Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel: Cold War Against Russia—Without Debate

source: May 19, 2014 edition of The Nation.















The Obama administration’s decision to isolate Russia, in a new version of “containment,” has met with virtually unanimous support from the political and media establishment.


Future historians will note that in April 2014, nearly a quarter-century after the end of the Soviet Union, the White House declared a new Cold War on Russia—and that, in a grave failure of representative democracy, there was scarcely a public word of debate, much less opposition, from the American political or media establishment.

The Obama administration announced its Cold War indirectly, in a front-page New York Times story by Peter Baker on April 20. According to the report, President Obama has resolved, because of the Ukraine crisis, that he can “never have a constructive relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and will instead “ignore the master of the Kremlin” and focus on “isolating…Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world…effectively making it a pariah state.” In short, Baker reports, the White House has adopted “an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment.” He might have added, a very extreme version. The report has been neither denied nor qualified by the White House.

No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point. Considerable congressional and mainstream media debate, even protest, were voiced, for example, during the run-up to the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, more recently, proposed wars against Iran and Syria. This Cold War—its epicenter on Russia’s borders; undertaken amid inflammatory American, Russian and Ukrainian media misinformation; and unfolding without the stabilizing practices that prevented disasters during the preceding Cold War—may be even more perilous. It will almost certainly result in a new nuclear arms race, a prospect made worse by Obama’s provocative public assertion that “our conventional forces are significantly superior to the Russians’,” and possibly an actual war with Russia triggered by Ukraine’s looming civil war. (NATO and Russian forces are already mobilizing on the country’s western and eastern borders, while the US-backed Kiev government is warning of a “third world war.”)

And yet, all this has come with the virtually unanimous, bipartisan support, or indifference, of the US political establishment, from left to right, Democrats and Republicans, progressives (whose domestic programs will be gravely endangered) and conservatives. It has also been supported by mainstream media that shape and reflect policy-making opinion, from the Times and The Washington Post to The Wall Street Journal, from The New Republic to The Weekly Standard, from MSNBC to Fox News, from NPR to commercial radio news. (There are notable exceptions, including this magazine, but none close enough to the mainstream to be “authoritative” inside the Beltway.)


To be more specific, not one of the 535 members of Congress has publicly expressed doubts about the White House’s new “Cold War strategy of containment.” Nor have any of the former US presidents or presidential candidates who once advocated partnership with post-Soviet Russia. Before the Ukraine crisis deepened, a handful of unofficial dissenters did appear on mainstream television, radio and op-ed pages, but so few and fleetingly they seemed to be heretics awaiting banishment. Their voices have since been muted by legions of cold warriors.

Both sides in the confrontation, the West and Russia, have legitimate grievances. Does this mean, however, that the American establishment’s account of recent events should not be questioned? That it was imposed on the West by Putin’s “aggression,” and this because of his desire “to re-create as much of the old Soviet empire as he can” or merely to “maintain Putin’s domestic rating.” Does it mean there is nothing credible enough to discuss in Moscow’s side of the story? That twenty years of NATO’s eastward expansion has caused Russia to feel cornered. That the Ukraine crisis was instigated by the West’s attempt, last November, to smuggle the former Soviet republic into NATO. That the West’s jettisoning in February of its own agreement with then-President Viktor Yanukovych brought to power in Kiev an unelected regime so anti-Russian and so uncritically embraced by Washington that the Kremlin felt an urgent need to annex predominantly Russian Crimea, the home of its most cherished naval base. And, most recently, that Kiev’s sending of military units to suppress protests in pro-Russian eastern Ukraine is itself a violation of the April 17 agreement to de-escalate the crisis.

Future historians will certainly find some merit in Moscow’s arguments, and wonder why they are being widely debated in, for example, Germany, but not in America. It may already be too late for the democratic debate the US elite owes our nation. If so, the costs to American democracy are already clear.
 

How Neocons Constrain Obama’s Message, Robert Parry, May 28, 2014

President Obama said that just because the U.S. military is “the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail” – a wise observation – but he then confused his foreign policy speech by pandering to neocon narratives on crises in Ukraine and elsewhere, reports Robert Parry.

source: http://bit.ly/RGM25y

As American neocons continue to shape the narratives that define the permissible boundaries for U.S. foreign policy thinking, the failure to enforce any meaningful accountability on them for their role in the criminal and disastrous invasion of Iraq has become painfully clear.

