Justice Integrity Project – by Andrew Kreig
The Ukraine’s new deputy national security director has urged that Russia’s most feared terrorist take action against Russia.
In a shocking statement largely ignored by the Western media, Dmitry Yarosh asked the fugitive Doku Umarov March 1 to take advantage of the “unique chance to win” arising from disturbances in the Ukraine.
Yarosh was appointed to the Ukraine’s new government after leading the Right Sector group of ultra-rightists. The Right Sector was the best organized and otherwise most effective of the Western-backed street fighters who toppled the Ukraine’s government last week.
Umarow, a native of Chechnia described as Russia’s equivalent to Osama bin Laden, has not been reported seen since last summer, when he urged terror attacks to prevent the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. He is shown in a file photo courtesy of Creative Commons and Wikipedia.
In an interview on RT March 1, I described Yarosh’s request to the terrorist as dangerous because it is so inflammatory and comes from an official of the new government.
But the Yarosh statement serves also as a valuable illustration to Western audiences of the violent tendencies of the street demonstrators who took power after they were encouraged by the West.
Meanwhile, Russian troops deployed through pro-Russian Crimean Peninsula of the Ukraine, which is the locale for a vital warm-water naval base of the Russians.
Russian troops also massed near the Ukraine border at a reported strength of 150,000. The Crimea is colored tan on the adjoining map, which is courtesy of Wikimedia.
United States and allied Western officials threatened reprisals against Russia but appeared to have few military or other meaningful options without risking world war.
Despite the bluster of U.S. politicians, a war-weary American public is hardly likely to support a new one that could escalate to a tragedy beyond anyone’s understanding or control. Also, any action by the United Nations Security council would be subject to a Russian veto, and “a coalition of the willing” is unlikely for similar reasons.
President Obama and allied powers denounced the Russians following a mid-day meeting Saturday at the White House of such top administration officials as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
However, the actions so far of the Obama team show them as seeming unprepared for what appears to have been the most logical outcome of the West-orchestrated overthrow of the Ukraine’s elected government. Republican leaders had little more to add aside from recriminations against Democrats for not acting more aggressively and spending more money on war-preparations and offers of aid.
More generally, the vast suffering created in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria all began with optimistic rhetoric from Western leaders about the benefits of collective action to support such attractive-sounding goals as national security, peace, democracy, and human rights.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power was among those who followed that pattern March 1 as she warned Russia against interference in the Ukraine.
Curiously lost in most U.S. coverage, however, has been the clear trail of United States and other Western interference in the Ukraine leading to coup last week overthrowing elected President .
U.S. Ambassador to the European Union (E. U.) Victoria Nuland, shown in her official photo, was captured on tape last month advising U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt on which Ukrainians the United States wanted installed in a new government if the current one were overthrown. Our news report of the confidential discussion record and released by unknown surveillance personnel was entitled,Top U.S. Diplomat Caught On Tape In Profane Plot.
On the call, Nuland can be heard saying “F__ the E.U.” and selecting for Ukraine’s leadership “Yats,” the current Ukrainian prime minister Arseniy Yatseniuk, who was installed during last week’s coup.
Nuland, a career diplomat, is married into the neo-conservative Kagan family instrumental in advocating for war in the Mideast. She proudly gave a speech in December in which she boasted of $5 billion spent by the United States to foster what she called democracy in the Ukraine. She did not define details of the spending, but presumably she meant funds passed on by largely secret means through private sector intermediaries in largely untraceable ways.
As in Iraq, Afghanistan and more recently Syria, management of the consequences of regime-change seems to exceed the capabilities of U.S. presidents both parties as well as their implementers such as Nuland, her husband Robert Kagan, and other global strategists adept at creating chaos.
Robert Kagan is, among other things, a columnist for the Washington Post, whose new owner Jeffrey Bezos has continued the editorial policies of the past. The source of Bezos’s wealth, Amazon.com, has also entered the world of U.S. military/intelligence government contracting in a big way by winning the CIA’s contract for $600 million to handle the agency’s advanced cloud computing needs.
As indicated in excerpts below, the Washington Post editorial board and guest columnist David Kramer, a former Bush official now heading a so-called democracy building organization active in the Ukraine, each published columns March 1 calling for escalation of threats and other hostilities in the Ukraine. These columns were, respectively, Spell out the consequences for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and U.S. foreign policy comes home to roost with Russia’s action in Ukraine.
