The Russian press took its cue from President Putin. For example, on December 4th, Russia Direct quoted Mr. Putin's assertion that "the anti-government protests in Ukraine were organized and planned by the West as an attempt to overthrow the country's legitimate government."
Given this focus, the Russian media made much of the stunning hypocrisy of U.S. Senator John McCain, who joined the opposition on the Maidan and asserted: "We " want to make it clear to Russia and Vladimir Putin that interference in the affairs of Ukraine is not acceptable to the United States." His very presence, like that of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, constituted the very interference he was decrying.
Only on December 17th, one day after the Times published its article about Svoboda, did Vicky Pelaez of Moscow News follow suit. Accusing the U.S. and the European Union of plotting to prevent the resurgence of Russia as a superpower, Ms. Pelaez noted, "All this explains why the U.S. and the EU do not call into question the participation of Neo-Nazi parties in the Independence Square rallies. One of the most seasoned and vociferous of these organizations is the Svoboda (Freedom) party, linked with France's National Front."
She noted that "Svoboda-affiliated activists were behind the recent toppling of a statue of Lenin -- an act imitating the style of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of al-Qaeda operators in Iraq, Libya and Syria. The party's leader, Oleg Tyagnibog, then urged his compatriots to 'struggle against Moscow's Jewish mafia.'"
The very issue of the protesters on the Maidan subsided during much of the rest of December, due to the agreement reached between Putin and Yanukovych that was announced on 17 December 2013. Thus, so did concern about violent right-wing extremists among the protesters.
As Gilbert Doctorow wrote in the Moscow Times on December 20th, "Putin clearly did his realist calculations with great care and may have landed a master stroke with the $15 billion bailout package plus gas discounts. If Russia 'bought' Ukraine, as the protesters on Kiev's Maidan would have us believe, then he did so with a bid that takes your breath away. Russia is putting up nearly the entire sum that Ukraine needs to ensure it meets its debt repayments and other convertible currency obligations for the coming year."
He also observed that "Putin has shown Senator John McCain, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and other Western politicians who posed for the cameras among protesters last week to be empty-handed blusterers."
However, Sergey Glazyev was not so sure. Writing in the National Interest on December 30th, He asserted: "Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's visit to Kiev was a pivotal moment. Accompanied by calls in Congress to impose sanctions against many Ukrainian officials and businessmen disloyal to Washington, she had confidential meetings with the most influential of them, threatening that they would be put on a list of sanctioned persons barred from entry into the United States and other NATO member-states and have their accounts and property seized. The blackmail of the most influential Ukrainians was attended by the publicized distribution of food to 'suffering' supporters of Euro-integration and accusations against Russia for tough pressure on Ukraine."
The Times was especially flummoxed by the deal. It published successive articles on December 18th and 19th that placed the deal in the context of yet another victory for Putin over the United States "that have served to re-establish Russia as a counterweight to Western dominance in world affairs." On December 23rd a Times article acknowledged that the deal "took the wind out of the sails of the protest." It also reported that the strategy of the ever-present core group of protesters was to force Yanukovych "to make a mistake so blatant that Ukrainians again take to the streets to protest."
By the end of December, the Russian press was preoccupied with Putin's pardon of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and two attacks by suicide bombers in Volgograd. In late December, the press also reported that "Putin has ruled out the possibility of Russia moving troops into Ukraine's autonomous Crimea region." Then it reported that Putin "signed a law that would make spreading separatist views a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail."
In late December the New York Times published an opinion piece that ran counter to its month-long theme of right-side-of history revolutionary protests at Maidan. Titled "Kiev Isn't Ready for Europe," Samuel Charap and Keith A. Darden asserted: "Listening to recent commentary from Western officials, you would think that a new nation has been born on the Maidan in Kiev, that Ukrainians are united in their desire to divorce themselves from Russia and return to the fold of Europe, and that it is only their current leaders bolstered and bullied by their patrons in the Kremlin who stand in the way of a 'Europe whole and free.' This all makes for a nice sound bite, but it bears little relationship to reality."
In fact, "an early December poll showed that the number of Ukrainians favoring closer ties with Russia was equal to the number favoring closer ties with Europe."
That inconvenient fact, however, would not prevent the cold warriors in the U.S., Europe and at the Times from throwing the "Ukrainians favoring closer ties with Russia" under the bus, in order to shamelessly deny the reality of a violent coup -- which overthrew a democratically elected government -- and extol it as an ineluctable right-side-of-history revolution.
(Note: Part Three of the Propaganda War over Ukraine will examine events there in January 2014.)
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