In any vibrant democratic system, it would be unthinkable that the neocons and other war hawks who yahooed the United States into Iraq a little more than a decade ago would still be exercising control over how Americans perceive today’s events. Yet, many of the exact same pundits and pols who misled the American people then are still misleading them today.
President Barack Obama touches the Marshall Plaque at Michie Stadium upon arrival for the United States Military Academy at West Point commencement in West Point, N.Y., May 28, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama touches the Marshall Plaque at Michie Stadium upon arrival for the United States Military Academy at West Point commencement in West Point, N.Y., May 28, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Thus, we’re stuck reading the Washington Post’s deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl reinforce the myth that the Ukraine crisis was caused by “the aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” when the reality is that it was the United States and the European Union that stirred up the unrest and set the stage for neo-Nazi militias to overthrow elected President Viktor Yanukovych and plunge the country into a nasty little civil war.

Yet, you’re not supposed to know that. Anyone who dares explain the actual narrative of what happened in Ukraine is immediately accused of spreading “Russian propaganda.” The preferred U.S. narrative of white-hat “pro-democracy” protesters victimized by black-hat villain Yanukovych with the help of the even more villainous Vladimir Putin is so much more fun. It lets Americans cheer as ethnic Russians in the east are burned alive by neo-Nazi mobs and mowed down by Ukrainian military aircraft.

Diehl and his boss, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, are precisely the same neocon propagandists who told Americans in 2002 and early 2003 that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction. Hiatt and Diehl didn’t write that as an allegation or a suspicion, but as flat fact. Yet, it turned out to be flatly untrue – and hundreds of thousands of people, including nearly 4,500 U.S. soldiers, died as a result of the war.

But don’t worry: the careers of Diehl and Hiatt didn’t suffer. They’re still in their same influential jobs a dozen years later, framing how we should understand Syria, Ukraine and the rest of the world.

And, if Hiatt and his editorial board had their way, American troops would still be patrolling Iraq. On Wednesday, the Post’s lead editorial condemned President Barack Obama for not maintaining permanent U.S. military forces in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan – and not getting deeper into the Syrian civil war.

“You can’t fault President Obama for inconsistency,” the Post’s editorial sneered. “After winning election in 2008, he reduced the U.S. military presence in Iraq to zero. After helping to topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, he made sure no U.S. forces would remain. He has steadfastly stayed aloof, except rhetorically, from the conflict in Syria. And on Tuesday he promised to withdraw all U.S. forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2016.

“The Afghan decision would be understandable had Mr. Obama’s previous choices proved out. But what’s remarkable is that the results also have been consistent — consistently bad.”

The neocons, including the Post’s editorialists, voice outrage when Obama paints them with a broad brush as obsessed with putting American boots on the ground. But how can one read that editorial and not recognize that what the neocons want is not just temporary U.S. boots on the ground but to have them cemented into these countries as permanent occupiers?

Mr. Overrated

Then, over at the New York Times, you can read the wisdom of Thomas L. Friedman, another star promoter of the Iraq War who infamously kept telling Americans every six months that the grinding war would look better in six months but it never did.

Friedman, who may be the most overrated columnist in American history, is now asserting what he trusts will become the new conventional wisdom on Ukraine, that Putin lost the Ukraine crisis. On Wednesday, Friedman wrote  “In the end, it was Putinism versus Obamaism, and I’d like to be the first on my block to declare that the ‘other fellow’ — Putin — ‘just blinked.’”

According to Friedman, the Ukraine crisis “may be the first case of post-post-Cold War brinkmanship, pitting the 21st century versus the 19th. It pits a Chinese/Russian worldview that says we can take advantage of 21st-century globalization whenever we want to enrich ourselves, and we can behave like 19th-century powers whenever we want to take a bite out of a neighbor — versus a view that says, no, sorry, the world of the 21st century is not just interconnected but interdependent and either you play by those rules or you pay a huge price.”

As with Hiatt and Diehl, one has to wonder how Friedman can be so disconnected from his own record as an eager imperialist when it came to U.S. desires for “regime change” in a variety of disliked countries. While it may be true that the United States hasn’t taken bites out of its immediate neighbors recently – although there were U.S.-backed coups in Honduras, Haiti and Venezuela in the 21st Century – the U.S. government has taken numerous bites out of other countries halfway around the world.

