This strengthening of the fascists would not be possible without the systematic support of the media and the main political parties in Europe and the US. Liberal newspapers such as the New York Times and the Süddeutsche Zeitung have produced a deluge of propaganda portraying events in Ukraine as a “democratic revolution”, glossing over the role of fascists and glorifying the coup.

Coup in Ukraine: A warning to the international working class
World Socialist Web Site – 25 February, 2014

The recent events in Ukraine are a warning to the international working class. Under conditions in which workers lack both a perspective and a party to enable them to intervene independently in political events, the situation in Ukraine has developed in an extremely reactionary direction. What had been unthinkable in Europe since the fall of Hitler’s Third Reich in 1945 has come to pass: while the US and Germany ruthlessly and recklessly destabilized the country, fascists became the decisive force on the ground.

The crisis was sparked in November of last year by President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union. This was unacceptable for Washington and Berlin. As Theo Sommer put it in Die Zeit, the issue at stake was “Where should the EU’s eastern boundary, and the western boundary of the Russian sphere of influence, be situated?”

The US and Germany systematically supported the pro-EU opposition, which organized the demonstrations against Yanukovych. In addition to Julia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland and Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR—two right-wing parties with close ties to the German CDU—the opposition also included the fascist Svoboda party of Oleh Tyahnybok.

The fact that Svoboda employs neo-fascist symbols, agitates against foreigners, Jews, Hungarians and Poles, maintains close relations with the French National Front and is compared to the ultra-right Greek Golden Dawn and Hungarian Jobbik by the World Jewish Congress, has not prevented the foreign ministers of the United States and Germany from publicly embracing Tyahnybok.

The initial opposition demonstrations, however, failed to force Yanukovych to resign. At this point, paramilitary fascist militias were mobilized to intensify the conflict and propel the country to the brink of civil war. The leading role was played by the so-called Right Sector, whose masked militants, equipped with helmets, batons, fire bombs and firearms soon dominated the center of Kiev, carrying out fierce attacks on the security forces. News reports estimate their number in Kiev alone to be between 2,000 and 3,000.

The conservative Die Welt paper termed the Right Sector an “informal association of right-wing and neo-fascist splinter groups”. Time magazine, which interviewed its leader Dmitry Yarosh, writes that their “ideology borders on fascism and it enjoys support only from Ukraine’s most hard-line nationalists”. Many of its members are former soldiers or fought in the conflict on the side of Azerbaijan, and in Chechnya and South Ossetia against Russia.

It was these paramilitary fascist militias which ensured that the situation escalated last Thursday. While they fought bloody battles with the security forces, resulting in dozens of casualties on both sides, the German, Polish and French foreign ministers flew into Kiev and forced Yanukovych to accept a “compromise” following hours of negotiations. It was the beginning of the end for the president.

When the Right Sector spoke out against the agreement and threatened to resume hostilities, the military declared its neutrality, and many deputies from Yanukovych’s Party of Regions changed sides. This sealed his fate.

The situation in Ukraine is still extremely tense and unstable. The various camps of the opposition are fighting for political dominance, while there is the danger of secession and civil war in Crimea and the east of the county. The fascist forces upon which the Western powers and the opposition relied to force through regime change are demanding their pound of flesh and will play an important role in the political life of the country.

When she spoke at Independence Square after her release from prison, former prime minister and Fatherland party leader Yulia Tymoshenko made a series of overtures to the fascist militias. She expressly thanked Right Sector for its “contribution to the revolution.” The new interior minister promised that the “Self-Defense Forces from Maidan” would be integrated into the new order. …more

Putin holds aces, Obama deuces
3 March, 2014 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

As Russian troops pour into Ukraine consolidating control over the southern Crimea region it looks as if President Putin has finally had enough of playing games according to bent Western rules.

Vladimir Putin knows that world public opinion and a good many nations are on Russia’s side in its show of strength against the cabal of rogue Western states led by Washington.

The morally bankrupt Western cabal tried to play its “sanctimonious card” at the weekend after Putin ordered more troops into the southern Ukrainian territory. American President Barack Obama said with tiresome cliché “the US stands with the international community in condemning violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty”.

