{"id":54135,"date":"2015-02-23T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2015-02-23T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=54135"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:04","slug":"crimea-was-it-seized-by-russia-or-did-russia-block-its-seizure-by-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/02\/crimea-was-it-seized-by-russia-or-did-russia-block-its-seizure-by-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Crimea: Was It Seized by Russia, or Did Russia Block Its Seizure by the U.S.?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both before and after Crimea left Ukraine and joined Russia in a public referendum on 16 March 2014, the Gallup Organization polled Crimeans on behalf of the U.S. Government, and found them to be extremely pro-Russian and anti-American, and also anti-Ukrainian<\/a>. (Neither poll was subsequently publicized, because the results of each were the opposite of what the sponsor had wished.)<\/p>\n

Both polls were done on behalf of the U.S. Government, in order to find Crimeans’ attitudes toward the United States and toward Russia, and also toward Ukraine, not only before but also after the\u00a0planned U.S. coup in Ukraine<\/a>, which occurred in February 2014 but\u00a0was actually kicked off on 20 November 2013<\/a>, the day before Ukraine\u2019s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych publicly announced that Ukraine had received a better economic offer from Russia\u2019s\u00a0Eurasian Economic Community<\/a>\u00a0than from America\u2019s European Union. (The EEC subsequently became the\u00a0Eurasian Economic Union<\/a>, now that it was clear that Ukraine was going with the EU.) That decision by Yanukovych in favor of the EEC was mistakenly thought by him to be merely an economic one, and he didn\u2019t know the extent to which the U.S. Government had set up an operation to overthrow him if he didn\u2019t go along with the EU\u2019s offer. (If some of these basic historical facts don\u2019t come through from merely the Wikipedia articles alone, that\u2019s because\u00a0the CIA is among the organizations that edit Wikipedia articles<\/a>, and so Wikipedia is unwittingly a\u00a0political propaganda vehicle<\/a>. It is especially used for propaganda by the\u00a0CIA and FBI<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

More recently, a poll of Crimeans was issued on 4 February 2015, by the polling organization GfK, and paid for this time by the pro-American-Government Canadian Government, via its Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, and via Free Crimea, which is itself funded by the latter organization. However, the Canadian Government got no better news than the U.S. Government had gotten: 82% of Crimeans \u201cFully endorse\u201d Crimea\u2019s having become part of Russia (of which it had been part between 1783 and 1954, and which the public there had never wanted to leave); 11% \u201cMostly endorse\u201d it; 2% \u201cMostly disapprove\u201d; 3% \u201cDon\u2019t know\u201d; and only 2% \u201cFully disapprove.\u201d Or, to put it simply: 93% approve; 3% don\u2019t know, and 4% disapprove. This poll was publicly issued only in the polling organization\u2019s own report, which was made available only in Russian (the Ukrainian Government\u2019s main language for international business) and therefore not comprehensible to English-speakers. It was titled,\u00a0\u201c\u0421\u041e\u0426\u0418\u0410\u041b\u042c\u041d\u041e-\u041f\u041e\u041b\u0418\u0422\u0418\u0427\u0415\u0421\u041a\u0418\u0415\u00a0\u041d\u0410\u0421\u0422\u0420\u041e\u0415\u041d\u0418\u042f \u0416\u0418\u0422\u0415\u041b\u0415\u0419 \u041a\u0420\u042b\u041c\u0410\u00a0\u0418\u0441\u0441\u043b\u0435\u0434\u043e\u0432\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0432\u0435\u0434\u0435\u043d\u043d\u043e\u0435 GfK Ukraine \u043f\u043e \u0437\u0430\u043a\u0430\u0437\u0443 \u043a\u043e\u043c\u043f\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0438\u201d<\/a>\u00a0or “SOCIO-POLITICAL SENTIMENTS IN\u00a0CRIMEA: Research\u00a0conducted by\u00a0GfK Ukraine\u00a0on the order of the company.\u201d\u00a0On February 10th, an English-language article reported and summarized the poll\u2019s findings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the 16 March 2014 public referendum in Crimea, 96% voted to rejoin Russia. One question on the post-referendum,\u00a0April 2014, U.S.-sponsored Gallup poll in Crimea<\/a>, was headlined, \u201cPerceived Legitimacy of\u00a0March 16\u00a0Crimean Referendum\u201d (on page 28 of the poll-report), and 82.8% of Crimeans agreed with the statement, \u201cThe results of the referendum on Crimea\u2019s status likely reflect the views of most people here.\u201d 6.7% disagreed. According to the newer poll (4 February 2015), 96% were for annexation to Russia, and 4% were opposed, which happens to be exactly what the 16 March 2014 referendum had actually found to be the case. But, continuing now with the description of the April 2014 Gallup poll: its \u201cViews of Foreign Parties\u2019 Role in the Crisis \u2014 Crimea\u201d (p. 25), showed 76.2% of Crimeans saying that the role of the U.S. was \u201cMostly negative,\u201d and 2.8% saying the U.S. role was \u201cMostly positive\u201d; while Crimeans\u2019 attitudes towards Russia were the exact opposite: 71.3% said Russia\u2019s role was \u201cMostly positive,\u201d and 4.0% said it was \u201cMostly negative.\u201d<\/p>\n

