JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: JUST WHY UKRAINE'S NEW PRESIDENT CANNOT MAKE PEACE IN THE EASTERN REGION DESPITE WANTING TO - RUSSIAN INVASION TALES ARE DISINFORMATION - PUTIN REJECTED EASTERN UKRAINE'S REQUEST TO JOIN RUSSIAN FEDERATION - ROLE OF NEO-NAZIS IN UKRAINE TODAY - AMERICA'S PURPOSE IN UKRAINE'S 2014 COUP - BIDEN'S ROLE IN UKRAINE

John Chuckman


EXPANSION OF A COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MURRAY BREWSTER IN CBC NEWS



“Canadian-led peacekeeping mission in Ukraine 'Plan B' for Kyiv, official says

“For Ukraine, the preferred option would be a successful outcome to peace talks”


https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-canada-peacekeeping-1.5343320


The Minsk Agreement is ultimately the only way to end this conflict. Minsk says that the breakaway eastern region will rejoin Ukraine but with special status.

The region is completely Russian-speaking, and Ukraine's last government tried removing rights of Russian-speakers. That's what started the trouble. The situation somewhat resembles what anyone would expect from Quebec if Ottawa declared English as the language for education and other matters.

There never has been Russian state involvement there except for a great deal of humanitarian and other assistance since Ukraine, under the last government, cut the region off from almost everything, including pensions. Tales of a Russian invasion in Ukraine are simply not true. They are disinformation fantasies. Russia has declined to accept the region into the Russian Federation, despite being asked by them to do so.

Look at what America has been doing in Venezuela, and you will have some idea of what it did in Ukraine in 2014, to topple an elected government whose only sin was good relations with Russia. All the many problems of Ukraine come out of that fact.

The coup destroyed Ukraine’s economy, destroyed important long-term relationships with Russia (the two societies have a closely entwined history going back nearly a thousand years), generated civil war in eastern Ukraine, saw the rise of extremist right-wing forces who now play a role in its government, and put in place a government, Poroshenko’s, which most people there regarded as palpably corrupt.

Russia has always supported the Minsk Agreement for peace. It helped create it. Putin has repeated his complete support many times. Forces inside Ukraine are what prevent that happening. That’s where outside pressure is needed, but none comes. American anti-Russian interests are central to Ukraine’s position. After all, the coup was encouraged precisely to create threatening instability along a major Russian border. Does anything good ever come out of such actions?

Hopes were that Zelensky, a reasonable man who speaks both Russian and Ukrainian, would implement Minsk, but he has not been able to do so. Why? There are several extreme right-wing armed organizations in Ukraine, most notably the Azov Battalion, who intimidate Zelensky and make sure any orders he issues concerning military occupation of certain positions near the breakaway Donbass (eastern Ukraine) region are simply not followed. Minsk requires a series of steps to be taken in preparation for its full implementation, and the Azov Battalion-types are not prepared to allow those steps.

http://defendinghistory.com/ukraines-state-sponsored-azov-battalion-expands-use-of-nazi-inspired-symbols/96016

The Azov Battalion was incorporated, inappropriately, into Ukraine’s national army by the last government, much like having one of those weird private right-wing American militias of the 1970s (eg, the armed Minutemen) incorporated into the American army, thus furnishing them with resources and support. It is one of the groups used in the violent coup of 2014, and it stands ready to repeat its activity if Zeleskey departs from its demands. They make compromise almost impossible.

It is important to understand that the 2014 coup was financed by the United States ($5 billion was allocated), something we know from the overheard words of a high former State Department official, Victoria Nuland. All the Joe and Hunter Biden controversy in our news recently stems from the fact that Joe Biden acted at the time as an American proconsul sent by Obama to the new coup government in Ukraine, offering certain help and making certain demands.

By the way, there are photos of Joe Biden in Ukraine shaking hands warmly with the commander of the Azov Battalion.

It is hard to see a sensible or useful place for Canadian peacekeepers here, but we have a foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, who is very responsive to American policy aims and warmly supported the troubled, coup-installed government of Ukraine that ruled before Zelensky while making many Russophobic remarks.



NOTE:

Joe Biden has a long history of scoring presents and privileges for his family in the course of carrying out various government duties – hence, Hunter Biden’s extraordinary board appointment in Ukraine with an income of $50,000 per month in a company and a country he knows absolutely nothing about.

Saying that does not put me in Trump’s camp at all. Trump is exactly the same kind of sleazy operator. He has his daughter and son-in-law sitting at desks in the White House. While they are not receiving government salaries, they are in extremely sensitive positions with top-level security clearance while receiving huge private incomes from Trump and Kushner family enterprises, something I think most people would regard as a serious conflict of interest.