Tag Archives: Ukraine

Obama Sidelines Kerry On Ukraine Policy, by Eric Zuesse

From Eric Zuesse, via zerohedge.com:

On May 21st, I headlined “Secretary of State John Kerry v. His Subordinate Victoria Nuland, Regarding Ukraine,” and quoted John Kerry’s May 12th warning to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to cease his repeated threats to invade Crimea and re-invade Donbass, two former regions of Ukraine, which had refused to accept the legitimacy of the new regime that was imposed on Ukraine in violent clashes during February 2014. (These were regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the Ukrainian President who had just been overthrown. They didn’t like him being violently tossed out and replaced by his enemies.)

Kerry said then that, regarding Poroshenko, “we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be.” Also quoted there was Kerry’s subordinate, Victoria Nuland, three days later, saying the exact opposite, that we “reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine.” I noted, then that, “The only person with the power to fire Nuland is actually U.S. President Barack Obama.” However, Obama instead has sided with Nuland on this.

Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, bannered, on June 5th, “Poroshenko: Ukraine Will ‘Do Everything’ To Retake Crimea’,” and reported that, “President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to seek Crimea’s return to Ukrainian rule. … Speaking at a news conference on June 5, … Poroshenko said that ‘every day and every moment, we will do everything to return Crimea to Ukraine.’” Poroshenko was also quoted there as saying, “It is important not to give Russia a chance to break the world’s pro-Ukrainian coalition,” which indirectly insulted Kerry for his having criticized Poroshenko’s warnings that he intended to invade Crimea and Donbass.

Right now, the Minsk II ceasefire has broken down and there are accusations on both sides that the other is to blame. What cannot be denied is that at least three times, on April 30th, then on May 11th, and then on June 5th, Poroshenko has repeatedly promised to invade Crimea, which wasn’t even mentioned in the Minsk II agreement; and that he was also promising to re-invade Donbass, something that is explicitly prohibited in this agreement. Furthermore, America’s President, Barack Obama, did not fire Kerry’s subordinate, Nuland, for her contradicting her boss on this important matter.

How will that be taken in European capitals? Kerry was reaffirming the position of Merkel and Hollande, the key shapers of the Minsk II agreement; and Nuland was nullifying them. Obama now has sided with Nuland on this; it’s a slap in the face to the EU: Poroshenko can continue ignoring Kerry and can blatantly ignore the Minsk II agreement; and Obama tacitly sides with Poroshenko and Nuland, against Kerry.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-07/obama-sidelines-kerry-ukraine-policy

To continue reading: Obama Sidelines Kerry On Ukraine Policy

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Ukraine’s Tragicomedy, by Justin Raimondo

From Justin Raimondo, at antiwar.org:

Remember that “imminent” Russian invasion of Ukraine that was supposed to take place over a year ago? Well, it’s still “imminent”!

President Poroshenko has just announced that the Russians are about to undertake a “full-scale” invasion of his country and that therefore the military budget must be increased, while “traitors” who refuse to be drafted – and who persist in criticizing his government – must be dealt with harshly.

While demonstrators ring the Parliament almost daily in Kiev, Poroshenko beats the war drums to drown out their protests, citing the “colossal threat” posed by that ever-imminent Russian blitz. Of course it’s just a coincidence that the upcoming G-7 summit – from which the Russians are being pointedly excluded – is sure to feature the familiar war propaganda aimed at the Kremlin.

While the Western media is giving us the usual pro-Kiev spin, echoing Poroshenko’s accusations that renewed fighting was started by the rebels, the OSCE monitors tell a different story: apparently the fighting began with shelling of rebel-held villages by the Ukrainian army, with at least 19 killed. If you click on the OSCE link, note two interesting facts: 1) The monitors insist on putting scare quotes around all mentions of the rebel entities and official titles, and 2) The report also describes a number of protests in government-held territory, mostly directed against official corruption and soaring prices. The natives are getting restless.

