What we're told about (the overthrow) bears only the sketchiest relationship with reality (Guardian) [View all]

[newthinking]

Note that this writer essentially predicted what happened
"The Ukrainian faultline has the potential to draw in outside powers and lead to a strategic clash."


In Ukraine, fascists, oligarchs and western expansion are at the heart of the crisis
From The Guardian

The story we're told about the protests gripping Kiev bears only the sketchiest relationship with reality

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/29/ukraine-fascists-oligarchs-eu-nato-expansion


"The Ukrainian faultline has the potential to draw in outside powers and lead to a strategic clash."

We've been here before. For the past couple of months street protests in Ukraine have been played out through the western media according to a well-rehearsed script. Pro-democracy campaigners are battling an authoritarian government. The demonstrators are demanding the right to be part of the European Union. But Russia's president Vladimir Putin has vetoed their chance of freedom and prosperity.

It's a story we've heard in one form or another again and again – not least in Ukraine's western-backed Orange revolution a decade ago. But it bears only the sketchiest relationship to reality. EU membership has never been – and very likely never will be – on offer to Ukraine. As in Egypt last year, the president that the protesters want to force out was elected in a poll judged fair by international observers. And many of those on the streets aren't very keen on democracy at all.

You'd never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings. One of the three main opposition parties heading the campaign is the hard-right antisemitic Svoboda, whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok claims that a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" controls Ukraine. But US senator John McCain was happy to share a platform with him in Kiev last month. The party, now running the city of Lviv, led a 15,000-strong torchlit march earlier this month in memory of the Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose forces fought with the Nazis in the second world war and took part in massacres of Jews.