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"Russia has issued a credible threat to counter-escalate" in the event of the policy shift, noted one former Pentagon official. "Are we prepared for such escalation?"
Anti-war voices this week sounded the alarm over U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's newfound embrace of letting Ukraine use weapons supplied by the United States to attack targets inside Russia—a policy critics say risks a catastrophic escalation between the world's two top nuclear powers.
So far, the Biden administration has strictly forbidden Ukrainian forces—who are defending their country from the invasion ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in February 2022—from attacking targets inside Russia with U.S.-supplied weapons. This is in keeping with President Joe Biden's stated objective of "trying to avoid World War III."
However, The New York Times' David Sanger reported Wednesday that "the consensus around that policy is fraying" amid "a vigorous debate inside the administration over relaxing the ban to allow the Ukrainians to hit missile and artillery launch sites just over the border in Russia."
Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant defense secretary during the Trump administration,
warned Wednesday on social media that "there is exceptional and ill-advised danger in this course," as "Russia has issued a credible threat to counter-escalate" in the event of the policy shift.
"Are we prepared for such escalation?" he asked.
Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center,
said Wednesday that Blinken's "move toward persuading Biden to allow Ukraine to widen the war to Russian territory is just a crazy idea, and makes any eventual negotiation all but impossible."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says forces and weapons amassed just across the Russian border have enabled Russia's recent territorial gains, including near Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, which has come under
heavy Russian bombardment in recent days.
After what Sanger called a "sobering" visit by Blinken to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv last week, the secretary of state has been pushing for a change in the Biden administration's stance. According to Sanger, "the consensus around that policy" of restraint is unraveling. It is not quite clear yet how many senior Biden administration officials support the move to greenlight Ukrainian attacks on Russia with U.S. arms, but one highly controversial undersecretary of state who recently resigned is a vocal proponent of the policy.
That would be Victoria Nuland, a neoconservative who is reviled by anti-imperialists around the world for her hawkish history that includes playing a key role in the plot to overthrow the pro-Moscow government of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych during the Euromaidan uprising a decade ago.
"They need to be able to stop these Russian attacks that are coming from bases inside Russia," Nuland
toldABC News on Sunday. "Those bases ought to be fair game... I think it's time for that because Russia has obviously escalated this war."
NULAND CALLS FOR STRIKES ON RUSSIA pic.twitter.com/9WxCDZrM6b
— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) May 19, 2024
The Biden administration is also weighing whether to train Ukrainian forces inside Ukraine, as opposed to in Germany under current policy—a move that could put U.S. and NATO troops in the line of fire.
Ukrainian officials welcomed Blinken's shift.
"Blinken's statement, which he repeated twice, that Ukraine is the one to choose its targets, created hope that the United States had changed its position: Ukraine should make its own decisions on the territories where it uses certain Western weapons, especially American ones," Nataliia Halibarenko, who heads Ukraine's mission to NATO, toldUkrinform on Thursday.
"The decision that we have the right to use American weapons beyond Ukraine must be made sooner or later," she added. "It is a pity that we are wasting time searching for a solution that should not cause doubts. But we will continue to promote it at all levels."
The U.S. would not be the first country to allow Ukraine to use weapons it supplies for attacks inside Russia. The United Kingdom has sent Ukraine Storm Shadow long-range air-launched cruise missiles, and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron says Ukraine "absolutely has the right to strike back at Russia."
The debate within the Biden administration over Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied arms comes amid Russian military drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, which Russia's Defense Ministry earlier this month claimed were ordered in response to "provocative statements and threats of certain Western officials."
Did Russia's annexation of Crimea on March violate the 1994 Budapest agreement among Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain and the U.S.? Specifically, in Paragraph One, Ukraine agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its territory in return for a commitment by Russia, Britain and the U.S. "to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?"
I'm no lawyer, but I can read the words. And, taken literally, the answer seems to be Yes - despite a host of extenuating circumstances that can be adduced to explain why Crimea rejoined Russia, including the alarm among Crimean leaders over the unconstitutional ouster of Ukraine's elected president and the Russian government's fear about the possible berthing of NATO's nuclear-missile warships at the naval base at Sebastopol.
