Kiev Junta Makes Sham of OSCE Talks. Expect More of the Same.

Based on its reporting of the last few days, a shift appears to be underway at the New York Times. No longer is there complete unquestioned fealty to the Obama administration line that everything bad currently happening in Ukraine is due to Russian aggression against a peaceful democratic people yearning to be free of that evil Rasputin Putin.

Take this morning's story by David Herszenhorn, "Talks on Ukraine Crisis Open in Kiev Without Representation for Separatists." Herszenhorn makes clear that the Kiev junta is not bargaining in good faith:

Senior Ukrainian officials and leading public figures opened talks here on Wednesday that they portrayed as an effort to end the country’s six-month-old political crisis, but the provisional Ukrainian government offered little compromise and there was no one present directly representing the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. 

Officials said the negotiating effort would continue with a session on Saturday in the embattled eastern city of Donetsk. 

Pro-Russian leaders in the east reacted dismissively, saying they were not invited to participate in the so-called round-table talks, while officials connected to the region who did attend urged the government to develop concrete proposals that could be presented at the next meeting. 

Oleksandr Yefremov, a member of Parliament from Luhansk, urged the provisional government to put forward solid initiatives. “I really would like to see all the officials who are now represented by the acting president and prime minister come to the round table, come with some proposals and not just slogans,” Mr. Yefremov said. “We have to give answers.” 

While some officials from the east, like Mr. Yefremov, attended the talks, the provisional government in Kiev had vowed not to negotiate with the leaders of the masked gunmen, whom they refer to as “terrorists” and “killers.” As a result there were no representatives of the separatist factions, who are crucial to reaching an accord that might resolve the crisis. 

Mr. Yefremov, in his opening remarks, said he expected more of a presence from his region, and he complained that the talks had opened with sharp words by a leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Filaret, blaming Russia for the crisis. 

“I am surprised that nobody is here from Luhansk,” he said, “and I also don’t understand why we start our dialogue with morality.” He added, “We have people who think differently, who have different culture, and we have a responsibility to create a state that corresponds to the needs of our people.”

Herszenhorn quotes Donetsk's junta-appointed governor, oligarch Sergei Taruta, saying the obvious: there is no support for the coup government in the east. The billionaire knows which way the wind blows. He wants to maintain the size of his fortune, something not possible if the junta sticks with its absolutist position:

Sergei A. Taruta, the billionaire governor of Donetsk, another embattled eastern region, also attended the talks, which were held in the Parliament building and featured two former presidents of Ukraine as well as religious leaders. While the negotiations were billed as round-table talks, the table itself was oblong in shape. 

Mr. Taruta warned that there was genuine opposition in the east, known collectively as Donbass. “The majority of Donbass population is for Ukraine’s unity, but at the same time against the current authorities in Kiev,” he said. 

The acting prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, was among the first to speak on Wednesday, and he reiterated a promise to fight graft and urged unity. But he made no particular outreach to the besieged eastern regions where separatist leaders on Sunday held referendums that they said showed broad public support for seceding from Ukraine. 

“To fight corruption and provide people with jobs is our main task,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said. “And that will unite our country.”

Yatsenyuk does nothing without consultation with his U.S. masters. And the U.S. position apparently is -- no surprise here -- to stage-manage a display of "good faith" talks under the auspices of the OSCE, floating phony federalization-lite proposals (what the junta labels "decentralization") that go no further than offering more regional control of tax receipts, all the while terrorizing the civilian population of Donbass with a mercenary-directed Ukrainian national guard and lining up the rubber-stamp acceptance by Europe of the May 25 presidential election.

The United States is not looking for a reasonable solution to the impasse. It wants control of east by Kiev, and short of that it wants war. There is no indication so far of anything else. We'll see how the next round of talks goes. I would assume, based on a turn to more reality-based reporting by the Gray Lady, that the junta will be under pressure to be more inclusive in its public relations, particularly since opinion in Europe is growing more estranged from the putschists. But the U.S. is still running the show. And there is a great deal of arrogance in its conduct. So expect no substantive changes.

Action to Shift East in Ukraine

A lot of rain here since the weekend, which is good. I got home with a wet head and set about preparing dinner. While that was cooking on the stove I watched an excerpt of Putin's statement regarding Ukraine, the situation in Crimea, the putsch in Kiev, etc. I was impressed. The Russian President seemed passionate, alert, focused, sensible, fully engaged. Then I watched Obama's response, which was dismissive, arrogant, evasive, insubstantial, weak. Obama did not engage Putin head on in many of the particulars, for instance the legal status of the putsch parliament in Kiev. Peter Baker summarizes as follows:

“I know President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations,” he said, “but I don’t think that’s fooling anybody.” 