And, as for playing by the “rules,” Friedman’s “exceptional” America sets its own rules. [For more on how this style of propaganda relates to Ukraine, see Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT’s One-Sided Ukraine Narrative.”]

Friedman’s schoolyard taunt about Putin having “blinked” also is at best a superficial rendering of the recent developments in Ukraine and a failure to recognize the long-term harm that Official Washington’s tough-guy-ism over Ukraine has done to genuine U.S. national interests by shoving Russia and China closer together. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Premature US Victory-Dancing on Ukraine.”]

Even newspaper columnists are supposed to connect their writings to reality once in a while. But I guess since the likes of Hiatt, Diehl and Friedman advocated the gross violation of international law that was the Iraq War, got their facts wrong, and paid no career price for doing so, they have little reason to think that they should change their approach now.

During my four-decade-plus career in journalism, I have seen reporters take on tough stories and do so with high professional standards, yet still have their careers ruined because some influential people accused them of some minor misstep, the case of Gary Webb and his Contra-cocaine series being one tragic example.  [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Warning in Gary Webb’s Death.”]

In contrast, Hiatt, Diehl and Friedman can provide false propaganda to justify an illegal war that gets hundreds of thousands of people killed while squandering about $1 trillion in taxpayers’ money, yet they faced no consequences. So, today, they are still able to frame new trouble spots like Syria, Libya and Ukraine and cramp President Obama’s sense of how far he can go in charting a less violent foreign policy.

Obama’s Timid Speech

Even though Obama did oppose the Iraq invasion last decade, he has been sucked into the same barren rhetoric about American “exceptionalism”; he makes similar hyperbolic denunciations of American “enemies”; and he plays into new false narratives like those that paved the way to hell in Iraq.

On Wednesday in addressing the graduating class at West Point, Obama had what might be his last real chance to shatter this phony frame of propaganda, but instead he delivered a pedestrian speech that tried to talk tough about crises in Ukraine and Syria as a defense against neocon critics who will predictably accuse him of weakness.

In Obama’s speech, the United States is still “the one indispensable nation,” so “when a typhoon hits the Philippines, or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria, or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help.” By the way, his reference to the “masked men” occupying a building in Ukraine wasn’t a reference to the masked neo-Nazi militias who seized buildings during the Feb. 22 coup against Yanukovych, but rather a shot at eastern Ukrainians who have resisted the coup.

Again, staying safely within Official Washington’s “group think,” Obama also lamented “Russia’s aggression toward former Soviet states” and said that “unnerves capitals in Europe.” But he expressed no concern for the Russian alarm over NATO enveloping Russia’s western borders. Obama also took a slap at China.

Obama said, “Regional aggression that goes unchecked — whether in southern Ukraine or the South China Sea, or anywhere else in the world — will ultimately impact our allies and could draw in our military. We can’t ignore what happens beyond our boundaries.” (Is Obama really suggesting that the United States might go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China over Ukraine and the South China Sea?)

The President also slid into familiar hyperbole about Russia’s agreement to accept Crimea back into the Russian federation after a post-coup referendum there found overwhelming support among Crimean voters to break away from the failed Ukrainian state. Instead of noting that popular will – and the reality that Russian troops were already in Crimea as part of a basing agreement for Sevastopol – Obama conjured up images of an old-style invasion.

“In Ukraine, Russia’s recent actions recall the days when Soviet tanks rolled into Eastern Europe,” Obama said, claiming that this latest “aggression” was countered with U.S. public diplomacy. “This mobilization of world opinion and international institutions served as a counterweight to Russian propaganda and Russian troops on the border and armed militias in ski masks,” he said.

Yet, while using this tough-guy rhetoric, Obama did reject endless warfare and endless occupations, saying:

“Since World War II, some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences — without building international support and legitimacy for our action; without leveling with the American people about the sacrifices required.

“Tough talk often draws headlines, but war rarely conforms to slogans. As General [Dwight] Eisenhower, someone with hard-earned knowledge on this subject, said at this ceremony in 1947: ‘War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.’”

