G8 on the same day. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea declared independence from Ukraine on March 17 and formally applied to become part of Russia following a referendum a day earlier, in which nearly 97 percent of the participants voted in favor of the move.
On March 21, Putin signed into law the documents officially making Crimea part of the Russian territory. Putin said the move was carried out based on the international law.
It can best be described as killing your friends once they become a burden.
An effort is underway to clean up the image of the junta now in control of Ukraine. Although Right Sector (Pravy Sektor) played an instrumental role in the coup, its radical nationalism continues to be an embarrassment for the new regime put in place by the IMF, the EU and the United States.
“Night of the Long Knives” refers to a series of political murders conducted by Hitler and the Nazis after they assumed power. In addition to opponents of the regime, the Nazis assassinated a number of paramilitary brownshirts who earlier specialized in fighting against paramilitary units of political parties opposed to the Nazis and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, union members and Jews.
It is also a popular theme in South Africa, where state security agents regularly bait conservative whites to “rise up” against black crime and the ongoing genocide against white farmers, hoping to draw renewed international sympathy for “mistreated and oppressed blacks”.
However, the South African government did deploy thousands of troops inside the country and added tons of fluoride to the water supply before they finally announced the death of Nelson Mandela last year, fearing indeed that blacks would go on an open killing spree against all whites, not only white farmers.
That would obviously not have supported the narrative that Anglo-Americans have fabricated about South Africa: where kindly, forgiving blacks are oppressed by cruel, destructive whites.
Similary, the Western narrative about “freeing Ukraine” was beginning to suffer from a stark reality infusion.
The corporate media has tried to underplay the violent character of the Ukranian organization, but Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, made this virtually impossible when he allegedly made an appeal to Chechen terrorist leader Doku Umarov to assist the ultra-nationalist group in its crusade against Russia. In addition to courting al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists, Right Sector is rabidly pro-American.
Numerous incidents of violence and intimidation by Right Sector have gone unreported in the West. “In the days since the US-backed coup, according to citizens in Ukraine I am in contact with, after the new regime dissolved the National Police, members of the Right Sector took over police functions in Kiev. Groups of young men, mainly members of Right Sector, have been patrolling the streets armed with baseball bats and weapons,” writes F. William Engdahl. “In some documented instances according to these reports from ordinary Ukrainians, they come in groups to homes of people identified as ‘pro-Russian’ and force them out of their homes or take their possessions, as they term it ‘privatization’ actions. The population lives in a state of terror they liken to the Stalin-era terror.”
It appears an effort to “clean up” its image and make it more palatable to the oligrachs moving in on Ukraine is now underway. On Tuesday it was reported that Oleksandr Muzychko, aka Sashko Biliy, Right Sector’s second in command, was shot dead in a cafe in Rivne in western Ukraine.
According to the BBC, Ukraine’s Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Yevdokimov said Muzychko was shot dead after opening fire on police and Sokol special forces during a raid at the cafe. They planned to arrest him and other ultra-nationalists for criminal activity. Ukrainian authorities described Muzychko as a gang leader.
Ukrainian MP Oles Doniy, however, provided a different account. He said Muzychko was abducted while traveling in western Ukraine and executed. His body was later found with hands bound and a fatal bullet wound to the heart. A photo posted on Twitter seems to confirm this second account.
A private military company will be in charge of suppressing protest movements in Eastern Ukraine, said a source in the country’s Security Service. According to him, the name of the company is Greystone Limited.
According to a source cited by ITAR-TASS, Ukrainian authorities believe that the Security Service is not able to suppress the protest mood and neutralize the leaders and activists of the pro-Russian movement in the eastern regions. In particular, the source said, the acting president Alexander Turchinov shares this opinion.
“Therefore it was decided to attract foreign mercenaries, who will serve as political police and state security protection, ” said the representative of the Security Service.
He informed that the initiative to attract mercenaries belongs to oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Sergei Taruta, appointed governors of Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk regions.
Not so long ago, during a meeting with Turchinov, a plan to stop the protest movements in the eastern regions was discussed. Kolomoysky noted: “why reinvent the wheel if there are real people who understand how and how much to pay,” said the source.
According to publicly available information Greystone Limited is a structural part of Blackwater, that was later renamed into Academi. According to military experts, the company is associated with the CIA and the US Defense Department. Its employees participated in the war in Afghanistan after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, the company has appeared in Iraq and became involved in training the new Iraqi armed forces and police, as well as support of the occupation forces.
