UKRAINE (Two articles from Informations ouvrieres, weekly newspaper of the Independent Workers Party – POI – France)

UKRAINE (Two articles from Informations ouvrieres, weekly newspaper of the Independent Workers Party – POI – France)

Crimea: The Dance of Hypocrites and Liars

By Dominique Ferré

MARCH 19 -- "Illegal" and "not in accordance with international law" is how the U.S. government and the European Union described the March 16 referendum in Crimea.

It is fashionable, including among many on the "far left," to raise a hue and cry about Russia. But on the question of Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not hesitate to claim the Kosovo precedent when justifying his actions. After the NATO intervention, Kosovo was detached from Serbia and declared "independent" in 2007 . . . under the auspices of the U.S. government, which still has its largest military base area-wise outside the United States in this territory: Camp Bondsteel.

But what about Russian troops disguised as self-defense militias in Crimea? An "invasion," of course. But hush! Barely a word can be uttered in the media about the landing in Kiev (according to the British Daily Mail) of 300 mercenaries of the sinister U.S. private agency Academi (formerly Blackwater), all of whom had honed their "skills" in Iraq and elsewhere.

And what about the European Union, which gives lessons in democracy to one and all? The EU has all sorts of experience when it comes to referendums! Let's recall the Danish referendum on the Maastricht Treaty [of the European Union], where the people were forced to vote again after they rejected this treaty in 1992. Or how about the majority "NO" vote in May 2005 in France and the Netherlands, where the mandate of the people was trampled upon and overturned soon after by the European Union and its servants when they imposed the European Constitutional Treaty, renamed the "Treaty of Lisbon"?

As for all the good souls, always quick to raise the specter of the far right to justify their submission to Brussels and the EU, they have suddenly become blind when it comes to a government that has bowed to the IMF dictates -- a government they have set up in Kiev.

"The Svoboda Party is a party further to the right than the others, [but ] it is not a far-right party," declared French [Socialist Party] Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (March 11, France Inter). Does Fabius not know that this infamous party celebrates every year the memory of the Ukrainian SS Galitchina division? Are we to believe that from the moment one agrees to implement the shock therapy of the IMF and the European Union, as the Svoboda Party and its ministers have done, one has suddenly become "acceptable" in good company?

And these are the same people who are on the campaign trial, now that European elections are around the corner, to slander as "xenophobic" all those workers who reject the European Union and its destructive plans!


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After the Referendum in Crimea: A New "Cold War"?

MARCH 19 -- It's not a big surprise that an overwhelming majority of voters chose the annexation of Crimea to Russia. Although Crimea is largely populated by Russians and Russian-speaking people, the demand for annexation was supported by only a tiny minority till very recently. (1)

But the recent measures implemented by the Ukrainian government -- from the prohibition of the Russian language to the "shock therapy" dictated by the IMF, not to leave out the rehabilitation of movements that collaborated with the Nazis -- pushed the immense majority of the Crimean population straight into the arms of the "pro-Russian" camp.

Immediately, Russia recognized this result and stated that it was ready to annex Crimea. In recent days, the Ukrainian government has increased its provocative decisions and declarations, issuing a call for a general mobilization of reservists and launching a militia force of tens of thousands of men, integrating into its ranks the "fighters" of Maidan Square, essentially people linked to the far-right political parties.

Add to this the ongoing NATO military exercises in neighboring countries (in the airspace above Poland and Romania, and over the Bulgarian banks of the Black Sea), all of which have led more and more Ukrainians to gradually join the demonstrations in the major cities of Eastern and Southern Ukraine that view annexation to Russia as a lesser evil, thereby accentuating each day a little more the processes leading to a break-up of the country. (2)

Sanctions Against Russia: A New "Cold War"?

In the aftermath of the March 16 referendum in Crimea, the United States and the European Union announced "sanctions" against Russia that were relatively modest in scope, as nothing should be done to "close the door to dialogue." . . . A new "Cold War"? Hardly.

The "Cold War" took place in a context where, despite the nature of the privileged bureaucracy that dominated the Soviet Union, its power was based on a system in which capitalism had been expropriated . Twenty-three years after the fall of the USSR, this is no longer the case.

The Russian economy, based on the process of privatization and looting of the 1990s, was integrated into a global capitalist economy in crisis.

It's a system where the City of London, the anchor point of the Russian mafia oligarchs, made known its reluctance to any sanctions against Russia.

