Ukraine update - 03/12/2014

CrossTalk: Spinning Ukraine (ft. Pepe Escobar)

What is the big picture in Ukraine today? Should it be interpreted legally or politically? What is China's attitude to the conflict in Ukraine? And, has Washington blinked?

CrossTalking with Pepe Escobar, Ann Lee and Martin McCauley

Posted on March 12th, by Counteractive in Campaigns, News. 1 Comment

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Listen to 'Yats' as he prostitutes his country.

Ukraine’s leaders appeal for financial help as government begins to run out of money

Ukraine’s deposed president Viktor Yanukovych left an economy in turmoil when he fled the country last month: the treasury has less than $500,000 and the government says it needs $4 billion just to prevent a default on its debt payments.

Washington Post,

13 March, 201

With the country quickly running out of money, interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk arrived in Washington on Wednesday to meet with President Obama and Vice President Biden. His mission is economic as well as political, as the country also appeals for help in finding a solution to Russia’s military intervention in Crimea.

President Obama hosted Ukraine’s interim prime minister today in a show of support for the Kiev government.

In 2004, Viktor Yushchenko’s face was disfigured, and he had severe pain in his abdomen and back. Was it poisoning?

While in the United States, Yatsenyuk will also meet members of the Congress, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and plans to address the U.N. Security Council about the situation in Crimea on Thursday.

An International Monetary Fund mission scheduled before the crisis escalated arrived in Kiev last week to assess Ukraine’s needs before finalizing what is expected to be a multibillion-dollar bailout. But Russia’s military offensive has made that mission more urgent.

The United States and European Union have also gone on the alert. In inviting Yatsenyuk to Washington, the Obama administration called on Congress to approve $1 billion of loan guarantees to Ukraine. For its part, the E.U. announced a comprehensive $15 billion assistance program for the country dependent on a go-ahead for an IMF bailout.

Perhaps by coincidence, the E.U. aid matches the $15 billion bailout that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin dangled before Yanukovych last November to persuade him to ditch plans to sign a trade deal with the E.U. in favor of closer ties with Moscow. About $3 billion of the Russian aid package was disbursed in December. But with Yanukovych ousted from office and his anti-Russian opponents in power, the Kremlin is unlikely to sanction the release of any further aid.

The E.U. is going forward with plans to sign a political agreement that would anchor Ukraine to Europe.

“We have a debt, a duty of solidarity” with Ukraine, Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said at a summit in Athens over the weekend. “We will work to have them as close as possible to us.”

The E.U. and U.S. aid packages are intended to help tide Kiev over until the IMF finalizes a stabilization program and long-term loan for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s problems are in large part a legacy of 23 years of incompetent economic management since the country became independent from the Soviet Union. When the global financial crisis struck in 2008, Ukraine was forced to turn to the IMF and the E.U. for assistance. World prices for steel, the country’s main export, have yet to recover to pre-2008 levels.

Most of the financial help now will come with conditions obliging the government to push through painful reforms and tackle corruption, which peaked during the Yanukovych presidency. According to Yatsenyuk, at least $70 billion has vanished from the financial system into offshore accounts over the past three years.

International lenders will also demand a crackdown on corrupt business practices that have suffocated enterprise. Measures will probably include the overhaul of the judiciary and an end to arbitrary state procurement processes that allow government friends and cronies to scoop up lucrative contracts at a fraction of their true value.

“Corruption here is really frightening, and it can be physically dangerous,” said Yuriy Shevchenko, the director of Transtyazhmash, a machine-building enterprise in the eastern city of Kharkiv. “At any time, tax collectors can arrive and demand that you pay more money.”

The IMF is also expected to insist that the government allow the Ukrainian currency, the hyrvnia, to float more freely and remove subsidies on domestic gas prices that drain the budget and encourage waste.

Timothy Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank, said the escalating crisis could stimulate a transformational, Western-backed program, turning the page on two decades of corrupt and incompetent economic management.

“The agenda is reform or fail, from an economic perspective and also in terms of sovereignty,” he said.

But as the euphoria of the revolution ebbs, the austerity measures could undermine the new government’s popularity. Public confidence in Kiev’s ability to right the economy is already low.

As a vital trading partner and Ukraine’s main source of energy, Russia has the power to wreak economic havoc. Last week the Russian state gas company Gazprom demanded that Ukraine settle its $1.89 billion debt or risk disconnection and threatened to jack up the cost of supplies in April.

For this reason as much as any other, Western financial support may not be enough to avert an economic collapse in Ukraine.

In pro-Russian eastern Ukraine, where Soviet-era industrial behemoths depend on Russian markets, a decline in living standards could stoke separatist sentiments.

Protesters in Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city and just about 30 miles from the Russian border, have taken to the streets to demonstrate against the interim government.