From a node in the neoconservative network, a Fox News studio, Charles Krauthammer has complained about the eviction of the Ukrainian Navy from the city of Sevastopol, where it was headquartered. Not a word did the commentator say about the city’s location: Sevastopol is on the Crimean Peninsula. It would appear that the city now falls within Crimean jurisdiction – starting March 16, the day the people of Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine.
By most estimates, between 97 and 93 percent of Crimean voters said yes to a reunion with Russia. High too was voter turnout. McClatchy pegs it at 83 percent of registered voters in Crimea. BBC News was agreed, also reporting a ballot of “more than 80 percent.” Zerohedge.com counted a “paltry” 73 percent turnout, still “higher than every U.S. presidential election since 1900.”
As rocker Ted Nugent might say, the Russians and Crimeans are blood brothers. Nugent got into trouble for using this perfectly proper appellation to describe his affinity for a politician, of all people: Texas Republican gubernatorial hopeful Greg Abbott. Notwithstanding that in the land of the terminally stupid, linguistic flourish can land one in hot water – blood brother is a good, if colorful, turn of phrase that denotes fealty between like-minded people. Steeped in state-enforced multiculturalism, America’s deracinated, self-anointed cognoscenti have a hard time grasping the blood-brother connections between the people of Russia and Crimea.
For no apparent reason other than that it is pro-Russian, Americans have reflexively aligned themselves against the swell for secession in southern Ukraine. Separatist referenda in Kosovo, Catalonia, South Sudan and Scotland have been accepted without demur by a political and media establishment unprepared to countenance a similar referendum in Crimea.
Guided by the pack animals of politics and punditry who seldom fail to shed darkness on whatever topic they tackle, a nation that struggles to locate the disputed territories on the map has been convinced of the menace posed by Russia. According to a CNN poll, 69 percent of Americans say they see Russia as a threat. A Rasmussen Report poll indicated that “52 percent support U.S. diplomatic action against Russia over Crimea.”
Helping to drive American Russophobia is the implacable logic exemplified by Bill O’Reilly of “The Factor,” yet another node in the network mentioned. At the suggestion that there are similarities between Russian and American military bellicosity, the TV host foams at the mouth. Fulmination is followed not by argument, but by a form of ad hominem or psychologizing.
It is absolutely verboten on this popular and powerful show to compare Russia’s “excursion” into Ukraine to America’s naturally illicit and illegal occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In defense of their reflexive rejection of the reasonable, if inaccurate, comparison – for decades the U.S. has been far more aggressive than Russia in its forays abroad – Bill and his gang “argued” (on March 3) as follows:
President Vladimir Putin is a thug. That’s why his actions can’t be contrasted with the actions of “a good country” like the U.S. By “logical” extension, George Bush and Barack Obama are never to be fingered as thugs.
Why, Billy, some of you will inquire? Is it because these thugs are American? Precisely.
Next, Bill O’Reilly’s mind-reading gifts were galvanized to negate the juxtaposition of the actions on the ground of the Russian and American governments. Putin, it would appear, seeks the recrudescence of the Russian empire. On the other hand, the U.S., with a military presence in 148 countries and 900 bases worldwide, has neither sought nor achieved empire status.
Why, Billy, some of you will ask? Is it because the U.S. is a good country? You got it!
Be it in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Japan, Bahrain, Djibouti, South Korea, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Kuwait – even Aruba, Iceland, Indonesia, Kenya, Norway and Peru – wherever it plants its military boot, a “good country” is never an empire, only a force for good.
Me, O’Reilly would dismiss as “anti-American.” But what of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger? While Kissinger has condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he excoriated “the demonization of Vladimir Putin.” This antipathy “is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” “The United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington,” wrote the statesman in the Washington Post.
Is Henry Kissinger anti-American or simply smarter than some Americans?
At least Secretary of State John Kerry hung on to his sense of humor. “Unless you are the United States of America, you just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” Kerry lectured the congenitally incurious David Gregory, of “Meet the Press.”
I ad-libbed. Except for the first eight words in quotation marks, Secretary Kerry did indeed say the foregoing. Given America’s military record, the missing words are implied.