Similarly in Germany, a country that receives the bulk of its natural gas from Russia (and which re-converted former "Socialist" Chancellor Schroeder), a spokesperson for the German employers said that "200,000 jobs in Germany depend on trade with Russia."

This interdependence also holds true on the Russian side: Thus, according to the International edition of The New York Times (March 11)"

"[T]the Russian oligarchs have been conspicuously silent since the beginning of the crisis. . . .

"'Of course, they are angry, but that does not mean they are going to challenge the foreign policy of Russia,' said Mikhail E. Dmitriev, an economist whose research group was formed originally to establish Putin's political agenda. ... In conversations in the corridors, however, numerous observers have stressed the great anxiety that reigns in the top echelons of the big corporations, particularly concerning possible sanctions that would affect the banks."

Reforming an Economy That is "Still Too Soviet"

The situation of decomposition under way in Ukraine today has created a climate that is conducive to announcements by the Ukrainian government of plans for "shock therapy" -- under the aegis of the IMF and the European Union. (3)

Rather than a "Cold War" what is on the agenda is a real social war against the Ukrainian working class, part and parcel of the offensive against working people throughout the continent.

It is a social war that risks running head-long into the resistance of the working class -- and it is precisely to counter the risk of such a social upheaval that all the high and mighty are working to promote the break-up of the country.

Egor Vladimirov (from the TPP -Inform agency) commented:

"The Ukrainian national economy remains far too Soviet; it requires reforms. During the autumn of 2013 an IMF delegation visiting Kiev concluded that unpopular measures had to be taken urgently, including the increase in gas prices, wage freezes and cuts to pensions, and budget cuts. . . .

"The government of Nicolas Azarov [under Yanukovych - Ed.] did not dare go in that direction and preferred a less painful alternative: get money from Russia in exchange for a more active participation of Ukraine in economic integration (with Russia).

"Now, the new government, which openly calls itself a 'government of kamikakes,' or suicide bombers, is forced to implement the measures proposed last year.

"It must halve the pensions of retirees who have been compelled to continue working. With an average income of about US$160 per month, this is bound to provoke the violent opposition of those who brought the current leaders to power.

"This can only lead one to assume that the unstable situation of the current government could quickly become unsustainable."

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Endnotes

(1) The annexation parties obtained only 4% of the vote in the last elections in Crimea.

(2) The insistence with which the political pundits and media highlight the alleged opposition between "pro-Russian" Russian-speakers and "pro- Ukrainian" Crimean Tatars shows how ethnic clashes could be induced tomorrow, including in Crimea.

(3) The European Union, with which the Ukrainian government is scheduled to sign "Agreement of Association" on March 21.

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The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun

By Dominique Ferré

(reprinted from Issue No. 192 of Informations Ouvrières, March 12, 2014, the weekly newspaper of the Independent Workers Party / POI of France)

"The looting of Ukraine has begun." These words come from Paul Craig Roberts, a specialist in this matter. Though he is now a harsh critic of U.S. foreign policy, Roberts at one time served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under the Reagan administration. For many years he was also an associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

In an article published by Information Clearing House on March 7, Roberts wrote:

"According to a report in Kommersant-Oukraina, the finance ministry [of Kiev] has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine's poor (http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2424454). It is Greece all over again.

"[T]he Western looters are already at work. . . . But this is only the beginning.

"The corrupt Western media describe loans as 'aid.' However, the 11 billion euros that the EU is offering Kiev is not aid. It is a loan. Moreover, it comes with many strings, including Kiev's acceptance of an IMF austerity plan."

That is the meaning of the Association Agreement with the European Union that is about to be signed by the government in Kiev -- a collection of neo-Nazis, corrupt oligarchs, and defectors of the Yanukovych regime, all of them sponsored, more or less, by U.S. and European "foundations" (1).

But as was stated more than 20 years ago, at the time of the break-up of Yugoslavia, by Crito Zoakaos, an "expert" at Polyeconomics, a leading international financial institution, "When the initial IMF shock therapy hit Yugoslavia the first results in terms of social disorder were not ethnic tensions, but massive strikes. . . . 'Ethnic cleansing' did not appear until after the 'shock therapy' had done its job."

That is why it is necessary for the United States and European Union to now manipulate language and national issues in Ukraine, pitting peoples against each other, so as to dislocate the working class and thereby allow the "shock therapy" to take hold in Ukraine and the rest of the continent.

