Crimes in the Name of Democracy Essence of the Matter in Ukraine

Events in Ukraine are unfolding rapidly as a result of the direct and overt interference of the United States and the European Union with the participation of high level UN officials. On February 21, President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych is said to have left the capital hours after he and opposition leaders signed an agreement aimed at resolving the crisis. In a televised statement on February 22, Yanukovych called the country's political crisis a coup and said it resembles the rise of Nazis in the 1930s. He also said he will not quit his post nor leave the country. On Saturday, February 22, news agencies reported that President Yanukovych was abandoned by his cabinet. The Parliament voted to hold presidential elections on May 25. Also on February 22, pro-EU opposition leader and former prime minister Yulia Timoshenko was released from prison and shortly thereafter addressed a mass rally in Maidan Square. She was imprisoned in 2011 on various corruption charges. The acts of violence of the myriad factions who the Western media call "peaceful protestors," include kidnappings, torture and attacks on soldiers. As of February 22, the Ukraine health ministry reported 82 deaths while monopoly media reported some 200 injuries. The abrupt escalation of violence on February 18 which entailed the high death toll also involved the seizures of stocks of military hardware and street fighting, accompanied with the U.S. demand for regime change and threats of sanctions against the government should it decide to use force to defend the constitutional order. On February 18, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt said that the United States believed the Ukrainian crisis could be settled with the help of dialogue, and sanctions could be imposed on those who encouraged the use of force on the both sides. The next day, the Ambassador said the right of people for peaceful protest should be guaranteed and notified that some Ukrainian officials were refused visas. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke with President Yanukovych on the phone demanding that the special operations forces be removed from the streets of the capital even as "peaceful protesters" assaulted military sites and police stations. Meanwhile, José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, warned Yanukovych that the EU Foreign Affairs Council would meet February 20 to take action against Ukrainian officials involved in taking the decisions that led to the loss of life. Foreign ministers of Sweden, Latvia, Poland, Lithuania and Germany proposed to discuss the possibility of deploying a peacekeeping force to Ukraine. Dietmar Stüdemann, former German Foreign Minister, made known the peacekeeping mission was an "operation of coercion" to force Ukraine to join the EU. Due to the fact that the U.S./EU aim of regime change was not realized, they are now fomenting civil war and the elimination of the state of Ukraine in its present form. According to analyst Alexander Boytsov, "American geostrategists want Ukraine to be destabilized. Their real intention is not to drag the country into the association with the European Union, but rather to prevent any kind of integration with the Eurasian Union. Americans are sure that in case they succeed all Moscow's efforts aimed at integration in the post-Soviet space will automatically become doomed. There is no doubt that playing the geopolitical games of such scope Washington's hawks will not be stopped by any death toll that may result from sparking a civil war in Ukraine." (TML Weekly No. 8, February 22, 2014)