Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
RINF Alternative News
The Yatsenyuk regime’s anti-terrorism operations in the southern and eastern oblasts/provinces of Ukraine are really a use of martial force against Ukrainian civilians opposed to the coup-installed regime in Kiev. Predominately peaceful Ukrainian citizens opposing the coup leaders and not “armed separatists” have been the main target of the regime’s militias.
The discourse about “pro-Russian” separatists is a misleading attempt to hide the real nature of the protests against the regime, which is opposition to a coup. The main issue is one of anti-coup protesters versus a junta and not separatists and federalists versus Kiev. To refer to the junta in Kiev as the government of Ukraine is to reject or ignore its illegality.
Welcome to Ukraine Nulandistan
Wherever the US government says it is promoting democracy and freedom, as US Assistant-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland professes about Ukraine, there has been destruction, impoverishment, sectarianism, fighting, and death. Welcome to post-coup Ukraine or Nulandistan. It follows the precedents and traditions of destabilization and violence honoured by US officials like Senator John McCain in the Syrian Arab Republic (McCainistan) and by Hillary Clinton in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya (Clintonistan).
Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk, who has illegally taken the post of Ukrainian prime minister with thr support of the US and European Union, was never favoured by the many of the authentic protesters in Euro-Maidan or even the grassroots members of his allies. When, without any election or public discussion, he was arbitrarily given the office of prime minister, many in the Euro-Maidan protest booed him and some even cried “bullet to his head.” His party boss, the infamously corrupt YuliaVolodymyrivna Tymoshenko, was booed too after she arrived. In reality, Yatsenyuk and the other Ukrainian politicians like the ultra-nationalist Svoboda’s Oleh Tyahnybok, appropriated the hopes and dreams of the Ukrainians that were protesting against not only the Ukrainian government of Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych, but the entire corrupt Ukrainian political establishment. Hiding behind the protesters, Yatsenyuk and Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party used the militias of their ultra-nationalist political allies to launch a violent coup in Kiev.
There is no functioning democracy in Ukraine and with the full support of the European Union and the US government free speech inside Ukraine is under attack by the new regime and its thugs. Yatsenyuk’s coup-installed regime has cracked down on media freedoms, sent the Ukrainian military to attack anti-coup protesters under the pretext of NATO-backed anti-terrorism operations, and started purges and witch hunts all over Ukraine. This started with the head of National Television Company of Ukraine, Aleksandr Panteleymonov, being threatened and beaten into resigning by Svoboda deputies Igor Miroshnynchenko and Andrey Ilyenko.
A atmosphere of intimidation and bullying is the new order of the day in Nulandistan and politicians opposing the regime are regularly threatened and beaten, some to the point of near death. Intimidation and violent tactics have also been used to force Ukrainian politicians and civil servants to resign or hand over power across Ukraine.
Inside the Verkhova Rada or Ukrainian Parliament any of the remaining deputies who dare to speak against the regime and its policies are silences and beaten up. This is the US-supported freedom of speech that has been brought to Ukraine, Nuland-style. Senior deputy Petro Symonenko is pushed and prevented from speaking just for daring to condemn the use of the Ukrainian military against civilian protesters by Yatsenyuk’s regime. Before being silenced, Symonenko made the key point of noting how the ultra-nationalists were serving foreign interests and not the national interests of Ukraine and actually dividing the Eastern European country.
Since they took power, the so-called Euro-Maidan “democrats” of the Yatsenyuk regime began killing those Ukrainians that opposed them or protested against them. In the process the Yatsenyuk regime is denying them the rights that he and the Euro-Maidan movement claimed legitimized their coup or takeover of power in Kiev.
The House of Trade Unions Massacre in Odessa
In the famous port city of Odessa, on the coast of the Black Sea, the Yatsenyuk regime tried to create sectarian provocation by allowing a football match between Chernomorets Odessa and Metalist Kharkov, knowing that a thousands of ultra-nationalist regime supporters would flock into Odessa for the match on May 2, 2014. After the match the regime supporters held a rally sanctioned by the regime-installed local authorities where they started yelling “knife the Russians” using derogatory language. Then what appeared to be anti-coup activists, which either support federalization or separation, wearing St. George Ribbons and red bands on their sleeves confronted them, which led to a violent confrontation in Odessa.
In retrospect, it has become clear that these thugs were really undercover agents and agent provocateurs. Some of the riot police and security forces, which were sent by the regime in Kiev from outside Odessa, were also were wearing the same red bands around their sleeves and associating with the fake anti-coup activists. After the fake anti-coup activists, which are being called the “third party” in retrospect, disappeared the pro-coup side attacked the peaceful anti-coup activists that were near Odessa’s House of Trade Unions. When the anti-coup activists ran inside the building for safety, it was set ablaze with Molotov cocktails. The police watched as the pro-coup side attacked and killed the peaceful activists in House of Trade Unions while ambulances and fire trucks were prevented from saving many of the people inside that burned.