The O’Reilly school of “thought” could – and does – counteract that Crimea’s vote to join Russia was tainted by fraud. This is certainly possible. Nevertheless, it is none of our business. Americans have their own tyrants to dethrone.
We’re supposed to be the freest people in the world, aren’t we? Is this claim not the moral basis for America’s we-know-best global meddling? But if we Americans are the freest people in the world, where’s our right to a referendum on, say, that “little” legislative “blip” called Obamacare? And if we’re so bleeding free, where’s our right to secede from D.C.?
US news agency Associated Press is no longer marking news items coming from Crimea as Ukrainian. In a blog statement, the American news major explained that the Ukrainian regime had lost control over the peninsula, and stressed its marking practice was based on the actual state of things.
Where it once used this dateline: “SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine (AP),” it will now use this one: “SEVASTOPOL, Crimea (AP).”
The reason is that Crimea is geographically distinct from Russia; they have no land border.
“For instance, we just say “Sicily” and “Sardinia” in datelines – “Palermo, Sicily” – even though they are part of Italy, and “Guadeloupe” in datelines even though that island is part of France,” Associated Press’ Stylebook announced
The change will effectively recognize Crimea as an independent state following a referendum on Sunday where the vast majority of Crimeans voted to become independent and join Russia.
Rather than champion the cause of independence and self-determination for colonized peoples around the world, the United States has become a center for defending inequitable status quos.
When, in 2008, the Assembly of Kosovo declared the region independent of Serbia, it was immediately recognized by the major corporatist powers because NATO troops were present to ensure that Serbia did not try to reassert its control over the region. NATO and the European Union also warned the majority Serbs in northern Kosovo not to declare independence and unify with Serbia.
Apparently, independence for ethnic groups is only permitted by NATO and the European Union as long as it is not Russians, Serbs, Afrikaners asking for the independence or the right of self-determination.
In the Crimean referendum, registered voter turnout was 83.10 percent. Only 2.09 percent of those voting opted to restore the 1992 constitution and remain a part of Ukraine. A clear majority of 96.7 percent favored joining the Russian Federation.
If the same rules that are presently applied by the corporatist powers to Crimea were extended to independence referenda held in other countries, there today would be no independent Norway, Iceland, Cambodia, Guinea, Samoa, Algeria, Malta, Djibouti, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova, Eritrea, East Timor, Montenegro, South Sudan, or, in fact, Ukraine.
All declared independence after referenda, some of which were more openly in favor than that held by Crimea (Norway, 99.9 percent; Iceland, 99.5 percent; Cambodia, 100 percent; Guinea, 95.2 percent; Samoa, 85.4 percent; Algeria, 99.7 percent; Malta, 54.5 percent; French Territory of Afars and Issas (Djibouti), 99.8 percent; Slovenia, 88.5 percent; Estonia, 78.4 percent; Latvia, 74.9 percent; Lithuania, 93.2 percent; Bosnia-Herzegovina, 99.7 percent; Moldova, 97.9 percent; East Timor, 78.5 percent; Montenegro, 55.5 percent; South Sudan, 98.3 percent; and Ukraine, 92.3 percent.)
The corporatist powers have, like Ukraine, denied their regions independence after clear majorities voted in favor of secession. In 1933, the British Parliament rejected a 70.7 percent vote in favor of secession by Western Australia. In 1946, the Danish King rejected a 50.4 percent vote in favor of independence held in the Faroe Islands. The declaration of independence by the islands was rejected by Denmark. In 1977, after the people of Aruba voted 95.1 percent for independence, the Netherlands instead offered the island a bogus self-determination status.
Great Britain still recognises the independence of two Bantustans in Southern Africa today, but refused to recognise the independence of other ethnic states because they had no control over them. Instead Britain called the independence of South African provinces “apartheid” and launched a worldwide attack on separate development.
High principles dominate the rhetoric on freedom-loving Ukraine, writes JP Sottile. But more mundane realities – like the interests of US oil corporations and Ukraine’s vast shale gas capacity – are part of the volatile equation.
In Ukraine, Chevron’s deal continues a long tradition of intermarriage between ‘national’ and corporate interests under the guise of national security.
Everybody’s got an opinion about the ‘showdown’ with Russia.
Some say it’s about freedom and the right to self-determination. Some say it’s about standing up to aggression and halting a dictator’s march.