And, in possibly the speech’s best line, Obama added: “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”

Yet, despite such reasonable observations, Obama kept sliding back into super-patriotic rhetoric, including assertions that sounded at best hypocritical if not ludicrous:

“I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law; it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions. And that’s why I will continue to push to close Gitmo — because American values and legal traditions do not permit the indefinite detention of people beyond our borders. That’s why we’re putting in place new restrictions on how America collects and uses intelligence — because we will have fewer partners and be less effective if a perception takes hold that we’re conducting surveillance against ordinary citizens.

“America does not simply stand for stability or the absence of conflict, no matter what the cost. We stand for the more lasting peace that can only come through opportunity and freedom for people everywhere.”

The JFK Contrast

Many eyes must have been rolling while listening to Obama attempt to disassociate himself from scandalous behavior that had occurred during his five-plus years as president. And his stab at soaring rhetoric fell far short of the mark set by President John F. Kennedy when he gave possibly his greatest speech at American University on June 10, 1963, declaring:

“What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.”

Kennedy recognized that his appeal for this serious pursuit of peace would be dismissed by the cynics and the warmongers as unrealistic and even dangerous. The Cold War was near its peak when Kennedy spoke. But he was determined to change the frame of the foreign policy debate, away from the endless bravado of militarism:

“I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. …

“Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”

And then, in arguably the most important words that he ever spoke, Kennedy said, “For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”

In his day, Kennedy also faced powerful war hawks who sought to constrain his vision of an international system that recognized the legitimate interests of other nations and their peoples. But Kennedy still deployed his rhetoric bravely to smash the narrow framework of Cold War reductionism.

By contrast, Obama accepted the tiny frame as shaped by Official Washington’s still powerful neocons; he simply tried to maneuver for a little more elbow room.

Terror in Ukraine forces left organisation Borotba underground – interview with Sergei Kirichuk, 29 05 14

Sergei Kirichuk is a leading member of the Ukrainian socialist movement "Borotba" (Struggle). Borotba has the distinction of opposing former president Yanukovych, petty-bourgeois Ukrainian and Russian nationalism and the Right-Wing force that constitutes the current Kiev 'government'. He describes the character of Left and also nationalist forces in the crisis in Ukraine.  In response to organizing against the post-coup Kiev powers Borotba members have been targeted by right-wing terror and police repression. Kiev propagandists have described Kirichuk as one of the leaders of the "separatists", and extreme right wing Ukranian nationalists have included ​​his name in the list of "enemies of the Ukrainian nation." 

Below is the English translation of an interview Kirichuk gave to the Russian publication Freedom Press 12th May 2014.

source: http://bit.ly/1kl6j7J                                                            

“SP”: Sergei, last winter all the television channels of the world were broadcasting the thousands-strong protests in Kiev. It looked very impressive. Why did “Borotba” not join the protest movement then?

From the beginning we did not have any illusions about the political character of that movement. Despite the fact that many thousands of people took to the streets, “Borotba” had never forgotten that even mass action can take place under reactionary flags. Back then we explained to a lot of people, including European comrades, that the neo-Nazis are a very, very important part of that movement. Many people have been saying that this is not such a big problem since the Nazis are not that numerous and they only constitute a minority. But it was an active and organised minority. A minority which had been forcing its own agenda on the rest of the movement.

And those leftists who attempted to take part in that movement have started to suffer attacks on the Maidan, from day one. When people from the Trotskyist organisation “Left Opposition” came out with social (not socialist, but social) demands, they suffered an attack straight way. They were mixed with dirt [slandered] and told that they stand for Gulags, totalitarianism, etc.

The Maidan as a movement never put forward any social demands. It never set the task of redistribution of national wealth in favour of the middle class or the poorest layers.

However, some of our comrades tried to take part in the Maidan. For instance, the Levin brothers came out on Kreshchatik, a street neighbouring the Maidan, and gave out trade union leaflets, spoke out in favour of the development of the workers’ movement. No red flags, no socialist agitation. As a result, Anatoliy Levin had a rib broken, and Denis got sprayed with gas. So from the start it was clear to us what kind of movement this is.

“SP”: Tell us, what is your native language? Do you come from the west or the east of the country?

