The World awaits for the next bad news to come out on the next bad move in Ukraine; there is no better way to sum up the situation. From the onset, the present crisis was a series of understatements at best and untruths more realistically ( i.e. at worst ). There are reasons for the actual mess but these have almost never been heard over the noise of the conceited opinions and that of the polarized news coverage from one side or the other. How could this writer predict for instance ( in repeated posts * ) that Russian troops would be sent in Ukraine while almost all others sources got surprised by the mysterious armed men’s apparition : simply by calling a cat a cat beyond personal preference. As the clock is ticking again on violence, interventions and partition, in short as Ukraine is ripping apart, it is time to come back on that succession of misleading misnomers and assumptions that kept the World from helping solve this crisis. Let’s start by enumerating the facts :
Fact : Euromaidan was a misnomer and illegal. The 2004 civil protests that led to a re-run of the dubious elections “won” by Viktor Yanukovych were called in the Western press : the Orange Revolution. But this is wrong : revolutions are dirty bloody affairs, always, even the best of them. To wit, the French Revolutions that produced a wide spreading of enlightened ideas on humanity as evidenced by its Declaration of Rights being copied by the UN’s Human Rights one cost not only the lives of the King and his family but that of countless revolutionaries that spent the ensuing years of power guillotining each other with a zeal that the best religious conflicts could envy. No violence of importance is attached to the 2004 civic movement in Kiev that attained its goal. By contrast, the Euromaidan movement morphed into a confrontation with authorities aimed at ousting the power but was called protests which was confirmed by the deal brokered by the trio of European Foreign Ministers to stop the crisis being ignored but was called protests. True that Yanukovich had lied first by promising a course of action ( Euro Shift ) in the prior elections that he later abandoned although electoral promises are the most common type of lie in democracy apart from advertising and if every broken one led to a revolution … Said otherwise, police in New York dismantled the much smaller Occupy Wall Street movement after 2 months if you remember even though nary a stone was ever thrown and 200 were arrested including some press and their trials are ongoing ** so how do you think a EuroMaidan would have been dealt with? Granted that two wrongs don’t make a right but this poetic choice of expression by the media allowed Moscow to begin its own propaganda and by coincidence with the Sochi Olympic Games to instill a sense of righteousness and power in Russian public opinion. All of which led to the farce of Vladimir Putin denouncing fascists and the right in the new Kiev government as if he was himself a paragon of socialist virtue, anything but a nationalistic autocrat. Still the truth remains that he only played on these lies up till then.
An accessory duo of lie and omission at that point was that the press refrained from warning the public that Olympics don’t stop wars anymore even if in this case for the glory gaining reason above they delayed an invasion and that it seems most analysts were busy watching bobsleigh or thought you were and forgot to tell you that the Crimean peninsula and Sevastopol Black Sea fleet base were vital for Russia, i.e. to be kept by any means which any geo-political observer worth half its salt has known since the end of the 18th century no less.
Fact : Crimea was invaded and its referendum illegal. Calling the troops that spread over Crimea “mysterious armed men” was wrong. If you watched all sources, some of the troops admitted to being Russian in front of the cameras. Of course, for this to be considered a true fact would have required someone to actually gather proof. This not having been the case, we cannot directly fault Putin with having lied, mind you! But we can still deduce it in retrospect not only by the equipment of these soldiers but from the fact that after the referendum and rejoining Moscow’s embrace, Russian troops dismantled the Ukrainian forces in the peninsula thus proving that these were not the ones “protecting” the place prior to the vote. Said vote was also illegal for other reasons of course but that only compound the imprecision allowed by the “mysterious armed men” phrase. For one, the Crimean parliament was under lock-down by armed militias. But having called the events surrounding EuroMaidan “peaceful protests” in fact restricted any possible outrage at this? Again, two wrongs do not make a right except that sometimes they do. In this case, the consideration is that in past cases, the international community has played with the rules to allow for de facto recognition of secessionist states. And since what is good for the goose is good for the gander and vice versa, it is now too late to do anything about it.
This actually bring up two other disputable interpretation of the truth ( i.e. lies ). One is that as armed men now occupy East Ukraine towns, some media are talking of a possible partition of Ukraine. Wake up, people! Partition of Ukraine has occurred; what else would Crimea’s departure be called? Unless you say further partition, it is a lie again. Another is historical in nature. Russia, the USA and the UK had signed an agreement in 1994 called the Budapest Memorandum promising to respect of the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Again, there are to parts to this document’s implication in the present situation. Since those 3 nations promised not to threaten or use force against the Ukraine’s political and territorial independence, Russia is already culprit of breaking its promise ( i.e. of having lied ). Or is it? Because since we have not clearly identified the “mysterious armed men”, maybe Moscow is not to blame? One could also fault both the UK & the US for not having held their end of the bargain ( i.e. of having lied ). That depends on two factors though.