Some say it’s about the future of everything-from Syria to North Korea to Iran’s nuclear program – and, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, it all stems from Obama’s failure to kill the people who killed Americans at Benghazi.
But the most-revealing voice in the chorus is Condi Rice. She penned a tension-filled op-ed on Ukraine for the Washington Post – the newspaper of broken records.
Her nostalgic, “Baby, It’s a Cold War Outside” ditty on the “Ukrainian Problem” came just two days after a Teflon-coated Henry Kissinger opined about the “art of establishing priorities” in his own Ukraine-themed op-ed for the Post.
Why should we care about Condi?
As the world learned through painful experience, Condi Rice, much like Henry Kissinger, was all about establishing priorities. But now that she’s out of power, why should anyone waste any time considering Ms. Rice’s opinion about anything, much less about the ‘crisis’ in Ukraine?
Why? Because it’s telling. Like most American Exceptionalists, her bluster and posturing can be reverse-engineered to find the banal truth about US foreign policy.
For example, her steadfast belief that Ukraine “should not be a pawn in a great-power conflict but rather an independent nation” might have something to do with Chevron’s 50-year lease to develop Ukraine’s shale gas reserves.
It’s the gas, stupid
When that lease was signed on November 5, 2013, it stoked Russian fears about losing its influence on, and a major gas market in, a former satellite.
It also came on the eve of the much-disputed trade deal with the European Union that, once abandoned due to Russian pressure, led to the toppling of Ukraine’s government.
Reuters characterized Ukraine’s “$10 billion shale gas production-sharing agreement with US Chevron” as “another step in a drive for more energy independence from Russia.”
Of course, Ms. Rice knows something about driving for more energy. She sat on Chevron’s board of directors for ten years before resigning to become President Bush’s National Security Adviser in January of 2001.
She was such a titanic figure at Chevron and so beloved by their corporate captains that they even named a 129,000-ton oil tanker ‘Condoleezza Rice’. Do people name tankers after people? People do!
But four months after leaving Chevron, they “quietly renamed” the tanker, apparently sensitive to the implication that she might prioritize their interests in places like Kazakhstan (a de facto dictatorship never targeted by American Exceptionalists) or the Caspian Sea (where Chevron is heavily invested) or Afghanistan (where they’ve long sought a pipeline from the Caspian region to the Indian Ocean).
Corporate Interests Abroad
In the case of Ukraine, Chevron’s deal continues a long tradition of intermarriage between ‘national’ and corporate interests under the guise of national security.
As the International Business Times stated immediately after the deal, “Chevron’s agreement with Ukraine was supported by the US as part of its national security strategy to help reduce Russia’s hold on Europe and Kiev.”
As quoted in the article, US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt said, “I’m very determined to cooperate with the Ukrainian government in strengthening Ukraine’s energy independence.”
That “cooperation” is couched in the language of “independence” – but it’s actually about shifting to financial interdependence with powerful, American corporate interests. It’s not about freedom or self-determination or human rights.
It’s about the ‘Open Door’.
Since the US proposed the Open Door Policy in China at the end of the 19th Century, American ‘soft imperialism’ has exploited resource opportunities for American corporate interests in dozens of ‘friendly’regimes – their commitment to freedom notwithstanding.
We have been there before
Whether it was oil in Iran, bananas in Guatemala or sugar-cane in Cuba, any move to close the door on US business interests has traditionally been met with dire warnings about the dangers of isolationism and specious claims about America’s national interests – which, oddly enough, always seem to be located in another country.
Throughout the Cold War, those ‘endangered’ national interests inspired CIA hijinks around the world. US foreign policymakers supported regime change in places like Chile (calling Dr. Kissinger) and around Central America.
And they doled out generous foreign aid packages to a motley crew of anti-communist ‘strongmen’. If push came to shove, the US military might even get involved.
Since the end of the Cold War, US policy has been kicking open doors around the world and particularly around the edges of the former Soviet Union. Expansion of NATO and US involvement in the former ‘Soviet Stans’ around Afghanistan extended a semi-circle of US military might around Russia.
A declaration of economic war
And the Ukrainian energy independence trumpeted by Ambassador Pyatt amounted to a declaration of economic warfare on Russia’s oil and gas-based economy. Like Condi Rice before him, Ambassador Pyatt’s well-established priority is to ensure that well-connected businesses get in on the ground floor.
