Michael Scheuer

Once again Americans are watching their government involve itself in an issue in which the United States has nothing at stake economically and no genuine national security interest at risk. Ukraine is a place that is worth neither a single American dollar nor more than a brief scan of the headlines by US citizens. And yet Obama and his fellow European interveners and democracy mongers are conducting themselves in a bellicose manner that could lead to some kind of military conflict in eastern Europe. Indeed, they already are conducting warfare against Russia via economic sanctions, a punitive exercise they promise to make more severe in the next few weeks.

And for what? When all is said and done Obama and Team Democracy appear to prefer a war to publicly admitting that it was their democracy crusading last winter in Kiev that brought on this worrying and sharpening confrontation. Into an increasingly bitter political battle between the Kiev regime and its domestic opponents, the EU as an organization and individual European governments sent a steady flow of diplomats, officials, and money to help the Ukrainian opposition prevail over the Kiev regime. This foreign intervention in a purely internal domestic dispute was clearly designed to overthrow the legitimate Ukrainian government. It is the kind of imperialist exercise that the UN was created to condemn and stop, but that organization’s recent history shows that it now exists solely to support unjustified -- and usually unjustifiable -- US and Western political and military interventions.

We will never know how the internal Ukrainian dispute would have worked itself out if the Ukrainians had been allowed an exercise in self-determination, but what we do know is that the EU’s arrogant intervention in the country’s internal affairs tipped the scales in the opposition’s favor and led to the Kiev regime’s collapse. And we know that Obama, Kerry, and Biden steered clear of the problem until they saw that the EU’s intervention might succeed. Faced with that reality, these US leaders put their best interventionist foot forward and joined the Europeans to wreck both Ukraine and European stability in the name of a democracy that will never see the light of day in Kiev. Washington, NATO, and Brussels are now well on their way to creating in Ukraine the same kind of democratic paradise they previously delivered in Egypt, Libya, and South Sudan.

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Olga Shedrova

The «anti-terrorist operation» announced by the Kiev-based regime to quell the protests in the south-eastern parts of Ukraine is unpopular in the army.

The local police units in the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov and other south-eastern cities refused to take action after the administrative buildings were captured by Donbass protesters. In response acting Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov ordered to start the formation of new police units across the whole country. They should be trained for punitive actions. Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky, a citizen of Israel appointed governor of Dnepropetrovsk region by the Kiev interim regime, promised cash rewards for the capture of protesters.

The army is also involved into the operations in Donbass. Reservists began to dodge their duty and even switch sides from the very beginning. For instance, on April 11 the soldiers of Alfa security service special operations unit refused to assault administrative buildings in Donetsk and Lugansk captured by local people. One of commanding officers said, «We’ll act in strict accordance with the law. Our unit is created for the mission of liberating hostages and fight against terrorism». On April 24, the unit did not join combat as another attempt to re-capture the building was undertaken.

On April 14 the soldiers of the 25th airborne brigade deployed near Slavyansk switched sides to join the people’s militia. There was an internal revolt in the 93th mechanized brigade based in Cherkassy, the Dnepropetrovsk region.

Reservists called for 10-days active duty account for the major part of army personnel used for the mission of putting the protests down. The mobilization plans have failed, so the age limit for people to be called for active duty has been increased to 55 years. The employees are to hold reservists’ jobs for two weeks, but they are kept on active duty for over a month. Many of them lose employment and have no means to care about their families.

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Robert Parry

Any propaganda war starts by planting stories that your target is getting rich, whether he is or isn’t, the latest move in demonizing Vladimir Putin. But the larger question is what might happen if the neocons succeed in destabilizing nuclear-armed Russia.

Now that the demonization of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is in full swing, one has to wonder when the neocons will unveil their plan for “regime change” in Moscow, despite the risks that overthrowing Putin and turning Russia into a super-sized version of Ukraine might entail for the survival of the planet.

There is a “little-old-lady-who-swallowed-the-fly” quality to neocon thinking. When one of their schemes goes bad, they simply move to a bigger, more dangerous scheme.

If the Palestinians and Lebanon’s Hezbollah persist in annoying you and troubling Israel, you target their sponsors with “regime change” – in Iraq, Syria and Iran. If your “regime change” in Iraq goes badly, you escalate the subversion of Syria and the bankrupting of Iran. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.”]

Just when you think you’ve cornered President Barack Obama into a massive bombing campaign against Syria – with a possible follow-on war against Iran – Putin steps in to give Obama a peaceful path out, getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons and Iran to agree to constraints on its nuclear program.

So, this Obama-Putin collaboration has become your new threat. That means you take aim at Ukraine, knowing its sensitivity to Russia. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

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