Revolution in Ukraine: Western-engineered Coup d'État?

[Laura]

So! I can't wait to see what happens next.

Me too! This is better than a soap opera!

Meanwhile, CNN Propaganda Machine is cranking it out:

With 50 percent of the votes counted, preliminary results show 95.5% of voters in Crimea want to become part of Russia, Crimean Electoral Commission head Mikhail Malyshev announced.

The European Union on Sunday repeated its "strong condemnation" of the referendum. The White House also rejected the vote, saying in a statement that it was "administered under threats of violence and intimidation from a Russian military intervention that violates international law." {Yeah, right. That's very weak sauce.}

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a statement Saturday that Crimea's referendum conforms to international law.

Read the developing story here. _http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/16/world/europe/ukraine-crisis/index.html

 

[Renaissance]

well, there's this:

http://www.sott.net/article/275700-US-backs-off-Ukraine-promotes-Russian-demands

U.S. backs off Ukraine, promotes Russian demands

There was another phone call today between Secretary of State Kerry and the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. The call came after a strategy meeting on Ukraine in the White House. During the call Kerry agreed to Russian demands for a federalization of the Ukraine in which the federal states will have a strong autonomy against a neutralized central government. Putin had offered this "off-ramp" from the escalation and Obama has taken it.

The Russian announcement:

Lavrov, Kerry agree to work on constitutional reform in Ukraine

(Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed on Sunday to seek a solution to crisis in Ukraine by pushing for constitutional reforms there, the Russian foreign ministry said. It did not go into details on the kind of reforms needed except to say they should come "in a generally acceptable form and while taking into the account the interests of all regions of Ukraine".
...
"Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry agreed to continue work to find a resolution on Ukraine through a speedy launch of constitutional reform with the support of international community," the ministry said in a statement.

The idea of a "constitutional reform" is from the Russians documented in a Russian "non-paper".

It describes the process of getting to a new Ukrainian constitution and sets some parameters for it. The Russian language will be again official language next to the Ukrainian, the regions will have high autonomy, there will be no interferences in church affairs and the Ukraine will stay politically and militarily neutral. Any autonomy decision by the Crimea would be accepted. This would all be guaranteed by a "Support Group for Ukraine" consisting of the US, EU and Russia and would be cemented in an UN Security Council resolution.

It seems that Kerry and Obama have largely accepted these parameters. They are now, of course, selling this solution as their own which is, as the "non-paper" proves, not the reality.

Here is Kerry suddenly "urging Russia" to accept the things Russia had demanded and which Kerry had earlier never mentioned:

Secretary of State John Kerry called on Moscow to return its troops in Crimea to their bases, pull back forces from the Ukraine border, halt incitement in eastern Ukraine and support the political reforms in Ukraine that would protect ethnic Russians, Russian speakers and others in the former Soviet Republic that Russia says it is concerned about.

In a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, their second since unsuccessful face-to-face talks on Friday in London, Kerry urged Russia "to support efforts by Ukrainians across the spectrum to address power sharing and decentralization through a constitutional reform process that is broadly inclusive and protects the rights of minorities," the State Department said.

As it looks now Obama has given up. The U.S. plot to snatch the Ukraine from Russia and to integrate it into NATO and the EU seems to have failed. Russia taking Crimea and having 93% of the voters there agree to join Russia has made the main objective of the U.S. plans, to kick the Russians out of Sevastopol and thereby out of the Middle East, impossible.

The Russian (non public) threat to also immediately take the eastern and southern provinces from the Ukraine has pushed the U.S. into agreeing to the Russian conditions mentioned above. The only alternative to that would be a military confrontation which the U.S. and Europeans are not willing to risk. Despite the anti-Russian campaign in the media a majority of U.S. people as well as EU folks are against any such confrontation. The U.S. never held the cards it needed to win this game.

Should all go well and a new Ukrainian constitution fit the Russian conditions the "west" may well be allowed to pay for the monthly bills Gazprom will keep sending to Kiev.

It will take some time to implement all of this. What dirty tricks will the neocons in Washington now try to prevent this outcome?

 

[Gawan]

So! I can't wait to see what happens next.

As far as I read some Westerners have a meeting tomorrow.

Now things are going to get very interesting. Russia will annex Crimea, the new Ukranian government and the west will protest much, but if they do nothing apart from protesting, they will look like the bunch of fools they are. My guess is Obama and Co. will seek to impose some limited economic sanctions on Russia and make a big show of it. But if Russia and China retaliate with similar or tougher measures, which they can do hard (and both have already threatened to do so), then that might be the much anticipated push into the final global economic collapse. For example, they can drop the dollar, stop buying US bonds, stop selling gas to Europe or increase their prices, etc, making the dominoes fall.

I agree, I wondered the whole time if it gets suddenly pretty cold in Europa and Russia closes the gas pipelines than we do have a real problem, beside the industry. I still remember two years back in winter, that many people were concerned cause of gas shortages from Russia and some schools and baths closed.