Svetlana, an electrician who declined to give her second name because she feared possible recriminations, said she had no confidence that the interim government would eradicate corruption and provide Ukrainian citizens with a better living. She said it “made no difference” to her whether Ukraine remained independent or became part of Russia.

“I have paid taxes all my life,” she said.” I have no savings. What difference does it make to me if my money lines the pockets of someone like Yanukovych or Vladimir Putin?”

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After Annexing Crimea, Russian Troops Are Piling Up By The East Ukraine Border

Zero Hedge,

12 March, 2014

Despite the relentless protests of Kiev, and of course the G7 group of world's most indebted nations, in the past two weeks Vladimir Putin once again succeeded in outplaying the west and annexed the Crimea peninsula without firing a single shot (granted there is still potential for material situational deterioration, one which would involve military participation by NATO whose outcome is not exactly clear). The market has "priced in" as much, with prevailing consensus now dictating that Russia will preserve its foothold in the Crimea however without additional attempts for annexation: certainly Poland is hoping and praying as much.

However, as the following photos taken on the Russian side of East Ukraine, next to Belgorod, the Russian airborne troops ("VDV") are now piling up, only not in Crimea, which needs no further Russian military presence, but ostensibly to prepare for the next part of the annexation: that of Russian-speaking east Ukraine.

On the clip and pictures below, one can see Russian troops on the move near the border with Ukraine in the Belgorod Oblast, about 20 kilometers from the border with Ukraine near Kharkiv:

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The indicative location:

Meanwhile, on the birder with Crimea, Ukrainian troops are digging in and mining fields in anticipation of Russians rolling out of the Peninsula:

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Belarus to offer Russia to deploy extra warplanes as NATO active near borders

Belarus will request Russia to deploy up to 15 extra warplanes on its territory, as NATO is building up military presence in proximity to the Belarusian borders, President Aleksandr Lukashenko announced. 

RT,

12 March, 2014

Speaking at a session of the country’s Security Council, he also vowed “a reasonable response” to NATO’s strengthening contingent near Belarus boundaries.

He stressed that Minsk “reacted calmly until a large exercise began in Poland which requested reinforcements and larger scope of the exercise.”

Lukashenko referred to the US deployment of a dozen F-16 fighter jets and nearly 300 service personnel to Poland a part of a training exercise which came in response to the crisis in neighboring Ukraine.

Aside from that the US also sent six F-15 fighter jets to Lithuania, in addition to four F-15s, which arrived on January 1, to bolster NATO’ air patrol over Baltic airspace.

“They threw in extra half a dozen fighters and some other planes which operate close to our borders, and we are acting reasonably. The Minister of Defense received such an order long ago and, as I am being told, it [the order] is being fulfilled,” Lukashenko said.

From the west and northwest, Belarus borders on the NATO member states of Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, and sees combat air patrols of these Baltic states’ airspace as a potential threat to its national security.

The situation in neighboring Ukraine, where Belarus leader said “we have seen escalation of the conflict” is affecting interests of his country, he pointed out.

“This escalation is happening not in Syria, Libya or Iraq. It's near our borders,” he stressed.

Lukashenko has called on Ukrainian coup-appointed government to focus on solving domestic conflict rather than on negotiations with the West.

“[They] just have to work, and less run abroad. It is necessary to think about their country and the welfare of the people. How to do it? If necessary, we will advise and help,” Lukashenko said.

When asked if the Ukraine scenario is possible in Belarus, as some media reports speculated, the President ruled out such possibility, saying that “there will be no Maidan in Minsk”.

“We are not afraid of anything, absolutely, even more so, I am not. We have no fundamental, conceptual reasons for such revolutions. And the main reason for that [revolution in Ukraine] we all know: terrible economic collapse, corruption, which led to the collapse of the authorities,” he said

Lukashenko added that Belarus will act within the legal and regulatory framework which exists between Belarus and Russia. “I have said it several times that Russians and Belarusians are one people and we will always be together.”

Russia and Belarus manage reciprocal air defense and joint military maneuvers under agreements signed within the Russia-Belarus Union State which was formed in 1999. Moscow and Minsk also have an agreement (since 2009) on joint protection of the Russia-Belarus Union State's airspace and the creation of an integrated regional air defense network.

Last year, Minsk and Moscow agreed on Russia’s deploying a wing of fighter jets at a military airbase in Belarus. Russia also planned to deliver four battalions of S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Belarus in 2014.

Belarus is not going to be “an initiator of escalation of any process in connection with the Ukrainian events and the confrontation of the West, the US, on the one side and Russia - on the other,” Lukashenko concluded. “We will serve the interests of our country, as well as our friends and neighbors, that’s why don’t try to scare us in this respect.”

Ukraine interim-PM to bolster take-over with DC rubber-stamp

Meanwhile U.S. President Barak Obama is set to play host to Ukraine's interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The two will discuss the 1 billion dollar aid Washington has already pledged to Kiev. It's a sign of just how deeply involved America is in the Ukrainian crisis - as Anastasiya Churkina explains.