Mr. Obama added that Ukrainians should have the right to determine their own fate. “Mr. Putin can throw a lot of words out there, but the facts on the ground indicate that right now he’s not abiding by that principle,” he said. “There is still the opportunity for Russia to do so, working with the international community to help stabilize the situation.”

So what will Obama say when Crimea votes for independence? He will say it is not a valid vote. But armed insurrections supported by the United States are legitimate democratic expressions of a people yearning to be free. Who does Obama think he is fooling?

I will give this to John Kerry: He can lie like a motherfucker.

The two big developments being trumpeted by the Gray Lady this morning pertain to 1) the Ukrainian aid package being offered by the EU, and 2) what U.S. sanctions are in store for Russia if they don't retreat from the Crimea.

The EU bailout is advertised to be "worth as much as $15 billion over the next two years." Add to that Kerry's offer of $1 billion, and you are still a long way off from the $35 billion Ukraine is said to need over the next two years to avoid default. The IMF auditors are in Kiev taking a look at the books. Twenty billion dollars adds up to a lot of structural adjustment. The game for the West is going to be to somehow obscure the true impact of these cuts prior to any elections. And the only way this can be done, if it can be done at all, is to keep shrieking about the evil Putin and the savage Russian bear. That is why developments in the eastern city of Donetsk bode ill. This is from the Steven Erlanger and Dan Bilefsky Ukrainian aid story linked to above:

In Donetsk, in the east of the country, where Russian speakers predominate, police officers citing a bomb threat evicted hundreds of pro-Russian protesters from a regional parliament building, returning it to Ukrainian police control for the first time since it was seized on Monday. 

Shortly after the protesters were evicted from the building, the Ukrainian flag was restored to the building’s flagstaff and a Russian flag that had flown there since the building’s seizure was removed. 

A police official denied that officers had removed the flag, saying that the police “stay out of politics,” and adding that officers had found an antipersonnel mine in the building but did not know who had put it there. 

The eviction came as Sergey Taruta, a billionaire businessman from the region who was recently appointed as the new governor, arrived in Donetsk Tuesday evening, and appeared to signal that the police and the local government had begun to actively resist pro-Russian activists calling for Donetsk to secede from Ukraine. 

Pavel Gubarev, the leader of the People’s Militia of Donbass, a separatist group, called the police action “a provocation” and said, “there was never any bomb.” He has called for the Donbass region to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. A police official said that a criminal case against Mr. Gubarev was being investigated. 

“Pavel Gubarev will answer before the law,” the official said.

The action will likely shift to the east. Covert U.S.-sponsored mayhem will proceed per usual. Overtly, a mild cocktail of sanctions, as outlined by Peter Baker, will be put into play:

Mr. Obama has authority to take several steps without new legislation from Congress. For starters, under a law called the Magnitsky Act, the State Department has already drafted a list of Russians tied to human rights abuses. The administration could promptly bar them from traveling to the United States, freeze any assets here and cut off their access to American banks.

The president also has the power under existing Syria sanctions to go after Russian individuals and institutions involved in sending arms to help President Bashar al-Assad crush the rebellion there. The administration had held back on such actions while trying to work with Russia to resolve Syria’s civil war, but if applied they could cut off certain Russian banks from the international financial system. 

Mr. Obama could also sign an executive order creating another set of sanctions specifically against Russian officials and organizations blamed for creating instability in Ukraine and violating its sovereignty. In theory, that could include everyone up to Mr. Putin, but officials indicated that they would instead work their way up the chain of command. 

Leaders in Europe, a region dependent on Russian natural gas and with far deeper economic ties to Russia, have expressed reluctance to go along with the toughest sanctions.

Not even Uncle Sam's poodle Tommy supports economic sanctions. No, the game going forward will be an information war coupled with covert action. It is what the United States does. It is a vast state ruled by elites who have no connection whatsoever with the regular workaday world that we ordinary people inhabit. The major political parties no longer have a popular basis in individual communities; they are merely fundraising apparatuses for corporate interests. There are no more "grassroots."

The elite who control the United States Government float above us in a cloud of wealth and privilege; they are disconnected. There is more trouble coming.