Many people know that I come from the Western part of the country, my parents are from Volhynia, and my native language is Ukrainian. And I can say with confidence that very many Ukrainians even in the country’s West are sympathetic with the struggle of the South-East. There are very many people discontented with the regime in the west too, but people are simply afraid to voice their opinion and stay silent because of the atmosphere of terror that reigns over there. At the same time, they look with hope at what is happening in the South-East, at that struggle. And in the South-East Ukrainian-speaking citizens too have taken part in the protest movement. To reduce it to ethnic, cultural or national factors is completely wrong.
“SP”: What is your opinion of the former president Yanukovich? Is he your ally?

Everyone knows (including our friends from Europe, who visited us and witnessed our struggle against Yanukovich) that we criticised Yanukovich very sharply and have always fought against his regime. But of course we did from positions that are completely different from those voiced by the Maidan. We stood for a socialist turn in Ukraine, against that monstrous oligarchic regime which Yanukovich had created.

It is also worth pointing out that Yanukovich was a very pro-Western politician. He was trying to please the West in everything that he did. His only mistake, from the point of view of the West, was that he requested a 6-month postponement of the signing of the agreement regarding the zone of free trade with the EU. It was after this that the protest movement known as the Maidan had sparked off.
“SP”: What is wrong with the current Kiev government? Why are you not trying to establish a dialogue with it?

The thing is that the self-proclaimed government is not at all ready to have any kind of dialogue. The only arguments that they use are force and arms. It so happened that the movement in the South-East has repeated the road of the Maidan from start to finish. It began with small demonstrations, and then they grew to be bigger and more massive. No dialogue with the government could have been had at the time, for it was completely deaf to the demands of the South-East. And these demands have been simple and understandable to any person – that is, wide autonomy for the region, recognition of its social, linguistic, cultural rights, removal of the oligarchy from power. But the Kiev regime provocatively appointed the richest people as governors of the South-Eastern regions. And then, just like at the Maidan, people began occupying administrative buildings to express their protest. But when the Special Forces were thrown against them, they started to go underground, thereby starting this partisan [guerrilla] war.

“SP”: What should be the reaction of democratic Europe, civil society, democratic parties to what is happening in Ukraine?

Two days ago I said at the Bundestag that they need to exert pressure on their governments in order to bring Kiev to reason. This bloody terror, this “counter-terrorist operation” needs to be stopped, for they are simply shooting unarmed people.

Our Western colleagues from left parties cannot put pressure on the media, but at least they are capable of informing the public of what is really going on in Ukraine, of giving an independent assessment of the events, demanding the respect of elementary human rights and liberties in Ukraine. It is a very simple programme.
“SP”: As a general rule, Western media characterises the protests in the South-East of Ukraine as a movement inspired and supported by Russia. How true is this?

This mad hysteria, of course, is not true. Here in the South-East, people are fighting for their socio-economic rights. There is a very strong anti-oligarchic, anti-capitalist component in these protests. Kiev’s media describe all activity of the opposition, all protests as the doing of Putin’s agents. And they consider everyone to be Putin’s agents. If you take part in mass demonstrations for socio-economic rights – you are an agent of Putin. If some politician in the European Parliament or in a national parliament of a European country allows himself to make some critical remarks about the Kiev regime, they are declared an agent of Putin straight away. Moreover, even if some neo-Nazis in Kiev commit an armed robbery or attack peaceful people, they too are declared Putin’s agents who are just creating a scene for Russian television. Thus, whatever unpleasant or uncomfortable happens to the Kiev government, “Putin’s agents” are invariably responsible. It is because, in their opinion, he controls just about everything – in Ukraine, in Europe, and everywhere else.
“SP”: Is there any financing from Moscow?

No. The movement in the South-East is incomparable to the Maidan in terms of its technical and financial endowment and support. Victoria Nuland said that the US spent $5bn on promotion of democracy in Ukraine. And in the East of Ukraine you can see that the protest movement lacks powerful financial backing. At any rate, in those cities where we were active – in Kharkov and Odessa, I did not see any financial backing from Russia or Putin’s administration. And on the political landscape there appears to be no one who would help and finance the movement.

“SP”: You are often labelled separatists or “pro-Russian activists”. What is your opinion of the idea of the South-Eastern regions of the country joining Russia?

The “Borotba” movement has always stood for territorial integrity of Ukraine, but only for such territorial integrity which would respect the rights of the people of the South-East. We are talking here about budget, social and cultural autonomy. But, unfortunately, the Kiev regime makes every effort to tear the country apart. All the time they make various scandalous decisions, declare anyone who is against them a separatist. In our opinion, the real separatists are the Kiev government. They have unfolded a struggle against the people.