One- if you consider the sanctions being waged at Russia since the Crimean separation was enacted by law in the Kremlin to be a proper answer then they held their promise … but if not, they lied!
Two- if you understand as explained here :
http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-explainer-budapest-memorandum/25280502.html
that memorandum to be a diplomatic document and not a true treaty in a legally binding sense then it follows that neither the Anglo-Americans nor Moscow can be blamed but it confirms that diplomacy is a constant exchange of useless utterances about courses of action not to be necessarily respected, at best, knavish attempts to fool each other and the opinion, at worst : lies!
The above bring us back to the present situation at last and the on-going Gordian knot of consideration that the reader may hold until events make them fall in either the truth category or the lies bin. Are the city revolts in Slaviansk, Donetsk, Lougansk et al. legal? The truth is : no more or no less than the Kiev uprising. If their weapons come from abroad and they have exterior support, one could contend that they are but then again Moscow kept repeating that the fighters around EuroMaidan if not the movement as a whole were CIA or Western backed and no one answered that contention. Why would they accept any blame now unless proofs are brought to bear. And if no such proofs could be gathered for the identity of the “mysterious armed men” a month ago, do you really think that a gun is going to be seized from the streets of Eastern Ukraine with a sticker of ownership by a Russian general or proclaiming it a gift from Moscow’s Foreign Minister? And if the rebels are all Ukrainian nationals with personal/local equipment, is it not a police affair to disarm them? Except that their acting as militias could warrant a military action but by who’s authority? That of the government back in Kiev?
Except that that government is temporary and will only gain full credit once the Presidential elections in may have been held and ideally followed by legislative ones. Except that if the unrest does not stop, the elections will not be valid over the entire territory of what remains of Ukraine than they were in Crimea. And a fight between an unrecognized power and secessionist elements is in fact a civil war which is pretty much the present state of things in Ukraine, saying the contrary would be tantamount to lying. That in turn brings us back to the fact that a previous lie of Moscow ( propaganda at best ) that Russians were in danger in Ukraine may become true enough to justify broadly an intervention with unmasked official troops this time. But things are so muddled by now that Putin may not even have to go that far. Crimea was urgent for strategic reasons but Eastern Ukraine is not. Besides, if the imprecise set-up we just evoked continues, there may be local referendums held in the interim which the void in factual authority will make difficult to condemn as illegal until their consequences fall under the protection of rights to independence. ***
That’s what you get from lying! Lies engender mistrust and uncertainty. Uncertainty makes one unable to project and plan ahead. And hesitation ensues that quite often cannot be resolved until the worst of consequences follow. To boot, today’s news is a medley of unresolved options :
-Doing nothing :
-Staying put :
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27018199
-Observing and waiting :
http://en.ria.ru/world/20140414/189215396/OSCE-Monitors-Arrive-in-Slaviansk.html
One link each from Ukraine, the West and Russia, mind you!
So what next? Well, the Ukrainian President wisely asked for UN troops to be deployed :
That is an excellent measure, a half and half solution that would calm down the volatile game and spare Ukraine a civil war. The only problem will be to find contributors for such a force. Even if all 5 Security Council biggies refrained from vetoing it / agreed, it is a given that neither Moscow nor any NATO member nation would be considered neutral or acceptable. South-Central America does not really have the manpower and african troops are pretty tied up by their continent’s hotspots.The Middle-East is busy around Syria so … China maybe? They have the means although they’ll need quite a few interpreters ( many chinese soldiers might have russian notions though but likely not Ukrainian ). Still, I can’t wait for that headline : China deploys troops in Eastern Europe! Even under Blue Helmet mandate, who would have thought a few years ago, right? It would still be better than the present mess, of course! Soup of lies, steak of deceit with a side order of violence and military occupation for dessert, what a menu! I wouldn’t recommend Earth for eating out; no wonder we get so few customers and they don’t stay for a nightcap!
So sad because so true and that is no lie! Tay.
Additional reading, this correct piece by the Washington Post includes a list of opinion articles worth checking out for comparative study :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2014/04/13/60e634a8-c31f-11e3-b574-f8748871856a_story.html
* http://definitivelapseofreason.com/2014/03/24/ukraines-armament-casus-belli-for-cold-war-2/
http://definitivelapseofreason.com/2014/03/06/crimeas-referendum-explained-in-5-pretexts/
and the first post -Feb.21- in which I predicted the Crimean invasion that I repeated the next day and until it happened :
http://definitivelapseofreason.com/2014/02/21/agreement-signed-in-kiev-is-ukraine-saved/
http://definitivelapseofreason.com/2014/02/22/fingers-crossed-on-ukraine/
Definitive Lapse of Reason 