From RussiaGate to UkraineGate: Route to Apocalypse
Corruption and supposed efforts to reduce it have become a neoconservative
weapon of choice with which to operate the controls on the funding sluice
gates to acolytes of the U.S.-led international neoconservative empire.
by Oliver Boyd-Barrett
April 14th, 2021
Mint Press News
By Oliver Boyd-Barrett
KIEV, UKRAINE - Within three months of the ascendancy of Joseph Biden to the
presidency of the United States, the world teeters on the edge of nuclear
war, whether by design or accident, as Russia reports that the U.S. is
placing considerable pressure on Ukraine to attack the independent republics
of the Donbass for which Russia provides logistical support. The U.S.
European Command has raised its alert status to the highest level and warned
of a "potential imminent crisis."
Mounting tension is an entirely foreseeable outcome of the sludge-like flow
over the past four years of Democratic Party fables about Russia,
RussiaGate, Ukraine, and U.S. national security, on behalf of the Incubus, a
sordid network of military, defense and surveillance industries, militarized
academe and think tanks, and complicit Western mainstream media.
In his first phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S.
President Joseph Biden affirmed his country's unwavering support for
Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia's
allegedly ongoing aggression in the Donbass and Crimea. Biden's defense
secretary, Lloyd Austin, in a conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart,
added his assurances of U.S. support for Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic aspirations
(i.e., Ukraine's ambition to acquire full membership in both NATO and the
EU), which, if achieved, would add a further 1400 miles to the boundary
between NATO and Russia and cement the encirclement of Russia.
In as many months as Biden has held the presidency the U.S. has shipped
three consignments of arms to Ukraine, adding to the $2 billion of security
assistance the U.S. has extended to Ukraine since 2014. The U.S. has
deployed nuclear-capable B-1 bombers to Norway for the first time in NATO's
history. This year's NATO war exercises include U.S.-led Rapid Trident and
Sea Breeze, British-Ukrainian Cossack Mace and Warrior Watcher,
Romanian-Ukrainian Riverine, and Polish-Ukrainian Three Swords and Silver
Sabre.
A dangerous new joker in the pack is Turkey, relatively fresh from assisting
Azerbaijan's 2020 victory against Armenia in the disputed region of
Nagorno-Karabakh, now participating in NATO-Ukrainian military exercises
against Russia. This move threatens escalation of tensions between Moscow
and Ankara in Turkey's seeming bid with NATO to seal off the Black Sea from
Russian presence, as part of which Ukraine hopes to establish two new
military bases (with financial help from the U.K.), help steal the major
Russian naval port of Sebastopol for Ukraine, and consolidate Turkish
control over oil and gas deposits to which Turkey lays claim. Turkish
frigates have joined U.S. and Ukrainian navies in the Black Sea since
January.
The contribution of RussiaGate demonization
There were many solid grounds for an upswell of both establishment and
public alarm as Donald Trump eked out electoral victory in 2016 and as he
unfolded his agenda over the succeeding four years. His relations with
Russia were not among them. Far more important and evidentiary was his
stubborn refusal to acknowledge the threats of climate change. Not only did
he repudiate evidence that climate change might well lead to the end of the
human species within a generation or two, but he actively reversed weak
countermeasures already in place. Worse, he malevolently sought to amplify
the threat, among other things by boosting fossil fuel interests and
doubling back on transition to lower fuel emissions from petroleum cars.
He exacerbated the shameless verticalization of wealth inequality in the
U.S., obfuscating this with sordid appeals to racist and fascist instincts
of his base in decayed, industrial wastelands vacated by a U.S.-globalized
economy. Where capital accrues in private hands to a degree that it can
compete against and corrupt the public sphere and - through
disproportionate, anonymous advocacy, lobbying, campaign finance and bribery
- undermine attempts to regulate corporate and plutocratic power, there is
no meaningful democracy. Trump's behavior towards the end of his period in
office and apparent incitement of a violent coup d'etat, testify to an
unhinged oligarchic impulse to narcissistic promotion of personal and class
interest above all competing considerations, even above annihilation of the
species.
As though none of these concerns provided sufficient political ammunition,
the Democratic Party throughout much of Trump's presidency allowed just one
meme to drown out almost everything else: RussiaGate. Not only did this
fable get little traction with the majority of people living in the real
world, the RussiaGate narrative has proven to lie somewhere between
disinformation and egregious hoax.
