Is anyone involved in Ukraine NOT to blame for something?
In spite of its history as a subjugated non-state, Ukraine has managed something like a functioning democratic government from time to time in recent years. Now is not one of those times. The elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, was by all accounts corrupt, but he was elected. Although the process was somewhat messy, he was duly elected in 2010 with almost 49% of the vote, concentrated in Russian-populated eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
Now Yanukovych has been deposed, perhaps justly, but by an unjust process spearheaded by a street mob and a disenthralled parliament. The parliament has appointed an acting president and Yanukovych is in asylum in Russia. It's not clear that Ukraine now has a legitimate government of any sort.
The Ukrainian presidential crisis, which is ongoing, is surely the result of longstanding, internal Ukrainian faultlines, ethnic, political, and economic. And the crisis is even more surely the result of deliberate, years-long interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine by the United States, the European Union, NATO, and other western forces, as Robert Parry has described. Ukraine appears to be the latest victim of those New American Century conspirators who brought the world such success in Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras, and Syria (home to another Russian warm water port and only Mediterranean base).
"KREMLIN DEPLOYS MILITARY TO SEIZE CRIMEA" -- N.Y. Times headline
That front page headline in the Times is, perhaps, less inflammatory than others elsewhere, but it was five columns wide and deploying "Kremlin" that way is pure Cold War journalism. As for accuracy, it's close -- even if it doesn't acknowledge that Russian troops have long been based in Crimea and "seize" is a hyperbolic rendering of an unopposed deployment which may even have been welcomed by most of the population.
The subhead -- "REBUFF TO OBAMA" -- is essentially propaganda, as it tries to make the President personally relevant to a situation that has its own dynamic. It's also propaganda insofar as it tries to make this an American crisis to which we're supposed to respond, rather than one we promoted for reasons that remain obscure.
The Times offers some idea of why Russia might be wary, but that's deep in an inside sidebar, not the front page story. The deadpan tone hides a host of implied threats to Russian stability and safety:
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