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Western media has lied about just about everything else – why wouldn't they lie about this?

Witnesses at Crimea base: 'No fighting or shooting like reported on TV'

RT,

11 March, 2014

Recent reports from Western media say Russian troops have allegedly seized control of the naval base near the Crimean city of Bakhchisaray on Monday, with “shots being fired in the air.” However, the sailors at the base deny all these reports.

“We were never ambushed or beaten. That’s just nonsense,” Aleksandr Gubenko, a seaman at the Crimean naval base, told journalist Ryan O’Neill.

According to Gubenko, the sailors at the base were told to come to the security checkpoints because “someone was trying to get in.”

“When we got there, these men asked us who we want to align ourselves with,” said Gubenko, “I am leaning towards Crimea because that’s where I’m from, same as 80 percent of other people at this base, and they all know they won’t go fighting their own people.”

It’s not only sailors that have denied the reports of an ambush. The members of the Crimean self-defense squads also say there was “no fighting or shooting” at the Bakhchisaray base “like they are reporting it on TV.”

“A group of Crimean self-defense forces just came in,” Sergey Yurchenko, from the Crimean self-defense squad, told O’Neill, “Their leader is currently negotiating with the commander of the base.”

“I don’t know what exactly they’re talking about there. There is definitely no fighting and no conflict,” he adds.

On Monday many Western media outlets have run reports that “masked troops of unidentified armed men fired in the air at the base near Bakhchisaray.” Some said that it was “Russian forces” which “took over a military hospital and a missile unit” in the naval base.

According to some reports these “masked pro-Russian troops” on Sunday kidnapped the base commander Vladimir Sadovnik. However, later it turned out that Sadovnik had never been kidnapped. On Monday he arrived at the Bakhchisaray base along with self-defense squads.

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea will hold a referendum for March 16 where its people – about 60 percent of whom are ethnic Russians – will decide whether they want the Crimea to remain part of Ukraine, or join Russia.

The situation on the Crimean Peninsula is tense and the authorities fear possible provocations from the coup-imposed Kiev government. On Monday radicals backed by the Kiev authorities made provocations in the village of Chinghar in northern Crimea, said a source from the Crimean self-defense squads. Over 30 cars with nearly 70 people, apparently intending to organize a coup, demanded the self-defense groups let them pass into the territory of Crimea.

Despite all these attempts to disrupt the upcoming the referendum, the Crimean government is controlling the situation on the peninsula, according to the speaker of the Supreme Council of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov. He added that “No provocations will be staged before or during the referendum as the region has enough self-defense forces to protect itself.”

The US and EU authorities do not recognize the legitimacy of the Crimean authorities, nor the March 16 referendum, despite the Crimean parliament welcoming a mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe the ballot.

Meanwhile, Crimean authorities are preparing for the Sunday poll. The government of the autonomous republic will issue up to US$2 million for ballot printing and providing technical support. Overall 1,550,000 ballots will be printed.

Over 1,500 Crimean troops will be deployed at polling stations, according to Crimean Prime Minister Aksyonov.

Russia allows Ukrainian surveillance flight to confirm no troops near border

In a confidence-building step, Russia’s Defense Ministry has given permission for a surveillance flight by Ukraine

over Russian territory near the border between the countries. Kiev had claimed Moscow was building up its military presence there.

RT

12 March , 2014

“The Ukrainians have asked for an unscheduled observation flight over our territory,” Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov told reporters in Moscow.

Russia and Ukraine are entitled to surveillance flights over each other's territories following the Open Skies treaty signed in 1992, but Antonov said that Kiev had never asked for one before, and that Moscow was "under no obligation" to allow it immediately.

“We have decided to allow such a flight. We hope that our neighbors are assured that there is no military activity that threatens them on the border.”

Antonov vehemently denied a statement Tuesday by Igor Tenyukh, defense minister for the Kiev coup-appointed government, that Russia had amassed more than 220,000 troops, 1,800 tanks and over 400 helicopters in regions adjacent to eastern Ukraine.

“Ukrainian military officials know full well that the entire [Russian] Southern and Western Military Districts put together don’t have that much equipment. The only way you could arrive at that number of soldiers would be if you counted their families,” Antonov said.

"I would dissuade Mr Tenyukh from adding fuel to the fire of the crisis, which is what he appears to be doing. He openly outlined the reasons for this himself, when he asked the Ukrainian parliament to issue him with more funding," continued the Russian official.

Antonov added that continuing mass training exercises in eastern Ukraine, which Kiev began this week, could plunge Ukraine into even deeper turmoil.

“Staging exercises in an area that is gripped by mass protests against the new regime which came to power as a result of a coup is a risky endeavor, which could further destabilize the political situation in Ukraine,” Antonov insisted.