At what point does the hypocrisy of the United States become too much to bear?
With the deployment of Russian forces into Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the US-NATO propaganda machine has kicked into high gear. Putin has been portrayed as a tyrannical aggressor, while the Obama administration and its European allies have attempted to stake out the moral high ground, declaring that peace, respect for sovereignty and international law should be the guiding principles. Naturally, such rhetoric warrants closer analysis.
The deployment of a small contingent of Russian forces into the autonomous region of Crimea is an important development in the continuing conflict in Ukraine. Because of the majority Russian population of Crimea, the seizure of power by vehemently anti-Russian Nazis and their Western-friendly neoliberal collaborators has sent a chill throughout Crimea and eastern Ukraine more broadly, leading to massive protests in a number of major cities in the region, and calls for support and protection from Moscow. This should come as no surprise considering the political, economic, cultural, and military ties between Crimea and the Russian Federation.
Russia maintains a naval base and other support facilities in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, home to the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet. Additionally, the region’s industry is heavily dependent both on Russian energy and the Russian market for its economic survival. Moreover, Crimea was in fact part of Russia proper until it was ceded to Ukraine by the Soviet Union in 1954 under then Premier Khruschev. However, despite becoming nominally part of Ukraine, Crimea (and most of the East and South of Ukraine) maintained close ties with “Mother Russia,” continuing to identify with Russia linguistically and politically, and governing itself with autonomous status within greater Ukraine.
In addition, it should be noted that the majority of Crimea and eastern Ukraine identify with Russia and the Moscow patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Church, unlike the west of Ukraine which, like its Polish neighbor, is traditionally aligned with the Western Church. This point should not be understated considering the fact that it is precisely these cultural ties that bind Ukrainian Crimea to Russia, and create the sense of community and shared experience that lead to the appeals for Russian protection against the putsch government in Kiev and its Nazi paramilitaries.
The Politics on the Ground
Some international observers question why the Crimea is calling on Putin to intervene on their behalf, portraying the move by Moscow as pure opportunism. This is far from the truth, as the political climate in Kiev seems to be the motivating factor. As I, and many others, have documented throughout the conflict in Ukraine, Nazi elements played, and continue to play, a key role in the overthrow of the democratically elected, though utterly corrupt and incompetent, Ukrainian President Yanukovich.
Avowed Nazi groups such as Right Sector, Trizub, Svoboda and others constituted the muscle of the putsch in Maidan and around the country. It was they who attacked riot police, stormed government buildings, threw petrol bombs and Molotov cocktails, and generally instigated the violence and unrest. Consequently, the so called “interim government” led by Victoria Nuland’s handpicked neoliberal puppet Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has been forced to cede control of the national security forces to the openly Nazi leaders of these organizations.
In particular, Andriy Parubiy, a co-founder of the Nazi Svoboda Party, has been made Secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee, with Dmitry Yarosh, leader of the Nazi paramilitary Right Sector group, as Parubiy’s deputy. These appointments, along with a number of other troubling power sharing arrangements, have created a putsch government that is essentially a collaboration between pro-EU liberals and right wing ultra-nationalists whose expressed aim, aside from seizing power for themselves, is to cleanse Ukraine of Jews and Russians.
As part of this ideology of “cleansing” Ukraine of Russian influence, one of the first actions of the occupying government in Kiev was to officially repeal a previous law that guaranteed the legal right of minorities in Ukraine to conduct business and education in their own languages. This move was seen by international observers, including representatives of governments sympathetic to Kiev’s new rulers, as a direct assault not only on minorities in general, but on the Russian-speaking population specifically. So much for democracy and human rights.
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