C.J. Chivers Plumbs New Propaganda Low

With bluster, propaganda and probably a number of covert operations we don't know anything about yet, the United States continues to play out its weak hand in the Ukraine. On the propaganda front, a new low in is on frontpage display in the Gray Lady today. Written by C.J. Chivers, the author last September of the now debunked "smoking gun" article arguing that azimuth data taken from impact craters "proved" that Syrian government forces launched the August 21 chemical weapons attack on the Ghouta suburb, "A Kiev Question: What Became of the Missing?" takes an issue, post-putsch missing protesters, that even the Maidan group, Euromaidan S O S, tasked with finding the "disappeared" dismisses as much ado about nothing and blows it up into a sort of killing fields whodunnit:

In all, 661 people have been reported missing since protests began last December, according to Euromaidan S O S, a volunteer group leading efforts to find the disappeared. The fates of 272 of them remained unknown late last week. 

Many people were found in prison cells or hospitals, or resurfaced on their own, said Vitaliy Selyk, a Euromaidan S O S coordinator. Some cases were caused by breakdowns in communications, including people who lost cellphones or ran out of credit on SIM cards, he said. 

A few of the missing were people estranged from families and whose recent silence was by choice. Mr. Selyk said he expected that most of the remaining cases would be solved and that the missing would turn up. 

But beneath that hope lies the grim concern that many Ukrainians may have disappeared after being seized by the Berkut riot police unit, by pro-Russian provocateurs or by unofficial forces that worked to keep Mr. Yanukovych in power.

From there C.J. Chivers repeats every dark rumor and every bit of fantastical bloody innuendo he can muster, not to mention re-reporting all the tales of pre-putsch savagery alleged to have been committed by shadowy Russian-speaking allies of the Yanukovych security forces. It is a sorry, sloppy attempt to occlude the story gaining attention in the European press, that, as The Guardian reported last week in a leaked phone conversation between  Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and the EU's Catherine Ashton, "[S]nipers responsible for killing police and civilians in Kiev last month were protest movement provocateurs rather than supporters of then-president Viktor Yanukovych."

Once this story hits the U.S. market, any hope of the Obama administration salvaging even a shred of credibility would seem to be a distant one. The Crimea secession vote is this Sunday. I would imagine that neither the Paet-Ashton conversation nor Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's request for an OSCE investigation into the Maidan snipers will get any play in the U.S. media until the results of the vote are tallied.

And speaking of a vote count, Jonathan Weisman has a story, "House Republicans Balk at Wording in Obama Emergency Aid Package for Ukraine," about difficulties the Obama administration is having getting the money to the putschists. It has to do with a reorganization of the International Monetary Fund that conservative Republicans are unwilling to go along with because of a perception that it would weaken U.S. control of the IMF; there is language in the Ukraine aid bill "that would extend a separate billion-dollar package of loans from the fund to $1.6 billion by expanding loan limits for countries like Ukraine." As with the effort to bomb Syria last summer, Obama is having problems getting a green light from Congress.

How long will Obama maintain his bluff when it is obvious that the hand he holds is a losing one?

How the Snipers on the Maidan Figure in the Kosovo Precedent

The big Ukraine story that the Gray Lady is featuring this Sunday is actually a good one. Written by Peter Baker, "Sovereignty vs. Self-Rule: Crimea Reignites Battle" explores the applicable precedents of the Wilsonian doctrine of self-determination. The one that gets the most ink, and the one that makes Obama's national security public relations man Benjamin Rhodes defensive, is Kosovo. If Kosovo can secede from a democratically elected government why can't Crimea?

Kosovo declared independence in 2008. The United States under George W. Bush recognized it, as did Britain, France and Germany, but Russia adamantly rejected it, as did Spain. The International Court of Justice later ruled that Kosovo’s declaration was legal. 

“We never saw it as setting a precedent, but there were some nations that saw it that way and still do,” said James W. Pardew, who was Mr. Clinton’s special representative for the Balkans.

John B. Bellinger III, who was the top lawyer at the State Department under Bush, said: “We were very careful to emphasize that Kosovo was a unique situation. We were fond of saying it was sui generis — and it did not create a precedent that would likely be replicable anywhere else.” 

