There was no excuse for Congress’ ignorance of
Ukraine. Here is a guide to help.
Special to Consortium News
At
Wednesday’s debut of the impeachment hearings there was one issue upon which
both sides of the aisle seemed to agree, and it was a comic-book caricature of
reality.
House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff led off the proceedings with this:
“In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that
nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild
a Russian empire…”
Five
years ago, when Ukraine first came into the news, those Americans who thought
Ukraine was an island in the Pacific can perhaps be forgiven. That members of
the House Intelligence Committee don’t know — or pretend not to know — more
accurate information about Ukraine is a scandal, and a consequential one.
As Professor Stephen Cohen
has warned, if the impeachment process does not deal in objective fact, already
high tensions with Russia are likely to become even more dangerous.
So
here is a kind of primer for those who might be interested in some Ukraine
history:
- Late 1700s: Catherine
the Great consolidated her rule; established Russia’s first and only warm-water
naval base in Crimea.
- In 1919, after
the Bolshevik Revolution, Moscow defeated resistance in Ukraine and the
country becomes one of 15 Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR).3
- In 1954, after
Stalin’s death the year before, Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, assumed
power. Pandering to Ukrainian supporters, he unilaterally decreed that
henceforth Crimea would be part of the Ukrainian SSR, not the Russian SSR.
Since all 15 Republics of the USSR were under tight rule from Moscow, the switch
was a distinction without much of a difference — until later, when the
USSR fell apart..
- Nov. 1989: Berlin
wall down.
- Dec. 2-3, 1989: President
George H. W. Bush invites Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to summit talks
in Malta; reassures him “the U.S. will not take advantage” of Soviet
troubles in Eastern Europe. Bush had already been pushing the idea of a
Europe whole and free, from Portugal to Vladivostok.
A Consequential Quid
Pro Quo
- Feb. 7-10, 1990:
Secretary of State James Baker negotiates a quid pro quo; Soviet acceptance of the bitter pill
of a reunited Germany (inside NATO), in return for an oral U.S. promise not to enlarge NATO “one
inch more” to the East.
- Dec. 1991: the
USSR falls apart. Suddenly it does matter that Khrushchev gave Crimea to
the Ukrainian SSR; Moscow and Kyiv work out long-term arrangements for the
Soviet navy to use the naval base at Sevastopol.
- The quid pro quo began to unravel in October 1996 during the last weeks of
President Bill Clinton’s campaign when he said he would welcome Poland,
Hungary and the Czech Republic into NATO — the earlier promise to Moscow
notwithstanding. Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock, who took
part in both the Bush-Gorbachev early-December 1989 summit in Malta and
the Baker-Gorbachev discussions in early February 1990, has said, “The
language used was absolute, including no ‘taking advantage’ by the U.S. …
I don’t see how anybody could view the subsequent expansion of NATO as
anything but ‘taking advantage,’ particularly since, by then, Russia was
hardly a credible threat.” (From 16 members in 1990, NATO has grown to 29
member states — the additional 13 all lie east of Germany.)
- Feb. 1, 2008: Amid
rumors of NATO planning to offer membership to Ukraine, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov warns U.S. Ambassador William Burns that “Nyet
Means Nyet.” Russia will react strongly to any move to bring Ukraine or
Georgia into NATO. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have Burns’s original cable from embassy in
Moscow.
- April 3, 2008: Included
in Final Declaration from NATO summit in Bucharest: “NATO welcomes
Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO.
We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”
- Early September 2013: Putin
helps Obama resist neocon demands to do “shock and awe” on Syria; Russians
persuade President Bashar al-Assad to give up Syrian army chemical weapons
for destruction on a U.S. ship outfitted for chemical weapons destruction.
Neocons are outraged over failing to mousetrap
Obama into attacking Syria.
