[rad-green] Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Cou p in Ukraine

*https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/10/cheering-a-democratic-coup-in-ukraine/*
<https://consortiumnews.com/2019/12/10/cheering-a-democratic-coup-in-ukraine/>

*Consortium News          December 10, 2019*

Cheering a ‘Democratic’ Coup in Ukraine

*There’s been much celebration in U.S. political and media circles over the
violent ouster of Ukraine’s democratically elected president. Nearly
everyone is hailing this putsch and ignoring that it was spurred on by
neo-Nazi militias, Robert Parry reported on Feb. 26, 2014. *

*The revival of some of the worst anti-Russian, Cold War rhetoric has been
heard in the impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill. What hasn’t been heard,
in a bi-partisan cover-up, is talk of the opening act of this political
drama, which started the entire mess in Ukraine, as explained by our
founding editor Robert Parry as the events were still unfolding.*

*By Robert Parry*
*Special to Consortium News*
Feb. 26, 2014

*There was always a measure of hypocrisy but Official Washington used to at
least pretend to stand for “democracy,” rather than taking such obvious
pleasure in destabilizing elected governments, encouraging riots,
overturning constitutional systems and then praising violent putsches.*

But events in Ukraine and Venezuela suggest that the idea of respecting the
results of elections and working within legal, albeit flawed, political
systems is no longer in vogue, unless the “U.S. side” happens to win, of
course. If the “U.S. side” loses, then it’s time for some “shock doctrine.”
And, of course, the usual demonizing of the “enemy” leader.
[image: Logo of Ukraine's extreme right-wing nationalist party, Svoboda.]
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/svoboda-logo.jpg>

Logo of Ukraine’s extreme right-wing nationalist party, Svoboda.

Ukraine’s ousted President Viktor Yanukovych was surely no one’s idea of a
pristine politician, though it looks like there are few to none of those in
Ukraine, a country essentially controlled by a collection of billionaire
oligarchs who jockey for power and shift their allegiances among corrupt
politicians.

But Yanukovych was elected in what was regarded as a reasonably fair
election in 2010. Indeed, some international observers called the election
an important step toward establishing an orderly political process in
Ukraine.

But Yanukovych sought to maintain cordial relations with neighboring
Russia, which apparently rubbed American neocons the wrong way. Official
Washington’s still-influential neocons have been livid with Russia’s
President Vladimir Putin because he cooperated with U.S. President Barack
Obama in averting U.S. wars against Iran and Syria.

In both cases, the neocons thought they had maneuvered Obama into
confrontations that could have advanced their long-term strategy of “regime
change” across the Middle East, a process that started in 2003 with the
U.S. invasion of Iraq but stalled with that disastrous war.

However, last year, prospects for more U.S. military interventions in two
other target countries Iran and Syria were looking up, as Israel joined
with Saudi Arabia in stoking regional crises that would give Obama no
choice but to launch American air strikes, against Iran’s nuclear
facilities and against Syrian government targets.

*Putin’s Interference*

That strategy was going swimmingly until Putin helped bring Iran to the
negotiating table over guarantees that its nuclear program would not lead
to a nuclear weapon. Putin also brokered a deal to avert threatened U.S.
air strikes on Syria over disputed evidence regarding who launched a
chemical attack on civilians outside Damascus. Putin got the Syrian
government to agree to eliminate its chemical weapons arsenal.

So, Putin found himself in the center of the neocons’ bulls-eye and given
some of his own unforced errors such as defending Russia’s intolerance
toward gays and spending excessively on the Sochi Olympics he became the
latest “designated villain,” denounced and ridiculed across the
neocon-dominated op-ed pages of the Washington Post and other major news
outlets.

Even NBC, from its treasured spot as the network of the Olympic Games, felt
it had no choice but to denounce
<https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/23/seeing-evil-in-the-new-russia/> Putin
in an extraordinary commentary delivered by anchor Bob Costas. Once the
demonizing ball gets rolling everyone has to join in or risk getting run
over, too.

All of which set the stage for Ukraine. The issue at hand was whether
Yanukovych should accept a closer relationship with the European Union,
which was demanding substantial economic “reforms,” including an austerity
plan dictated by the International Monetary Fund. Yanukovych balked at the
harsh terms and turned to Ukraine’s neighbor Russia, which was offering a
$15 billion loan and was keeping Ukraine’s economy afloat with discounted
natural gas.