In Ukraine, where tragedy and comedy are inextricably linked, there’s never a dull moment: the latest tragicomedy is the news that Poroshenko has appointed former Georgian strongman Mikheil Saakashvili as the new governor of Odessa. Saakashvili and his gang were forced to flee Georgia when they were kicked out of office by outraged voters. Saakashvili fled the country when charges linked to his violent 2007 crackdown on street protesters were brought against him. He was also charged with embezzling government funds for his own personal use. The New York Times details the charges, including:

“[U]sing public money to pay for, among other things, hotel expenses for a personal stylist, hotel and travel for two fashion models, Botox injections and hair removal, the rental of a yacht in Italy and the purchase of artwork by the London artist Meredith Ostrom, who makes imprints on canvases with her naked, painted body. …

“Mr. Saakashvili is also accused of using public money to fly his massage therapist, Dorothy Stein, into Georgia in 2009. Mr. Saakashvili said he received a massage from Ms. Stein on ‘one occasion only,’ but Ms. Stein said she received 2,000 euros to massage him multiple times, including delivering her trademark ‘bite massage.’ ‘He gave me a bunch of presents,’ said Ms. Stein, who splits her time between Berlin and Hoboken.”

US aid continues to pour into Ukraine, a portion of which will doubtless include more “massages” for the new governor of Odessa. Also pouring into that war-torn country are US military “advisors.” Their mission is to train Ukraine’s army of conscripts and neo-Nazi volunteers, who have been pathetically inept when faced with the determined residents of east Ukraine.

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/06/04/ukraines-tragicomedy/

To continue reading: Ukraine’s Tragicomedy

John Kerry admits defeat: The Ukraine story the media won’t tell, and why U.S. retreat is a good thing, by Patrick L. Smith

From Patrick L. Smith at salon.com:

The U.S. seems to admit it overplayed its hand over Ukraine. Caving to reality is actually the best possible policy

It is just as well Secretary of State John Kerry’s momentous meetings with Russian leaders last week took place in Sochi, the Black Sea resort where President Putin keeps a holiday home. When you have to acknowledge that two years’ worth of pointless hostility in the bilateral relationship has proven none other than pointless, it is best to do so in a far-away place.

Arriving in the morning and leaving in the afternoon, Kerry spent three hours with Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s very competent foreign minister, and then four with Putin. After struggling with the math, these look to me like the most significant seven hours the former senator will spend as this nation’s face abroad.

Who cannot be surprised that the Obama administration, having turned the Ukraine question into the most dangerous showdown since the Cold War’s worst, now declares cordiality, cooperation and common goals the heart of the matter?

The question is not quite as simple as one may think.

On the one hand, the policy cliques’ long swoon into demonization has been scandalously juvenile, and there has been no sign until now of sense to come. Grown men and women advancing the Putin-is-Hitler bit with straight faces. Getting the Poles, paranoids for understandable reasons on all questions to with Russia, to stage ostentatious displays of teenagers in after-school military exercises. American soldiers in those silly berets they affect drilling Ukrainian Beetle Baileys in “war-making functions,” as the officer in charge put it.

When the last of these theatrics got under way in mid-April, it was time for paying-attention people to sit up. As noted in this space, it seemed to indicate that we Americans were prepared to go to war with another nuclear power to rip Ukraine from its past and replant it in the neoliberals’ hothouse of client states—doomed to weakness precisely because corrupt leaders were enticed with baubles to sever their people from history.

On the other hand, it took no genius to see what would eventually come. This column predicted long back—within weeks of the American-cultivated coup that deposed President Yanukovych in February of last year—that the Obama administration would one day be forced to retreat before it all came to resolution.

It was hard then to see how anyone could anticipate any other outcome, and so it has remained. You cannot turn basic miscalculation, indifference to history and diplomatic insensitivity into a winning hand. You turn it into an overplayed hand. And that is what sent Kerry to Sochi last week.