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Endnote

(1) On December 13, 2013, Victoria Nuland, on behalf U.S. State Department, announced that US$5 billion were being allocated to "assist the Ukrainian opposition," including the neo-Nazis.

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Ukraine: Sinister "Shock Therapy" Behind the Carving Up of the Country

By Dominique Ferré, with help from our correspondents

MARCH 12 -- All eyes are on Crimea. The Parliament of the autonomous region in this peninsula in the Black Sea, which was transferred to the Ukraine in 1954, has convened a referendum on March 16, which is to decide on its transfer to Russia. It harbors the Russian military base of Sevastopol and a population that is Russian-speaking in its great majority, made up of 58% Russians, 27% Ukrainians and 12% Crimean Tatars (1). It is thus a mixture that is propitious to all sorts of manipulations and confrontations between communities.

The Western Press Unleashed

The U.S., French, British and German governments, along with the European Union, have denounced the referendum as "illegal," accusing the Putin government of having pushed for this decision and having sent troops into Crimea. NATO military flight maneuvers have taken place in two countries bordering the Ukraine: Poland and Romania.

The Western press has lashed out against the "Russian aggression" and Putin's threats of annexing Crimea.

In all this flood of propaganda, an ounce of truth was published in the daily French newspaper Le Monde on March 6: "Up until the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis, the parties working [in Crimea] in support of Crimea's transfer to Russia had but a negligible audience."


So why are crowds of Ukrainian citizens waving the Russian flag, from Simferopol (in Crimea) to Donetsk and Kharkov (in the eastern regions of the Ukraine, where the Ukrainian population is Russian-speaking, in its majority?

Isn't it because the Members of Parliament and a government of sorcerer's apprentices that was catapulted into power in Kiev with the full support of Washington and Brussels adopted at the end of February 2014 laws that are provocative -- beginning with the law forbidding the Russian language in the regions where it is the native language of the majority of the Ukrainian population?

Exonerating Nazi Groups

Not only that. What about the law that exonerates the Stepan Bandera groups -- Stepan Bandera was a Nazi collaborator at the time of the invasion of the USSR in 1941. The Svoboda Party, in power in Kiev, claims to belong to these groups.

In a country where dozens of atrocities took place like the ones in the French town of "Oradour-sur-Glane" under Nazi occupation (2), this exoneration could only push millions of citizens into the arms of the political forces, up till now a tiny minority, advocating secession.

The referendum in Crimea, like the state of near-secession of the eastern regions along the Russian border, are but consequences of the policy that the U.S. government and the European Union have been implementing for months now.

Reducing the Budget by 5 Billion to 6.2 Billion Euros!


The stakes of the carving up of Ukraine that is under way were announced in the March 6 issue of Kommersant-Oukraina, under the headline "The shock and the bill":

"The government has prepared a series of measures aiming at settling the budget problems as quickly as possible."

Among them are the following: "Cutting the social spending, for example, reducing the retirement pension of the still-employed retirees by 50%" (in reality, those who are forced to work due to the measly $150 retirement pension per month).

All this has to be implemented "by the end of May." Until March 31, local communities must immediately increase their income by 2% and reduce their spending by 1%" and this, among other things, must be carried out in order to reduce the budget from now till then by 65 billion to 80 billion grivnas (i.e., beween 5 billion and 6.2 billion euros).

A Lowering of the State's Aid to the Mines

An "expert consultant to the government and the international institutions" adds: "The shock therapy could include a lowering of the State aid to the coal mines that are not profitable." (Ibid.)

Ukraine would then follow the same path as Romania where, according to a mining trade unionist who was present at the Paris European Workers Conference (last March 1-2), 120,000 jobs have been liquidated over the past 20 years, at the injunction of the IMF and then of the European Union.


The Miners' Strike of 1989-1990

But everyone remembers that the miners of Ukraine, like the miners of Russia, went on strike for months and months in 1989-1990, against the bureaucracy and its first measures of "liberalization" under "Perestroika."

It is in an attempt to break up this fighting force of the working class, still present, that everyone -- first and foremost the U.S. government and the European Union -- is pushing for the carving up of Ukraine.

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Endnotes

(1) Muslim and Turkish-speaking Crimean Tatars were collectively deported to Central Asia in 1944 by Stalin, as so-called "enemies of the people" -- along with entire other peoples of the USSR.

(2) In 1944, a Waffen SS company gathered the entire population (642 men, women and children) of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane (in the Haute-Vienne Department of Vichy, France) and massacred them.