Once on the ground floor, they need insurance – either from local clients or from a neighborhood patrol by US forces. Perhaps that’s why Ms. Rice used her Ukraine op-ed as an opportunity to advocate leaving a permanent military force in Afghanistan.
She doesn’t want to hear “talk of withdrawal from Afghanistan whether the security situation warrants it or not.” For her, nothing less than 10,000 troops will do. Otherwise, the US is “not serious about helping to stabilize that country.”
Freedom, liberty, justice … and hydrocarbons
Yet, one wonders if she – like all the professional hand-wringers, truculent think tankers, and once and future policymakers who’ve grandstanded on the showdown with Russia – isn’t quietly more concerned about something more basic than freedom, liberty and justice for all.
Perhaps the former Secretary of State, former Chevron big-wig and former oil tanker is more concerned with the ability of Chevron to realize its Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline dream.
Her old cohorts practicing soft imperialism at the US State Department have certainly been doing their part to help Chevron score that lucrative contract.
The banal truth is that America’s long-standing policy is to help people anywhere and everywhere when those people just so happen to be living on or near valuable resources.
Unless, of course, it’s Bahrain, Nigeria, Kazakhstan or anywhere else repressive and corrupt governments are already interdependent upon US corporate interests.
A woman with her face painted in the colours of the Russian national flag waits for the announcement of preliminary results of today’s referendum on Lenin Square in the Crimean capital of Simferopol March 16, 2014
The referendum in Crimea was fully consistent with international law and UN Charter, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Barack Obama, after the overwhelming majority of Crimeans expressed their willingness to join Russia.
The citizens of the peninsula have been given an opportunity to freely express their will and exercise their right to self-determination, the Russian president said in a phone conversation with his US counterpart, according to Kremlin’s press service.
With a record-breaking turnout of over 80 percent, according to preliminary results, over 95 percent of the Crimean population said ‘yes’ to the reunion of the republic with Russia. International observers have not reported any violations or anything resembling any kind of pressure during the vote.
However, Obama said the Unites States and the “international community” will “never recognize” the results of the referendum “administered under threats of violence and intimidation,” according to White House spokesman.
Obama “emphasized that Russia’s actions were in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that the US in coordination with its European partners is “prepared to impose additional costs on Russia,” the White House added.
Despite the existing differences in the assessment of the situation in Ukraine, the leaders of Russia and US have agreed that they must jointly seek to help stabilize the situation in the country, the Kremlin said.
“Putin drew attention to the inability and unwillingness of the current Kiev authorities to curb rampant ultra-nationalist and radical groups, destabilizing and terrorizing civilians, including Russian-speaking population, and our fellow citizens,” Kremlin statement reads.
In this context, the possibility of sending an OSCE monitoring mission to Ukraine was discussed, the press office reported. The Russian President believes such a mission should be extended to all Ukrainian regions. – RT.COM
The deepening crisis in Ukraine involves not only issues of political sovereignty, European integration and Russian hegemony, but also language and its relationship to nationalism and ethnic identity. Immediately after the removal of President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, the Ukrainian Parliament repealed a controversial law passed in 2012 that allowed the use of “regional languages” – including Russian, Hungarian, Romanian and Tatar — in courts and certain government functions in areas of the country where such speakers constituted at least 10 percent of the population. (In 1991, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent state of Ukraine established Ukrainian as its sole official language.)
Interim President Oleksandr Turchynov has since vetoed that repeal, but the episode has alarmed many of Ukraine’s Russian speakers and others. “Just as the law itself was meant to validate the continued use of Russian in Ukraine for a wide range of activities, the move to cancel that law was perceived as taking away rights enjoyed by the Russian-speaking population, and potentially a sign that there might be growing discrimination against them,” explained Olga Oliker, a security and defense analyst at the RAND Corp.
Indeed, after the 2012 law was passed, 13 of Ukraine’s 27 regions, mostly in the industrial eastern parts of the country, quickly adopted Russian as a second official language. (But even then, the passage of the law triggered demonstrations in the streets and even fistfights in Parliament.) Dr. Vitaly Chernetsky, associate professor in the department of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Kansas, commented that the 2012 language law was poorly written and roundly criticized by many experts at the time. “Additionally, no budgetary allocations were made at the time, so passing this law was, in effect, a purely symbolic measure intended to divert the attention of the Ukrainian electorate from corruption and economic problems,” Chernetsky said in an interview.