Denying the idea of federalisation of the county, the oligarchs, for instance, are creating their own private armies. Thus, they are going down the feudal path, where every suzerain had their own detachments. They are creating these formations with non-transparent sources of financial backing, and without any kind of civic control over these armed formations whatsoever. That is, by going against federalisation, they are standing for feudalisation of the country.

If there was no oligarchic regime in Russia, if there were, if not socialist, then at least social reforms in Russia, which would correspond with the interests of wide layers of the toilers, then many people in Ukraine would be disposed towards a close union with a Russia like this.

Nevertheless, many Ukrainian citizens are looking at Russia with hope. But here we are talking not even of pro-Russian sentiments, but only about saving one’s own life, stability, peace on the territory of South-Eastern regions.

“SP”: What do you and your comrades think about the Russian president Vladimir Putin? Do you consider him your ally? What do you think about the Russian opposition?

We have always been Putin’s opponents. You are aware that we have close connections with the Russian organisation “Left Front”, which was strongly opposed to president Putin. And we always supported our comrades when they suffered from repression. We protested at the Russian embassy and carried out other solidarity events. We supported the prisoners of the Bolotniy trial [a prominent political trial against certain activists of the 2012 protest movement in Russia, left wing activists among them], helped Russian activists find refuge in Ukraine from political repression. No one can suspect us of being Putin’s allies.

“SP”: Tell us, how does the mass protest movement in the South-East look from the inside? What are its differences and similarities with the Maidan?

Mass events are in the past now, for the Kiev government created such an atmosphere of fear and terror that many people are simply afraid of taking to the streets.  But when people had been coming out on the streets, you could see two major component parts. The first one was the citizens who wanted maximum co-operation and union with Russia. The second component part was anti-capitalist, anti-oligarchic; people who were outraged by the fact that the Kiev government is appointing billionaire oligarchs as governors of the South-Eastern regions and has no intentions whatsoever of carrying out any reforms in the interests of the people.

But even among the so-called pro-Russian component were some very different people. There were those who spoke of historical and cultural commonality with the people of Russia. But there were others, who maintained a very pragmatic vision. These are young workers, engineers, who want to work at technologically advanced enterprises which are currently orientated towards the Russian market. They do not want to turn into “zarobitchan’e” [Ukrainian migrant workers] who are forced to travel around the world looking for employment. 

“SP”: There are many accounts claiming that Russian nationalists took part in the protests in the South-East. Is that true?

I can say that Russian nationalists did take part in these protests, but there were very few of them. And the difference between the participation of nationalists in the protests in the South-East and on the Maidan was in the fact that they were unable to force their own agenda neither in Kharkov, nor in Odessa, and not even in the Donbas. We have made sharp criticisms of Russian nationalists, and they criticised us in turn. But here was a situation where the Left was a stronger, more organised side.

“SP”: In the beginning of May the whole world was shaken by the Odessa tragedy…

I believe that the Odessa massacre is an issue which should be in the centre of European and world politics. The Odessa tragedy is quintessential to what is happening in Ukraine. Many European politicians limit themselves to saying that this, in their words, is a very difficult and complex question. But this is not an answer. It is equally insufficient to say that both sides are guilty, as some Ukrainian media tend to claim.

First of all, it is important to understand that this conflict is not exhausted by the clash of just two parties alone. You see, there were neo-Nazis and football fans, and people who protested the Kiev government. But there was also the police, which is controlled by the Kiev government. So in this conflict there were at least three sides.

Football fans and units of the Maidan self-defence started arriving in Odessa on the 2nd May. They wanted to hold a so-called march for the unity of Ukraine, which had ended in bloodbaths in other cities. This is a very serious question to put to the Kiev government – why did they not stop nationalist demonstrations in these conditions of civil war?

More than two thousand people were gathered to Odessa from different Ukrainian cities. Some of them were armed. And this is another question for the Kiev government – why did they permit such a high concentration of armed people in the city?

