Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Just What is "Our Side" in the Ukrainian Civil War Up To?

In today's "black & white" political world, Canada is squarely and uncritically on the side of the Kiev government.  The Russian-supported rebels are bad.  Putin is bad.  The Crimea is bad.

We hear a fair bit about civilian casualties in the rebel-held regions of Donetsk but, and correct me if I'm wrong, but "rebel-held" suggests the artillery and rocket barrages aren't coming from the rebels but from our side, the Kiev government.  In our media we don't get into the inconvenient details of just who is firing on those civilians which allows us to somehow blame it on the rebels.

Merkel and Hollande have this last-ditch peace initiative underway now.  Obama is threatening to ship Kiev "defensive" heavy weaponry if that falls through.  So maybe the carrot-and-stick approach will produce a deal, right?  Only if our buddies in the Kiev government are in a mood to deal but, according to Montreal-based Global Research, peace is the last thing they want.  If anything they may be hoping to drag the West into a shooting war with Russia.

N.B.  - I'm not vouching for Global Research.  Looking into them I found a piece by Terry Glavin in NatPo from 2011 where he castigated GR's principal, Ottawa U. prof Michel Chossudovsky for purporting that Syria's Assad government was being attacked by radical Muslim fighters.

Professor Chossudovsky explains: “What we have are Islamists, gunmen, Salafi as well as Muslim Brotherhood gunmen, snipers shooting at civilians as well as police. . .these are death squads which are supported directly by Turkey and Israel. It is an intelligence operation. They come in, they cross the border, they go into communities. . they go into the Christian communities, they intimidate people, they shoot on them, they kill them. . .”

Uh, yeah, Terry - I don't know how to break this to you but Chossudovsky was warning, back in 2011, about the rise of what was to become ISIS.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The problem with the current situation is two-fold.
1. This a battle for “spheres of influence” initiated by USA. Russia considers the whole Ukraine as its own sphere and intends to defend it any cost. USA wants to wrestle, at least part of such “sphere” from Russian control.
Angela Merkel is the sanest politician from those involved. She is on record as saying that “spheres of influence” are archaic concept, leftover form imperial past, and in today interconnected global world only leads to proxy wars.
2. The Ukraine, in current borders is very, very young country and not all the territory is really ethnic and culturally Ukrainian. Crimea was not (given to Ukraine as a gift by Khrushchev, an Ukrainian himself), western 15% was Polish for more than 600 years and redistributed after WW II by Stalin, and more importantly, Donbass region was essentially Russian for 1000+ years. Since almost no country would like to voluntarily give away the territory it currently holds (which was acquired rightly or wrongly) I expect that conflict would go on till Ukraine would be split according to historical and ethnic boundaries. The Poland is not asking for western Ukraine only because it would have to consider giving away its own western land assigned to Poland after the war by Stalin.
A..dam

Steve said...

There is a word for what is going on in Ukraine. Its called kumbaya navite.

Power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Nothing has changed only the camo is better.

The good guys in the Ukraine are all billionares, the bad guys do not want to work on Maggies farm.