An accurate reflection of the reason why Crimeans, during the lead-up to the referendum, were appalled by\u00a0America\u2019s extremely violent and bloody<\/a>\u00a0takeover\u00a0of the Ukrainian Government (as the EU itself had confirmed)<\/a>, was given on Crimean television shortly before the referendum, when a former criminal prosecutor in the Ukrainian Government, who lived and worked in Kiev and saw with her own eyes much of the violence but was not personally involved in the events, quit her office, and got in her car and drove back to her childhood home in Crimea, now unemployed, because she was so revulsed at what had happened to her country. On this call-in show, which was watched by many Ukrainians,\u00a0she explained<\/a>\u00a0why she could no longer, as a lawyer and a supporter of the Ukrainian Constitution, support the Ukrainian Government \u2014 that it was now an illegal Government. She closed her opening statement, just before taking the calls from people over the phone, by saying, \u201cDespite that our \u2018great politicians\u2019 who seized power by bloodshed, are now claiming that we don\u2019t have the right to decide our own future \u2014 citizens of Crimea, you have every right in the world. Nobody is allowed to usurp power.\u201d She subsequently became a criminal prosecutor in the new Crimean government, enforcing now the Russian Constitution, in Crimea.<\/p>\n

However, anyone who says that Russia \u201cseized Crimea,\u201d is clearly lying or else is fooled by people who are.<\/p>\n

Here, then, are highlights from a typical Western \u2018news\u2019 report about Russia\u2019s President, Vladimir Putin, in the issue of\u00a0TIME<\/em>\u00a0magazine (December 10th online, December 22nd\u00a0issue on newsstands), headlining\u00a0\u201cVladimir Putin, The Imperialist,”<\/a>\u00a0in which Putin was a \u201crunner-up\u201d as the \u201cPerson of the Year\u201d \u2014 a year when, actually, Obama\u00a0overthrew Ukraine\u2019s Government and replaced it with one run by racist-fascist (or nazi) haters of Russia<\/a>, who were setting up to yank the remaining years on Russia\u2019s lease of its crucial Black Sea Naval Base in Crimea, and the Crimeans were imminently fearing a Ukrainian invasion (the author was Simon Shuster):<\/p>\n

His decision in March to invade and then annex the region of Crimea \u00a0from \u00a0Ukraine marked the first growth of Russia\u2019s dominions since the\u00a0fall of the\u00a0Soviet Union. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

With\u00a0the conquest of Crimea, a derelict peninsula about the\u00a0size of\u00a0Massachusetts, Putin at last restored a scrap of Russia\u2019s honor,\u00a0says\u00a0Gorbachev, by \u201cacting on his own,\u201d unbound by the constraints of\u00a0U.S.\u00a0supremacy and the table manners of international law. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

That name [Crimea], redolent with the history of Europe\u2019s 19th century wars,\u00a0 has\u00a0become a byword in Russia for national revival, a taste of the\u00a0imperial glory\u00a0that a generation of Russians have long hungered for. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Already expelled from the G-8 club of wealthy nations in March after\u00a0the\u00a0annexation of Crimea, Putin was further ostracized at the G-20\u00a0summit. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

So, was Putin\u2019s taste of empire worth the cost to Russian prosperity?\u00a0For\u00a0those who carry the grudges of Russian history, it was. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Russia now seeks to position itself as an alternative to the Western\u00a0model\u00a0of liberal democracy\u2014and it\u2019s had some success. Right-wing\u00a0politicians in\u00a0France and the U.K., not to mention Central and Eastern\u00a0Europe, are not\u00a0shy about declaring their admiration for Putin. The\u00a0ultraconservative\u00a0government of Hungary, a member of NATO and the\u00a0European Union, has\u00a0announced its intention to develop as an \u201cilliberal\u00a0state\u201d modeled on\u00a0Russia, cracking down harshly on civil society. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Putin will face challenges of his own as the West begins to rally against\u00a0 his \u00a0aggressiveness. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Make no mistake, though: Russians also remember that\u00a0their country once dominated a sixth of the earth\u2019s landmass and stood\u00a0as\u00a0a global player second to none. That is the role Putin seeks to\u00a0regain. \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Nothing was said about the Black Sea fleet, nor about any strategic issue. Nothing was provided in order to help readers understand what was happening. Readers\u2019 Cold-War buttons were being pushed; that is all. America\u2019s aristocracy despises its public, whom they merely manipulate and control.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a><\/span>\u00a0is an article about (and linking to) U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s\u00a0“National Security Strategy 2015,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in which Obama uses the term \u201caggression” 18 times, 17 of them referring to Russia. Obama never once cites a reason for applying that term; for example, unlike Simon Shuster, he doesn\u2019t even so much as mention \u201cCrimea.\u201d<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0here is the best video<\/a>\u00a0that has yet been issued on Obama\u2019s February 2014 coup, the coup that installed the Ukrainian regime that has been carrying out the ethnic cleansing operation, which Ukraine calls their \u2018Anti Terrorist Operation,\u2019 in the Donbass region, though it\u2019s really the\u00a0anti-resident<\/em>\u00a0operation<\/a>\u00a0there.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8-RyOaFwcEw<\/p>\n

