{"id":167654,"date":"2015-07-23T18:42:10","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T18:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=167654"},"modified":"2015-07-23T21:15:38","modified_gmt":"2015-07-23T21:15:38","slug":"eu-visa-slams-ukrainians-after-february-2014-ukrainian-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/eu-visa-slams-ukrainians-after-february-2014-ukrainian-coup\/","title":{"rendered":"EU Visa-Slams Ukrainians After February 2014 Ukrainian Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Although the coup in Ukraine in February 2014<\/span><\/a> was allegedly done in order to get Ukraine into the European Union (because the overthrown President Viktor Yanukovych had just before declined the EU\u2019s offer for Ukraine to join the EU<\/span><\/a>), European countries are now denying Ukrainians visas even more than they had been doing before the coup and its follow-on Association Agreement with the EU<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s independent European Integration website headlined on July 21st,\u00a0\u201cThe Percentage of Refusals Increased,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that, \u201cOf the 22 countries in the Schengen area [the countries where visas are not required], 16 increased the percentage of refusals of entrance to Ukrainians as compared to the year 2013,\u201d which was the final year prior to the coup.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore: \u201cSwitzerland and Finland denied visas to Ukrainians at a rate three times higher than in 2013, and Spain, Portugal, Greece and Sweden denied visas almost twice as much as in 2013.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ukraine\u2019s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin \u201cadmitted: Some consulates deliberately do not give visas to Ukrainians, even when they are eligible.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The same website had\u00a0reported on June 26th<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that they were informed, \u201cMost of the people who are affected by this live outside Kiev and the other major cities. \u2026 I fear it will lead to increased numbers of forged papers from those areas.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On July 15th<\/a><\/span>, the website quoted Klimkin at a meeting of Ukraine\u2019s parliamentary committee on European integration, saying, \u201cSome countries pretend that everything remains as it was before, but against the background of internal pressure [to block more Ukrainians from visiting] they change the visa practice.\u201d That report quoted Klimkin saying he is \u201cnow putting pressure on these consulates and capitals, demanding they return to the previous practice.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The report on July 21st discussed what might be causing these increased refusals: \u201cWhy are Ukrainians denied visas? On this, we asked our expert Visa-free diary editor, \u2026 Sergei Sidenko:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018The problem of increasing the number of refusals last year was a response to the events in the East [especially the region that had voted 90%+ for Yanukovych<\/span><\/a> and rejected the coup-imposed government, and where the new Ukrainian government responded by bombing that region<\/span><\/a>]. Some countries are suspicious of Ukrainians generally, but especially of people who live near the conflict-zone, suspicious that they\u2019ll take advantage of tourist visas and ask for asylum.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The EU hadn\u2019t been very eager for Ukraine to join it, but Ukraine\u2019s joining the EU had long been a goal of American Presidents in order to isolate and weaken Russia<\/span><\/a>, and especially President Obama planned for this, and made the changes in his Administration right after the 2012 U.S. Presidential election, in order to carry it out, such as by promoting Victoria Nuland to run European affairs, and transferring Geoffrey Pyatt to the Kiev Embassy to become the man on the ground coordinating it<\/span><\/a>. The fractious EU has gone along with Obama\u2019s plan, and (except for Netherlands<\/span><\/a>), wasn\u2019t involved with planning and perpetrating the coup. This is the reason why there still is considerable ambivalence within Europe as to whether or not Ukraine should ever be admitted into the EU: the U.S. is more eager for that to happen than the EU itself is. The EU\u2019s leaders were even shocked to find out<\/span><\/a> that Yanukovych had been overthrown by a coup. Only after the fact did it become \u201cthe most blatant coup in history,\u201d<\/span><\/a> because of the many leaks (such as the ones linked to here at \u201cshocked to find out\u201d and \u201ccoordinating it\u201d). It was entirely a U.S.-run operation<\/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>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Although the coup in Ukraine in February 2014 was allegedly done in order to get Ukraine into the European Union (because the overthrown President Viktor Yanukovych had just before declined the EU\u2019s offer for Ukraine to join the EU), European countries are now denying Ukrainians visas even more than they had been doing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":167656,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,93,535,59,987,523,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-167654","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-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-global-news","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-russia-today","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-warfare","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167654","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=167654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}