There is much that is unusual about this story. For one, it is infrequent that a story occupies the upper-left column -- the premiere slot -- on The New York Times homepage for the entire day. Usually there is some sort of rotation. So that it is a "tell" right there. Readers are being told to pay attention.
Then there is that headline: "Ukraine Leader Was Defeated Even Before He Was Ousted." What is this supposed to mean?
In line with the U.S. State Department, the Gray Lady insists that what happened in Kiev last year was not a coup; rather, it was a mass uprising by young, tech-savvy urban professionals and babushka ladies, a democratic convergence, a spontaneous plebiscite, wholly legitimate, that the venal Yanukovych abdicated to when he fled Ukraine. In this fantastical retelling, the Right Sector neo-Nazi shock troops that did the street fighting and sent Yanukovych scurrying for his life are merely fringe figures. Higgins and Kramer are reprising this narrative slightly to include the collaboration of people within Yanukovych's own government:
Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster to what it portrays as a violent, “neo-fascist” coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular uprising. The Kremlin has cited this assertion, along with historical ties, as the main justification for its annexation of Crimea in March and its subsequent support for an armed revolt by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s industrial heartland in the east.
Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin’s line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, questions remain about how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely.
An investigation by The New York Times into the final hours of Mr. Yanukovych’s rule — based on interviews with prominent players, including former commanders of the Berkut riot police and other security units, telephone records and other documents — shows that the president was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone else.Higgins and Kramer, reporting last year from Kiev during the coup, placed heavy emphasis on the looting of an armory in Lviv in hastening the demise of Yanukovych. In that story from last February, "As His Fortunes Fell in Ukraine, a President Clung to Illusions," Higgins and Kramer note the role of a mysterious deputy interior minister in ordering the Yanukovych security forces to stand down and vacate the city:
Using a member of Parliament as an intermediary, Mr. Levus [deputy head of the Maidan “self-defense” forces] opened a line of communication with a deputy interior minister, whom he declined to name. It appeared that Mr. Yanukovych, perhaps sensing that his security forces were reluctant to press the crackdown, was inclined to turn to the army for help. He had fired the armed forces chief of staff, Col. Gen. Volodymyr Zamana, on Monday.
“We understood they had a few hundred fanatical riot police, but the rest of the police would not fight,” Mr. Levus said.
Several street fighters who were on the barricades early Thursday morning said that they saw police officers walking away from their positions, and that this emboldened them. Some protesters fired hunting rifles and shotguns. Police lines crumpled.
“Our people are ideologically motivated, and on the contrary, they were demoralized,” Mr. Levus said. “They did not want this fight. And he understood that our people were ready to run against gunfire.”
Mr. Levus said he received a call on his cellphone around noon on Thursday from the deputy interior minister. “I told him, ‘We will guarantee the safety of the police if they leave the city,’ ” he said.
The deputy minister agreed first to a cease-fire until 3 p.m., when Parliament was set to meet. With support from some members of Mr. Yanukovych’s quickly disintegrating Party of Regions, Parliament voted to support the protesters’ demand that the police demobilize.In their report yesterday, Higgins and Kramer name the deputy interior minister, Viktor Dubovik, who played the critical role in the coup, ordering security forces to leave Kiev
Security forces were also thrown into a panic by rumors, fanned by the protesters themselves, about the whereabouts of hundreds of guns seized on the night of Feb. 18 in Lviv, a bastion of pro-European fervor 300 miles west of Kiev near the Polish border. The weapons were said to be on their way to Kiev to add to an already growing arsenal of hunting rifles, pistols, Molotov cocktails and metal clubs.
According to the chief of police in Lviv, Dmytro D. Zagariya, around 1,200 weapons, mostly pistols and Kalashnikov rifles, were seized in raids on five district police stations and the headquarters of the Interior Ministry’s western command. Only 300 of these, he said, were recovered by the authorities. He said there was no evidence that any of the missing guns had been used in or even reached Kiev.
Western diplomats in Kiev, including the American ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt, also heard about the guns grabbed in Lviv and worried that, if brought to Kiev, they would turn what had begun as a peaceful protest movement that enjoyed wide sympathy in the West into an armed insurrection that would quickly lose this good will.