That fate of\u00a0ethnic cleansing or local genocide<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the fate which befell the residents of Ukraine\u2019s Donbass region,\u00a0the region that\u2019s shown in dark purple in this election-map for the man whom Obama overthrew in February 2014 and which is the area that voted 90% for him<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is the fate that Crimeans were protected from when they rejoined Russia.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s using its troops, who were permanently stationed in Crimea already and didn\u2019t need to \u2018invade\u2019 anything in order to protect the residents in Crimea so that they could hold their referendum in peace, is what blocked the seizure of Crimea by the newly installed Ukrainian regime.<\/p>\n

The invader was the United States, in its typically sneaky post-1950 way: a coup d\u2019etat. What Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s, Allen Dulles\u2019s, and Kermit Roosevelt\u2019s CIA operation had done to Iran in 1953, Barack Obama\u2019s and Victoria Nuland\u2019s operation did to Ukraine in 2014: a violent coup installing a far-right government \u2014 in Obama\u2019s case, even a\u00a0nazi government<\/a>\u00a0(and see\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0this<\/a>).<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM<\/p>\n

That \u2014 and\u00a0the firebombings and other horrors that Washington\u2019s Brookings Institution think tank want U.S. taxpayers to finance yet more of in Donbass<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is what Russia protected Crimeans from.<\/p>\n

The aggressor here is not Vladimir Putin; it is Barack Obama. All honest news media (such as\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>) are reporting that. For economic analysis and reporting on these and other events,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0is an excellent general news source. (It autotranslates if viewed in google\u2019s chrome browser.) As for dishonest \u2018news\u2019 media, such as\u00a0TIME<\/em>\u00a0 and Fox \u2018News,\u2019 they serve a different purpose than truth; so, none of them will be listed here, where the only interest is truth.<\/p>\n

PS: For further insights into the lying that is prevalent in the West regarding Crimea, Ukraine, and Russia, see this remarkably honest testimony to the U.K. House of Lords\u2019 20 February 2015 Committee report,\u00a0\u201cThe EU and Russia: before and beyond the crisis in Ukraine,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0linked there on p. 108 as \u201cRUS0012\u201d and titled\u00a0\u201cIrina Kirillova MBE \u2013 Written evidence,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in which that Cambridge university professor describes the profound disappointment of ordinary people she had encountered in Russia, as they saw the misrepresentations in the West regarding the situations in Russia, Ukraine and Crimea. Outside of the English-speaking world, and especially in the regions that are not controlled by the U.S., the fakery of \u2018journalism\u2019 in the English-speaking world is becoming shockingly more evident than it formerly was. As usual, however, the House of Lords\u2019 final report ignored these realities; and, throughout, it starts with the assumption that Russia is aggressive and that the West is merely responding to that. This professor\u2019s written testimony was thus ignored. Most of the other individuals in the \u201cAppendix 2: List of Witnesses\u201d were the Anglo-aristocracy\u2019s usual Russia-haters, such as Ian Bond, Director of Foreign Policy, Center for European Reform, saying that, \u201cThe most important thing is that the EU, as a rules-based organisation, should follow a rules-based approach to Russia,\u201d as if that would be something alien to Russians. This type of bigoted condescension was rife throughout the report. If those people are as blind to evidence and science as they put themselves forth as being, they are dangerous in any governmental role; and to call the U.K. a \u2018democracy\u2019 is questionable, at best. Britain is an aristocracy, not a democracy. And the U.S. is at least as bad. In regards to the relationships between Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea, the West might be as bad as Ukraine, and should just quit the entire matter and try to start over from scratch, which means to let the\u00a0nazis<\/a>\u00a0whom Obama placed into power there sink, not provide them with more weapons. Or, if more weapons are provided to them, then the rest of the West should issue sanctions against any nation that does that. Under liars and fools the West is drifting towards a totally unwarranted\u00a0nuclear conflict with Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

______________________<\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0 and of\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Christ\u2019s Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 fortruss.blogspot.de<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Both before and after Crimea left Ukraine and joined Russia in a public referendum on 16 March 2014, the Gallup Organization polled Crimeans on behalf of the U.S. Government, and found them to be extremely pro-Russian and anti-American, and also anti-Ukrainian. (Neither poll was subsequently publicized, because the results of each were the opposite of what the sponsor had wished.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-balkans-eastern-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}