According to the CIA/World Factbook, the Russian language is spoken by about one-fourth (24 percent) of the Ukrainian population, while about one-sixth (17.3 percent) of the Ukrainian population are ethnic Russians. RT, a Russian television network, claims that 40 percent of Ukrainians speak Russian, (presumably including non-Russians). Russian speakers are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine – while in the southern autonomous region of Crimea (where the Russians have had a naval base on the Black Sea for more than 200 years), an estimated 60 percent of the population are ethnic Russians.
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The Ukraine Parliament reportedly will consider yet another language law in the coming weeks or months – it is unclear if it will again allow a multi-language framework for the country’s social and political life.
Svitlana Melnyk, a lecturer in Slavic languages and literatures at Indiana University-Bloomington, argued that the establishment of monolingualism formed a key part of solidifying Ukraine’s national identity. “For post-Soviet independent countries and Ukraine in particular, the state language has symbolic meaning and a great symbolic value in the process of nation-building,” she said. “This is a national symbol along with the flag and anthem. The language issue is highly politicized in Ukraine, and its future management heavily depends on the evolving political situation.”
Melnyk added that she thinks that Ukrainian should be “the only state language” in the country. “At the same time, the [new language] law should consider the current socio-linguistic situation and protect the languages of national and ethnic minorities in the country,” she said.
But the temporary repeal of the 2012 law sparked outrage from Ukraine to Moscow and even in the European Union. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev condemned the law’s abolition. “We do not understand what is going on there. There is a real threat to our [Russian] interests and to the lives and health of our citizens,” he said at a press conference, adding that the new interim government in Kiev lacks legitimacy. Similarly, Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commissioner for human rights, characterized the law’s repeal as an “attack on the Russian language in Ukraine” and a “brutal violation of ethnic minority rights.”
Outside of Russia, the European Parliament even passed a resolution calling on the new Ukraine regime to respect the rights (and languages) of its minority population. “The Parliament of Ukraine has made what I believe to be a mistake… canceling a law on regional languages,” Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told CNN. “The new Ukrainian government should signal very eloquently to the ethnic minorities in Ukraine that they are welcome in Ukraine; that they are going to be part of the new Ukraine. And also Ukraine is a member of the Council of Europe, [with] its laws on protecting minorities.”
Separately, in response to the gathering storm in Ukraine, some nationalist lawmakers in Moscow, led by the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, have called for the fast-tracking of Russian citizenship to ethnic Russians in Ukraine. LPDR MP Ilya Drozdov has already tabled a bill that would grant Russian citizenship to Ukrainian-Russians within six months of proving their ethnicity. “The adoption of this amendment would allow [us] to lawfully use the migration potential of Ukrainian citizens of Russian ethnicity who desire to get Russian citizenship,” Drozdov explained. RT reported that more than 2 million residents of the former Soviet republics have received fast-tracked Russian citizenship since the fall of the Soviet Union – even including people not of ethnic Russian origin, like the South Ossetians of Georgia, who speak an Iranian-related language.
Meanwhile Ukrainian nationalists, particularly members of the ultra-right Svoboda (Freedom) party led by Oleg Tyahnibok, have even threatened to ban the Russian language completely and even strip the Ukrainian citizenship of the nation’s Russian speakers. Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, in a meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, expressed their grave concerns about another Svoboda-proposed bill that would essentially ban all Russian language media in Ukraine (which Svoboda has defended by citing that Russian reports of the turmoil in Ukraine have been tarred with bias). That bill would prohibit from Ukraine any media from nations that have not ratified the European Convention on Transfrontier Television — Russia has signed the convention, but has not ratified it yet.
“Russia is not a party to the convention, but it does not prevent us from broadcasting all across Europe. No EU member makes any problems for our broadcasts. If such a decision is taken in Ukraine, it would be a serious violation of the freedom of speech,” Lavrov said at a media conference.
With respect to the prevalence of Russian language, Chernetsky also noted if one looks at an average Ukrainian newsstand, one will find that about 90 percent of the publications are in Russian, even in the areas where the majority of the population speaks Ukrainian. “The Russian language also dominates the radio,” he said. “The only segment of the media where the Ukrainian language predominates is the national-level television channels.”
