{"id":157864,"date":"2015-06-08T23:47:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T23:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=157864"},"modified":"2015-06-08T23:47:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T23:47:59","slug":"the-reversal-of-kerrys-ukraine-statement-came-from-obama-not-nuland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/the-reversal-of-kerrys-ukraine-statement-came-from-obama-not-nuland\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reversal of Kerry’s Ukraine Statement Came from Obama, Not Nuland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

When Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on May 15th contradicted her boss John Kerry\u2019s statement of three days earlier, in which Kerry had warned Ukraine\u2019s President Petro Petroshenko not to violate the Minsk II agreement, and not to invade Crimea, and not to re-invade Donbass, the source of this reversal was actually U.S. President Barack Obama, and not Victoria Nuland (as the State Department had reported).<\/span><\/p>\n

When I first noticed the contradiction\u00a0as I reported on May 21st,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Nuland\u2019s statement on May 15th was being quoted by Ukraine\u2019s Interfax News Agency, without any link to its U.S. source. I looked but didn\u2019t right away find its U.S. source, but the official Ukrainian news agency would not quote a U.S. Government official falsely, and so I went with the story on that basis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that I have found the U.S. source in\u00a0the full May 15th U.S. State Department press briefing in Washington,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0there can be little doubt that Nuland had actually been instructed by the White House to be quoted there as issuing this reversal of Kerry\u2019s statement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The press conference, by the Department\u2019s press spokesperson Jeff Rathke, opened with an introductory statement in which he asserted:<\/span><\/p>\n

Assistant Secretary Nuland\u2019s ongoing visit to Kyiv and her\u00a0discussions with Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and President\u00a0Poroshenko reaffirm the United States\u2019 full and\u00a0unbreakable support for Ukraine\u2019s government,\u00a0sovereignty, and territorial integrity. We continue to\u00a0stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine\u00a0and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian\u00a0nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of\u00a0Ukraine.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s all that was reported by Ukraine\u2019s Interfax. Much later in the press conference, however, after reporters had asked him many questions about Iran, Burundi, Japan, Iraq, and other countries, but not Ukraine, one reporter finally asked a single (but unrelated) question about Ukraine, and, after answering it, Rathke interrupted the next reporter\u2019s question, which was about Cuba, to ask all of the assembled press-stenographers, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, any other questions on Ukraine?\u201d and, after not getting any such question, he simply went directly on to say:<\/span><\/p>\n

I would \u2014 if I could take the opportunity, I would also just\u00a0want to go back to what I said at the top, and just to\u00a0review what has happened this week with regard to\u00a0Ukraine. Secretary Kerry was in Sochi at the start of the\u00a0week, where the Secretary was clear with Russia \u2014\u00a0President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov \u2014 about Ukraine\u00a0and about the consequences for failing to uphold the\u00a0Minsk commitments. Right after that discussion, he\u00a0called President Poroshenko to update him and to\u00a0reaffirm our support for Ukraine. He went from there\u00a0immediately to the meeting of NATO foreign ministers in\u00a0Antalya, where he briefed them and also underscored the\u00a0United States\u2019 commitment when he met with Foreign\u00a0Minister Klimkin in Antalya. Assistant Secretary Nuland is\u00a0in Kyiv right now, and the message of all of these\u00a0engagements is that we stand for the implementation of\u00a0Minsk. We stand in support of the Ukrainian Government,\u00a0President Poroshenko, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, and the\u00a0Ukrainian people. And I wanted just to make sure that I\u00a0took that opportunity.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: Kerry, after his statement on May 12th to Putin in Sochi, saying, about Poroshenko\u2019s repeated warnings that Ukraine will retake both Crimea and Donbass \u2013\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious\u00a0jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013 was taken to the woodshed by his boss, Obama; and the best way that could be decided upon to issue the reversal was by this indirect one, which would be sourced to his subordinate Nuland, so that Kerry himself wouldn\u2019t have to be the person contradicting himself, and so that the blame for the actually anti-Minsk-agreement position of the U.S. President himself would go instead to Nuland, whom everybody already knows to be a \u201cneo-conservative,\u201d and a hardliner against Russia \u2013 and would definitely not go to the Nobel Peace Prize winning U.S. President, Barack Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: the President, who had been behind\u00a0the February 2014 coup<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that instigated Russia\u2019s defensive measure of protecting its main naval base (ever since 1783) in Crimea and so Russia\u2019s accepting the overwhelming desire of Crimea\u2019s residents on 16 March 2014 to become again a part of Russia (of which Crimea had always been a part until 1954), wanted to move forward again with the war in Ukraine, and with the resulting sanctions against Russia, all of which were part of Obama\u2019s plan ever since at least\u00a0the summer of 2013, when the organizing of the overthrow of Yanukovych had started at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Minsk II agreement had been engineered by Merkel and Hollande of the EU, against the wishes and without the participation of Obama, and this is the sort of thing that Nuland had had in mind about the EU when she had told Geoffrey Pyatt, America’s Kiev Ambassador,\u00a0on 4 February 2014, \u201cF\u2013k the EU!\u201d and instructed him then whom to get appointed to run Ukraine after the coup (\u201cYats\u201d Yatsenyuk),<\/span><\/a>\u00a0which\u00a0coup then culminated 18 days later, on February 22nd.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0(Yatsenyuk received the official appointment on February 26th.)<\/span><\/p>\n

This likewise explains the reason why Ukraine\u2019s President Poroshenko, as I reported on June 7th<\/span><\/a>, said again, on June 5th, that Ukraine will retake both Crimea and Donbass. He has Obama\u2019s wind to his sails on this (and not only Nuland\u2019s).<\/span><\/p>\n

So: the war will continue, as Obama wants, and probably the resistance to it on the part of the EU will continue to be ineffectual and half-hearted.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the sanctions against Russia, for\u00a0responding as it must to Obama\u2019s actions,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0will also continue, which is also part of Obama\u2019s original plan. (What was not<\/i> part of Obama\u2019s plan, however, was the continued survival of millions of the residents in Donbass, the former region of Ukraine\u00a0that had voted 90%+ for the man, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Obama overthrew<\/span><\/a>. But Obama evidently has not given up his goal of eliminating them.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The people who say that Obama doesn\u2019t have a plan are simply ignoring it. The evidence is very clear what the plan is. And it is succeeding: it\u2019s\u00a0a war-plan against Russia.<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of \u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse When Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on May 15th contradicted her boss John Kerry\u2019s statement of three days earlier, in which Kerry had warned Ukraine\u2019s President Petro Petroshenko not to violate the Minsk II agreement, and not to invade Crimea, and not to re-invade Donbass, the source of this reversal was actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":157865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,96,529,535,850,59,889,926,526,524,523,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-157864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-fascism","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-kerry","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-nuland","17":"tag-poroshenko","18":"tag-propaganda","19":"tag-russia","20":"tag-ukraine","21":"tag-usa-news","22":"tag-warfare","23":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}