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Tag: viktor yanukovich
A Trump Presidency Could Mean Russian Hegemony

A Trump Presidency Could Mean Russian Hegemony

As Donald Trump continues to flirt with a radically transformed post-war world order, a victory for the GOP nominee would mean a political win for the Kremlin.

Trump’s stated belief in both a protectionist foreign policy and a weaker NATO alliance — not to mention his repeated praise for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin — all suggest that a Trump presidency could lead to a previously unimaginable cession of power to Russia.

An article in The Atlantic Thursday, “Hillary Clinton Is Running Against Vladimir Putin,” warned that a Trump presidency would collapse the post-World War II order carried by the United States and lead to mass nuclear proliferation.

Indeed, Trump has stated unequivocally that the price of maintaining world peace isn’t worth the cost. He also suggested Thursday that he would not come to the aid of NATO countries that are threatened in some way by Russia.

“If we are not going to be reasonably reimbursed for the tremendous cost of protecting these massive nations with tremendous wealth… I would be absolutely prepared to tell those countries, ‘Congratulations, you will be defending yourself,’” he said in an interview with The New York Times. The implications of this statement, should Trump reach the Oval Office, are incredibly profound.

All of this indicates Trump would be willing to let Vladimir Putin exert and expand his hegemonic impulse across Eastern Europe — and even further — in order to preserve American resources.

And that’s without considering Trump’s personal admiration for Putin: He has notoriously expressed his respect for the brutal Russian president, who arguably shares his fiery temperament and knack for media manipulation.

“He’s running his country and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in December, adding that Putin enjoyed high favorability numbers.

Moreover, Putin’s political strategy in Ukraine and Trump’s political strategy everywhere else seem to have been influenced by the same person: As a Slate profile recounts, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort spent almost seven years working for the former president of Ukraine, a corrupt, autocratic Putin surrogate named Viktor Yanukovych.

(Yanukovych left his post amid mass protests in response to his attempts to fix an election. In a column in April on Manafort, The National Memo’s Joe Conason called him a “Ukrainian overlord.”)

Not coincidentally, Trump strategists — who had a mostly hands-off approach to the party’s platform — scrapped a promise to aid Ukraine against Kremlin influence, as The Atlantic article points out.

No wonder, then, that Russia is the only other country in the G20 that doesn’t favor Hillary Clinton by a landslide.

 

Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures as he addresses students during his visit to German Embassy school in Moscow, Russia, June 29, 2016. REUTERS/Alexander Zemlianichenko

Ukrainian Panel’s Probe Links Previous Government To Shooting Deaths

Ukrainian Panel’s Probe Links Previous Government To Shooting Deaths

By Victoria Butenko and Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Security details and special police with the government of Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovich were responsible for the deaths of protesters shot in February, officials with the nation’s interim leadership said Thursday.

Three riot police officers were formally arrested and nine others detained overnight on suspicion of carrying out sniper fire that killed scores of people in Kiev on Feb. 20 during violent clashes between protesters and police, acting Prosecutor General Oleh Mahnitsky said at news conference in the capital while discussing preliminary results of the new government’s investigation.

The officials offered no proof of their accusations, saying the investigation into the deaths continues. Yanukovich and his former aides have denied that their forces carried out the attacks on protesters.

Speaking at Thursday’s news conference, acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said a special group within the capital’s Berkut riot police unit known as the “black company,” whose officers were dressed in black uniforms with yellow arm bands and were armed with Kalashnikovs and sniper rifles, are suspected of killing at least 17 protesters on Institutskaya Street on Feb. 20.

“We have identified all the people who were taking part in that operation,” Avakov said. “The degree of personal involvement of each of this special company’s officers is being established.”

The company’s commander, Maj. Dmitry Sadovnik, was among those taken into custody overnight, Avakov said.

Mahnitsky, the acting prosecutor general, said law enforcement officials were also investigating the deaths of three police officers who were slain on Feb. 20.

The violence, which capped three months of anti-government protests, led to the downfall of Yanukovich’s government in late February. The former president fled to Russia, and the current interim government is led by opponents of his rule.

Avakov accused Yanukovich’s interior minister, Vitaly Zakharchenko, of hiring criminals to attack people in the Ukrainian capital and said they were responsible for killing five people, including Kiev journalist Vyacheslav Veremiy.

More than 100 police officers from a security group known as Alpha were deployed in downtown Kiev armed with Kalashnikovs and sniper rifles and also fired on protesters for three days beginning Feb. 18, acting Security Service chief Valentin Nalivaychenko said at Thursday’s news conference.

Nalivaychenko said investigators believed that the operation was run by then-Security Service head Olexandr Yakimenko on orders from Yanukovich. Zakharchenko and Yakimenko are believed to be in Russia.