Trump Russia
A woman looks at front pages from around the nation on display at the
Washington Newseum, March 23, 2019. Alex Brandon | AP
It was founded on at least three dubious chains of argument:
A piece of opposition research cobbled together by a former MI6 agent and
paid for by the Democratic Party (the "Steele dossier");
Perhaps the shallowest Intelligence Community Assessment ever published (the
ICA of January 2016); this piece of theatre provided little to no actual
evidence of significance, disavowed any claim to accuracy, but legitimized
claims of a private contractor, CrowdStrike (hired by the DNC but with
previous FBI links), for which the company later admitted it had no direct
evidence, that DNC servers had been hacked by Russians;
An FBI investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, that proceeded amidst increasing
awareness of the problematic, deeply partisan character of the Steele
dossier, which it deployed in the process of seeking FISA warrants to
investigate a Trump adviser whom it knew to have been a CIA informant
(information it tried to hide).
Did Trump and his campaign team have connections to Russians? Of course,
some of them did. Yet a two-year-long investigation by a former FBI
director, drawing on the assistance of over a dozen FBI agents, was unable
to establish that there had been coordination between the Trump campaign and
the Russian government. Its most significant indictments against Russians
fell apart when challenged. Robert Mueller was barely able to establish
obstruction because there had been no fundamental criminality whose
investigation could be obstructed.
Those who received any punishment were charged with offenses that had little
or nothing at all to do with the fundamental reason why the special counsel
had been appointed. Donald Trump, in his campaign, had wisely recognized the
advantages of building more positive relations between Russia and the U.S.
(disincentivizing Sino-Russian bonding not the least of them). Under the
cloud of RussiaGate suspicion fomented ceaselessly by the Democrats and
their media allies, the only Russia-related measures that Trump took while
in office undermined U.S.-Russia relations, recklessly plunging the world
towards the nuclear abyss from a precipice admirably suited for none other
than his successor, President Joe Biden.
The 2014 Ukraine coup
Trump had been roundly castigated, and impeached, for pressurizing a new
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Trump's likely
rival, Joe Biden, for the 2020 election, in return for expediting U.S. arms
support to Ukraine in its struggle against separatist republics of eastern
Ukraine (the Donbass). Whatever its legality, Trump's behavior certainly did
not favor Russia. It could be argued that there was a stronger actual tie
between Ukraine and President Biden than ever existed between former
President Trump and Russia. Trump was unable even to interest Moscow or
Russian President Vladimir Putin in a proposal for a Moscow Trump Tower.
Biden left a much deeper impression on Ukraine.
In 2014 the Obama administration - in part through the offices of Victoria
Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs - supported a coup
d'etat in Ukraine that, through persistent street demonstrations in which
neo-Nazi militia played a key role, toppled Ukraine's democratically elected
President Viktor Yanukovych. Although labeled pro-Russian by Western
mainstream media, Yanukovych's Party of the Regions, advised in part by none
other than key RussiaGate player Paul Manafort (later and for a brief period
appointed chair of the Trump campaign in 2016), tilted towards acceptance of
an agreement with the European Union that would have unquestionably cemented
the EU as Ukraine's major patron in rivalry with Russia.
Did Media Spiking the Ukraine-Burisma Story Win Joe Biden the Election?
Considering how close the election race has become, it is quite possible
that the media squashing the Hunter Biden story gave Biden an edge.
MintPress News | Alan Macleod | Nov 6, 2020
Yanukovych fatefully switched direction from the EU in favor of Russia at
the last moment (possibly because Russia was offering a more attractive,
less patronizing, and ultimately less invasive deal), thus provoking the
Maidan protests, U.S./EU (and Biden's) egging them on, and Yanukovych's
departure. Protestors met with deadly resistance by State forces but there
were also resistance snipers who shot protestors with a view to further
inflaming international support in their favor.
