LONDON—On November 21, 2013, demonstrations were initiated at Independence Square in the city of Kiev, the Ukraine capitol that has up to now resulted in coup that has overthrown the Ukraine government and growing tension between Russia and the U.S. who have opposing interests in the conflict.
These demonstrations targeted democratically-elected president Viktor Yanukovych for his abandonment of the European Union's Association Agreement in favor of a deal with its bordering neighbor, Russia.
Russia's president Vladimir Putin had launched a Customs Union with members of the former Soviet Union as a strategic economic move in which the Ukraine—in Moscow's view—was to play a major role. There is no doubt that for Moscow, Ukraine’s joining the Custom Union is a strategic win.
By mid-January, the demonstrators grew in confidence and became unmistakably focused on overthrowing the government of Ukraine. By January 24, anti-government forces started seizing government buildings and attacking police forces.
By the night of February 22 the police and security personnel around the presidential office were nowhere to be seen; and it was clear that president Viktor Yanukovych had fled from Kiev to unknown whereabouts.
There are many questions as to what happened.
Why did the coup happen?
Who were the coup plotters?
What is their history, and what is the role of the U.S. in this coup?
It is certain that the Ukrainian coup leaders/conspirators were funded by the U.S.
U.S. government operatives were in control of the demonstrations and left no room for compromise until their mission was accomplished—the immediate overthrow of Yanukovych’s government and the reinstallation of a U.S./EU puppet regime.
Considering the fact that the elections in Ukraine were due in February 2015, why was it so urgent that a U.S./EU puppet should come back to power through overthrowing the government of Yanukovych?
This coup in Ukraine is a direct response to the crisis of white imperialism, and more specifically, the decline of U.S. imperialism in the world. This decline is characterized by U.S. defeats in Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, by the fall of the dollar, by the economic rise of contenders China and India, and by the growing Russian influence in Europe.
Who are the new leaders?
The All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” Party dominates the current illegitimate Ukrainian government. Their leader—Yulia Tymoshenko, former prime minister of Ukraine between 2005-2010—was freed from jail by coup forces after the fall of the Yanukovych government. She had been sentenced to seven years in 2011 for embezzlement and abuse of power.
The other leaders of this party include Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the interim prime minister and the man pegged by U.S. assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland to carry out U.S. interests in Ukraine; Arsen Avakov, interim interior minister; Andriy Parubiy, acting chairman of the National Security Council; and Oleksandr Turchynov, interim president.
The leaders of the Fatherland Party came to prominence during the so-called “Orange Revolution” that in 2004 shook the pro-Russian government in Kiev at the time to its knees.
The Guardian, a liberal imperialist mouthpiece out of London, talked about the Orange Revolution on November 26, 2004. It wrote, “But while the gains of the orange-bedecked ‘chestnut revolution’ are Ukraine's, the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes… funded and organized by the U.S. government, deploying U.S. consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big American parties and U.S. non-government organizations. The campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box.”
The same article added, “The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the U.S. state department and USAID are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns, as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute…..
Freedom House and the Democratic party's NDI helped fund and organize the ‘largest civil regional election monitoring effort’ in Ukraine, involving more than 1,000 trained observers. They also organized exit polls.”
This long quote clearly tells us that the U.S. has been very active since the fall of the Soviet Union in Ukraine and other areas in Eastern Europe. Buying influence, with the precise objective being to put its puppets into power at the expense of Russia, has been the name of the game.
Another of the forces in the Ukrainian coup is the Right Sector Party. They are a white nationalist neo-Nazi group. They played a key role in providing the storm troops that controlled the streets and fought against the members of the police and security forces to hasten the fall of the pro-Russian regime. Led by Dmytro Yarosh, they are vehemently pro-capitalist, anti-communist and anti-Russia.
The Svoboda Party is another neo-Nazi organization represented in the government. They are led by Oleh Tyahnybok.
