Finally, the Gray Lady Paints a Fair Picture of the Ukraine Crisis

I woke this morning to a drunk singing on the street below my apartment. Listening to lugubrious, slurred moans and wails is not the ideal way to begin one's day, but it does seems consistent with what has been in the news the last several months.

The good news this morning is that David Herszenhorn has a story that is probably one of the best things that has been published in the Gray Lady on the Ukrainian crisis. While "In Crimea, Russia Moved to Throw Off the Cloak of Defeat," begins with a denigration of the Russian Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol -- the Cold Warrior information war mode that a regular reader of the New York Times has come to expect -- Herszenhorn unexpectedly changes course and presents a helpful, if still biased, appraisal of the East-West trade war in the Ukraine that led to the putsch, which was followed by Russia claiming Crimea:

“For 23 years after 1991, Russia has been treated consciously or subconsciously as defeated in the Cold War,” said Dmitry Kosyrev, a writer and political commentator with the RIA Novosti news agency in Moscow. “Russia has not accepted this mentality. We have something to say. We have not only interest, but experience. We are not a defeated country in the Cold War; we are something separate like India, like China.” 

Mr. Kosyrev added, “Not talking to us, not accepting our point of view, that’s exactly what brought Europe and the United States to the crisis in Ukraine.”

*** 

The contest for influence in Ukraine, long torn between Russia and the West, stretches back much further than last autumn. It is part of a wider tug-of-war that the West had dominated since the fall of the Soviet Union, drawing into Europe’s fold not just former Eastern bloc nations like Poland and Bulgaria, but the ex-Soviet republics — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — in the Baltics. 

Mr. Putin and many Russians believe that the Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev had received assurances that the NATO alliance would not extend beyond a reunited Germany. They consider it a betrayal that NATO now includes the Baltics, reaching Russia’s borders — a point that Mr. Putin stressed in his speech announcing the annexation of Crimea.

***

In the case of Ukraine, Mr. Putin had been waging a battle for months to prevent Mr. Yanukovych from signing accords with the European Union,wielding a mix of threatened trade sanctions and the enticements of fiscal aid— precisely the economic tools that the West views as the preferred way to conduct geopolitical combat in the 21st century.

Last summer, Russia blocked Ukrainian imports at the border for stepped-up customs inspections, and issued a series of threats of debilitating trade sanctions. Mr. Putin personally conveyed those threats to Mr. Yanukovych, who ultimately told European leaders he could not sign the accords. In the contest for Ukraine, Mr. Putin thought he had won with soft power. 

After protests broke out in Kiev in late November, and Western leaders moved aggressively to revive the political and trade agreements, Mr. Putin once again reached into his economic arsenal, offering Ukraine $15 billion in credit assistance along with discounts on Russian natural gas. By his view, the West had refused to accept Russia’s fair victory. 

While it appears much of the protests in Kiev were organic, fueled by genuine public outrage against Mr. Yanukovych that grew in response to police brutality, Mr. Putin and the state-controlled Russian media portrayed the uprising as fomented and sponsored by the West.

What Herszenhorn chooses not to mention here is the famous "Fuck the EU" hacked phone call between Nuland and Pyatt where the two U.S. officials discuss their collusion with Ukrainian opposition politicians to topple the elected Yanukovych government. It's hard to dismiss this phone call as Russian paranoia, as it is Nuland's statement that the U.S. has spent $5 billion promoting "democracy" in Ukraine.

But Herszenhorn finishes his piece quoting a former Bush I and Clinton official, Andrew Weiss, that leaves no doubt that Europe instigated the current mess:

Andrew S. Weiss, who worked on Russia issues in the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and the elder George Bush and is now vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Mr. Putin’s actions were logical, even if not compatible with Western interests, in seeking to destabilize Ukraine rather than allowing it to fall into Europe’s sphere of influence. 

“There is a very straight line rational strategy at work here,” Mr. Weiss said. 

Mr. Weiss also said that Europe repeatedly refused to hear Russia’s concerns, effectively forcing a conflict by insisting the trade deal with Europe was incompatible with joining Russia’s customs union, a trade bloc it formed with Belarus and Kazakhstan. Europe also resisted three-way talks with Russia and Ukraine. 

“In some ways the E.U. has taken maximalist positions with the Russians and acted as if they were surprised that Russia took offense or got angry,” Mr. Weiss said.

So with Russia read out of the G-8 by the G-7, and with the bluff of further sanctions in abeyance pending Russian moves into eastern Ukraine, we should be entering a period of relative quiet. Except I think that the putsch government cannot stand peace and quiet because what it represents -- IMF austerity, increased militarism -- is anathema to the citizens of Ukraine. So I would expect some sort of provocation, some form of loud bang, a diversion, to keep eyes off the necessarily unpopular, undemocratic moves that have to made. This should go on for some time because Ukraine is in bad shape.