U.S. Full-Court Press Against Russia Covers Kiev's Weakness

The newspaper today is loaded with stories pertaining to Russia and the Ukraine. The place to begin is not with the front page "bombshell," written by government mule Michael Gordon, on alleged Russian violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) Treaty. That story has been waiting on the back burner for the U.S. to serve up at the appropriate time.

The appropriate time is now. Along with a ruling by a panel in The Hague awarding $50 billion to shareholders of Yukos oil company for its seizure by the Russian government, and the new raft of sanctions being debated and implemented today in Brussels, the U.S. assertion that Russia is in violation of the INF is part of a full-court press. And our question should be why now.

I have an answer. The answer is the junta in Kiev is in trouble. The inherent instability in the coup coalition of Svoboda/Right Sector Nazis and Fatherland neoliberal predators was made manifest last week when putsch prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk tendered his resignation, paving the way for new elections this fall. The clock is ticking. The Donbass uprising has to be put down in the next few months in order for the Kiev junta to begin implementing the IMF reforms; otherwise, Kiev will run out of money.

But the current junta offensive is not going well, despite assurances from Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the junta's fascist security council. Let's turn to Andrew Kramer and David Herszenhorn, "Officials Pull Back From Crash Site as the Army Puts Pressure on Rebels":

Fighting raged farther east along the highway as well, overnight and through the day. Outside Shakhty-20, a coal mining town on the road, a photographer who was passing through Monday morning saw the scorched hulks of Ukrainian armored personnel carriers in the road, and the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers lying about. 

The Ukrainian offensive was intensive enough that the separatists’ military commander — a Russian citizen who uses the name Igor Strelkov, or Igor the Shooter — held a news conference on Monday to deny rumors that he had fled the city or that important positions had fallen.

“Everywhere, the fight was tough,” he said. “They attacked from the north and the south. As a result of the fierce fighting, most of the advance was pushed back.”

The Malaysian airliner was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on July 17 when it fell from the sky over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. Ukrainian and American officials say that a Russian-made surface-to-air missile fired from territory held by separatist rebels brought the jetliner down. The Kremlin and the rebels say the Ukrainian government was responsible for the crash.

Asked at the news conference if he had shot down the plane, Mr. Strelkov said that he would not have known how, even though he once served as a guard in an air defense unit. He also denied that his forces had the type of missile the United States says brought down the plane. “I did not have under my command any Buk systems, so I could not have ordered them to shoot at the airplane of Malaysia Airlines,” he said. “My subordinates did not do it.” 

In Kiev, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the government’s security council, said the Ukrainian offensive had made gains, capturing a hilltop World War II monument complex that rebels have used for weeks as a stronghold. The claim could not be independently verified. In Donetsk, Mr. Strelkov said the site had not fallen.

The polite way the Gray Lady has devised for the serial mendacity of Lysenko and other junta representatives is to mention that the claims could not be independently verified.

But to return to the line of thought that I was pursuing, the offensive is not meeting with resounding success. Add to that the shift in the narrative that has taken place over the last week and is still ongoing as to who is at fault for bringing MH17 down. The week following the July 17 crash of the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet it was a foregone conclusion that the Novorossiyan militia, operating with Russian technical guidance, was to blame. That has shifted, with the unanswered questions piling up and the Kiev/U.S. case falling flat. So that now whenever MH17 is mentioned the standard form is to say that on the one hand Kiev/U.S. blames the rebels, while on the other the rebels/Russia blame the junta. For a sample of why Kiev/U.S. are running scared on the MH17, look at Lavrov's forceful statement:

In Moscow on Monday, the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, repeated a Russian call for the United States to make public whatever proof it has that Flight 17 was brought down by a missile fired from rebel-controlled territory. “We do not understand why the Americans, who say that they have strong evidence to support their accusation, why they do not show that evidence,” he said at a news conference. 

Mr. Lavrov also said that the United Nations should guarantee security at the crash site, and he called on Ukraine to respect a United Nations Security Council resolution adopted on July 21 asking all parties to refrain from any action that would complicate the investigation.

The last paragraph refers to the agreement to cease hostilities within a 24-mile radius of the wreckage site. The junta is in direct violation of the UNSC resolution due to its offensive. So when serial liar Lysenko says "[W]e have information that terrorists from time to time are shelling the plane crash area, in particular from mortars and artillery, in order to destroy all possible evidence,” he is really talking about the junta.

Sabrina Tavernise and Noah Sneider report from Donetsk in "Enmity and Civilian Toll Rise in Ukraine While Attention Is Diverted" another reason for the big PR roll out by the United States. Kiev is losing the "hearts and mind" war. Even spook-infested Human Rights Watch is accusing the junta of war crimes:

In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch documented four instances of the use of unguided Grad rockets, which killed at least 16 civilians in and around Donetsk in nine days. While both rebels and Ukrainian forces use the rockets — descendants of World War II-era weapons — the investigation “strongly indicates that Ukrainian government forces were responsible” for the four attacks. 

“Using these kinds of weapons in populated areas is a violation of the laws of war,” said Ole Solvang, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “International allies of the Ukrainian government — the United States, the European Union — should condemn this use and urge the government to stop.”

The junta's indiscriminate shelling in the urban centers of Luhansk and Donetsk, backed up by HRW, has given Russia all the justification it needs to rationalize an invasion of Ukraine for humanitarian purposes. All Russia need do is invoke the Kosovo precedent.

The U.S. is on shaky ground. That is the big picture. And true to form the U.S. is covering up its wobbliness with a lot of noise and bluster. It is a shame to see Europe bamboozled into placing more sanctions on Russia. The capital markets ban of Russian banks accessing medium- and long-term loans will no doubt hurt, but I don't think it is an existential threat. The dual-use machinery ban, depending on what gets placed on the black list, could be extremely damaging. Dual-use sanctions are what drove Iraq into poverty and caused the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children, eliciting the famous Madeleine Albright quote, "We think the price is worth it."

Already reservations are being voiced that this could drive Russia into more bellicose behavior, manifesting the very outcome that U.S.-led sanctions are designed to avoid. But for the United States the goal has not been the territorial integrity of Ukraine or peace and harmony. For the Unites States the goal all along has been to reestablish the Cold War, to rebuild a wall between Europe and Russia.