But there's also the item in Paragraph Three in which Russia, the UK, and the U.S. also commit "to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty."
Might the EU's take-it-or-leave-it proposal last fall offering Ukraine "associate" status in return for draconian economic austerity imposed on the Ukrainian people come under the rubric of the "economic coercion" prohibited at Budapest? An arguable Yes, it seems to me.
Some will try to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovych's ill-fated rejection of these International Monetary Fund demands to make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder as "history," now that the EU and Ukraine's replacement President Petro Poroshenko signed on June 27 that "associate" status agreement - the same agreement that Yanukovich rejected in favor of what appeared to be a better deal from Russia.
Was Yanukovich also under pressure from Moscow to maintain Ukraine's historic, cultural and economic ties to Russia? Of course. Putin reportedly weighed in heavily with Yanukovich last October and early November when U.S. and EU diplomats were pressuring the Ukrainian president as well.
But did Yanukovich expect to be overthrown if he opted for Moscow's offer? If he did not, he sorely underestimated what $5 billion in U.S. "democracy promotion" can buy. After Yanukovych's decision, American neoconservatives - the likes of National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland - pulled out all the stops to enable Ukraine to fulfill what Nuland called its "European aspirations."
The central problem confronting Ukraine, however, was not whether it leaned toward Europe or toward Russia. It was that after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, some ruthless businessmen used their insider connections to snap up (or "privatize") the natural and industrial resources of the country. These handful of "oligarchs" then corrupted the political process, buying off politicians from both pro-EU and pro-Moscow perspectives.
Last fall, Yanukovych, who was elected from a political base in the more industrial Russian-ethnic east, was looking for how to bail Ukraine out of the financial and economic crisis that it was facing amid widespread unemployment and the hangover from the Great Recession.
In a layman's way of understanding what happened in Ukraine, Yanukovych issued what in the consulting world is called a Request for Proposal (RFP), i.e., a feeler to see who could offer the most promising plan for helping Ukraine escape insolvency. After initially tilting toward the EU proposal (before he learned of its draconian IMF small print), he later shifted to the less onerous offer from Russia.
In the world of contractors and RFPs, there are orderly procedures for firms whose bids are turned down to contest the selection of the eventual winner. But I know of no case where one of the losing firms turned around and violently removed the leadership of the RFP-issuing institution, installed new leadership and got the contract.
Abortive Feb. 21 Agreement
And, in assessing which side - the U.S./EU or Russia - is in the wrong on Ukraine, there was also the agreement, facilitated on Feb. 21 by the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France, in which then-President Yanukovich acceded to demands from the opposition by accepting limits on his powers and agreeing to early elections to vote him out of office.
Yanukovych also fatefully agreed to pull back the police, opening the way for right-wing militias, including neo-Nazis, to seize government buildings and force Yanukovych and his government officials to flee for their lives. With these paramilitary forces patrolling government offices, what was left of the Parliament voted to replace Yanukovych and install a new regime, giving four ministries to the far right and the neo-Nazis in recognition of their crucial role.
As the U.S. and the EU hailed the "legitimacy" of this new regime -- with Nuland's hand-picked leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk appointed as the new prime minister - the Western "mainstream media" quickly forgot the Feb. 21 agreement (surprise, surprise!). But Russian President Vladimir Putin had a personal representative there, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin.
Yet, because the MSM was already parading Putin (and Yanukovych) around the op-ed pages and talks shows as the black-hatted villains of the Ukraine saga, few Americans got to hear Putin's perception of what happened, as he explained at a Moscow press conference ten days after Yanukovich was overthrown:
"First of all, my assessment of what happened in Kiev and in Ukraine in general. ... This was an unconstitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power. Does anyone question this? Nobody does. ... The question is why this was done? ...