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/19/john_kerry_admits_defeat_the_ukraine_story_the_media_wont_tell_and_why_u_s_retreat_is_a_good_thing/

To continue reading: John Kerry admits defeat

What Does Putin Want? by Rostislav Ishchenko

Foreword by the Saker:

The analysis below is, by far, the best I have seen since the beginning of the conflict in the Ukraine. I have regularly posted analyses by Ishchenko on this blog before, because I considered him as one of the best analysts in Russia. This time, however, Ishchenko has truly produced a masterpiece: a comprehensive analysis of the geostrategic position of Russia and a clear and, I believe, absolutely accurate analysis of the entire “Putin strategy” for the Ukraine. I have always said that this conflict is not about the Ukraine but about the future of the planet and that there is no “Novorussian” or even “Ukrainian” solution, but that the only possible outcome is a strategic victory of either Russia or the USA which will affect the entire planet. Ishchenko does a superb overview of the risks and options for both sides and offers the first comprehensive “key” to the apparently incomprehensible behavior of Russia in this conflict. Finally, Ishchenko also fully understands the complex and subtle dynamics inside Russian society. When he writes “Russian power is authoritative, rather than authoritarian” he is spot on, and explains more in seven words than what you would get by reading the billions of useless words written by so-called “experts” trying to describe the Russian reality.

We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Denis, Gideon and Robin for translating this seminal text, which was very difficult to translate. The only reason why we can read it in such a good English is because the innumerable hours spent by these volunteers to produce the high quality translation this analysis deserves.

I strongly recommend that you all read this text very carefully. Twice. It is well worth it.

SLL seconds the opinion of the Saker. Ishchenko’s conclusion: The US needs war; peace serves Russia’s interest, and those positions reflect diminishing US and increasing Russian strength.

From Rostislav Ishchenko, at thefallingdarkness.com:

It’s gratifying that “patriots” did not instantly blame Putin for the failure to achieve a full-scale rout of Ukrainian troops in Donbass in January and February, or for Moscow’s consultations with Merkel and Hollande.

Even so, they are still impatient for a victory. The most radical are convinced that Putin will “surrender Novorossiya” just the same. And the moderates are afraid that he will as soon as the next truce is signed (if that happens) out of the need to regroup and replenish Novorossiya’s army (which actually could have been done without disengagement from military operations), to come to terms with the new circumstances on the international front, and to get ready for new diplomatic battles.

In fact, despite all the attention that political and/or military dilettantes (the Talleyrands and the Bonapartes of the Internet) are paying to the situation in Donbass and the Ukraine in general, it is only one point on a global front: the outcome of the war is being decided not at the Donetsk airport or in the hills outside Debaltsevo, but at offices on Staraya Square1 and Smolenskaya Square,2 at offices in Paris, Brussels and Berlin. Because military action is only one of the many components of the political quarrel.

It is the harshest and the final component, which carries great risk, but the matter doesn’t start with war and it doesn’t end with war. War is only an intermediate step signifying the impossibility of compromise. Its purpose is to create new conditions whereby compromise is possible or to show that there is no longer any need for it, with the disappearance of one side of the conflict. When it is time for compromise, when the fighting is over and the troops go back to their barracks and the generals begin writing their memoirs and preparing for the next war, that is when the real outcome of the confrontation is determined by politicians and diplomats at the negotiating table.

Political decisions are not often understood by the general population or the military. For example, during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Prussian chancellor Otto Von Bismarck (later chancellor of the German Empire) disregarded the persistent requests of King Wilhelm I (the future German Emperor) and the demands of the Prussian generals to take Vienna, and he was absolutely correct to do so. In that way he accelerated peace on Prussia’s terms and also ensured that Austro-Hungary forever (well, until its dismemberment in 1918) became a junior partner for Prussia and later the German Empire.

To understand how, when and on what conditions military activity can end, we need to know what the politicians want and how they see the conditions of the postwar compromise. Then it will become clear why military action turned into a low-intensity civil war with occasional truces, not only in the Ukraine but also in Syria.