There is video evidence that shows Svoboda and Euro-Maidan supporters firing on the people inside the House of Trade Union with guns while others are killing people inside (see the photographs above). A man who called presented himself as sotnik Mykola, a leader of Euro-Maidan, is even caught on tape firing into the building at people trying to escape the fire. A pregnant women was taped screaming for help before she was strangled to death by a regime supporter wearing a white and blue jackert(see the first figure). One of the ultra-nationalist supporters of the Yatsenyuk regime that was in Odessa during the attacks proudly wrote about the murder of the anti-coup activists in her Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/angela.aravina). “My jacket smells of burned rubber and it is stained with blood. On the one hand, there is horror, when I think of the faces of the dead people, on the other hand, there is pride, and there is nothing you can do about it,” she wrote (see figure below).
Russia’s Perviy Kanal (Channel One or First Channel) network would use the publicly available YouTube footage about the clashes in Odessa to point what happened. Their important observations about the lead-up to the clashes would be reported by RT International in English for international audiences. Tatyana Ivananko, a survivor of the attack from the anti-coup activists camp in Odessa, would tell RT’s Ukrainian journalist Alexey Yaroshevsky in an interview the ”police were idle not doing anything” and that the coup’s supporters “finished off some of the people who managed to escape [the fire], and threw from the windows those who did not, to kill them on the ground.” She also confirmed that there were no foreign nationals among their ranks and that the “third party” were not involved with her group whatsoever.
TheYatsenyuk Regime’s Phony Anti-Terrorism Operations Are a Smokescreen
There has been a siege on Donestsk Oblast by the coup-installed regime in Kiev. Unarmed Ukrainian civilians were killed in Mariupol by orders of the Yatsenyuk regime on May 9, 2014. Raw footage from Mariupol shows how unarmed Ukrainian civilians were killed in the name of phony anti-terrorism operations by order of the Yatsenyuk regime in its efforts to gain control in the parts of Ukraine that do not recognize the illegal February coup that ousted the government.
More Ukrainian civilians were killed on May 10, 2014, when voting in a referendum was suppose to take place in several of Ukraine’s oblasts located in an area of Ukraine that is controversy called Novorossiya for historical and sociological reasons. Albeit skirmishes did take place between the regime and armed resistance fighters in such places as Slavyansk, the US-backed Yatsenyuk regime killed Ukrainian civilians in this region when they tried to exercise their democratic rights to vote peaceful in the referendum. For example, instead of allowing the inhabitants of Krasnoarmeysk, in Donetsk Oblast, to vote on their future, the US-backed junta sent its militias to prevent the people there from freely voting. This was done under the pretext of anti-terrorism operations. The US-backed anti-terrorism operations are really a smokescreen aimed at hiding the regime’s motives to disrupt the referendum.
The regime is using the so-called National Guard of Ukraine to force its will on its opponents. What is important to note is that this National Guard was created in March 2014 by the coup-installed government to secure their hold on power. The militia has incorporated sections of the same ultra-nationalist groups that helped violently oust the legal Ukrainian government in Kiev in February 2014. In other words, many of the same armed men that stormed Ukrainian government offices in a coup are now acting in an official capacity. Moreover, albeit the National Guard is official categorized as the reserve force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, it is under the jurisdiction and control of the Interior Ministry. The reason for this is, because the Ukrainian military is not loyal to the coup-installed regime in Kiev. The irregular National Guard, which has ultra-nationalist integrated into its ranks that are loyal to the regime, on the other hand is dependable and more than willing to do the regime’s dirty work, like killing unarmed civilians, that many members of the Ukrainian military would refuse to do.
The Yatsenyuk Regime’s Predisposition to Commit Atrocities and Crimes in Ukraine
The Yatsenyuk and its supporters were itching to use force against those opposing them. The discourse about “pro-Russians” and, even, Russian-speakers in misleading. The real nature of the opposition in the southern and eastern portions of Ukraine is opposition to an illegal government installed through a foreign-back coup.
As early as March 10, 2014, Euro-Maidan supporters like the Ukrainian businessman Gennady Balashov began to say publicly that the protesters in the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine should be killed. Balashov also called for the blockage of natural gas from Russia to the the countries of the European Union and for deliberate attempts to provoke against the Russian Federation. He candidly discourages any dialogue and called for bloodshed and ethnic cleansing, more properly termed as genocide, in places like Crimea, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk. Anyone that opposes the coup-installed regime in Kiev he clarified should be murdered without mercy. This includes those wearing the orange and black St.George’s Ribbon, which is a ribbon that is displayed to commemorator the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Nazi Germany, since it has become the distinguishing mark of the anti-coup protesters in Ukraine who view the US-supported February 2014 coup as the reemergence of the threat of fascism.