"President Yanukovich, through the mediation of the foreign ministers of three European countries - Poland, Germany and France - and in the presence of my representative signed an agreement with the opposition on Feb. 21. I would like to stress that under that agreement (I am not saying this was good or bad, just stating the fact) Mr. Yanukovich actually handed over power. He agreed to all the opposition's demands: he agreed to early parliamentary elections, to early presidential elections, and to return to the 2004 Constitution, as demanded by the opposition.
"He gave a positive response to our request, the request of western countries and, first of all, of the opposition not to use force. ... he issued orders to withdraw all police forces from the capital, and they complied. He went to Kharkov to attend an event, and as soon as he left, instead of releasing the occupied administrative buildings, they [the opposition] immediately occupied the President's residence and the Government building - all that instead of acting on the agreement.
"I ask myself, what was the purpose of all this? ... He had in fact given up his power already; and as I believe, as I told him, he had no chance of being re-elected. ... What was the purpose of all those illegal, unconstitutional actions, why did they have to create this chaos in the country? Armed and masked militants are still roaming the streets of Kiev. ...
"If you want, I can tell you even more. He [Yanukovich] called me on the phone and I told him not to do it. I said, 'You will have anarchy, you will have chaos in the capital. Think about the people.' But he did it anyway. And as soon as he did it, his office was seized, and that of the government, and the chaos I had warned him about and which continues to this day, erupted."
If Putin's account of how the Feb. 21 agreement was violated the very next day is accurate, and by almost all indications it is, then we have the anatomy of an undisguised putsch - an unconstitutional overthrow of a duly elected president of a sovereign state. The apparent aim, to install a government friendlier to the EU, is relevant but not essential here. The fact of the coup is essential.
Guaranteeing Ukraine's Sovereignty
Friday's lead editorial in the neocon flagship Washington Post, "Potemkin drawdown: The West must hold Russia to a real withdrawal from Ukraine," charged that "the rebellion in the east is manufactured by Russia to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty. The United States and Britain guaranteed support for that sovereignty in 1994 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons."
That claim brought my thoughts back to a conference of distinguished scholars at the U.S.-Russia Forum in the Hart Senate office building on June 16. With Professors Stephen Cohen and Robert Legvold presenting, it was the most sensible discussion of the Ukraine imbroglio that I have witnessed to date.
The point was made that Russia had violated the Budapest agreement in annexing Ukraine. But were the Russians the only culprits? What about the rest of the story? Russia, the UK and the U.S. all pledged "to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?" Okay. Gotcha on Putin considering the "existing borders."
But what about the political destabilization supported by the U.S. government, including the $5 billion that Assistant Secretary of State Nuland publicly announced had been invested in Ukraine's "European aspirations" - or the scores of projects financed by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, training activists, supporting "journalists" and organizing business and political groups.
During the crisis, U.S. officials even showed up in Kiev's Maidan square to urge on the protesters seeking to overthrow Yanukovych. Sen. John McCain gave a speech on a platform of the right-wing Svoboda party under a banner hailing the late Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Nuland went so far as to pass out cookies to the demonstrators and discuss with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who should be take over after Yanukovych was ousted.
How does this overt and covert interference square with the Budapest pledge "to respect the independence and sovereignty ... of Ukraine?" And how do the strong-arm tactics of the EU square with the commitment "to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty?"
Luckily, at the U.S.-Russia Forum, I was able to go first during the Q and A.
I said: "I have a brief question having to do with the Budapest agreement and also in the perspective of Vladimir Putin being more in a reactive mode than anything else. He's been accused, of course, of violating that agreement because of the Crimea [annexation].
"I'm wondering, if you look at the putsch, if you look at the coup d'etat of Feb. 22nd, supported to the tune of $5 billion by outside forces over the course of several years, of course, could that not also be regarded as a violation of the Budapest memorandum?"
Columbia University Professor Legvold's answer was, I think, instructive - instinctive, perhaps. His first thought was to associate my point with an argument the Russians have made. For many listeners, that might put me in the category of some kind of apologist for Putin. I know Legvold well enough to doubt this was his intent. But still: Is Putin's account of the Feb. 21-22 events to be dismissed out of hand simply because it is from Putin?