The government is investigating whether the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, the successor agency of the KGB, played a role in attacks on protesters, Nalivaychenko said. 32 armed FSB agents arrived in Kiev in late January, he said.

“We have sound reasons to believe that these groups that were stationed at one of the Security Service bases (near Kiev) were involved in planning and coordinating the so-called anti-terrorist operation,” Nalivaychenko said.

In an interview aired Wednesday from the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, Yanukovich denied accusations that he ordered the shootings of protesters.

“I never gave any orders to open fire,” Yanukovich said. “I always followed the principle that that no power is worth a drop of shed blood.”

The shootings of both protesters and police were carried out by opposition snipers, Yakimenko, the former Security Service chief, said recently in an interview to Rossiya-24, a Russian news television network.

The FSB also denied its role in Ukraine’s deaths.

“Let such statements be on the conscience of Ukraine Security Service,” an unnamed FSB press service officer told RIA-Novosti news agency Thursday.

The then-opposition forces were responsible for the deadly sniper fire in Kiev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised remarks last week. “I can’t confirm it by 100 percent, but there are very many facts which point that way,” Lavrov said.

Nonetheless, the preliminary findings announced in Kiev on Thursday match video images taken at the time, said Dmitry Tymchuk, a Ukrainian defense and security expert.

“In the videos open to the public we can see numerous government officers dressed in black shooting at protesters with Kalashnikovs and sniper rifles in Institutskaya Street,” Tymchuk, head of Kiev-based Center of Military and Political Research, said in an interview with The Times.

“Among other things,” he added, “there is one important element in their uniforms, a yellow arm band on all of them, which indicates they were informed in advance of sniper fire in central Kiev and identified themselves for their own snipers to prevent the so-called friendly fire.”

A widow who saw her husband, a 39-year-old home repairman and protest activist, slain in the streets of Kiev on Feb. 20 said she had no doubt that the Yanukovich government was responsible.

“My husband, Volodymyr (Melnichuk), and I were standing near October Palace about 5 p.m. on that day after all the shooting was already long over when a single shot rang and my husband was killed,” Maria Kvyatkovskaya, 39, said in a phone interview Thursday. “I am glad the investigators have found out the killers were among Yanukovich’s police. Personally I have never doubted that. Who else would need these killings?”

©afp.com / Muykhylo Markiv

Ousted Ukrainian Leader Laments Country’s Loss Of Crimea

Ousted Ukrainian Leader Laments Country’s Loss Of Crimea

By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — Ukraine’s ousted president on Wednesday lamented the loss of Crimea to Russia as “a grave pain and tragedy very difficult to come to terms with” but insisted the current interim government in Kiev was solely responsible for the region’s annexation.

“I personally can’t agree” to the loss of Crimea, Viktor Yanukovich said in a televised interview with the Associated Press and NTV, a Russian television network. “If this were happening under me, I would have tried to prevent it.”

Yanukovich acknowledged he had asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to deploy troops on the Ukrainian peninsula to stop “the outrages by armed gangs of nationalists.”

“I also did this because I myself became an object of an attack by bandits,” he said in the interview conducted in the Russian city Rostov-on-Don. “Armed gangs roaming around the country pursued me as well. They were shooting with automatic weapons at my convoy. They injured my (protection detail) officer.”

Wednesday’s interview was the third public appearance in Russia by Yanukovich, 63, since he fled Ukraine in late February after violent clashes between protesters and riot police. Scores of people were killed, most of them protesters, and hundreds wounded in the last week of his rule. Many victims were shot by snipers.

Yanukovich denied ordering the use of weapons against the demonstrators.

“I never gave any orders to open fire,” he said. “And firearms as far as I knew were never issued to units protecting state offices and buildings” in Kiev, the capital.

Numerous videos taken at the scenes show police officers and men in black uniforms shooting at protesters with automatic and sniper rifles.

A commission appointed by Ukraine’s interim government is investigation the shootings and reportedly will soon be releasing its findings. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed last week that Russia has evidence to suggest the snipers in Kiev were hired by the opposition, which came to power after Yanukovich fled.

Yanukovich called the forthcoming presidential election in Ukraine set for May 25 questionable. He suggested that it should be preceded by a nationwide referendum to decide whether Ukraine should remain a single unified nation or become a confederation.

Lavrov insisted last Friday during a meeting with Secretary of State John F. Kerry that Ukraine should become a confederation that allowed more autonomy to each region — and presumably would give Moscow greater influence over the eastern Ukraine areas that have large Russian-speaking populations.

Yanukovich’s appearance Wednesday suggested that the Kremlin still considers the fallen leader a handy tool to apply pressure on Ukraine, said political scientist Kost Bondarenko.

“Putin still views Yanukovich as a legitimate leader of Ukraine and uses him to blackmail Ukraine into conducting a constitutional reform allowing Russia to preserve significant positions of influence in Ukraine’s industrial east and southeast,” said Bondarenko, director of the Institute of Ukrainian Policy, a Kiev-based think tank.