 

[Aithin Tusa Fein]

If that happens, then who knows what the west will do next, seeing that they will be losing their place at the top. I'd like to think that being rational, even if pathologically selfish, their reason will tell them that escalating into an actual shooting war with the east would be a very bad idea, even for their own interests. But then again, this is my assumption that they have some capability for rationality remaining at that point. World wars have happened in the past after all... Hopefully they just tell us they are very very upset and shocked and leave it at that.

So! I can't wait to see what happens next.

Personally, right now from where I sit, I don't see much happening apart from symbolic gestures. Americans do not have the will for another war, unless the media can really get them worked up, which they're not yet. The most are worried about jobs and the economy and not foreign policy. Obama has come off as weak and many don't want to fight a war under him anyway because they think he would lose. Aside from that many Southerners actually support the Crimean secession. Imagine that. Republicans and Democrats are spreading on the 'we must act to save freedom' pretty thick, but I'm not seeing any real enthusiasm outside TV-land.

ADDED: At the most that I can see is that the rhetoric may cause the administration to support finishing the Keystone Pipeline in order to allow the US export energy to Europe allowing them to sanction Russia without losing energy supply. But even then it would take the US awhile to increase its exports. I don't know if the public's attention span will wait that long.

 

[Cosmos]

Obama to Putin: U.S. and EU Will Punish Russia for Ukraine Vote as soon as Monday and the vote "would never be recognized" by the United States and its allies as a legitimate way of determining the political status of the Ukrainian region:

_http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/obama-putin-u-s-will-punish-russia-ukraine-vote-n54136

President Obama warned Vladimir Putin of "additional costs" for Russia after a weekend referendum to separate Crimea from the Ukraine went forward.

In a phone call between the leaders on Sunday, Obama told the Russian president that the U.S. and its allies were "prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions."

And the U.S. signaled it could act as soon as Monday to impose sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea, and for conducting the referendum while occupying troops were in place. The referendum to break Crimea away from Ukraine and make it a part of Russia reportedly passed overwhelmingly although the U.S. and other Western nations have rejected the legitimacy of the vote.

"President Obama reiterated that a diplomatic resolution cannot be achieved while Russian military forces continue their incursions into Ukrainian territory and that the large-scale Russian military exercises on Ukraine’s borders only exacerbate the tension," the White House further said of Obama's conversation with Putin.

Obama was defiant about the Crimean vote, saying the vote would "would never be recognized" by the United States and its allies as a legitimate way of determining the political status of the Ukrainian region.

White House press secretary Jay Carney called the referendum, against which Obama had previously warned, "dangerous and destabilizing" for the Ukraine and much of region. Another top aide to Obama further said observers could "expect sanctions designations in the coming days" during an appearance earlier on Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Obama has phoned his Russian counterpart several times throughout the crisis in Ukraine, none of the calls prompting either leader to yield much to the other's position.

 

[Cosmos]

This whole soap opera reminds me of what was stated in the paper "The Hazard to Civilization from Fireballs and Comets" which was addressed to the European Office of Aerospace Research and development, dated June 4, 1996:

"We do not need the celestial threat to disguise Cold War intentions; rather we need the Cold War to disguise celestial intentions!"

http://www.sott.net/article/146792-The-Hazard-to-Civilization-from-Fireballs-and-Comets

Maybe that is what that all is really about? A new cold war in which anything that is hitting the earth can be blamed on humans on either side of the "new cold war" line and possibly create a new hot war if needed at any time, if things out there get to much out of hand?

 

[Anthony]

People have a choice, but if that choice doesn't coincide with what
the elites want then forget about it - it's violation of the international laws
or some other nonsense. I mean, they can't really do anything now
with 95% of the people approving of the referendum - unless they want
to expose their patological version of the so-called democracy.

Check mate for Russia?

http://www.sott.net/article/275700-US-backs-off-Ukraine-promotes-Russian-demands

 

[Laura]

People have a choice, but if that choice doesn't coincide with what
the elites want then forget about it - it's violation of the international laws
or some other nonsense. I mean, they can't really do anything now
with 95% of the people approving of the referendum - unless they want
to expose their patological version of the so-called democracy.

Check mate for Russia?

http://www.sott.net/article/275700-US-backs-off-Ukraine-promotes-Russian-demands

Yeah. US trying to save face now. They know checkmate is inevitable, so they knock over their king.

 

[Laura]

CNN Propaganda machine has to tell the truth sometimes:

An overwhelming 96.7% of Crimea residents voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia, according to final results of Sunday's referendum. Mikhail Malyshev, the head of the Crimean Election Commission, announced the results in a news conference Monday. While he did not say 100% of the ballots had been counted, he did say, "The committee's work is done." The turnout was 83.1%: 1,274,096 of eligible voters cast their ballots.