Obviously, the views of Kiev politicians are of no interest to us because they don’t decide anything. The fact that outsiders govern the Ukraine is no longer concealed. It doesn’t matter whether the cabinet ministers are Estonian or Georgian; they are Americans just the same. It would also be a big mistake to take an interest in how the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) see the future. The republics exist only with Russian support, and as long as Russia supports them, Russia’s interests have to be protected, even from independent decisions and initiatives. There is too much at stake to allow [Alexander] Zakharchenko or [Igor] Plotnitzky, or anyone else for that matter, to make independent decisions.

Nor are we interested in the European Union’s position. Much depended on the EU until the summer of last year, when the war could have been prevented or stopped at the outset. A tough, principled antiwar stance by the EU was needed. It could have blocked U.S. initiatives to start the war and would have turned the EU into a significant independent geopolitical player. The EU passed on that opportunity and instead behaved like a faithful vassal of the United States.

As a result, Europe stands on the brink of frightful internal upheaval. In the coming years, it has every chance of suffering the same fate as the Ukraine, only with a great roar, great bloodshed and less chance that in the near future things will settle down – in other words, that someone will show up and put things in order.

In fact, today the EU can choose whether to remain a tool of the United States or to move closer to Russia. Depending on its choice, Europe can get off with a slight scare, such as a breakup of parts of its periphery and possible fragmentation of some countries, or it could collapse completely. Judging by the European elites’ reluctance to break openly with the United States, collapse is almost inevitable.

What should interest us is the opinions of the two main players that determine the configuration of the geopolitical front and in fact are fighting for victory in the new generation of war – the network-centric Third World War. These players are the United States and Russia.

http://www.thefallingdarkness.com/2015/04/28/what-does-putin-want-a-major-analysis-by-rostislav-ishchenko-must-read/

To continue reading: What Does Putin Want?

He Said That? 5/2/15

General Phillip Breedlove, Commander of the US Command in Europe and NATO’s top general in Europe, is a loose cannon (see “Breedlove’s Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine, from Spiegel Online,” SLL, 3/7/15). Reprinted is an article that details his latest, “Bellicose Gen. Breedlove Pushes NATO Toward War In Ukraine,” from Daniel McAdams at The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, via davidstockmanscontracorner.com. The Breedlove quotes are bolded. McAdams does a good job of skewering his pompous and dangerous saber-rattling.

General Philip Breedlove, who serves as Commander of the US Command in Europe and NATO’s top general in Europe, is a good example of what happens when the division between a military and the civilians who in a democratic society should control that military breaks down. While there have been plenty of “political” general officers in the past, Breedlove has shown a particular predilection for infusing his policy preferences — and even fantasies — into what should be objective assessments of military capabilities and threats. Thus he has taken every opportunity to report to the media dozens of scare stories of Russian invasions of eastern Ukraine. But thus far he has presented no evidence of these “invasions.”

US partners in NATO have been increasingly alarmed by Breedlove’s bellicose pronouncements about Ukraine, which seem to have little basis in fact. As the major German news magazine Spiegel reported in March:

[F]or months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove’s leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. … False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO — and by extension, the entire West — in danger of losing its credibility.
According to the same article, US intelligence is similarly perplexed over the pronouncements of General Breedlove.

But the US general is unchastened over criticism of his bombast. Just yesterday Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee (Chaired by Sen. John McCain), that:

Russia is blatantly challenging the rules and principles that have been the bedrock of European security for decades. The challenge is global. not regional. and enduring. not temporary. Russian aggression is clearly visible in its illegal occupation of Crimea, and in its continued operations in eastern Ukraine. (sic)

And just as the US has begun training its proxies in west Ukraine and supplying them with military equipment, General Breedlove accused:

In Ukraine, Russia has supplied their proxies with heavy weapons, training and mentoring, command and control, artillery fire support, and tactical-and operational-level air defense,. Russia has transferred many pieces of military equipment into Ukraine, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery pieces, and other military vehicles.

