There was no excuse for Congress’ ignorance of
Ukraine. Here is a guide to help.
By Ray McGovern
November 15, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - 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).
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.)
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
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.
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. 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.
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.
Ray
McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm
of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in
inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a CIA analyst
included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch
and conducting the morning briefings of the
President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(VIPS).
http://raymcgovern.com/
This article was
originally published by "Consortium
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