In its initial deliberations, the emerging coup regime following the
departure of Yanukovych expressed considerable hostility towards the
influence of Russia, Russian language, Russian media, and Russian culture
through many parts of southern and eastern Ukraine that were predominantly
Russian speaking (just as Zelensky is doing once more in 2021). This would
explain and possibly justify Russia's concern for the welfare of the
considerable population of Russian-speakers in Crimea, which had belonged to
Russia (or the former Soviet Union) for over two hundred years and whose
economy was built around Sebastopol on the Crimean Peninsula. That city has
long been a major Russian naval center and one of Russia's few major
seaports, leased by Russia under treaty with Ukraine that allowed for the
presence of several thousand Russian troops.
A threatening, anti-Russian government in Kiev guaranteed that Russia would
protect its security interests and the interests of most of the Crimean
population. This it did, but only after a referendum of the Crimean people
and a subsequent formal request from Crimea to Russia that it be permitted
to rejoin Russia. Reliable polls from both before and after the return of
Crimea to Russia indicate consistently strong popular support for the
measure in Crimea.
The Big Lie
Biden's support for Ukraine's membership in NATO contravened the firm
promise given in 1990 to the last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail
Gorbachev, by James Baker, secretary of state to George H.W. Bush, that in
return for Soviet conceding of the unification of Germany, NATO would never
extend further east of the new European behemoth (RT, 2017). As
vice-president, Biden had visited Ukraine six times in seven years. Biden
had long advocated that Ukraine, along with other post-Soviet Russian
states, become a member of NATO. Before any other consideration, this casts
Biden's relations with the current Ukraine regime in a very problematic
light, a possibly deadly one for the future of the human species.
Explanation requires a revisit to the Obama administration and then-Vice
President Biden's support for the 2014 coup in Kiev and his later stern
demands, delivered even in the Ukrainian Rada itself, that the succeeding
coup regime of President Petro Poroshenko apply itself to anti-corruption
efforts. These have been somewhat ineffective. In the absence of any very
senior prosecutions, critics have suggested that the more important function
of the West's campaign against corruption in Ukraine has been to establish a
network of new institutions - whose legitimacy derives from western pressure
and which undermine the country's existing, if ponderous legal system -
while providing scope to local power holders in the corruption matrix for
blackmail.
Victoria Nuland Ukraine
Obama staffer Victoria Nuland offers cookies to pro-EU protesters in Kiev,
Dec. 11, 2013. Andrew Kravchenko | AP
Corruption and supposed efforts to reduce it have become a neoconservative
weapon of choice with which to operate the controls on the funding sluice
gates to acolytes of the U.S.-led international neoconservative empire.
Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was offered a lucrative position on the board of
Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company controlled by an oligarch, almost
certainly because of his father's prominence. The oligarch in question was
Mykola Zlochevsky, former minister of natural resources under the allegedly
"pro-Russian" Yanukovych. Trump administration figures claimed that Joe
Biden had pressed the post-coup government of President Poroshenko to sack
its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to discourage him from investigating
Burisma. Burisma had been under scrutiny for alleged improper acquisition of
licenses (unrelated to Hunter Biden's position on the board). Biden and a
group of U.S. allies were said to have urged Shokin's ouster in 2015, on the
grounds that he was turning a blind eye to corruption. Shokin has claimed
that his actions as general prosecutor did not suit Biden's interests and
that Biden was motivated by his son's connection to Burisma.
Poroshenko and Zelensky
Ukraine's two presidents since the 2014 coup, Petro Poroshenko (2014 to
2019) and Volodymyr Zelensky (2019 to the present), each started with strong
support that quickly waned. The country has scarcely improved. Gross
National Product peaked in December 2013; unemployment has increased from 7%
to over 10%; Ukraine remains the second poorest country in Europe per
capita.
Corruption, the supposed key force behind popular support for the elections
of both Poroshenko and Zelensky, continues to be rampant. Kiev's policies of
stand-off with Russia have been dramatically counter-productive and have
deprived Ukraine of Crimea and control of major industrial areas of the
Donbass. Some 14,000 lives have been taken, 1.4 million people displaced,
and 3.5 million remain in need of humanitarian assistance.
