Today representatives of the United States, Russia and the European Union (EU) met in Geneva, Switzerland for the latest round of talks on the war in Syria. However due to a hardening of the position of the Syrian government the US were forced to re-cast Ukraine in the Syria role.
These talks have only just ended in the last few hours so information is still filtering out. However the first thing I noticed is how calm and moderate the Russian position was. If I was in charge of the Russian delegation what I would have done is refuse to grant even a suggestion of legitimacy to the Kiev government that the US have chosen to represent Ukraine in these talks despite the fact they seized power by force and have no democratic mandate. This would have put pressure on the EU delegation to in turn put pressure on the US to moderate it's somewhat rabid position and demonstrate that it is committed to building a safe and stable nation for all Ukrainians rather then simply looking for any excuse to attack Russia. If the EU received such commitments from the US it would then be free to put pressure on Russia to speak with the Kiev government.
As is turns out the Russians put aside this sort of diplomatic gamesmanship and agreed to speak to the Kiev government without pre-condition. Following those talks it then agreed a number of steps that Kiev needs to take in order to stabilise the nation it claims to run. The Kiev government also agreed to these steps but as always with them I don't think they've quite understood what has been said to them. For example the agreement talks about the need to disarm all illegal armed groups and clear all occupied streets, squares and occupied spaces. That means that the Kiev government is now under an obligation to do what it attacked Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukoyvch for and clear Independence (Maidan) Square of its armed thugs.
Obviously without these efforts to moderate the US' position the US continued in it's usual rabid and irrational fashion. For example in his press conference after the talks US Secretary of State highlighted leaflets that had been handed out in the eastern city of Donetsk demanding that Ukrainian Jews register themselves and all property they own with the local authorities or face deportation. Kerry obviously did this in order to portray anti-Kiev protesters in the east as anti-Semites and Neo-Nazis. The US is also trying to argue that these anti-Kiev protesters are Russian government agents so by extension it is attempting to smear the Russian government as anti-Semitic. However by doing this Kerry may have instead exposed the US chronic lack of understanding of what is and has been going on in Ukraine and other eastern European nations including EU members.
Rather then being evidence of anti-Semitism these leaflets which appear to have only been distributed to journalists strike me as someone with access to a photocopier making a point. That's because these leaflets provide an easy to point to prop demonstrating something that has been happening more quietly and more discreetly across the rest of Ukraine since the start of anti-government protests in November 2013.
Those protests - which the US has fully endorsed - were led by a group called "Right Sector" (Pravyi Sektor in Ukrainian). In speaking about those protests one of Right Sector's leader's Igor Mazur described them as being against "The Jewish oligarchs [who] care only for their trans-national business empires, for making money." Bizarrely Mazur has also claimed that Yulia Tymoshenko the leader of Ukraine's Fatherland" Party "Must have some Jewish blood in her" when asked about her imprisonment on pretty epic embezzlement charges. Last Monday (7/4/14) a Jewish cemetery and holocaust memorial in Odessa was attacked and vandalised by people who left behind pro-Right Sector graffiti.
Although more street thugs then a political party with an organised platform Right Sector's leader and current Deputy Minister for National Security in Kiev Dymtro Yarosh stated Right Sector have a lot of common positions with the Freedom (Svoboda in Ukrainian) Party. Formed as the National-Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1991 and using the "Idea of Nation" emblem that is remarkably similar to the Nazi Swastika Svoboda are unashamedly fascist and anti-Semitic holding marches to commemorate the 'achievements' of the Waffen-SS. In May 2013 the World Jewish Congress labelled Svoboda as Neo-Nazi and called for them to be banned. In June 2013 30 members of the Israeli Knesset signed a letter to the EU condemning Svoboda and calling for them to be isolated. Oleksandr Sych and Oleh Makhnitskyi both serve the current US and EU backed Kiev government as Deputy Prime Minister and Prosecutor General respectively.
Another group that played a leading role in the US backed anti-government protests was the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA). They are not so much Neo-Nazis as actual Nazis. That is to say that they fought on the side of Nazi Germany during the second world war and actively participated in the holocaust particularly the massacre of 200,000 Jews in Volyn in 1942 and 100,000 Poles in Volhynia in 1943/44. Both Right Sector and the UIA believe that territories such as Przemsyl that were ceded to Poland at the end of the second world war should be returned to Ukraine. That is something that both the EU and NATO are under an obligation to prevent from happening
The largest provocation of the day came from the White House itself though which announced that it is sending non-lethal aid such as medicine and tents to Kiev. These things are of course completely irrelevant to the situation in Ukraine but are badly needed by the foreign and completely illegal insurgents fighting the Syrian government. As such Obama seemed to be reminding everyone that the US' true objective is to destabilise Ukraine in order to punish Russia for it's support for Syria and by extension the founding principles of the United Nations (UN) in the hope that the EU would join him in cowering in fear that Saudi Arabia will lash out if they are not obeyed. That's a bit of a shame because I think we all know what would happen the following day should the Saudis ever follow through on their threat to cut off the world's oil supply.
As is pretty much par for the course the EU who were represented by Catherine Ashton were pretty much an irrelevance during these talks.
19:55 on 17/4/14 (UK date).
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