That is not how the Kremlin sees it. Ever since, Russia has cited Kosovo to justify support for pro-Moscow separatist republics in places like Georgia, where it went to war in 2008 and recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia over Western objections.

But here is the "money" passage:

“Kosovo is very much a legitimate precedent,” said Dimitri K. Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington research organization, agreeing with Moscow’s argument. “Independence was accomplished despite strong opposition by a legitimate, democratic and basically Western-oriented government of Serbia.” By contrast, he said, the new pro-Western government in Kiev “lacks legitimacy,” since it came to power by toppling a democratically elected president.

The Obama administration maintains that the cases cannot be compared. Serbia, White House officials said, lost its legitimacy and right to rule in Kosovo by its violent crackdown. Despite Russian claims, there has been little, if any, independent evidence of such a campaign against the Russian-speaking population in Crimea. 

“There’s no repression or crimes against humanity that the government in Kiev has committed against the people of Crimea,” Mr. Rhodes said. “There’s no loss of legitimacy.”

But what if the "legitimate" government in Kiev came to power by means of a violent crackdown, a putsch? This is obviously what happened. And it is getting trickier for the Obama administration since a leaked phone call between Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and EU foreign affairs representative Catherine Ashton reveals that the sniper fire that killed both the protesters and police on the Maidan had the same "handwriting," meaning it came from the same snipers.

Why would the snipers, if they were Yanukovych goons, as the Obama administration prefers, gun down police? They wouldn't. Therefore the sniper fire was an act of provocation designed to create mayhem, mayhem used by the putsch leaders and their Western allies to delegitimize the Yanukovych government.

The Guardian ran the story last Wednesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now pressuring the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to investigate. Agence France Presse has the story. Lavrov is making his request because the putsch government refuses to investigate.

I assume the Gray Lady will maintain her blackout of this story for as long as she can, even up to and including the OSCE actually conducting an investigation (maybe then she would assign it a sidebar). In any event, add this sniper issue to the March 16 Crimea vote to align with the Russian Federation (not to mention the enormous funding issues facing the putschists, ably outlined in a story by Steven Erlanger, as well as the political rise of anti-EU-integration Right Sector) and you have a train coming round the bend that is sure to fly off the rails.

Agreement Reached on Mitrovica

Kosovo was in the news again. On Friday Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, "The Snake," former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army, reached agreement with his Serbian counterpart, Prime Minister Ivica Dacic, on the administration of Mitrovica. The EU's Catherine Ashton acted as mediator. Serbia can now begin negotiations on entry into the European Union.

The story, "Serbia and Kosovo Reach Agreement on Power-Sharing," written by Dan Bilefsky, can be found in this past Saturday's paper:

The agreement hinged on how much autonomy Kosovo was willing to cede to Serb municipalities in the north, in return for Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo’s authority in the area. Until now, Serbia has had de facto control over the small Serb-majority area in the north, which does not recognize Kosovo’s authority. 

Tensions have lingered since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after NATO bombs helped push out the forces of the Serbian strongman, Slobodan Milosevic. For Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian Muslim majority, independence was the culmination of a struggle for self-determination after a brutal ethnic civil war with Serbia. 

Kosovo is now recognized by more than 90 countries, including the United States and a majority of nations in the European Union. But five member countries, including Spain and Cyprus, have refused to recognize Kosovo. 

Serbia has also refused to recognize Kosovo, arguing that its declaration of independence breached international law. Serbia’s staunch ally, Russia, has blocked Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, a hurdle to its economic and political progress. 

Under the agreement, municipal bodies in the Serb-majority north will retain autonomy in matters like health care and education. In return, the police and courts will apply the Kosovo central government’s laws. The Serbian municipalities will be able to appoint a regional police chief. 

Petrit Selimi, Kosovo’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, said Kosovo agreed not to deploy its security forces in the Serbian region for an unspecified number of years, except during emergencies like earthquakes. Even in that event, a senior NATO official said, the security forces would need authorization from NATO peacekeepers in Kosovo. 

The accord conspicuously omits any Serbian recognition of Kosovo’s independence. But analysts said the agreement was nevertheless a breakthrough.

For the straight dope on all Balkan matters I strongly suggest reading Nebojsa Malic who appears on Antiwar.com. His writing is clear and his arguments are forceful. There is an inherent bias in mainstream Western media against Serbia.