Under Fire from Ukraine: Everyday life in the Donetsk People's Republic
Eva Bartlett traveled to the Donetsk People's Republic to see firsthand how
residents are faring amidst a western-backed incursion by Ukraine
MintPress News | Eva Bartlett | Nov 8, 2019
With Russia's development of Nord Stream 2, bitterly contested by the U.S.,
Ukraine stands to lose $3 billion a year in transit fees that with more
prudent negotiation it might have hoped to retain. Kiev administrations have
been unwilling to progress the Minsk Protocol, agreed in 2015 to end the
struggle in the Donbass and signed by Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the
republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Under the agreements, Ukraine was required to
pardon the participants of the conflict, carry out local elections, and
recognize a de facto autonomy of the region in the Constitution. Russia was
obliged to return its equipment and mercenaries to Ukraine, ensure that
local military formations laid down arms, and cede to Ukraine control over
its border with Russia.
Ukraine has complained that, as warfare is ongoing, elections are hardly
possible and that fair elections are not achievable before it secures
control of the border. Russia insists that amnesty should be granted in
advance of the elections and before Ukraine regains control of the border,
while Ukraine considers that an amnesty can happen only after these events
and after public discussion. The Kiev administration has been wedded to a
highly centralized vision and finds the idea of greater regional autonomy
repugnant. It claims that Russia supports greater autonomy because that
gives it greater control over the Donbass. It would be truer to say that
Ukraine is an ethnically riven polity in which the dominant ethnicity does
not have sufficient political will to risk taking the only measures that can
yield a lasting peace.
Ukraine Donetsk
Locals visit their homes to collect belongings after shelling near a
frontline outside Donetsk, April 9, 2021. Photo | AP
Any indication that Poroshenko might move in the direction of Minsk provoked
far-right paramilitary opposition. His successor, Zelensky, is a former
comedian, a neoconservative cutout who achieved power on the basis not of
actual policies but of the imaginary policies of his satirical show (aired
on a channel owned by anti-Russian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky) - also the
title of his political party, Servant of the People.
As Zelensky loses support (his party performed disastrously in local
elections in November 2020 - it did not win a single mayoral race or even a
majority in any regional parliament or city council), he has escalated
action of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass (despite some
ministerial appointments that appear pro-Russian), in an apparent bid to
establish greater political legitimacy for his party in western Ukraine but
at the cost of a steeply rising number of weekly ceasefire violations. He
has continued to collaborate in joint actions with NATO and allied forces in
military exercises along the Russian border that appear designed to provoke
Russia (whose 4,000 troops mustered there remain insufficient for invasion,
given the estimated total number of 100,000 NATO and Ukrainian troops
participating in exercises during 2021).
In recent months he has introduced measures to sanction pro-Russian
opposition leaders, shut down pro-Russian media outlets owned by opposition
leader Viktor Medvedchuk, and restrict Russian language use, while he
condemns opposition leaders who back a negotiated settlement with Moscow.
In March, Zelensky signed Presidential Decree No. 117/2021, declaring it was
official Ukraine policy to take back Crimea. He approved plans to admit
foreign troops for military exercises led by UN and NATO nations and asked
NATO to monitor airspace across the border with Russia. His new military
strategy emphasizes subjugation of Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea. In 2020,
NATO designated Ukraine an "Enhanced Opportunity Partner," giving it the
same status as Georgia, Sweden, Finland, Australia and Jordan (Ritter,
2020), to promote the "partnership interoperability" initiative, which in
effect means that NATO extends greater trust to Ukraine to follow NATO's
orders and interests.
Actual full membership in NATO is unlikely, given European opposition to
this, the rift between Russia and Ukraine over Crimea, the persistence of
corruption, and Ukraine's dispute with Hungary over curbs on minority
rights. Yet the lure is sufficient for Zelensky to offer Ukraine to NATO as
a suitable battleground for possible nuclear war. Understandably, this
enthusiasm for NATO is not shared by most Ukrainians.
Zelensky may believe, in the face of European opposition, that playing
footstool to NATO aggression will secure full membership in NATO for Ukraine
and NATO intervention in the Donbass to secure victory for the Armed Forces
of Ukraine - despite the fact that Ukraine's rift with Russia would need
first to be resolved before full membership is possible under the conditions
that must be met for membership, and even though direct NATO intervention
would be tantamount to a declaration of war that could turn nuclear at any
point. There is no conceivable advantage to the Ukraine, the U.S. or Russia
in this scenario. But mad pursuit of idiotic objectives is de rigueur
machismo among adherents to neoconservative ideology at the service of
corporate and plutocratic power, much as it is for the politics of
resistance to meaningful solutions to climate change.