Even more absurdly, US Secretary of State John Kerry later lambasted Russia’s “brazen aggression”. With a ridiculous straight face, probably due to years of botox treatment, Kerry said: “You just don’t invade another country on phoney pretext in order to assert your interests. This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped-up in terms of its pretext. It’s really 19th century behaviour in the 21st century.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov shot back that US threats of sanctions and veiled military confrontation against Moscow are “completely unacceptable”.

And the subsequent increase in Russian troop deployment in the Crimea seems to be a clear sign that Moscow is snubbing Washington’s warnings with the contempt that they deserve.

For a start, Russia knows that it is morally and legally right to make its latest moves. With a Russian ethnic population comprising up to 60 per cent of the Ukraine, particularly in the East and South of the country, Moscow has a responsibility to protect its compatriots in a territory with a long shared history and heritage. Russia has real vital national interests at stake in the Ukraine, and it is entitled to exercise this protection – unlike countless American trumped-up interventions around the globe.

Secondly, Russia knows that the phoney American rulers and their European proxies have been making a mockery of international law in Ukraine over many years and especially in the last three months, during which the West has inflamed social and political unrest to the point where the elected authorities in Kiev were ousted two weeks ago in a Western-backed coup d’état. It is only Western rulers and their delusional media who pretend that the events in Ukraine were “a popular uprising”.

The American, British, French and German governments have orchestrated a regime change operation, which now sees a rabble of neo-Nazis and fascists in power in Kiev. The rabid anti-Russian politics of this Western-backed junta poses a real and present threat to the pro-Russian population. True to plan, this junta of unelected quislings who came to power on the back of murderous street violence – violence fully supported and encouraged by the Western states – will in short order give the green light to NATO troops being stationed on Russia’s borders. …more

Ukraine: The Dangers of Dealing with Delusional Western Leaders
Finian CUNNINGHAM – 04 March, 2014 – The Strategic Culture Foundation

Fittingly, given the coincidence of the US cinema Oscars ceremony held at the weekend, American politicians and their Western allies were also starring in bravura performances of hypocrisy and double think with regard to their denunciations of Russia’s recent security response to chaos in Ukraine.

Increased military maneuvers apparently by Russian troops in Ukraine’s southern Crimean Peninsula over the weekend were met with strutting over-the-top reactions from Washington and other Western members of the so-called Group of Eight economic nations.

The US, Britain, France and Canada said they were canceling plans to attend the G8 summit to be held in Sochi later this June in protest over what they said was Russia’s «violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty». German Chancellor Angela Merkel declined to endorse calls for Russia’s suspension from the G8, however the German leader in a phone call with American President Barack Obama complained that the Russian head of state, Vladimir Putin, was «living in another world», according to the New York Times.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said he agreed with Obama’s earlier admonition to Russia that there «must be significant costs» imposed on Moscow for its military actions in Crimea.

French President Francois Hollande issued a statement urging Putin to «not use force» in any involvement of Russian troops on Ukrainian territory. That’s a nice touch of self-parody from Hollande given that he ordered hundreds of French troops into the Central African Republic in recent months – an intervention that sparked thousands of deaths from sectarian clashes between Muslim and Christian communities there and which has now resulted in a full-blow humanitarian crisis in that country.

While Cameron and Obama talk about «significant costs» to be sanctioned against Russia for troop movements in Crimea – during which not a single shot was fired nor has anyone been injured – both British and American leaders continue to have evaded prosecution for illegal wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq where more than one million people have died and millions more wounded and displaced.

But the star political performer among the Western hypocrites was American Secretary of State John Kerry. His botox treatment may limit facial movements, but Kerry’s rhetoric made up for that in playing to the gallery. He denounced to US media what he called «incredible, brazen aggression» by Russia towards Ukraine.

«You just don’t invade another country on phoney pretext in order to assert your interests», said Kerry. «This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext. It’s really 19th century behaviour in the 21st century».

