In order to understand why southeastern Ukrainians want separation from the people whom Obama placed in control in the country's northwest during February, in Kiev, just imagine that you are a Russian-speaking Ukrainian who had voted for the winner of the last Presidential election in Ukraine (Viktor Yanukovych had won overwhelmingly in the eastern half of the country), and that he was ousted in a coup on 22 February 2014, and the Obama-Administration-imposed interim government had perpetrated this massacre on May 2nd in Odessa against supporters (like yourself) of that ousted President, and now of independence from the fascists who (after $5 billion+ of U.S. preparation, plus sending U.S. mercenaries) had ousted him and installed the neo-Nazis who organized and perpetrated the May 2nd massacre of former supporters of that now-ousted President, and thus instigated the Ukrainian civil war. Would you feel safe, being ruled by those people, Obama's people, the fascists who had killed hundreds, all of whom were civilians, in Odessa's Trade Unions Building, on May 2nd? Would you want to be ruled by people who have shown themselves committed to your own destruction?
And, thus, we now shall discuss the second point in this story: the primary goal of the U.S. aristocracy being to maintain the U.S. dollar as the world's international-trading currency.
On 6 March 2014, Paul Craig Roberts bannered, "The Looting of Ukraine Has Begun," and he wasn't referring to the long history of kleptocracy in Ukraine, but only to the Obama Administration's part in that history. "According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington's stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government 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. It is Greece all over again. ... The austerity plan [from the IMF, which is controlled by Europe's aristocrats] will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations [further implementing control by those aristocrats]. Ukraine's agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness." It wasn't of benefit only to Europe's aristocrats.
Something highly important was occurring at that very moment: Iskra News in Russian, and also the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, reported, on 7 March 2014, that "At 2 a.m. this morning ... an unmarked transport plane was on the runway at Borosipol Airport" near Kiev in the west, and that, "According to airport staff, before the plane came to the airport, four trucks and two Volkswagen minibuses arrived, all the truck license plates missing." This was as translated by Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research headlining on 14 March, "Ukraine's Gold Reserves Secretly Flown Out and Confiscated by the New York Federal Reserve?" in which he noted that, when asked, "A spokesman for the New York Fed said simply, 'Any inquiry regarding gold accounts should be directed to the account holder." The load was said to be "more than 40 heavy boxes." Chossudovsky noted that, "The National Bank of Ukraine (Central Bank) estimated Ukraine's gold reserves in February to be worth $1.8 billion dollars." It was 36 tons. The U.S., according to the U.S. State Department's Victoria Nuland (who selected the leadership of the post-coup interim government) had invested around $5 billion in precipitating the coup. Was Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk now cleaning out the nation's gold reserves in order to strip the nation so that the Ukraine's steep indebtedness for Russian gas would never be able to be repaid to Russia's oligarchs? Or was he doing it as a payoff for Nuland's having installed him? Or both? In any case: Russia was being squeezed, by this fascist-Ukrainian/U.S. ploy.
Metal.com, the Shanghai Metals Market, headlined on March 14th, "Ukraine Gold Reserves Reported To Be Hastily Aircrafted To U.S." Nobody would say anything about it, and U.S. "news" media blacked out the matter. However, U.S. sources said that it was done in order to protect Ukraine's gold in the event that Russia were to invade and steal it (i.e., to take it toward repayment of Ukraine's $16 billion debt to Russia).
Raul Illargi headlined at The Automatic Earth, "Debt Rattle Mar 9 2014: Big Oil and Gas Wars," and linked to recent news reports about international oil companies' efforts to push Russia's state oil company Gazprom out of Ukraine and replace Russian with Western oil companies' production. Headlines included: "EU leaders draw up plans to send gas to Ukraine if Russia cuts off supply," "Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry," "Ukraine Plans to Cut Russian Gas Imports, Raise EU Supply," and "Ukraine's Naftogaz slashes Russian gas imports in February." The machinations by rightist politicians to shove aside Gazprom were already at a fever-pitch throughout the weeks leading up to the overthrow of Ukraine's pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych, especially the last week of February in 2014, when he was replaced by Nuland's chosen person, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
So: that's why the Russian-speakers who live in Ukraine are terrified and are hoping for Russia's protection of them, and why Ukraine's neo-Nazis were being unleashed by Obama against them. It's just one gang of aristocrats trying to muscle another gang of aristocrats off to the side. And we'll see who wins. But, clearly, the public, throughout Ukraine, will lose, big-time: "collateral damage" from the struggle between two rival gangs of aristocrats.
It's just history repeating itself, for the zillionth time.
As usual, the winner of the 25 May 2014 election in Ukraine was an oligarch, but it wasn't the one whom Obama had wanted, Yulia Tymoshenko (the one whose ally, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Obama's agent Nuland had selected to run the interim government). She's a rabid hater of Russia and supporter of the Hitlerites. Instead, it was Ukraine's chocolate king, Petro Poroshenko, who is perhaps even more dependent upon Vladimir Putin's goodwill than he is upon Barack Obama's. At least with Poroshenko at the helm, there is a chance of possibly blocking the fascist future for Ukraine that U.S. President Obama had, by now, so clearly intended. Enough Ukrainians, even in the country's northwest (since ones in the southeast weren't voting) opposed fascist rule, to turn away from Obama's intended ruler of Ukraine. However, Poroshenko inherits a country whose Crimean region had clearly chosen to abandon Ukraine and to become again part of its original country, Russia.
Whether Poroshenko will be able to stop the civil war that started on May 2nd is yet to be seen. If he prosecutes the top people behind the May 2nd massacre, such as the Tymoshenko-allied oligarch of banking, gas, airlines and media, Ihor Kolomoisky, then a civil war among the public will become instead a civil war among the oligarchs themselves. The alternative will be continuation of the existing public civil war, ending in Ukraine's degenerating into two failed states. That would be disastrous even for Poroshenko's financial interests, so a reasonable expectation would be for him to do whatever is necessary to do in order to avoid that outcome, though that might bring on the wrath of President Obama.
Perhaps Obama will find a different way to continue the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
----------
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).