The last political force is the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms (UDAR), led by boxer Vitali Klitschko. It is another pro-parasitic capitalist party.
Another source that gives us indisputable evidence of the U.S. government’s control of this coup is the exposing phone conversation recording between Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the current U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, discussing their plans on how to direct their Ukraine puppets for the seizure of power. This conversation in which they are discussing who they will put into the Ukraine government after the coup has found its way all over YouTube.
On the U.S. state department's website, a transcription of Victoria Nuland’s presentation at the U.S.–Ukraine Foundation Conference from December 13, 2013 spells out the role of the U.S. government in bringing down Viktor Yanukovych:
“Throughout this period the United States’ message has been clear and unequivocal.
We stand with the people of Ukraine in their search for justice, human dignity, security, a return to economic health, and for the European future they have chosen and that they deserve. Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance—all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure, prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
Also noted is how EU and U.S. leaders joined demonstrators at Maidan Independence Square in Kiev in December 2013, including U.S. senator John McCain and German foreign affairs minister Guido Westerwelle.
In addition, Israeli soldiers took part in the Maidan Independence Square attacks.
These attacks also trained in on Ukraine's monstrous agri-business, which produces a quarter of the former Soviet Union's grains.
Manlio Dinucci’s March 24 article, “The New Gladio in Ukraine,” which documents the connection between the neo-Nazis, Israelis, Ukrainian army and NATO in the coup, stated about one of the leaders of the Ukrainian coup’s military forces, “‘Delta’ is a former veteran of the Israeli army, who specialized in urban warfare as a member of the Givati infantry brigade, which was involved in Operation Cast Lead and other attacks on Gaza, including the massacre of civilians in the neighborhood of Tel el-Hawa. Back in Ukraine since a few years behind the guise of a businessman, he set up and trained, together with other former Israeli soldiers, the ‘Blue Helmets of Maidan,’ a fighting unit applying in Kiev the same urban techniques that were experimented in Gaza.”
A leaked conversation between EU foreign affairs chief Cathy Ashton and the Lithuanian foreign minister Urmas Paet seems to also suggest that snipers tied to coup forces shot at both demonstrators and the police. Urmas Paet stated in the conversation, “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”
Why should the new leaders in Ukraine be considered more legitimate than the referendum of people of Crimean to join Russia?
The present leaders in Kiev, who have just overthrown a democratically-elected government with the support of the EU and the U.S., should consider the reattachment of Crimea to Russia a legitimate claim, considering the historical ties of the people.
Obama and the leaders of Europe are lying when they are saying that since the end of the second World War II, there has not been a redrawing of Europe maps by force.
The U.S. has partitioned Serbia by force. Kosovo has been created by force.
Talking about big countries bullying small countries? That is exactly the history of the U.S. today and in the past.
All these calls by the EU and the U.S. that Russia has invaded Ukraine by taking back Crimea are used to cover their own strategy to capture Ukraine from Russia’s influence.
According to Russian president Vladimir Putin, Crimea was first the Bolshevik’s, after the 1917 Russian revolution, that transferred part of historical South Russia to Ukraine.
This was followed in 1954 by then Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev's unilateral decision to offer Crimea and the city of Sevastopol to Ukraine, an apparent act of atonement for earlier Soviet repression in Ukraine used to win the political support for its establishment.
The white imperialist press and leaders can say that the invasion of Mali and Central Africa Republic by France, the invasion of Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Ukrainian government is legal on one hand, and then on the other hand, the vote of the people of Crimea to join Russia is illegitimate. This is ridiculous.
The president of Argentina accused the British and U.S. rulers of "double standards" if it doesn't recognize Crimea as part of Russia. During a speech in Paris, Cristina Fernandez compared the referendum in the Black Sea peninsula to the one that took place last year in the Falkland Islands, a British territory that Argentina claims as its own and refers to as the "Islas Malvinas."
