UKIP and Ukraine.

Bear with me, there is a point here.

On Maundy Thursday (17/4/14) representatives of the US, Russia, the European Union (EU) and the government of Kiev met in Geneva, Switzerland. There they drew up an agreement to stabilise the situation in Ukraine. That can be read via the link below but its main points were that all illegal protests such as building occupations must end, all illegal groups must be disarmed and all expressions of extremism, racism and religious intolerance including anti-Semitism must cease; http://eeas.europa.eu/statements/docs/2014/140417_01_en.pdf

The problem was that the signing of the Geneva agreement was immediately followed by the four day Easter weekend which meant that in a heavily Christian country like Ukraine very little got done. As a result nothing much at all happened. There was an incident on the Saturday (19/4/14) in which five people were killed at a checkpoint near Slaviansk that was manned by a militia opposed to the Kiev government but that is the sort of thing that happens when there are too many hotheads running around with assault rifles and why most people are trying to calm the situation. On the Tuesday (22/4/14) two bodies including one of a member of the Fatherland Party which makes up the government in Kiev were discovered in a river in Donetsk which prompted the Kiev government to announce that it would resume its military operation against militias in the east of the country but failed to indicate when this would take place.

The absence of anything significant actually happening did not stop US Secretary of State John Kerry giving a high-profile televised address on the situation in Ukraine on the one week anniversary of the Geneva agreement (24/4/14). Although this address seemed predominately aimed at a South East Asian audience while US President Obama was visiting the region and had a strong subtext of the US' "Pivot Towards the Pacific" policy and associated Rihanna operation Kerry declared - without offering evidence - that the Kiev government were completely upholding the Geneva agreement while the Russians were breaking by sending special forces into eastern Ukraine. As punishment the US would work with the EU over following days to draw up fresh sanctions against Russia.

Kerry's speech was the diplomatic equivalent of pouring gasoline onto a fire and the situation in Ukraine quickly and dramatically worsened. Clearly spurred on by Kerry's comments the Kiev government resumed it's military operation on Friday (25/4/14) resulting in the deaths of two Ukrainians opposed to the Kiev government. This prompted Russia to launch military training manoeuvres within Russia on the border with Ukraine in order to offer a deterrent to prevent the Kiev government going too far. On Sunday (27/4/14) several thousand pro-Kiev Ultras from Dnipro and Metalist football clubs attacked several hundred anti-Kiev protesters in Kharkiv leaving 15 people injured including two police officers. On Monday (28/4/14) Gennady Kernes the Mayor of Kharkiv - Ukraine's second largest city - was shot whilst out jogging and remains in hospital fighting for his life. On Tuesday (29/4/14) several thousand anti-Kiev protesters assembled outside government buildings including the main police station in Luhansk and quickly seized the buildings after the police defected without a fight.

On Monday - Holocaust Memorial day - the US announced that it would be punishing Russia by imposing sanctions against seven Russian government officials and seventeen Russian companies. Later in the day the EU announced that it would be joining the US in imposing sanctions against the seven individuals. Although this spilt indicates that the US is far from enjoying universal support for its campaign against Russia I am disgusted that the EU would even entertain the idea of supporting the current Kiev government let alone punishing Russia for opposing it. For example on Sunday members of  Ukraine's Svoboda (Freedom) Party of which Kiev's vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych and Prosecutor General Oleh Maknitskyi are prominent members held a rally in Lviv celebrating Nazi Germany's Waffen SS and it's role in the Holocaust. This should be morally repellent to all and most certainly represents a clear violation of the Geneva agreement which specifically forbids expressions of anti-Semitism.

The way that the EU has been able to overlook this clear fascism from the Kiev government actually touches on something that is a big issue in the EU and the UK in particular in the run-up to the May 27th (27/5/14) EU elections - the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).

Despite only having been formed a few years ago and being a single issue party about the UK's relationship with the EU UKIP have seen their popularity surge in recent years with them expected to do very well at the EU elections. This rise has of course meant that UKIP has been taking support away from the more established parties such as the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrat Parties. As a result those established parties have joined together to mount a covert smear campaign against UKIP aimed at labelling them as racists and lunatics. In short the UKIP are being likened to the fascist and Neo-Nazi British National Party (BNP) that the UK worked very hard to get elected at the last round of EU elections.

The problem is that while some of their junior members may well hold racist views UKIP is not a racist party and is most certainly not fascist nor Neo-Nazi. Instead it is entirely focused on the UK's relationship with an EU that is overwhelming white. The reason why UKIP campaign so heavily on the immigration issue is because it is a very overt and easy to understand element of the EU's desire for rapid expansion and the free movement of people that comes with it.

The plan behind the EU's free movement of people policy is just that it allows people to move freely between member states for work. This is obviously very attractive to newer, poorer EU members because they can travel to richer member states and charge what is to them a small fortune for doing the same job they do at home. The theory is though that this flow of money created by higher wages along with EU development grants and increased trade through the abolition of customs tariffs will all combine to bring the poorer nations up to the standard of the richer nations stemming the flow of large scale immigration. The problem is that the EU has been expanding so quickly in recent years that so many new nations are joining that this flow of wealth is being dispersed and there are constantly new waves of immigration.

There are a variety of reasons driving the EU's desire for rapid expansion. For example camps such as those represented by UK Baroness Catherine Ashton want to create a totalitarian superstate while others want to build an economic bloc to rival the global power of the US and in doing so reduce the US' influence. One of the most significant drivers behind the EU's expansion though is this old Cold War mentality of imposing the capitalist west including the US onto eastern Europe in order to limit Russia's power to the point that it is almost entirely destroyed. This of course continues despite the fact that the Soviet Union has long since collapsed and modern Russia is very much a capitalist society. It is this Cold War mentality that has been the key driver behind the unrest in Ukraine and why the US and the EU seem perfectly happy to do business with Neo-Nazi groups such as Svoboda, Right Sector and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA).

However Ukraine is not the only place where the EU is prepared to overlook political views it used to find repellent. For example many of the new EU states have fascist and Neo-Nazi Parties in their governments such as the Jobbik Party in Hungary, The Slovak National Party in Slovakia, the NOP in Poland, the Estonian Independence Party in Estonia and Attack in Bulgaria. It is parties such as these are part of the reason why they EU is being pressured to accept a Kiev government that many of the newer nations consider to be ideological allies. The fact that they are tolerated has also helped strengthen similar parties in more established EU nations such as the National Front in France, Golden Dawn in Greece and the Northern League in Italy. To my mind that is going against one of the core, founding principles of the EU - that it is a political and economic union held together by shared values.

So by attacking parties such as UKIP who seem to be trying to have a grown up discussion about EU policy as racists and Neo-Nazis people seem to actually be strengthening actual fascist and Neo-Nazi Parties within the EU. 

16:15 on 30/4/14 (UK date).