Reasonable people can disagree about whether the EU was driving too hard a
bargain or whether Ukraine should undertake such painful economic “reforms”
or how Yanukovych should have balanced the interests of his divided
country, with the east dominated by ethnic Russians and the west leaning
toward Europe.

But protesters from western Ukraine, including far-right nationalists,
sought to turn this policy dispute into a means for overthrowing the
elected government. Police efforts to quell the disturbances turned
violent, with the police not the only culprits. Police faced armed neo-Nazi
storm troopers who attacked with firebombs and other weapons.
[image: Yanukovych with Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2012, Moscow.
(President of Russia)]
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/YanukovychPutin-.jpg>

Yanukovych with Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2012, Moscow. (President
of Russia)

Though the U.S. news media did show scenes of these violent melees, the
U.S. press almost universally blamed Yanukovych and took almost gleeful
pleasure as his elected government collapsed and was replaced by thuggish
right-wing militias “guarding” government buildings.

With Yanukovych and many of his supporters fleeing for their lives, the
opposition parties seized control of parliament and began passing draconian
new laws often unanimously, as neo-Nazi thugs patrolled the scene.
Amazingly, the U.S. news media treated all this as uplifting, a popular
uprising against a tyrant, not a case of a coup government operating in
collusion with violent extremists.

In the upside-down world that has become the U.S. news media, the
democratically elected president was a dictator and the coup makers who
overthrew the popularly chosen leader were “pro-democracy” activists.

*A Curious History*

There’s also a curious history behind U.S. attitudes toward ethnically
divided Ukraine. During Ronald Reagan’s presidency as he escalated Cold War
tensions with the Soviet Union one of his propaganda services, Radio
Liberty, began broadcasting commentaries into Ukraine from right-wing
exiles.

Some of the commentaries praised Ukrainian nationalists who had sided with
the Nazis in World War II as the SS waged its “final solution” against
European Jews. The propaganda broadcasts provoked outrage from Jewish
organizations, such as B’nai B’rith, and individuals including conservative
academic Richard Pipes.

According to an internal memo dated May 4, 1984, and written by James
Critchlow, a research officer at the Board of International Broadcasting,
which managed *Radio Liberty* and *Radio Free Europe*, one RL broadcast in
particular was viewed as “defending Ukrainians who fought in the ranks of
the SS.”

Critchlow wrote, “An RL Ukrainian broadcast of Feb. 12, 1984 contains
references to the Nazi-oriented Ukrainian-manned SS ‘Galicia’ Division of
World War II which may have damaged RL’s reputation with Soviet listeners.
The memoirs of a German diplomat are quoted in a way that seems to
constitute endorsement by RL of praise for Ukrainian volunteers in the SS
division, which during its existence fought side by side with the Germans
against the Red Army.”

Harvard Professor Pipes, who was an adviser to the Reagan administration,
also inveighed against the RL broadcasts, writing on Dec. 3, 1984 “the
Russian and Ukrainian services of RL have been transmitting this year
blatantly anti-Semitic material to the Soviet Union which may cause the
whole enterprise irreparable harm.”

Though the Reagan administration publicly defended RL against some of the
public criticism, privately some senior officials agreed with the critics,
according to documents in the archives of the Reagan Presidential Library
in Simi Valley, California. For instance, in a Jan. 4, 1985, memo, Walter
Raymond Jr., a top official on the National Security Council, told his
boss, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, that “I would believe
much of what Dick [Pipes] says is right.”

This three-decade-old dispute over U.S.-sponsored radio broadcasts
underscores the troubling political reality of Ukraine, which straddles a
dividing line between people with cultural ties oriented toward the West
and those with a cultural heritage more attuned to Russia. Though the
capital Kiev sits in a region dominated by the western Ukrainians, the
Russian-allied Ukrainians represent most of the population, explaining
Yanukovych’s electoral victory.