Why white people in Ukraine desperately want to join European Union
Ukraine and Russia have deep historical and economic ties which the U.S. and other European countries would find difficult to undo in the short term.
According to a March 20 article in businessweek.com, “Ukraine has received massive aid from Russia in the form of discounted natural gas—a subsidy totalling $200 billion to $300 billion since 1991.”
The bankrupt U.S. and EU cannot offer such a deal to Ukraine.
Russia is the biggest trading partner of Ukraine. Ukraine was the grain basket of the former Republic of the Soviet Union.
It was the biggest prize sought by U.S. imperialism. Because of its proximity to Russia, it has great military significance. It is also a place to make lots of money.
There is no doubt that the IMF and other parasitic financial institutions that have loaned Ukraine money have a plan on how to loot the agriculture of Ukraine.
According to a February 7 article on osw.waw.pl, “The value of Ukraine’s agricultural and food exports increased from US$4.3 billion in 2005 to US$17.9 billion in 2012, and currently accounts for a quarter of Ukraine’s total exports. Economic forecasts suggest that in the current marketing year (July 2013 – June 2014) Ukraine will sell more than 30 million tonnes of grain to foreign markets, making it the world's second biggest grain exporter, after the United States.
“Ukraine has the second largest acreage of farmland in Europe (after Russia) with a total of 41.5 million hectares of agricultural land (about 70 percent of the total area of the country), of which arable land accounts for over 32 million hectares. Ukraine benefits from a favourable climate and good quality soils, of which about half are the highly fertile chernozem (or black earth).”
Quoting Hosea Jaffe, Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s Political Report to the African People’s Socialist Party’s (APSP) Sixth Congress states about the emergence and behavior of Europe and the “white man”:
“…As long as Europe remained isolated from the world, there was no Europe. When it became connected with and dependent on first Africa, then the Americas and finally Asia, it became a reality and an idea. Only when Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, English, German, Danish and Swedish confronted and clashed with Africa, America and Asia did the need arise for them to consider themselves as a set, a whole, different from, hostile to and eventually, superior to Africans [aboriginal Americans and Asians]. Colonialism gave them a common interest.
“Europe was born out of colonialism, as the exploiting, oppressing, negating pole that tried always to destroy and assimilate its opposite pole—the rest of the world.
So the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarus, Serbs, etc are those white peoples who did not fully participate in the process of accumulation of capital that created capitalism.
The westerners are historically the white people from those countries which first consolidated the white nation in the process of pillaging, raping and enslaving Africa, the Americas and the rest of the non-white world. That is Britain, the U.S., Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, Australia, Japan, Portugal, Israel, etc.
The industrial revolution that gave the West an edge over the rest of the world is the direct result of the wealth, the value, the surplus extracted at gun point primarily from the colonized peoples.
Before the Russian revolution, the Russian empire was a semi-feudal country dominated economically by western imperialism from Britain, France and Germany.
Russia politically was a backward country dominated by the despotic monarch known as the czar.
The full bourgeois democratic revolution or democracy for white people, and the industrial revolution, which happened in Western Europe, never fully happened in Eastern Europe.
Russians experienced humiliation at the hands of the Western imperialist countries through vast wars of conquest from Napoleon to Hitler—wars with devastating consequences.
Under the leadership of Lenin, Russian revolutionaries, also known as Bolsheviks, seized power and founded the Soviet Union. A vast republic that included many of the Eastern European countries, of which Ukraine was part until the Soviet Union break-up in 1991.
The consequences of the existence of the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc meant that Eastern Europe could not fully participate in the capitalist world economy dominated by the Western capitalists.
Imperialist powers could not at will access and exploit Eastern European natural resources and labor.
The call from Eastern Europe to join the West is a call to join the European nation under the leadership of the U.S. It is a call for access to wealth stolen from the colonies in Africa, the Americas and elsewhere.
Russian revolution and the creation of the Soviet Union
An imperialism weakened by World War II was challenged by the unstoppable rise of national liberation struggles.