These days, many of the activities leading to regime change or afterwards in drone warfare and other military fighting are undertaken by in secret by the CIA. In sum, a web of inter-relationships exists between government, media and the non-profit community, including scholars, that is largely hidden from the American public.
In general, the track record of this bipartisan foreign policy establishment shows tragic and colossal failure covering both the Bush and Obama administrations.
The patterns and most of the United States officials mentioned above are major figures in my new book,Presidential Puppetry: Obama Romney and Their Masters. This is the first book on top officials in the Obama second term and their oft-hidden histories and motives.
In it, I argue that situations such as the threat to world peace posed by recent developments in the Ukraine are understandable only by appreciating the goals of the most powerful players in the West, who are not government officials for the most part. They are instead the private sector enablers, who prefer for the most part to remain out of sight except for business, charitable and other innocuous roles.
More specifically, I categorize as puppets most of the officials featured by the media during this weekend’s crisis. In my view, a few such officials — including Brennan and Nuland — are best regarded as “puppet strings” because they are well-connected to the off-stage Wall Street, munitions, security and energy titans as well as to government staff, media and contractors.
The pattern is clear once one starts looking for it. But the traditional media seldom even hints at it. Nearly all the media march in tandem on the kinds of issues arising in the Ukraine. Nearly all major experts — whether Republican or Democrat or whether from the news industry or government — spoke of the issues in similar terms March 1 in my informal sample of television appearances. The coverage of U.S. policy for the most part consisted of replaying statements by officials, with largely hawkish analysis by members of the foreign policy establishment.
That is why I appreciate the opportunity to provide a more nuanced interpretation both here and on RT.
Terror Bombings In Moscow?
Doku Umarov, whose first name is sometimes spelled Dokka, is an Islamist militant born in Chechnia in 1964. An engineer by training, he has declared himself to be emir of a wider region encompassing Chechnia. He has claimed responsibility for several terror killings of civilians, making him arguably Russia’s most feared and hated criminal.
That was the context of the recent call to action by Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh on a Facebook page. I found no mention of it in the March 2 print copy of the Washington Post. But RT reported the previous day:
During the recent riots in Ukraine, Yarosh rejected any negotiations with the Ukrainian government, calling on his supporters to defy the truces and agreements of the government and the opposition.
Right Sector has been referred to as the most active, the most radical and the best organized group in the Ukrainian unrest. Well-equipped masked rioters from Right Sector often used clubs, petrol bombs and firearms against the Ukrainian police. Some notorious members of the radical movement have continued to use rifles and pistols to intimidate local authorities, which they believe should be “afraid” of the people.
Although the violent acts of the group have been well-documented by media and placed on YouTube, Western powers have largely ignored its actions and persisted with describing the protests in Ukraine as “peaceful.” After meeting with Ukrainian protesters, including Right Sector members, in late January, Western representatives went as far as saying that they were “convinced that these people posed no threat.”
in an address posted on Right Sector’s page in VKontakte [now VK, Europe’s second most popular site] social network. The statement points out that “many Ukrainians with arms in the hands” supported Chechen militants in their fight against Russians and “it is time to support Ukraine now.” The message, signed “leader of Right Sector Dmitry Yarosh” then calls on Umarov “to activate his fight” and “take a unique chance to win” over Russia. Yarosh, who is a self-proclaimed deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, leads the far-right militant Right Sector group. He used to be a leader of radical nationalist group Trident, which became the core of Right Sector. The radical leader has been consistently anti-Russian in his statements, calling for the destruction and division of the “Moscow Empire” and openly supporting Chechen militants and Georgian aggression. Yarosh believes Russia is Ukraine’s “eternal foe” and has said that war between the two countries is “inevitable.” At the same time, the Right Sector leader said Ukraine should be “careful” with its future EU membership, as the “bureaucratic monster of Brussels” is “doing everything to bring to naught the national identity” of EU member countries.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said any military intervention by Russia would mark the beginning of “war.” EU foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton called the Federation Council vote “an unwarranted escalation of tensions.” She called on Russia not to dispatch troops, but to promote its views through “peaceful means.”“We strongly support the deployment of Russian troops to resolve the situation in Crimea as well as provide assistance to other Ukrainian regions, where the population rejects nationalism and asks [Russia] for help and protection.”
Contact the author Andrew Kreig