The Atlanticist narrative also hides another critical fact. The Maidan movement and post-coup regime are largely the creation of just one of the two broad ethno-cultural and political groups that cohabit in the Ukraine. This is a very important when trying to understand the response of many in the East and South to recent events.
The Maidan protest movement was overwhelmingly driven by Ukrainian nationalist sentiment, and by protestors who were mainly from Western and Central Ukraine. The regime that it spawned is a coalition of three political parties. The geographic centre of gravity of all three parties is in the West/Central Ukraine, with a smaller presence in the South (especially Dnipropetrovsk), but very attenuated support in the East.
One of the parties, the Fascist Svoboda (on which, more below), is almost exclusively based in the West. In the 2012 Rada elections, the Fascist Svoboda could barely conjure up 1-2% of the vote among the millions of voters in the industrial Russian-speaking East. Yet they got up to 30% of the vote in West Ukrainian cities like Ternopil and Lyviv.
The anti-Russian nature of a significant element in the new post-Maidan regime was evident from the very start. Voices were heard calling for the recognition of Ukrainian as the sole official language, Russian pages were taken down from government web sites, Russian television stations were blocked and Russian journalists were denied visas.
In Kiev, Russophobic fascists were openly running around attacking opponents - for example sacking the offices of the Party of Regions and the Communist Party, and attacking television journalists who were 'off-message' on Crimea.
As if this wasn't enough, in the light of the historical background outlined above, it is difficult to understate the offence caused to the Russian speaking and socialist industrial working class of the Donbass region, when they realised that a coup they had played no part in had installed a regime including West Ukrainian fascists.
Did the one-sided ethno-cultural nature of the Maidan protest and the regime it spawned cause any concern for its Atlanticist backers - the USA, EU and NATO, those stout defenders of pluralism and inclusiveness? Not a bit. Why? Because their sole interest was in exploiting the situation for geopolitical gain. It was all about winning Ukraine for the Atlanticist bloc, deepening the engagement with NATO, extending the EU corporatist oligarchy, standing up another debtor state for the IMF, and stuffing it to Putin for wrecking their schemes to vaporize Ba'athist Syria and make the Middle East a little bit safer for the USA, EU, NATO and Israel - the self-ascribed 'international community'.
In pursuit of this goal not only did the Atlanticist bloc treat the Russian speaking, socialist-leaning East as if it didn't exist, but it showed itself willing to work openly with Fascists.
The Atlanticist bloc had to cover-up the fact that it had ridden roughshod over the delicate divisions in Ukraine in order to score a geopolitical victory, jeopardising the very fabric of pluralist (as opposed to ethno-nationalist) Ukrainian unity. It had to explain why so many in the East, South and Crimea began to protest in large numbers, many of them waving Russian flags as a sign of their offended sense of ethno-cultural identity.
So the Atlanticist bloc has spun and sustained a hysterical and utterly disingenuous anti-Russian conspiracy narrative, hoping thereby to deflect public opinion from the fact that the divisions in contemporary Ukraine have been largely provoked by a run of events shamelessly exploited by the Atlanticist bloc for its own gain.
For example, according to the Atlanticist spin, Crimea did not secede - it was invaded. It was all a Russian land grab. Of course this conveniently ignores the fact that by every conceivable norm of democratic national self-determination - so favoured of the Atlanticist bloc when geopolitically convenient - Crimea always was, is, and should be Russian.
Crimea had only been handed to the Ukraine in 1954. It had always maintained and nurtured a strong Russian identity. Support for reunion with Russia was overwhelming.
Why did it secede in March 2014? Why not any time earlier? Why not in 2004? The reason is because the events in Kiev provoked a genuine and completely understandable irredentist backlash. For the Crimea, the deal with 'Ukraine', concluded in 1954 without her consent, was now well and truly over. Ethnically Russian Crimea had no interest in being part of an Atlanticist proxy Ukrainian nationalist regime. Particularly one that contained Fascists.
As for the ground-swell of anti-regime opinion in the East, especially the Donbass, it is also a purely reflexive phenomenon. There were no 'little green men' before the 'men in black' seized power and treated the Russophile East with Russophobic contempt.
In Kiev, members of the Rada have been openly threatening for months to ban the Communist Party and the Party of Regions. This kind of anti-democratic nonsense has just started up again following the Donetsk referendum, largely because elements in the Party of Regions and the Communist Party have had the temerity to lay the blame for events in the Donbass exactly where it belongs - at the feet of the post-coup regime and its international sponsors.
But there is an even more important aspect to this. The nature of the Donetsk rebellion has been systematically distorted. It is consistently characterised as 'pro-Russian' or 'separatist'. In fact, at a popular level, it is primarily anti-Fascist. Anyone who has seen pictures of the banners and posters draped over the barricades around occupied buildings or roadblocks, or seen the banners carried in demonstrations, or heard the chants of 'Fashisty' aimed at the invading Ukrainian forces in Mariupol or Slavyansk, cannot fail to have noticed this.
So why do the people of the Donbass regard the regime as Fascist? Isn't this just Russian propaganda exploiting historical fears?
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