Over 50 years of national liberation struggles have changed the course of history and human progress, making it impossible for imperialism to rule in the same old way.
British colonialism, which used to rule a quarter of the world, lost direct white rule in India in 1947, and soon after, the rest of the Asian colonies. In Africa, they were shaken to the core by the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, better known as the Mau-Mau. In all these places Britain was forced to installed neocolonialism.
U.S. imperialism was under attack by the Cuban Revolution, and independence struggles occurred throughout Latin America. Most importantly, revolution was occurring inside the U.S. borders, led by the African working class.
Africa was on the brink of a national revolution. National liberation struggle was the order of the day everywhere on the continent. That is where we saw Kwame Nkrumah, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon and many more.
The 1949 Chinese Revolution meant a new and powerful China in the world to the dismay of white imperialism.
The significance of national liberation struggles is not something in the distant past. It is the central part of the dynamics that are shaping the world today.
Today, the desperately aggressive domestic and international political and economic programs of the U.S. and other imperialist governments are direct responses to the successes of national liberation struggles.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s 1981 Political Report to the First Congress tells us, “In the first place, U.S. and Western imperialism is not simply dying or weakening on its own accord. It is not accommodating us by committing suicide. U.S and Western imperialism is being killed.”
Why did the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe “communist” block collapse?
The quote below from Chairman Omali in his report to the Fifth Congress explains why the Soviet Union and the Eastern communist bloc collapsed.
It is a good introduction to the recent history of Russia and Ukraine, and it is also the best scientific explanation you can find in the world:
“Obviously the historical basis for the advent of socialism did not exist when revolution changed any of the above mentioned countries. What did exist were the political conditions for the socialist to take power in places like Russia, China and Cuba.
“The fact is that capitalism was born as a world economy, and the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions did not change the fact their countries and economies existed within a pervasive, capitalist world economy. Therefore, although these revolutions, contending with semi-feudal, semi-colonial and neocolonial economies, were able to make rapid, short term changes in the lives of the workers and toiling masses, they soon ran into their limitations, as an oasis within a sea of capitalist predators."
By the end of 1989, we saw the rise of the Vatican and CIA-sponsored Solidarity Movement of Lech Walesa rise to power in Poland. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany and the breakup of the Soviet Union were examples of the acceleration of the crisis of imperialism in Eastern Europe.
With this dramatically changed landscape of Europe, the European Union (EU) and the Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military organization expanded eastward at the expense of Russia’s national pride, influence, security, and economic interests.
U.S. government has been working hard to militarily contain Russia
By 1992, EU and U.S. had encouraged Croatia and Slovenia to secede from Yugoslavia, and then we saw Bosnia secede and explode with a savage ethnic warfare between Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs.
Between 1998 and 2003, the U.S. government used the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) to further break up Yugoslavia. KLA attacked southern Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro, which were all part of the former republic of Yugoslavia.
In March 1999, NATO, led by the U.S., bombed Serbia for 78 consecutive days, destroying roads, bridges, oil tankers, radio and TV stations and the Chinese embassy. This was the first attack on a European sovereign country since the end of the Second World War!
There was no outcry of going back to cold war. This war consolidated the detachment of Kosovo from Serbia. In 2006, Montenegro voted to be independent from Serbia. Serbia has always been an historical ally of Russia.
By the end of 1999, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO. They were followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania in 2004. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009.
According to a March 3 article by Paul Craig Roberts, the U.S. and Israelis have unleashed their “trained Georgian army on the Russian population of South Ossetia, and now threatens Russia with sanctions for standing up for Russians and Russian strategic interests. The Russian government noted that Kerry has raised hypocrisy to a new level.”
It is worth noting that Yanukovych, the ousted Ukrainian president, threw out the plan from his predecessor for Ukraine to join NATO in 2010.