The main takeaway for me from the forum was the Cohen-Legvold common assertion that we have already entered a New Cold War. Cohen was very direct in exposing the extraordinary abuse regularly accorded to scholars and specialists who try to discern and explain honestly Moscow's point of view.
Legvold suggested it would be "naive" not to recognize that the new Cold War is already upon us, that it will be "immensely expensive and immensely dangerous," and that all of us need to do whatever we can to make it "short and shallow."
That endeavor of averting the costs and the risks of Cold War II might well start with a truthful narrative of what happened, not the one-sided account that the American people have been seeing and hearing in the U.S. media.
us russia forum 061614www.youtube.com
Tensions are again soaring in Ukraine on Tuesday as leaders of the interim government in the western capitol city of Kiev trade accusations and threats with leaders in Moscow (and themselves) over events in eastern cities of the country closer to its Russian border.
As security forces sent from Kiev cleared protesters from government buildings in the city of Kharkiv, arresting 70 pro-Russian activists in the process, the Russian Foreign Ministry warned that further violence against those demanding their right to a referendum on independence from Ukraine could lead to civil war.
"We are calling for the immediate cessation of any military preparations, which could lead to civil war," the Russians said in a statement.
As the interim Ukraine government announced preparations for a larger security operation for Kharkiv and the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, the Russians accused Kiev of including hired mercenaries from the private U.S. military firm Greystone as part of its "special operations" units in addition to members of far-right and nationalist militias.
According to CNN:
The ministry alleged that what it called "American experts from the private military organization Greystone," disguised as soldiers, as well as militants from the Ukrainian far-right group Right Sector, had joined Ukrainian forces preparing for the crackdown in the country's east.
Late Monday, Ukrainian special forces cleared armed protesters from the headquarters of Ukrainian security services in Donetsk, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov's office announced.
But Ukraine's interim Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Yarema was quoted by Russian state-run news agency ITAR-Tass as saying Tuesday that the authorities are not going to storm the city's regional administration building. Yarema said the decision was made after talks with representatives of the protesters in the building.
A CNN team on the ground said that pro-Russian protesters appear still to be in control of the building and that there is no sign of special forces nearby.
In the city of Luhansk, pro-Russian separatists continued to occupy the Security Services Buildings and are reportedly better armed after accessing a weapons depot inside.
In Donetsk, where those who took over the central administrative buildings declared independence on Monday and demanded a referendum by week's end, a standoff between security forces continued. There, according to Reuters, "steel-and-energy tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest man, is mediating with the protesters, but he may have complicated the plans of the authorities by publicly urging authorities not to use force as a solution."
Brawl in Parliament
Meanwhile, in Kiev, a "brawl" broke out in the parliament building as left-leaning PMs clashed with their right-wing counterparts over the manner in which the crisis in Crimea and now these other eastern cities has been handled.
Watch:
Punch Up In Ukrainian Parliament Over Events In Kharkiv, Lugansk and DonetskA session of the Ukrainian parliament has descended into a brawl as rival factions argued over who was to blame for events in the ...
According to the Guardian:
A brawl erupted in the Ukrainian parliament chamber after the country's communist leader accused nationalists of playing into the hands of Russia by adopting extreme tactics early in the Ukrainian crisis.
Two deputies from the Svoboda far-right nationalist party took exception to the charges by communist Petro Symonenko and seized him while he was talking from the rostrum. His supporters rallied to his defence and a brawl broke out with deputies from other parties joining in and trading punches. [...]
Against the backdrop of the deepening crisis in the south-east, Symonenko stirred nationalist anger in parliament when, referring to the pro-Russian protesters who had seized buildings in eastern Ukraine, he suggested that nationalists had set a precedent earlier this year by seizing public buildings in protest at the rule of the ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Now, he said, armed groups were attacking people who wanted to defend their rights by peaceful means. "You are today doing everything to intimidate people. You arrest people, start fighting people who have a different point of view," he said, before being pulled away from the rostrum by the Svoboda deputies.
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