He has not provided evidence that Russia is doing covertly what we know the US is doing openly. But even if he had, does it not seem like double standards for the US to criticize in others what it is openly and enthusiastically doing itself?

As NATO moves troops and military equipment literally up to the Russian border, increasing military activity on the Russian border by some 80 percent, the US general blames Russia for, well, being in Russia:

Russia’s illegal actions are pushing instability closer to the boundaries of NATO.

NATO pushing its boundaries closer to Russia has nothing to do with it, presumably.

What is General Breedlove’s solution? War!

I am often asked, ‘Should the United States and others provide weapons to Ukraine?’ What we see is a Russia that is aggressively applying all elements of national power – diplomatic, informational, and economic, as well as military. So my view,.is it would not make sense to unnecessarily take any of our own tools off the table.(sic)

When US generals are allowed to shape policy to the degree that Breedlove has been afforded, there is a particular danger of every problem becoming a nail. The hammers may be thrilled, but the nation under such military rule suffers from limited inputs and often unsophisticated analysis that leads to policy mistakes — in this case potentially catastrophic.

Were President Obama truly the Commander in Chief of the US Military, he would do well to consider pulling a Truman with his increasingly McArthur-ite General Philip Breedlove. Before it’s too late.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/bellicose-gen-breedlove-pushes-nato-toward-war-in-ukraine/

She Said That? 4/30/15

From Elena Bondarenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament:

I, Elena Bondarenko, a deputy of Partiya Regionov [Party of the Regions –ed.], which is in opposition to the governing party in Ukraine, would like to make a statement about the fact that the government is directly threatening with assault opposition politicians, depriving them of freedom of speech in the parliament and in other places, as well as conniving in the crimes against opposition leaders and their children.

Persistent threats, an undeclared ban on opposition parties appearing in the majority of Ukrainian mass media, purposeful baiting—these are everyday things in the life of the opposition in Ukraine. Everybody who calls for peace in Ukraine immediately becomes an enemy to the regime as it was, for instance, in 30-40’s Germany or in the USA during the McCarthyite era.

A few days ago the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Minister, Arsen Avakov, said: “When Elena Bondarenko ascends the parliamentary tribune, I want to reach for my gun.”

I emphasise the fact that those are the words of the person who has the main authority over the police in the country. Exactly a week ago the Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament, Alexander Turchinov, banned me from the parliamentary tribune as a representative of the opposition Party of the Regions. It was done solely because of my words, that “a regime that sends its army to bomb peaceful cities is criminal.” After that, he kindly allowed the parliamentary radicals to call for the shooting of the opposition .

I remember last year, when Kiev was flooded with extremists, my car was shot at. I reported this fact to the police. I take such threats to myself very seriously. I also would like to inform everyone who is not aware yet, that the regime protects the criminals who dared to raise their hand against the son of another opposition politician—Vladimir Oleynik. Ruslan Oleynik, a district public prosecutor, was beaten up in his work place, putting his life and health under threat. Instead of investigating the attack and threats against the politician and his family, the regime fired the prosecutor. My colleagues complain weekly about their assistants being beaten up, their supporters’ offices being searched, their lives, health and possessions threatened.

Ukrainian cyberspace is almost totally censored of this information, and ordinary Ukrainian citizens have no idea of the criminal fight against the opposition and of the fact that the constitutional right to freedom of speech is suppressed in many ways. The mass media who tell the truth in spite of their fear constantly get attacked by nationalist groups, and hooligans who assault publishing offices are never prosecuted, even when they are identified by video and photographic proof of their involvement is available.

I call upon international organisations who proclaim their democratic principles to not only pay attention to these facts but also to join the fight for democratic rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens. The methods used by the Junta in their struggle for power in Ukraine have nothing to do with democracy. Inactivity of the international community towards these outrageous facts looks like complicity and silent approval of all the crimes being committed in Ukraine. The free world is losing another outpost—Ukraine. All those who fight for democracy, peoples rights and freedoms, can bring about many changes together. Only together can we stop the Junta and the fratricidal war in Ukraine!