The fall of Soviet Union opened a new area of anti-imperialist struggles, subsequently deepening crisis of U.S.-led world imperialism
The triumphalism of U.S. led white power was short lived, as they began soon to learn that the end of the Soviet Union did not mean the end of the crisis of imperialism, or a secured domination of the peoples of the world.
Early years of this new millennium were marked by the renewal of resistance in the late Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, sending anti-U.S. imperialist shock waves throughout the Americas and the Caribbean and breaking the isolation of Cuba.
Bolivia and other countries in Latin America have since erupted in reclaiming their own resources causing U.S. imperialism to fear for its existence.
We saw the defeat of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan and the emergence of Iran as a regional power. We saw the rise of China, India and Brazil as world powers at the expense of the U.S. and EU in Asia, Latin America and particularly in Africa.
In 2008, the declining U.S. imperialism was hit in the face by a sudden sharp financial crisis that shook the U.S. and European economy to the core.
Over five years later, this crisis has not gone away, making the collapse of the U.S. economy and currency in a near future a very likely outcome.
In frantic desparation to stop this imperialist crisis, the U.S. ruling class put a black face in the form of Barack Obama in the White House; put a broad military solution known as AFRICOM in Africa for the purpose of hegemonic controlling African resources at the expense of China and other imperialists and put in the pivot, a military solution to contain China.
Meanwhile, NATO has always been the “pivot” to contain communist Russia, and now capitalist Russia too.
In 2011, the highly publicized Arab uprisings surprised the U.S. white ruling class because masses of poor people in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen were able to overthrow the U.S. puppets who kept the masses in check.
The U.S., France, Britain and other imperialist relics teamed up with petty bourgeois forces known to the world as Al Qaida jihadists to prevent the shift in the balance of power. They bombed Libya in violation of their own UN resolution, which only called for no-fly zone, and they overthrew Gaddafi’s government before murdering him.
Right now they are involved in murdering people in Syria and attempting to overthrow its president, Bashar al-Assad, a key ally of Iran.
They are right now involved in de-establishing Venezuela, and they are involved in regular provocations against North Korea. They overthrew the government of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after making a deal with them just a year before.
Russia’s significance in preventing the U.S. government from bombing Syria, and in helping Iran to secure a deal with the U.S. around its nuclear policies was not lost to U.S. and EU leaders.
U.S. rulers consider growth of Russian’s influence in Europe as a threat
Russian influence has also been growing in Europe. With about $500 billion in European banks, they are a factor in the current housing bubble in London. They are also in the top five high spenders in tourist money that flows into the UK.
In terms of gas, there are projects that the U.S. cannot stop, short of aggravating the crisis itself, and gas is at the center of Russia’s influence in Europe.
One example can be found in a March 14 Financial Times article: “Meanwhile, in a sign of the EU’s continuing economic ties to Russia, South Stream, the gas pipeline project backed by Gazprom of Russia, Eni of Italy, EDF of France and BASF of Germany, announced that it had signed a contract worth about €2bn with Saipem of Italy to build the offshore stretch of the route under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. Construction is scheduled to start in June.”
The need for energy in Europe and their dependence on Russia does not allow any EU leader to say “do not buy the Russian gas today.”
This influence does not just end in Europe. Russia holds $138.6 billion in U.S. government debt. U.S. banks and assets managers have between them about $75 billion of exposure to Russia. With this, there is no surprise that Obama is quiet on the money.
Today Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries are amongst the growing trend of countries that have their own independent agenda in opposition to U.S. interests.
Russia is also a key component part of BRICS, a new alliance which seeks to pursue their own agenda, irrespective of the U.S. and EU. Some people speculate that the abandonment of the use of the U.S. dollar is one of BRICS’s main aim.
China is a key force in this alliance, as this crisis brings into the equation the possibility and viability of Russia going East. With the formation of Eurasia, this would be an historical alliance uniting the future of Russia with the people of Asia, further weakening U.S. imperialist power in the world.
