An extremely enlightening article from Sri Lanka about the Ukraine crisis. It all started with the European Union...its Eastern Partnership Initiative and the idea of association agreements with some of the focus countries purely based on geopolitical ambitions of NATO. Ukraine was a prime target. Shortly before signing the Eastern Partnership Initiative at the Vilnius Summit of the Eastern Partnership at the end of last November President Yanukovich had second thoughts about getting only EU involved in the deal. Evidently he understood the possible implications of this agreement realising that the EU hasn’t got the sufficient economic strength on its own to rescue fast diminishing economy in Ukraine...he decided to invite economically more powerful Russia into the negotiation. President Yanukovich knew how the IMF works. This was perhaps one of the reasons why President Yanukovych ultimately chose not to sign the Association Agreement, because the money that he would have had the chance to get through the IMF was linked to certain very costly reforms in the line of austerity like raising domestic prices for energy 40%, like freezing wages, lowering pensions, and so on. So this was tantamount to a social time bomb.... Even schoolbooks were changed to promote association with the European Union, and of course those people who came out to protest against that particular decision by President Yanukovych were eager to see Ukraine closer to the European Union. Most of them had no idea what the Association Agreement is all about. But eventually those protests evolved into something different. If you compare pictures from the Maidan square, the Independence square in Kiev, in the first days and weeks to what happened towards the end of the sit-in, they look completely different because the popular protest was side lined and then almost eliminated by thuggish-looking armed hooligans, well-equipped with steel helmets, with flak jackets, with bats, and ultimately with kalashnikovs. The flags that were seen were no longer EU flags, but those red and black flags of the ultra-nationalists, and the portraits were not of Van Rompuy or Barroso, not even Ashton. They were of Stepan Bandera, a well-known Nazi collaborator and war criminal who is still considered a hero among the ultra-nationalists. All those events, and they lasted for months, needed money. The protests were fed, equipped, heated. Such things, indeed, require a budget. Not necessarily the outcome of those protests was defined solely by croissants delivered by a well-known representative of the U.S. State Department. But evidently, both political and material support as well as international publicity were promptly provided for the opposition, by EU and the United States, whereas Russia kept a neutral stand. At the end of the day, Majority of the Ukrainian people do not recognize the new authorities in Kiev, and they have every right to do so because this changeover of power in the Ukraine was an act of questionable legitimacy and undemocratic. The person called himself as the minister of interior in the new government is an unknown position in the Ukraine constitution – there is no minister of interior because according to the constitution, any constitution, of Ukraine, ministers of interior, defence and other power structures, they can only be put in office by a decree of a president. So, this new government, which was promised to be a government of national unity, is far from that because it does not represent the eastern half of the country. Actually, only a small number of political factions are represented. So it cannot be called an inclusive government........ lankaweb/news/items/2014/03/02/when-a-regime-change-orchestrated-by-the-west-back-fires/
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 10:38:57 +0000
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