Yours sincerely,
People’s deputy of Ukraine, Elena BONDARENKO.

http://slavyangrad.org/2015/04/18/statement-by-elena-bondarenko-peoples-deputy-of-verkhovna-rada-of-ukraine/

The following commentary is from Paul Craig Roberts:

The Western media has created a fictional account of events in Ukraine. The coup organized by the Obama regime that overthrew the elected democratic government in Ukraine is never mentioned. The militias decked out in Nazi symbols are ignored. These militias are the principle source of the violence that has been inflicted on the Russian populations, resulting in the formation of the break-away republics. Instead of reporting this fact, the corrupt Western media delivers Washington’s propaganda that Russia has invaded and is annexing eastern and southern Ukraine. British and European politicians parrot Washington’s lies.

The Western media is complicit in many war crimes covered up with lies, but the false story that the Western media has woven of Ukraine is the most audacious collection of lies yet. Truly, truth in the Western world has been murdered. There is no respect for truth in any Western capital.

The coup in Ukraine is Washington’s effort to thrust a dagger into Russia’s heart. The recklessness of such a criminal act has been covered up by constructing a false reality of a people’s revolution against a corrupt and oppressive government. The world should be stunned that “bringing democracy” has become Washington’s cover for resurrecting a Nazi state.

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/04/29/truth-has-been-murdered/

Stephen F. Cohen on the U.S./Russia/Ukraine history the media won’t tell you, An Interview with Patrick L. Smith

Today, SLL is reposting three articles about Ukraine and potential war with Russia. Even the possibility of war with Russia, whose nuclear arsenal matches and in some aspects exceeds that of the US, dwarfs other concerns. As Patrick Buchanan points out, there are “hotheads” in both the US and Russia for whom an escalation to nuclear war is not inconceivable or unacceptable. Two atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities in World War II, and today’s thermonuclear bombs are thousands of times more destructive. The threat of millions of lives lost and economies, cities, countryside, and infrastructure decimated may not be enough to curb the egos of the publicly bellicose; that’s often why wars either start or escalate. It should be a trivial and trite bromide, not worth repeating, but unfortunately it has to be: nobody would “win” a nuclear war.

Justin Raimodo examines the Ukraine government the US is supporting diplomatically, financially, and militarily. Finding anything in the mainstream American press other than boilerplate about Ukraine’s “democratic” government and the magnificent Euromaidan Revolution that put it in power is virtually impossible, but if that government is going to be the possible linchpin of a US war with Russia, it’s crucial to understand for whom we are risking nuclear holocaust. For anybody who does not believe what they read on the Internet until it is confirmed by the MSM, A Wall Street Journal article this morning, buried on page A16, “Kiev Is Hit by Series Of Mysterious Deaths,” 4/17/15, “confirms” the deaths cited by Raimondo in his article.

If you only have time to read one article, salon.com’s interview with historian Stephen F. Cohen is recommended. It is the first of two parts and SLL will also repost the second part next week. Cohen is careful and analytical, not prone to rhetorical hyperbole. He considers, sometimes endorsing and sometimes condemning, Russia’s point of view, and makes a strong case against US policy stretching back to when President Bill Clinton pushed for the expansion of NATO.

Interview with Stephen F. Cohen, from salon.com:

There’s an alternative story of Russian relations we’re not hearing. Historian Stephen Cohen tells it here

It is one thing to comment in a column as the Ukrainian crisis grinds on and Washington—senselessly, with no idea of what will come next—destroys relations with Moscow. It is quite another, as a long exchange with Stephen F. Cohen makes clear, to watch as an honorable career’s worth of scholarly truths are set aside in favor of unlawful subterfuge, a war fever not much short of Hearst’s and what Cohen ranks among the most extravagant expansion of a sphere of influence—NATO’s—in history.