Germany does not unite with the U.S. economic sanction against Russia
Germany is the largest trade partner of Russia after China, with a trade worth about $100 billion a year. Germany imports gas and oil from Russia, while Russia imports the finest industrial products of Germany.
There are 6,000 German companies in Russia, and trade between the two countries generates employment in Germany for over 300,000 people.
Russia and Germany have built a gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, which supplies Germany with Russian gas, bypassing Ukraine and other eastern states. The Baltic States, whose dependence on Russian gas is 100 percent, cannot be ignored when sanctions are considered.
Germany is correctly opposed to sanctions against Russia, because it would not serve Germany’s interest, which makes up 30 percent of all EU export in Russia.
Since Germany gets up to 40 percent of its gas from Russia, it would have a gas security crisis. There are all kinds of profound cooperation between Russia and Germany, including economic, educational and engineering that makes it difficult for Germany to blindly go along with U.S. imperialist rulers.
Is Obama setting the stage for a World War III?
U.S. energy companies like Chevron in Ukraine are encouraged to diversify Ukraine consumption energy away from Russia, which is nothing but a threat to Russian interests.
Agricultural companies like Monsanto and Cargill are also in Ukraine working out ways to pull Ukraine away from Russian markets.
There is no doubt that there is a sector of the white ruling class in the U.S. and Europe who want war against Russia, China and Iran, as they are seen as obstacles to world domination by white power.
For these imperialist leaders, the stage is being set for war. That is how we should read the declarations coming from NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen in which he said, “The Russian behavior must have consequences. I mean, when I study the founding documents that create the framework for our partnership with Russia, I can see Russia in blatant breach of all the fundamental principles."
In view of the Russian actions in Ukraine, Rasmussen, while addressing a meeting, said NATO has also taken measures to strengthen its readiness. "They include more assets for our Baltic air policing mission, surveillance flights over Poland and Romania, and heightened awareness. Allies have taken further steps to impose diplomatic and economic consequences. These are not our preferred choice. They are inevitable and appropriate consequences of Russia's choices.”
The role of African Internationalists and African working class
We are opposed to all imperialist wars and threats of wars, because they are all unjust wars!
We are therefore opposed to any imperialist war to re-divide the world in order to rescue imperialism in general or any particular imperialist power.
Russia is opposed to the expansion of NATO to Ukraine, but it is not opposed to expansion of U.S. AFRICOM to Africa or to French invasion of Mali and Central Africa Republic. Russia simply wants to get along with U.S. imperialism as long as the U.S. recognizes Russia’s interests as well.
We think that all legitimate wars and struggles for genuine freedom must be fought against imperialist oppressor nations and their ruling classes.
To all people of Ukraine, the struggle in the real world is to stand for a principled relationship. It is not to choose between EU, U.S. and Russia, but to choose between joining oppressor imperialist nations and joining the struggles of the oppressed nations.
It is as Chairman Omali often puts it: Join the rest of humanity to overturn white power parasitic capitalism. The struggle is about how to deepen the crisis of imperialism, by fighting for a Ukraine free from parasitic capitalism.
If you choose either US/EU or Russia, you have simply indicated on parasite’s side you are on.
For those of us living on less than two U.S. dollars a day or who are subjected directly and daily to the murderous U.S., UK, Canadian, French, Belgian and Brazilian government agents on streets and in prisons, or indirectly in U.S. proxy wars in Congo, Haiti, Sudan, Jamaica and Columbia, we consider this conflict as just one more manifestation of the moribund parasitic capitalism, incapable of universal human progress and world peace.
On the contrary, the whole world can see that there is no revolutionary participant.
No one is engaged in fighting for a genuine socialist transformation but rather for which sector of the bourgeoisie will secure a better deal for themselves in Ukraine within the context of the crisis of a worldwide economy built at the expense of the African nation and other oppressed peoples of the world.
Smash U.S.-led parasitic capitalism!
Oppose all unjust wars and threats of unjust wars!
