Obama "Deeply Impressed" by Billionaire Oligarch Poroshenko

Today is the day that Obama officially takes ownership of the Ukrainian coup. Meeting with president-elect Petro Poroshenko, Obama announced the delivery of $5 million worth of "non-lethal" military sundries while praising the Ukrainian leader, a billionaire chocolate king and founding father of Ukraine's political status quo, as, according to Peter Baker's account, "In Show of Support, Obama Meets With Ukraine Leader," someone who " '[U]nderstands the aspirations and hopes of the Ukrainian people' and represents a better future for his country."

“I have been deeply impressed by his vision,” Mr. Obama told reporters at the end of the 70-minute session. “The United States is absolutely committed to standing behind the Ukrainian people, not just in the coming days and weeks but in the coming years.”

To get a sense of that vision all one need do is scan Poroshenko's Wikipedia entry. Poroshenko owes his obscene wealth to the privatization of state-owned assets. This is a man who helped create the Party of Regions and then went on to finance the 2004 Orange Revolution. Poroshenko served as Viktor Yuschenko's foreign minister.

Absorbing Poroshenko's curriculum vitae, one comes away with an appreciation for the age-old wisdom of "divide and conquer." Sow divisions in the body politic, and then reap the rewards. This is how politics is practiced in the United States; this is the essence of the neoliberal paradigm; and it is what Poroshenko will attempt to formalize in Ukraine.

It is going to be a very hard sell. The Obama administration is sticking to the script that Poroshenko represents a people-power movement against an oppressive, blood-thirsty, corrupt authoritarian power structure. Here is how he put it in Warsaw:

“The Ukrainians of today are the heirs of Solidarity — men and women like you who dared to challenge a bankrupt regime,” Mr. Obama told a crowd in Castle Square under overcast skies. “When your peaceful protests were met with an iron fist, Poles placed flowers in the shipyard gate. Today, Ukrainians honor their fallen with flowers in Independence Square.”

This imagery is hard to square with the reality of Ukrainian fighter jets raining missiles down on the leafy city streets in Donbass. As Sabrina Tavernise reports this morning from Luhansk:

In Luhansk, mourners were occupied Wednesday with burying the victims of an airstrike two days earlier. More than 100 stood in a crowded cemetery by the grave of Alexander Gizai, a respected community leader who was killed in the strike. The death of Mr. Gizai, who ran a local youth club, has angered residents.

U.S. policymakers, as usual, proceed as if reality does not matter. The policy is all important. And the policy here is to absorb Ukraine into the Eurozone and eventually into NATO.

But many hurdles stand in the way. First is the obvious. Showering a population with bombs does not create allegiance. It creates enemies. Donbass is lost to Kiev. Each day that passes with more violence this becomes obvious. But apparently not to the Obama administration.

Next are the ongoing energy negotiations with Gazprom. Russia seems at this point to be playing along with Kiev. We'll see. These negotiations are the thing to watch to gauge Russia commitment to Novorossiya. An agreement is supposed to be finalized by June 9.

Finally, there is the deep problem of implementing U.S.-backed, IMF-prescribed austerity when there is no political consensus or stability in Ukraine, and when Europe itself is undergoing an electoral realignment and turning away from the EU.