These words come from the top diplomat of a country that has used countless phoney pretexts – from weapons of mass destruction to humanitarian protection – to subvert and invade other sovereign states, inflicting millions of deaths; not just in the distant past but right now in the present with regard to covert operations and sanctions in Syria, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, among other places. …more

The Coup in Ukraine – Obama’s Dumbest Plan Yet
by MIKE WHITNEY – 2 March, 2014 – Counter Punch

“Washington and Brussels … used a Nazi coup, carried out by insurgents, terrorists and politicians of Euromaidan to serve the geopolitical interests of the West.” — Natalia Vitrenko, The Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine

The United States helped defeat Nazism in World War 2. Obama helped bring it back.

As you probably know by now, Obama and Co. have ousted Ukraine’s democratically-elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, with the help of ultra-right, paramilitary, neo-Nazi gangs who seized and burned government offices, killed riot police, and spread mayhem and terror across the country. These are America’s new allies in the Great Game, the grand plan to “pivot to Asia” by pushing further eastward, toppling peaceful governments, securing vital pipeline corridors, accessing scarce oil and natural gas reserves and dismantling the Russian Federation consistent with the strategy proposed by geopolitical mastermind, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski’s magnum opus–”The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and it’s Geostrategic Imperatives” has become the Mein Kampf for aspiring western imperialists. It provides the basic blueprint for establishing US military-political-economic hegemony in the century’s most promising and prosperous region, Asia. In an article in Foreign Affairs Brzezinski laid out his ideas about neutralizing Russia by splitting the country into smaller parts, thus, allowing the US to maintain its dominant role in the region without threat of challenge or interference. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Given (Russia’s) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia’s vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic — would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow’s heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski,“A Geostrategy for Eurasia”)

Moscow is keenly aware of Washington’s divide and conquer strategy, but has downplayed the issue in order to avoid a confrontation. The US-backed coup in Ukraine means that that option is no longer feasible. Russia will have to respond to a provocation that threatens both its security and vital interests. Early reports suggest that Putin has already mobilized troops to the East and –according to Reuters “put fighter jets along its western borders on combat alert.” Here’s more from Reuters:

“The United States says any Russian military action would be a grave mistake. But Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Moscow would defend the rights of its compatriots and react without compromise to any violation of those rights.” (Reuters)

There’s going to be a confrontation, it’s just a matter of whether the fighting will escalate or not.

In order to topple Yanukovych, the US had to tacitly support fanatical groups of neo-Nazi thugs and anti-Semites. And, even though “Interim Ukrainian President Oleksander Tuchynov has pledged to do everything in his power to protect the country’s Jewish community”; reports on the ground are not so encouraging. Here’s an excerpt from a statement by Natalia Vitrenko, of The Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine that suggests the situation is much worse than what is being reported in the news:

“Across the country… People are being beaten and stoned, while undesirable members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine are subject to mass intimidation and local officials see their families and children targeted by death threats if they do not support the installation of this new political power. The new Ukrainian authorities are massively burning the offices of political parties they do not like, and have publicly announced the threat of criminal prosecution and prohibition of political parties and public organizations that do not share the ideology and goals of the new regime.” (“USA and EU Are Erecting a Nazi Regime on Ukrainian Territory”, Natalia Vitrenko)

Earlier in the week, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that a Ukranian synagogue had been firebombed although the “Molotov cocktails struck the synagogue’s exterior stone walls and caused little damage”.

Another article in Haaretz referred to recent developments as “the new dilemma for Jews in Ukraine”. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“The greatest worry now is not the uptick in anti-Semitic incidents but the major presence of ultra-nationalist movements, especially the prominence of the Svoboda party and Pravy Sektor (right sector) members among the demonstrators. Many of them are calling their political opponents “Zhids” and flying flags with neo-Nazi symbols. There have also been reports, from reliable sources, of these movements distributing freshly translated editions of Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Independence Square.” (“Anti-Semitism, though a real threat, is being used by the Kremlin as a political football”, Haaretz)

Then there’s this, from Dr. Inna Rogatchi in Arutz Sheva:

“There is no secret concerning the real political agenda and programs of ultra-nationalist parties in Ukraine – there is nothing close to European values and goals there. One just should open existing documents and hear what the representatives of those parties proclaim daily. They are sharply anti-European, and highly racist. They have nothing to do with the values and practices of the civilized world… …more