Former German chancellor Schmidt criticizes West's Russia policy.

[JackRiddler]

15. The State Department supported the overthrow, yes.

Tape Reveals State Department Officials Plotting Covert Intervention to Overthrow Government of Ukraine (Feb 20)

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/20/a_new_cold_war_ukraine_violence

My comment from Feb 20:

I'm glad someone has finally covered the real story in the leaked recording of Victoria Nuland, undersecretary at the State Department, discussing strategy for Ukraine with the ambassador at the U.S. embassy in Kiev. Only in the reality-show world of the mass media is it a story that Nuland in passing happened to say, "Fuck the E.U." (oooh, how terrible!).

It also matters little who released the tape, since its authenticity is not in dispute.

What the tape reveals is that Nuland and the ambassador are involved in the management of a covert intervention aimed at overthrowing Ukraine's democratically elected government. Without any prior public discussion or announcement of a U.S. government policy in the supposedly democratic United States, Nuland and Pyatt discuss how the U.S. government should

1) open a channel to the Ukrainian president to negotiate his resignation;

2) forestall efforts by one of the opposition leaders (Klitschko) to resolve the crisis in parliament by joining the government coalition;

3) get their preferred opposition leader (Yatsenyuk) into power; and

4) keep the opposition leaders they don't like (Klitschko, who is perhaps disliked because he is too German-influenced, and Tyahnybok, leader of the extreme right party supported by John McCain) outside power but in a stable alliance with Yatsenyuk.

In this unannounced, secret, hostile intervention to overthrow and replace the government of another country, the U.S. is expecting to have a say in the micromanagement of who sits in the new cabinet: "What [Yatsenyuk] needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week. You know, I just think Klitsch going in, he’s going to be at that level working for Yatsenyuk. It’s just not going to work."

Why the love for Yats, as Nuland calls him--whether she gives these nicknames condescendingly or familiarly is unclear. "I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience," she says.

More importantly, when did any Ukrainians vote for Nuland and her CIA-infested State Department to play kingmakers for their country? When did any Americans even get to know let alone discuss this policy, which ultimately will be put down as having been pursued in their name, with their tax money?

In the same clip from Democracy Now!, Yats is shown, to his credit, admitting that he cannot control and has little idea of who is in charge at this point among the protesters battling the police on the street level.

(Note: That proved quite important, as extreme right parties took over key ministries in the new government, which on the day after the coup d'etat passed a law to abolish the status of the Russian language, triggering the Crimea crisis.)

I wish to emphasize that by posting this here, I take no position on the Ukrainian struggle. I am an American and a democrat and I am talking about my own government making secret policy on my behalf. I oppose that on principle.

I oppose it ten times over if this government policy involves--as it typically does--a mere handful of self-appointed geostrategists like Nuland using U.S. public resources to intervene covertly in faraway countries on the basis of whatever they imagine are legitimate U.S. interests.