U.S. Worried About May 25 Ukrainian Presidential Election

How many times since the February putsch have high-level U.S. officials made the trip to Kiev to fete the putschists? It is hard to count. Senator John McCain alone has made multiple trips, as has Secretary of State John Kerry. Then there was CIA Director John Brennan's visit shortly before the putschists' debacle of a military campaign in the east. Today it is VP Joe Biden's turn to pay tribute. Andrew Higgins and Alan Cowell have the story this morning, "Biden Urges Ukrainian Leaders to Fight ‘Cancer of Corruption’ ":

Mr. Biden’s remarks, during a visit designed to show high-level backing from the United States, came a day after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, accused the government in Kiev of flagrantly violating the international accord reached last week seeking to defuse the crisis in eastern Ukraine. Mr. Lavrov’s remarks were taken as a sign that Russia may be further preparing the groundwork for a military intervention. 

The Kremlin regards the interim authorities as a product of a Western-backed coup that seized power in late February after months of protests.

Mr. Biden met on Tuesday with the acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, and scheduled meetings with other officials. He will leave late Tuesday for Washington, a day after he arrived.

According to news reports, Mr. Biden told Ukrainian leaders that they had an opportunity to generate a united Ukraine, and that the United States stood ready to help end their dependence on Russian energy supplies, although the process would take time. 

He said that Kiev faced “humiliating threats” and daunting problems and, according to Reuters, described the presidential election scheduled for May 25 as the most important in the country’s history.

At this point there can be no mistake that the current putsch government of Ukraine is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the United States. This should never have been in doubt from the moment Victoria Nuland's "Fuck the E.U." telephone call was publicized. But events have been racing at a fast pace and sometimes it is hard to keep the truth in focus.

And the truth is Ukraine has been a long-sought prize of U.S. geopolitical strategists and power brokers, and they are not going to let it fall from their grasp even if this plumb turns out to be completely rotten and infested with maggots -- as it certainly is.

One of the immediate concerns of the United States is the legitimacy of the putschist May 25 presidential election:

Mr. Biden also warned Russia on Tuesday that “it’s time to stop talking and start acting” to reduce tension in Ukraine, The Associated Press reported. He announced that Washington would provide a further $50 million to promote political and economic change, including $11 million to be spent on voter education, administration and oversight of the May 25 ballot. 

So far the putsch government in Kiev has not been able to convincingly display that it has control over the country, whether east, west or south. Right Sector goon squads are seemingly the only way the putschists can project power outside the capital. This is not the formula for a free and fair national election. Biden's announcement of aid earmarked for the election shows that there is a concern that if the putschists manage to bungle next month's ballot no amount of Western-supplied propaganda will be able to confer the thinnest patina of legitimacy on an illegitimate, anti-democratic junta.

As for Neil MacFarquhar's frontpage "Under Russia, Life in Crimea Grows Chaotic," it is nothing more than a litany of everyday aggravations residents of a jurisdiction that has recently switched nationalities will have to endure for a while: passports are difficult to secure, as apparently are yogurt, Big Macs and methadone; but no one is being gunned down by neo-Nazis or raped in the street.