Balashov states: “We must block the pipeline. We must not allow natural gas trade. Only this can stop the invaders. We must block the pipeline and let them send Alpha to shoot everyone there. These people are on the foreign territory. Crimea, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk are the Ukrainian cities. If they wear the St.George ribbon, if they tear down our flag, we must shoot them in the head because they are enemy. We should not talk to them or educate them…”
Gennady Balashov’s comments echo those of the infamous anti-Russophone and anti-Russian Iryna Dmytrivna Farion, a deputy in the Rada for Svoboda, bluntly and without any hesitation tells the media that the coup-installed Yatsenyuk regime in Kiev should take the opportunity to kill all the Ukrainians protesting against the new regime. The US-supported Ukrainian ultra-nationalist politician even says that the Ukrainian protesters opposed to the US-supported regime in Kiev are “aliens” that need to be killed as a means of cleansing the country. She calls for nothing short of a genocidal operation and even calls he compatriots “creatures.”
Iryna Farion’s otherization of Russophones and Russkiyes (ethnic Russians) is unusual, because as a philologist she should be aware that ethnic Ukrainians, Russkiyes, and Belarusians (White Russians) are ethno-linguistically one people which splintered from one another due to being cutoff by the boundaries of different empires that led to regional distinctions and, over time, the eventual construction of new ethnic and civic identities. The terms Velikorus (Great Russian), Malorus (Little Russian) and Belorus (White Russian) were geographic concepts originally before they were socially constructed into the ethnic identities and social structures that are Russkiye, Ukrainian, and Belarusian.
This does not mean that the Ukrainian identity is inauthentic or that Ukrainians are a sub-group of Russkiyes, what it means is that Ukrainians and Russkiyes are the same people with different perceptions of identity. Their perceived ethnographic differences, which are social constructs, have been utilized as geopolitical tools by the US and its allies to dupe nationalist elements, inside Ukraine (as well as the Russian Federation) into fighting and opposing their own kin and to destroy their own societies from the inside pursuing a fictitious purification of their society.
Additionally, the Russophone people or Russian-speakers in Ukraine are just as Ukrainian as the Ukrainaphone people or Ukrainian-speakers. The majority of the Russophones and Ukrainian-speakers are the descendants of the same local ancestors. The difference between the two groups is that one community adopted Russian as their main language. Regardless, the two languages are almost identical and the majority of the Ukrainian population are bilingual in Ukrainian and Russian. The mythical tribalism informing the views of Iryna Farion and other nationalists in Ukraine is nothing more than a distraction from the gross injustices and unequal distribution of power and wealth in Ukraine; it distracts the population from real issues about improving their lives and divides the countries citizens, preventing them from confronting their oligarch exploiters.
The Perpetrators of Terrorism are Blaming the Victims: Who Are The Real Terrorists?
Who are the real terrorists? Unarmed civilians trying to vote or coup figures like the foolish Arseniy Yatsenyuk, a self-appointed leader of the “EuroMaidan” movement, sending armed groups to threaten and kill them? Moreover, the actions of the Yatsenyuk regime validate the premise in Moscow that Russian troops needed to be sent into the Crimean Peninsula to allow for the voting not to be disrupted. If this did not happen the referendum on March 16, 2014 may have never taken place, with fighting taking its place.
Unarmed Ukrainian citizens can be clearly heard bravely yelling at the Yatesenyuk regime’s so-called National Guard militias that they are “fascists” in much of the footage that is beginning to emerge from coup-controlled Ukraine. These people are the Yatsenyuk regime’s terrorists. Unarmed Ukrainians civilians that that have tried to peacefully prevent the Ukrainian military and National Guard from entering their towns and cities to either illegally establish what is essentially martial law for the illegitimate US-backed regime in Kiev or to prevent them from voting freely are the ones that the US government and the European Union are condemning while trying to scapegoat Russia.
The real terrorists and fascists are the coup leaders that have sold themselves and Ukraine to foreign powers. Also the real terrorist and fascists are the foreign-backers of the Yatsenyuk regime in the US, Britain, France, Poland, Canada, and Germany, which have brought division, ruin, and destruction across the globe, from the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya to Syria, Mali, the Central African Republic, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former president of Iran, is mistranslated and misrepresented by the mainstream media in North America and Western Europe about saying he wants to “wipe Israel off the map” during a conference, the US government and European Union have field days condemning Iran. In Nulandistan, however, the coup-installed head of Khersonshchyna, Governor Yuri Odarchenko, can praise the invasion of Ukraine by Adolph Hiter and Nazi Germany like he did on May 9, 2014 to the anger of Ukrainian war veterans, the US, Canada, and European Union all keep silent. Do not expect any in-depth reporting by CNN, the BBC, France 24, Fox News, or their ilk about the murder of unarmed civilians in Ukraine by the Yatsenyuk regime either. These media networks are conducting an information war against any countries opposed to the US and its allies. Instead of reporting what is actually taking place, the mainstream media in North America and the European Union will continue distorting the truth by blaming Russia and those Ukrainians that it deceivingly, as a means refusing to acknowledge their legitimate opposition and resistance to the illegal regime in Kiev, calls ”pro-Russian.”
An award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is the author of The Globalization of NATO (Clarity Press) and a forthcoming book The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa. He has also contributed to several other books ranging from cultural critique to international relations.