Oliker noted that while Ukraine has some strident far-right groups, including Svoboda and Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector), there are also more measured voices that recognize that Ukraine is a multi-ethnic country and which have absolutely no interest in denying anyone their citizenship on ethnic grounds. “Emotions are of course running very high right now, but I think most Ukrainian leaders, including the leadership of Svoboda, know they stand to lose far more than they stand to gain by taking action against the ethnic Russian minority,” she noted. “That said, the situation bears watching, because people are very angry and frightened, because one cannot ignore the ethnic undertones to the anger or the fear, and because elements of Svoboda, and certainly Pravyi Sektor, do hold ultra-nationalist views.”
Russian and Ukrainian are closely related Slavic tongues, but they are also distinct languages with separate ethnic and national identities. The Christian Science Monitor reports that Russian-language activists in Ukraine have long wanted to make Russian a second official state language, citing such scenarios in multi-lingual countries like Canada and India. “There is this pervasive suggestion that if you speak Russian, you’re not a loyal or true Ukrainian. This makes Russian-speakers feel like second-class citizens,” Ruslan Bortnik, vice chairman of Russian-Speaking Ukraine, an advocacy group, told the Monitor.
Of course, Ukrainian nationalists fear the further encroachment of Russian into its national fabric. “If Russian were an official language, the main fear is that it would be a wide-open door for Russian influence in Ukraine,” said Oleksiy Kolomiyets, president of the Center for European and Transatlantic Studies in Kiev. – International Business Times
The defense ministries of Ukraine and Russia have agreed on a truce in Crimea until March 21, Ukraine’s acting defense minister said on Sunday.
“An agreement has been reached with (Russia’s) Black Sea Fleet and the Russian Defense Ministry on a truce in Crimea until March 21,” Ihor Tenyukh told journalists on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting.
“No measures will be taken against our military facilities in Crimea during that time. Our military sites are therefore proceeding with a replenishment of reserves.” – Reuters
An international observer from Finland, who sees the referendum on the status of Crimea as absolutely legitimate, has received death threats.
A referendum is due to be held in Crimea on the status of the peninsula tomorrow, on Sunday, March 16, so on Saturday, any campaigning is banned there. An ad-hoc commission is due to see to it that this is strictly observed.
Meanwhile, an international monitor from Finland, Johan Bäckman, has complained at Simferopol airport of pressure that has been brought to bear on him and his colleagues, and also said he’d received death threats, because he supports the referendum.
“It’s all threats and slander. I received a letter with death threats earlier today”, Bäckman said. “The letter is anonymous. The Western media are full of aggression against Russia. I can’t really make out the position of the West that the referendum is allegedly in breach of international law”.
He said the residents of Crimea have every right to determine their future. The US and the European Union are bending every effort to have the referendum cancelled, and are threatening with sanctions. That the EU is considering sanctions is absolutely absurd.
Bäckman said the attempts of western politicians to stop or cancel the referendum are prompted by their desire to downgrade Russia’s authority.
The All-Crimea plebiscite is due on Sunday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. local time. The minimum voter turnout to consider the referendum valid is 50%. International observers keep arriving in Crimea to monitor the plebiscite.The international observer stressed that he sees the referendum on the status of Crimea as absolutely legitimate.
The situation in Crimea is calm, Deputy of the Belgian parliament Frank Creelman, who arrived to monitor the referendum to be held on March 16, said on Saturday. Everything is very calm and normal, absolutely not the way it is being pictures abroad, he said.
There are many pro-Russian people among residents and many law enforcement officers are at streets, Creelman said.
Creelman said he intended to monitor the referendum on the status of Crimea not just in Simferopol but in relatively small Crimean settlements as well.
The former Republican congressman and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul has launched a scathing attack on what he calls a US-backed coup in Ukraine, insisting the Crimean people have the right to align their territory with Moscow and characterising sanctions against Russia as “an act of war”.
“The evidence is pretty clear that the NGOs [non-governmental organisations] financed by our government have been agitating with billions of dollars, trying to get that government changed,” he said. “Our [American] hands are not clean.”
Voice of Russia, Interfax, Life News, The Guardian
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A resident of Donetsk has posted a photo of soldiers on a social networking service site. The soldiers, outside a local military enlistment office, were armed with sub-machineguns and light-weight machineguns and spoke English. They wore the uniform that was obviously not Ukrainian.