Meanwhile in Ukraine
- Dec. 2013: In
a speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, Assistant Secretary of State for
European Affairs Victoria Nuland says: “The United States has supported
Ukraine’s European aspirations. … We have invested over $5 billion to
assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and
prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”
- Feb. 4, 2014: Amid
rioting on the Maidan in Kiev, YouTube carries Assistant Secretary of
State Victoria Nuland’s last minute instructions to U.S. Ambassador to
Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt regarding the U.S. pick for new Ukrainian prime
minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (aka “Yats”) and other plans for the imminent coup d’etat
in Kiev. (See: ) When Pyatt expresses concern about EU misgivings
about mounting a coup, Nuland says “Fuck the EU.” She then apologizes to
the EU a day or two later — for the profanity, not for the coup. She also
says that Vice President Joe Biden will help “glue this thing together”,
meaning the coup.
- Feb. 22, 2014: Coup
d’etat in Kyiv; appropriately labeled “the most blatant coup in history”
by George Friedman, then President of the widely respected think-tank
STRATFOR.
- Feb. 23, 2014: The
date that NATO, Western diplomats, and the corporate media have chosen –
disingenuously – as the beginning of recent European history, with silence
about the coup orchestrated in Kyiv the day before. President Vladimir
Putin returns to Moscow from the winter olympics in Sochi; confers with
advisers about Crimea, deciding — unlike Khrushchev in 1954 — to arrange a
plebiscite to let the people of Crimea, most of whom strongly opposed the
coup regime, decide their own future.
- March 16, 2014:
The official result from the voters in Crimea voted overwhelmingly for
independence from Ukraine and to join Russia. Following the referendum,
Crimea declared independence from Ukraine and asked to join the Russian
Federation. On March 18, the Russian Federal Assembly ratified the
incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
- In
the following days, Putin made it immediately (and publicly) clear that
Yatsenyuk’s early statement about Ukraine joining NATO and – even more
important – the U.S./NATO plans to deploy ABM systems around Russia’s
western periphery and in the
Black Sea, were the prime motivating forces behind the post-referendum
re-incorporation of Crimea into Russia.
- No
one with rudimentary knowledge of Russian history should have been
surprised that Moscow would take no chances of letting NATO grab Crimea
and Russia’s only warm-water naval base. The Nuland neocons seized on the
opportunity to accuse Russia of aggression and told obedient European
governments to follow suit. Washington could not persuade its European
allies to impose stringent sanctions on Russia, though, until the downing
of Malaysian Airlines MH17 over Ukraine.
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Airplane Downed; 298 Killed
- July 17, 2014:
MH 17 shot down
- July 20, 2014: Secretary
of State John Kerry told NBC’s David Gregory, “We picked up the imagery of
this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know
the timing. And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared
from the radar.” The U.S., however, has not shared any evidence of this.
- Given
the way U.S. intelligence collectors had been focused, laser-like, on that
part of the Ukrainian-Russian border at that time, it is a near certainty
that the U.S. has highly relevant intelligence regarding what actually
happened and who was most likely responsible. If that intelligence
supported the accusations made by Kerry, it would almost certainly have
been publicized.
- Less
than two weeks after the shoot-down, the Europeans were persuaded to
impose sanctions that hurt their own businesses and economies about as
much as they hurt Russia’s – and far more than they hurt the U.S. There is
no sign that, in succumbing to U.S. pressure, the Europeans mustered the
courage to ask for a peek at the “intelligence” Kerry bragged about on NBC
TV.
- Oct. 27, 2016: Putin speaks at the Valdai International
Discussion Club.
How did the “growing
trust” that Russian President Putin wrote about in his September 11, 2013 New York Times op-ed evaporate?
How
did what Putin called his close “working and personal relationship with
President Obama” change into today’s deep distrust and saber-rattling? A short
three years later after the close collaboration to resolve the Syrian problem
peacefully, Putin spoke of the “feverish” state of international relations and
lamented: “My personal agreements with the President of the United States have
not produced results.” And things have gone downhill from there.
Reprinted with the author’s
permission.
Copyright
© 2019 Ray McGovern, Consortiumnews.com