As the foreign ministers of Germany and Poland and a senior French diplomat met Mr. Yanukovych to negotiate a truce on the evening of Thursday, Feb. 20, at the presidential offices, Mr. Pyatt and several European envoys met at the German Embassy with Andriy Parubiy, the chief of the protesters’ security forces, and told him to keep the Lviv guns away from Kiev.
“We told him: ‘Don’t let these guns come to Kiev. If they come, that will change the whole situation,’ ” Mr. Pyatt recalled telling Mr. Parubiy, who turned up for the meeting wearing a black balaclava.
In a recent interview in Kiev, Mr. Parubiy denied that the guns taken in Lviv ever got to Kiev, but added that the prospect that they might have provided a powerful lever to pressure both Mr. Yanukovych’s camp and Western governments.
“I warned them that if Western governments did not take firmer action against Yanukovych, the whole process could gain a very threatening dimension,” he said.
Andriy Tereschenko, a Berkut commander from Donetsk who was holed up with his men in the Cabinet Ministry, the government headquarters in Kiev, said that 16 of his men had already been shot on Feb. 18 and that he was terrified by the rumors of an armory of automatic weapons on its way from Lviv.
“It was already an armed uprising, and it was going to get worse,” he said. “We understood why the weapons were taken, to bring them to Kiev.”
Around 2 p.m. that Friday, just as European diplomats were gathering for the signing ceremony at the nearby presidential administration building, Mr. Tereschenko received a call from a deputy interior minister, Viktor Dubovik, with an order to leave the city. Mr. Dubovik, he said, put him in touch with the opposition lawmaker Mr. Pashinsky, who escorted the Berkut commander and his 60 or so men to the edge of town, from where they drove overnight by bus to Donetsk.
Mr. Dubovik, who the authorities say has since fled Ukraine, could not be located for comment.
Mr. Pashinsky estimated that in all, he arranged escorts out of the city for more than 5,000 officers from the riot police, Interior Ministry forces and other security units, like the special operations unit, Alfa. He said Mr. Dubovik was just one of the officials he worked with on the mass evacuation, but added that he did not know where the order to retreat had originated.
Giving Up on a Leader
Inna Bogolovskaya, a longtime ally of Mr. Yanukovych who broke with him over his November decision not to sign the trade deal with the European Union, said the retreat was merely a response to a resolution adopted late Thursday that week by the Ukrainian Parliament that ordered all Interior Ministry troops and police officers to return to their barracks.
Ms. Bogolovskaya said that the Thursday night vote sent an emphatic message to Mr. Yanukovych and his last backers that Parliament, dominated by the governing Party of Regions and previously a bastion of loyal support, had given up on him.
“This was the moment that Yanukovych realized that he no longer had even Parliament on his side,” she said, adding that the president had no choice after this but to respect its resolution and order security forces off the streets.
But Mykhalo V. Dobkin, a Party of Regions baron who had for years worked closely with Mr. Yanukovych, said the president did not give the order and had no knowledge of it until security forces suddenly vanished.
Mr. Dobkin, who met with Mr. Yanukovych late Friday night after he fled Kiev for the eastern city of Kharkiv, said he spoke with a senior presidential official whom he declined to name and was told that the sudden departure of security forces on Friday afternoon had taken the president and his entourage entirely by surprise.
The official, Mr. Dobkin said, had looked out of his window in the presidential administration building on Friday afternoon and, shocked to see the police “laying down their shields and getting on buses,” rushed to see the president to ask what was going on. Told by Mr. Yanukovych that he had issued no order for a withdrawal, the official, according to Mr. Dobkin, then left the building, never to return.So there you have it. All clearly laid out. Not a mass democratic uprising, but a coup, or putsch, plain and simple. U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt powwowing with neo-Nazi leader Andriy Parubiy on coup strategy, and, when it looked like things were going to get really hot in Kiev, an order is issued by deputy interior minister Viktor Dubovik, without Yanukovych's knowledge, for the security forces to leave the city.