*Loving a Putsch*

Now, right-wing militias, representing those historical resentments toward
the Russians and hostility toward the Jews, have seized control of many
government buildings in Kiev. Faced with this intimidation, the
often-unanimous decisions by the remaining legislators would normally be
viewed with extreme skepticism, including their demands for the capture and
likely execution of Yanukovych.
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Euromaidan_in_Kiev_2014-02-19_12-06-scaled.jpg>

Maidan uprising, 2014. (Wikipedia)

But the U.S. press corps can’t get beyond its demonization of Putin and
Yanukovych. The neocon *Washington Post* has been almost euphoric over the
coup, as expressed in a Feb. 24 editorial:

“Ukraine has shaken off its corrupt president and the immediate prospect of
domination by Russia, but at the risk of further conflict. The decision by
Viktor Yanukovych to flee Kiev over the weekend triggered the
disintegration of his administration and prompted parliament to replace him
and schedule elections for May.

“The moves were democratic, members of Mr. Yanukovych’s party joined in the
parliamentary votes, but they had the effect of nullifying an accord
between the former government and opposition that had been brokered by the
European Union and tacitly supported by Russia.

“Kiev is now controlled by pro-Western parties that say they will implement
the association agreement with the European Union that Mr. Yanukovych
turned away from three months ago, triggering the political crisis.

“There remain two big threats to this positive outcome. One is that
Ukraine’s finances will collapse in the absence of a bailout from Russia or
the West. The other is that the country will split along geographic lines
as Russian speakers in the east of the country, perhaps supported by
Moscow, reject the new political order.”

The *Post* continued, “What’s not clear is whether Mr. Putin would accept a
Ukraine that is not under the Kremlin’s thumb. The first indications are
not good: Though Mr. Putin has been publicly silent about Ukraine since
Friday, the rhetoric emanating from his government has been angry and
belligerent. A foreign ministry statement Monday alleged that ‘a course has
been set to use dictatorial and sometimes terrorist methods to suppress
dissenters in various regions.’”

So, *The Washington Post*’s editors consider the violent overthrow of a
democratically elected president to be “democratic” and take comfort in
“democratic” actions by a legislature, despite the curious lack of any no
votes and the fact that this balloting has occurred under the watchful eye
of neo-Nazi storm troopers patrolling government offices. And, according to
the Post, the Russian government is unhinged to detect “dictatorial and
sometimes terrorist methods.”
<https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Euromaidan_in_Kiev_2014-02-19_10-22-scaled.jpg>

Maidan, 2014

*The New York Times* editorial page was only slightly less celebratory,
proclaiming: “The venal president of Ukraine is on the run and the
bloodshed has stopped, but it is far too early to celebrate or to claim
that the West has ‘won’ or that Russia has ‘lost.’ One incontrovertible
lesson from the events in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, is that the deeply
divided country will have to contend with dangerous problems that could
reverberate beyond its borders.”

There has been, of course, a long and inglorious history of the U.S.
government supporting the overthrow of elected governments: Mossadegh in
Iran in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Allende in Chile in 1973,
Aristide in Haiti twice, Chavez in Venezuela briefly in 2002, Zelaya in
Honduras in 2009, Morsi in Egypt in 2013, and others. After Yanukovych, the
next target of these U.S.-embraced “democratic” coups looks to be Nicolas
Maduro of Venezuela.

In these cases, it is typical for the mainstream U.S. news media to obsess
over perceived flaws in the ousted leaders. On Wednesday, for instance, *The
New York Times* made much of an unfinished presidential palace
<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/26/world/europe/an-unfinished-ukraine-palace-and-a-fugitive-leaders-folly.html?hp>
in
Ukraine, calling it “a fugitive leader’s folly.” The idea seems to be to
cement in the minds of impressionable Americans that it is okay for the
U.S. government to support the overthrow of democratically elected
presidents if they have flaws.

The outcomes for the people of these countries that are “saved” from their
imperfect leaders, however, often tend to be quite ugly. Usually, they
experience long periods of brutal repression at the hands of dictators, but
that typically happens outside the frame of the U.S. news media’s focus or
interest. Those unhappy countries fade from view almost as quickly as they
were thrust to center stage, next to the demonization of their elected
leaders.

[For more on Ukraine, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons and the Ukraine Coup
<https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/23/neocons-and-the-ukraine-coup/>.”]

*The late investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. He
founded Consortium News in 1995 was its editor until his death in 2018.*

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