Cohen is a distinguished Russianist by any measure. While professing at Princeton and New York University, he has written of the revolutionary years (“Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution,” 1973), the Soviet era (“Rethinking the Soviet Experience,” 1985) and, contentiously but movingly and always with a steady eye, the post-Soviet decades (“Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia, 2000; “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives,” 2009). “The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag After Stalin” (2010) is a singularly humane work, using scholarly method to relate the stories of the former prisoners who walk as ghosts in post-Soviet Russia. “I never actually lost the uneasy feeling of having left work unfinished and obligations unfulfilled,” Cohen explains in the opening chapter, “even though fewer and fewer of the victims I knew were still alive.”

If I had to describe the force and value of Cohen’s work in a single sentence, it would be this: It is a relentless insistence that we must bring history to bear upon what we see. One would think this an admirable project, but it has landed Cohen in the mother of all intellectual disputes since the U.S.-supported coup in Kiev last year. To say he is now “blackballed” or “blacklisted”—terms Cohen does not like—is too much. Let us leave it that a place may await him among America’s many prophets without honor among their own.

It is hardly surprising that the Ministry of Forgetting, otherwise known as the State Department, would eschew Cohen’s perspective on Ukraine and the relationship with Russia: He brings far too much by way of causality and responsibility to the case. But when scholarly colleagues attack him as “Putin’s apologist” one grows queasy at the prospect of a return to the McCarthyist period. By now, obedient ideologues in the academy have turned debate into freak show.

Cohen, who is 76, altogether game and remembers it all, does not think we are back in the 1950s just yet. But he is now enmeshed in a fight with the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, which last autumn rejected a $400,000 grant Cohen proposed with his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, because the fellowships to be funded would bear Cohen’s name. Believe it, readers, this is us in the early 21st century.

The interview that follows took place in Cohen’s Manhattan apartment some weeks after the cease-fire agreement known as Minsk II was signed in mid-February. It sprawled over several absorbing hours. As I worked with the transcript it became clear that Cohen had given me a valuable document, one making available to readers a concise, accessible, historically informed accounting of “where we are today,” as Cohen put it, in Ukraine and in the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Salon will run it in two parts. This is an edited transcript of the first. Part two follows next week.

What is your judgment of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine? In the current situation, the need is for good history and clear language. In a historical perspective, do you consider Russia justified?

Well, I can’t think otherwise. I began warning of such a crisis more than 20 years ago, back in the ’90s. I’ve been saying since February of last year [when Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in Kiev] that the 1990s is when everything went wrong between Russia and the United States and Europe. So you need at least that much history, 25 years. But, of course, it begins even earlier.

As I’ve said for more than a year, we’re in a new Cold War. We’ve been in one, indeed, for more than a decade. My view [for some time] was that the United States either had not ended the previous Cold War, though Moscow had, or had renewed it in Washington. The Russians simply hadn’t engaged it until recently because it wasn’t affecting them so directly.

What’s happened in Ukraine clearly has plunged us not only into a new or renewed—let historians decide that—Cold War, but one that is probably going to be more dangerous than the preceding one for two or three reasons. The epicenter is not in Berlin this time but in Ukraine, on Russia’s borders, within its own civilization: That’s dangerous. Over the 40-year history of the old Cold War, rules of behavior and recognition of red lines, in addition to the red hotline, were worked out. Now there are no rules. We see this every day—no rules on either side.

What galls me the most, there’s no significant opposition in the United States to this new Cold War, whereas in the past there was always an opposition. Even in the White House you could find a presidential aide who had a different opinion, certainly in the State Department, certainly in the Congress. The media were open—the New York Times, the Washington Post—to debate. They no longer are. It’s one hand clapping in our major newspapers and in our broadcast networks. So that’s where we are.

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/16/the_new_york_times_basically_rewrites_whatever_the_kiev_authorities_say_stephen_f_cohen_on_the_u_s_russiaukraine_history_the_media_wont_tell_you/

To continue reading: Interview With Stephen F. Cohen