“For his own part,” he added in a telephone interview, “Yanukovich hopes that he can still be considered a potentially good leader for those regions should the said federalization be imposed on Ukraine by hook or by crook.”

AFP Photo/Filippo Monteforte

Ousted Ukrainian Leader Warns Of Civil War; Russia Adds To Forces

Ousted Ukrainian Leader Warns Of Civil War; Russia Adds To Forces

By Sergei L. Loiko, Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — Ukraine is on the verge of civil war, warned ousted President Viktor Yanukovich, who reemerged in the Russian southern city of Rostov-on-the-Don to make a statement more than a week after his first news conference in Russia.

His statement came as Moscow reportedly reinforced its forces in the Ukrainian region of Crimea and held new military exercises. In Crimea, the regional parliament declared independence ahead of a referendum planned for Sunday, when the peninsula’s voters are to decide whether they want to join Russia.

“They want to put the (Ukrainian) army under a flag of (nationalism) and unleash a civil war,” Yanukovich said of the interim government of Ukraine that took power after he fled Kiev, the capital, late last month. “They want to include fighters from nationalist organizations in the armed forces and hand them guns.

“I would like to ask the Western sponsors of these dark forces: Have you lost your memory?” he asked. “Have you forgotten what is Nazism?”

Yanukovich insisted he is still his nation’s leader.

“I remain the only legitimate president of Ukraine, as I also remain the commander in chief” of its armed forces, he said. “I am alive, I have not been impeached in the order provided for by the constitution.”

Yanukovich accused the new leaders in Kiev, whom he referred to as “a gang of ultranationalists and neo-fascists,” of wanting to use the country’s armed forces against its people and appealed to the officers and soldiers not to “fulfill the criminal orders.”

Yanukovich fled Ukraine after his security forces crackdown on months-long street protests resulted in bloodshed that claimed scores of lives, many killed by snipers, and left hundreds of people injured. He is wanted by the interim government on suspicion of committing mass murders.

The ousted president emerged in Russia the day after Russian gunmen captured government buildings in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, and on the same day the region’s parliament voted to hold a referendum on the future of the Ukrainian peninsula and appointed a pro-Moscow Russian nationalist, Sergei Aksenov, as its new premier.

A majority of Crimea’s population is Russian speaking. The region has historic ties to Moscow and is home to the Russian navy’s Black Sea fleet.

Ahead of Sunday’s referendum, Russian officials said they are preparing to incorporate the region into their nation.

“We have everything in our laws and the constitution to accept a new subject in the Russian Federation,” Sergei Zheleznyak, deputy speaker in the lower house of Russia’s parliament, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview. “As soon as the people of Crimea express their willingness to join Russia, we will set the process into motion and I don’t see any reason of a delay here.”

In the meantime, Crimea’s new pro-Russia authorities announced plans to nationalize Ukraine’s navy vessels and bases in the Crimea. Their statement came as Russia reportedly beefed up its military presence in the peninsula, bringing in new troops and military hardware while continuing to blockade the remaining Ukrainian army and navy units on the peninsula.

Overnight the Russian armed forces brought in more than 60 pieces of military hardware, including Grad rocket launchers and several Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters, defense expert Dmitry Tymchuk told the Times.

“They have already amassed a military force in the region way too big to simply control Crimea,” said Tymchuk, head of the Center for Military and Political Research, a Kiev-based think tank.

He expressed a fear prevalent in his country. “We understand their grand plan was to capture the entire Ukraine, topple the interim government they hate so much and put Yanukovich back in place, or as a compromise just gain control of the industrial east and southeast, splitting the country in two. As a fallback plan they will be content with breaking away the Crimea and getting away with it, the mission they have all but accomplished.”

Ukrainian acting Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk complained to his nation’s parliament Tuesday that he couldn’t get in touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin or Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Yatsenyuk is expected to hold consultations with President Obama on Wednesday in Washington.

On Tuesday, Russia launched a four-day military exercise of its elite airborne troops.

“In the course of the exercise, for the first time in over 20 years, the airborne deployment of 3,500 paratroops will be conducted,” said a statement posted on Russian Defense Ministry’s official website.

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops and 36 planes, said the statement, which didn’t specify the location of the exercise.

Russia has deployed a force of 220,000 troops, 1,800 tanks and over 400 helicopters close to Ukraine’s border. Its neighbor has about 41,000 troops, of which only 6,000 were “really combat ready,” Ukraine’s acting Defense Minister Igor Tenyukh told the national parliament Tuesday, UNIAN news agency reported.

“This (Russian) force by several times exceeds the armed forces of Ukraine,” Tenyukh said.

Photo: Matthew Schofield/MCT