Thank you for the heads-up on Bulgaria, uawchild. The military alliance seems to be encircling an enemy that it has helped bring back from the grave - the USSR. We need it to justify all the wars that help prop up a faux democracy that only serves plutocrats. If policies were.left to the people, peace would break out.

It's Becoming Apparent
Ukraine: The Truth
by GARY LEUPP
CounterPunch, APRIL 14, 2015
Reuters headline, April 9: Ukraine sets sights on joining NATO.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty headline, April 9: Far-Right Leader Names Ukrainian Military Adviser.
Moscows official line on Ukraineand it should not be dismissed just because thats what it isis that the U.S. has spent about $ 5 billion backing regime change in that sad, bankrupt country, ultimately resulting in a coup detat (or putsch) in Kiev in February 2014 in which neo-fascists played a key role. The coup occurred because the U.S. State Department and Pentagon hoped to replace the democratically elected administration with one that would push for Ukraines entry into NATO, a military alliance designed from its inception in 1949 to challenge Russia. The ultimate intent was to evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet from the bases its maintained on the Crimean Peninsula for over 230 years.
Personally, I believe this interpretation is basically true, and that any rational person should recognize that its true. Victoria Nuland, the neocon thug who serves as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and is the key official shaping U.S. Ukraine policy, openly admitted to an international business conference on Ukraine in December 2013 that Washington had invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine achieve [the development of democratic institutions] and other goals.
She repeated this assertion in an CNN interview, and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has proudly reiterated it as well on cable news. The unspoken goal was Ukraines membership in NATO.
(Imagine if a top-ranking official in the Russian Foreign Ministry were to boast of a $ 5 billion Russian investment in undermining the Mexican or Canadian government, with an aim towards incorporating one of those countries into an expanding military alliance. John McCain and Fox News would be demanding the immediate nuking of Moscow.)
SNIP...
The U.S. has military personnel stationed in about 130 countries in the worldthat is, in two-thirds of the countries who are members of the UN. In contrast, Russia has military forces stationed in, by my count, ten foreign countries, eight of them on its borders. And yet the U.S. press and political class depict Russia and specifically its president Vladimir Putin, a threatening juggernaut. (Just as they once did Saddam Hussein, that lame creature demonized asas the warmongers always do, before attacking and destroying hima new Hitler.)
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/14/ukraine-the-truth/