 

[Keit]

What is interesting, that if US and EU haven't started with their machinations and manipulations in Ukraine, all the people in Crimea would probably continue to live as they did, without rising up or voicing their opinions in an outward manner. But since the whole issue has exploded, so has Crimea people's desire "to go home". That's what I found so amazing, that even inspectors were shocked by the overwhelming reaction of the Crimea population. They finally have a chance "to go home", and that's an extremely strong sentiment and quite symbolic. US with their games have nothing to go against that. Maybe that's what C's meant (among other things) when said that they will get a reaction different from what they have anticipated?

 

[Gawan]

What is interesting, that if US and EU haven't started with their machinations and manipulations in Ukraine, all the people in Crimea would probably continue to live as they did, without rising up or voicing their opinions in an outward manner.

This is what I also thought in the last days about Crimea and especially about the EU and USA, that without there and especially covert actions no such referendum would be needed. And imo it is also a remarkable signal to Russia and the universe.

 

[Keit]

Stupid is as stupid does:

From NYT news alert.

_http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/world/europe/us-imposes-new-sanctions-on-russian-officials.html?emc=edit_na_20140317&nlid=68377642
U.S. Imposes New Sanctions on Russian Officials
The United States, working in coordination with Europe, imposed new sanctions on prominent Russian officials on Monday as the showdown over Ukraine reached a new stage of confrontation between East and West.

President Obama signed an executive order freezing the assets and banning visas for a number of Russians deemed to be responsible for the seizing of Crimea or otherwise interfering with Ukrainian sovereignty. Among those targeted were several officials in President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle, and the White House threatened to go after more if Russia did not back down.[...]

Among those targeted were Vladislav Surkov, one of Mr. Putin’s most influential advisers, known as the Kremlin’s “gray cardinal”; Sergei Glazyev, an economist who has been advising Mr. Putin on Ukraine; Valentina Matviyenko, chairman of the Federation Council, the upper house of Parliament; and Dmitry Rogozin, a deputy prime minister. No sanctions were placed on Mr. Putin.

Mr. Obama told Mr. Putin in a telephone call on Sunday that the referendum “violates the Ukrainian Constitution and occurred under duress of Russian military intervention” and “would never be recognized by the United States and the international community.” He continued to stress, however, that “there remains a clear path for resolving this crisis diplomatically.”

 

[Gawan]

Similar message as Keit.

Beside in an article from Reuters:

The Ukrainian parliament on Monday endorsed a presidential decree for a partial military mobilization to call up 40,000 reservists to counter Russia' military actions.

_http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/17/us-ukraine-crisis-idUSBREA1Q1E820140317

 

[Laura]

Mr. Obama told Mr. Putin in a telephone call on Sunday that the referendum “violates the Ukrainian Constitution and occurred under duress of Russian military intervention” and “would never be recognized by the United States and the international community.”

What part of invading and overturning the leaders of a whole slew of countries around the world that the US has done over the years, is NOT a violation of their laws and/or constitutions? And what about trying and executing lawful leaders of different countries? What part of that is not against international law?

Geezus! Obama really is a psychopath if he is saying this crap from his own head.

 

[angelburst29]

Pro-Russian oligarch arrested —first sign of US sanctions on Russia?
_http://intelnews.org/2014/03/17/01-1438/

March 17, 2014 by Ian Allen
A well-connected Ukrainian oligarch, who is considered one of Russia’s most trusted energy sales intermediaries, has been arrested in Austria at the request of the United States. Some speculate that this may be a first direct sign of America’s response to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. In an article published last week, The Washington Post suggested that the arrest of Dmytro Firtash, a citizen of Ukraine, may be “the beginning of a US effort to inflict financial pain on Russia over its role in the Ukrainian crisis” Firtash’s lucrative business activities are inextricably tied to Gazprom, the world’s largest extractor of natural gas and one of the most powerful corporations in existence. The company, whose activities typically account for around 10 percent of Russia’s annual gross domestic product, is one of Moscow’s primary exporters of energy and among its most important sources of foreign revenue. Throughout the last decade, Firtash’s company, RosUkrEnergo, acted as the primary mediator between Gazprom and Naftohaz, Ukraine’s national oil and gas company.

Last Wednesday, a statement from the Ukrainian government in Kiev confirmed that the man identified only as “Dmytro F., 48” in a laconic Austrian police report was indeed Dmytro Firtash. Austrian media reported that the oligarch was arrested in Vienna “at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation”, and that the charges against him stem “from a 2006 deal in India”. No further information has been released. The Ukrainian government told The Washington Post that it had not sought Firtash’s arrest. Meanwhile, the Kremlin refused to comment on the case, as Russian officials are waiting to see whether the Austrian authorities will extradite Firtash to the US to stand trial. The Post opined that, if the Austrians grant Washington’s extradition request, “the Kremlin will be sure to object”.