An attack on the activists of the march for the unity of Ukraine soon followed. The attackers were some unidentified people in masks and with ribbons made from red tape. They acted with tacit approval of Kiev-controlled police. And so, we should ask – who controls the police? Clearly, not the activists of the anti-government movement…

The opposition camp on the Kulikovo Field [a square in front of the Trade Union Building] consisted mainly of older people, women, peaceful protesters who did not possess any weapons. They found shelter in the Trade Union Building. Neo-Nazis set this building on fire, many were burnt alive, many died having jumped out of windows, and many were finished off once they were on the ground.

Our comrade Andrey Brazhevsky died in the Trade Union Building. He jumped from the third floor of the burning building and survived, but the fascists had beaten him to death with sticks. His mother was there at the time as well. She saw that one of the guys jumped out of a window, saw that the fascists were trying to finish him off. She threw herself on him, covered him with her body and saved him. She did not know that her own son at this exact moment was being beaten by the fascists and that he would die from these beatings.

It is insufficient to state that this was a tragedy. It was a planned, well co-ordinated and planned massacre in the centre of one of Ukraine’s largest cities.
“SP”: On 7th May in Moscow the President of Switzerland and Vladimir Putin announced another plan of de-escalating the situation in Ukraine. Does it have any future?

The Geneva Agreements had a similar content, but it is obvious that the Kiev regime did not have any intention of observing them, and even if it did, it has absolutely no means of doing that. When we talk about disarming all these neo-Nazi gangs, we need to understand that the Kiev government is not in control of most of them and has no loyal forces which would be capable of disarming them. The Kiev government is held hostage by these gangs and cannot do anything about them.
“SP”: What do you think about the upcoming presidential election on 25th May?

We do not recognise this election because it is being carried out by a self-declared government which constantly violates democratic rights and procedures. This government initiated and implemented changes in the law according to which the election will be considered valid even if it takes place at only one polling station. Can you really consider such an approach democratic?

Many times now we have called on candidates to resign from this election. Unfortunately, the CPU [Communist Party] thinks they ought to participate, their candidate is running [Editors note: The candidate of the Communist Party withdrew from the presidential race on 16 May]. But we do not want to take part in this farce.
“SP”: What do you think about the referendums in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions?

Initially we were quite sceptical about these referendums and thought that in order to hold them there needs to be some sort of a stabilisation of the situation. But today, in conditions of violence and terror, we take an understanding approach towards the people who held and took part in the referendums. The republics that have been proclaimed in the Donbas are not a result of some moves by Putin, but a direct result of the Kiev government’s actions, which surpasses the worst examples of fascist propaganda in its lies and cynicism.
“SP”: What mistakes have you made in your political struggle?

The “Borotba” movement, which always orientated towards mass mobilisation of the working class and the youth, had believed that we had several years of relative democracy ahead of us, that there will be such conditions in which, one way or another, the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of the press would be respected. Unfortunately, this calculation turned out to be mistaken. We turned out to be unprepared for direct terror. Perhaps it is our mistake that we found ourselves unarmed in these conditions. Our organisation is de facto currently being crushed throughout the country. Open repressions against the forces of the Left have begun in the past few days.  Our office in Kharkov was attacked by unidentified people in black uniforms who have confiscated everything – red flags, loudspeakers and megaphones, a projector, all our agitation. Work of the organisation in the city is blocked. We have information in Odessa that arrest of the local leader of “Borotba” Alexei Albu is being prepared; he is mayoral candidate in the city and was forced to leave Odessa. In Kiev, the flat of Andriy Manchuk, who is the most well-known left journalist in Ukraine, was searched – some assault rifle-wielding people burst into his home. Overall, we are in a complete state of illegality. Some of our comrades temporarily left Ukraine. Those who remain live in illegality, and we have asked them to refrain from any public activity and concentrate on illegal work.

I am currently in Athens myself, where I took part in the conference “European Anti-Fascist Meeting”. I was not planning to leave Ukraine for long. On 9th May I went to Berlin to participate in a conference in Germany, but there I received information about the possibility of my arrest, and decided to stay here for some time.

The Nazis have compiled lists of “enemies of the Ukrainian nation” and are planning repressions aimed at people from those lists. Almost all “Borotba” activists are on those lists, as well as ordinary people, so hundreds and hundreds are in danger… Now the regime too is compiling its own lists of unreliables, so I think that in the coming months Ukraine will see an atmosphere of Right terror.

But we have to go down this road. We have no other choice.
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Translated by Timur Dautov