Ukraine is Going to Get Even Messier

As another week comes to an end and Washington and Moscow are still jousting over Ukraine, the best statement, a statement that properly encapsulates what we are witnessing in this new Cold War, comes from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' rebuttal to the embarrassingly weak “President Putin’s Fiction: 10 False Claims About Ukraine” put out by the U.S. State Department on Wednesday:

“They cannot get over it and come to terms with the fact that they cannot always dictate their will and act in their customary role of ‘infallible judge,’ which is followed by — the last word,” it said. “Their nerves are giving out, but that is no reason to thrust guilt on the innocent.”

It is just going to get worse for the United States. Crimea will vote in nine days to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, and there is nothing the United States can do about it. And this is driving the smart set at Great Satan HQ batty. Obama, in what is becoming regular ritualized performances of "The Emperor Has No Clothes," steps before the cameras and denounces the Crimean vote as a violation of international law. “Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government of Ukraine.”

And therein lies the problem for the U.S./EU: the insistence that a government that came to power by means of a violent insurrection in Kiev spearheaded by fascists from western Ukraine is legitimately democratic, while an autonomous jurisdiction that is historically Russian seeking to realign with the Russian Federation by plebiscite is illegal, unconstitutional and anti-democratic. Obama's statement is risible.

One would hope that the Cold Warriors in the State Department would cut their losses now and end this charade, but don't count on it. I don't think that they are going to let the Crimea vote come off unimpeded. Whether through overt saber rattling by sending more U.S. fighter jets to the region or more war ships to the Black Sea, or a covert campaign of destabilization using Right Sector shock troops, as was done during the February putsch, I don't know. But as of now I think that some form military escalation is likely.

Take the news, reported today in "Moscow Signals It Will Embrace Crimean Move for Secession," by Steven Lee Myers, David Herszenhorn and Alan Cowell, that DmytroYarosh, the head of the fascist organization Right Sector, plans to re-brand his group and run for president:

In Kiev, the leader of the Right Sector movement, Dmytro Yarosh, will run for president of Ukraine, the chairman of the local branch of the movement, Andriy Tarasenko, said on Friday. The nationalist group, which was important in the fight for Kiev’s Independence Square, will rename itself at a congress in a week and participate in elections at all levels, Mr. Tarasenko said. 

Right Sector has been controversial for its semi-military organization, but it has also refrained from working in eastern Ukraine, where its presence could be seen as a provocation by Russia. But Mr. Tarasenko said that the group is prepared to fight, in Crimea and elsewhere, “if the Kremlin tramples on us further.” He added, “Accordingly, we are conducting mobilization and are preparing to repel foreign aggression.”

This is bad news for the West. Not only does it expose the lie that far right ultranationalists were a negligible part of the uprising against Yanukovych, it means that the putsch government might have great difficulty implementing the IMF austerity mandates coming their way. Right Sector, according to a decent, dispassionate appraisal by Emmanuel Dreyfus, "Who Was in Kiev’s Independence Square?," that appears in the weekend edition on the Counterpunch web site, is to the right of Svoboda, another Banderist political construct, and does not support integrating with the European Union:

The biggest, Pravy Sektor (right sector), emerged after the Grushevsky Street clashes and, for the moment, enjoys real popular support. It has a few thousand members across the country, including people disappointed by Svoboda, members of ultra-nationalist groups, hooligans and dropouts. Their common denominator is a taste for radical action, and for the ideology that one of the movement’s leaders, Andrei Tarassenko, dispensed from its high-security headquarters on the fifth floor of Trade Union House, on Independence Square. Pravy Sektor defines itself as “neither xenophobic nor anti-Semitic, as Kremlin propaganda claims” and above all as “nationalist, defending the values of white, Christian Europe against the loss of the nation and deregionalisation”. Like Svoboda, it rejects multiculturalism, as “responsible for the disappearance of the crucifix and the arrival of girls in burqas in your schools”, but it does not advocate joining the EU, which it describes as “liberal totalitarianism in which God has vanished and values are turned upside down”.

Pravy Sektor supports none of the opposition parties, especially not Svoboda, disappointed by its “appeals for calm and negotiation with the authorities”. It could contemplate becoming a party itself, which would be awkward for Svoboda’s Tyahnybok: besides seeing his reputation as an anti-system champion seriously dented by his appeals for moderation during the clashes, he would have to come to terms with a party even further to the right, whose feats of arms and determination are known. 

Svoboda’s success over the past few years and the presence of neo-fascist groups such as Pravy Sektor in Independence Square are signs of a crisis in Ukrainian society. It is first and foremost a crisis of identity: in 22 years of independence, Ukraine has not managed to develop an unbiased historical narrative presenting a positive view of all its regions and citizens: even today, the Ukrainians are seen as liberators in Galicia but as fascists in Donbass. It is also a political crisis: some Ukrainians, exasperated and disappointed with the Orange Revolution, have turned to voting for extremist parties, more out of pique than for real ideological reasons. Though Independence Square will go down in history as an extraordinary example of collective and popular action, the political outcome is as yet unclear. Ukraine is in need of a new force that truly serves the people and transcends its many social and political divides.

Ukraine is going to get even messier. The United States has made a terrible blunder and there is no indication that any remedy is in the works.