Dubovik was certainly bought off. Why can't he be located by the Higgins and Kramer?
This begs the question, "Why does The New York Times insist in denying the Russian explanation of Yanukovych's ouster when its own reporting basically confirms there was a coup in Kiev last February?"
My guess is that the Gray Lady wants to get out front because things are soon to grow even worse for the junta in Kiev; The New York Times doesn't want to find itself with another Judith Miller "weapons of mas destruction" canard on its hands . Oliver Stone, someone with chops (his 1991 movie JFK led to the creation of the 1992 Assassination Records Act), is working on a documentary that will delve into last year's Kiev coup. Here is Stone's Facebook entry from December 30:
Excuse my absence these past weeks. A combination of overwork, prepping the Snowden movie in Germany & England, a side trip to Moscow, and a devastating head cold have laid me low. Recovering over Christmas in California; winter sun helps.
Interviewed Viktor Yanukovych 4 hours in Moscow for new English language documentary produced by Ukrainians. He was the legitimate President of Ukraine until he suddenly wasn’t on February 22 of this year. Details to follow in the documentary, but it seems clear that the so-called ‘shooters’ who killed 14 police men, wounded some 85, and killed 45 protesting civilians, were outside third party agitators. Many witnesses, including Yanukovych and police officials, believe these foreign elements were introduced by pro-Western factions-- with CIA fingerprints on it.
Remember the Chavez ‘regime change’/coup of 2002 when he was temporarily ousted after pro and anti-Chavez demonstrators were fired upon by mysterious shooters in office buildings. Also resembles similar technique early this year in Venezuela when Maduro’s legally elected Government was almost toppled by violence aimed at anti-Maduro protestors. Create enough chaos, as the CIA did in Iran ‘53, Chile ‘73, and countless other coups, and the legitimate Government can be toppled. It’s America’s soft power technique called ‘Regime Change 101.’
In this case the “Maidan Massacre” was featured in Western media as the result of an unstable, brutal pro-Russian Yanukovych Government. You may recall Yanukovych went along with the February 21 deal with opposition parties and 3 EU foreign minsters to get rid of him by calling for early elections. The next day that deal was meaningless when well-armed, neo-Nazi radicals forced Yanukovych to flee the country with repeated assassination attempts. By the next day, a new pro-Western government was established and immediately recognized by the US (as in the Chavez 2002 coup).
A dirty story through and through, but in the tragic aftermath of this coup, the West has maintained the dominant narrative of “Russia in Crimea” whereas the true narrative is “USA in Ukraine.” The truth is not being aired in the West. It’s a surreal perversion of history that’s going on once again, as in Bush pre-Iraq ‘WMD’ campaign. But I believe the truth will finally come out in the West, I hope, in time to stop further insanity.
For a broader understanding, see Pepe Escobar’s analysis “The new European ‘arc of instability,’” which indicates growing turbulence in 2015, as the US cannot tolerate the idea of any rival economic entity http://bit.ly/1yBmpHa. You might also see “Untold History” Chapter 10 where we discuss the dangers of past Empires which did not allow for the emergence of competing economic countries.The current situation in Kiev is growing more unstable. Sabrina Tavernise, a Gray Lady reporter who was in the Donbass last year, wrote in the Sunday Review section of the paper yesterday ("The Next Battle for Ukraine") that
One immediate problem is cash. The country is running on fumes in terms of hard currency reserves, in part a result of a large payment recently to Russia for its gas debt. Without a substantial cash infusion from the International Monetary Fund, the country is likely to suffer an economic meltdown, with far-reaching consequences for its currency, banking system and its new government’s reputation. Russia’s wobbly finances do not help — about a quarter of Ukraine’s exports go to Russia.
One big test for the new government will be Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch whose PrivatBank, one of the largest commercial banks in the country, is at the center of a murky web of financial transactions, symbolizing much of what is wrong with the Ukrainian banking industry. Taking him on will be complicated: He is a friend of the new government and the revolution that put it there. He is governor of the eastern region of Dnepropetrovsk. He also has his own militia.
The odds are overwhelmingly against the reformers. Change is hard, war is distracting and history is difficult to overcome.
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