Alex Constantine - April 1, 2014
KIEV, April 1 (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's parliament has ordered the immediate disarming of illegally armed groups in the country following a fatal shooting Monday on the city's main square believed to have involved a political activist of the Right Sector movement.
"In line with the extreme sociopolitical situation in the country, the escalation of crime and systematic provocations from foreign citizens in southeastern Ukraine and Kiev, the Verkhovna Rada orders the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Special Services to immediately disarm the illegal groups," reads the resolution, authored by Serhiy Sobolev, the leader of the Batkivschyna (Fatherland) faction on the parliament.
The legislature passed the measure by 36 votes over the necessary 220.
"Ukrainians are demanding order," the country's parliament-appointed President Oleksandr Turchynov said prior to the vote. He emphasized that people who carry arms while not working with the security services or the national guard should be regarded as saboteurs.
The country's Interior Ministry declared a month of volunteer surrender of firearms in March, extended on Monday for another month. Kiev believes that disarming Ukrainians will help to halt the threat of violence that has risen with the formation of self-defense groups.
On Monday a member of the Right Sector ultra-nationalistic movement opened fire near Kiev's Dnepr Hotel, which had been reported to house the group's headquarters. Three people, including a senior official in the Kiev city administration, were injured in the incident.
According to the Interior Ministry, the shooter wanted to bring alcoholic drinks onto the square. Afterwards, he tried to hide in a nearby restaurant, but was soon arrested. Police investigating the case have found several weapons in the hotel previously occupied by the group. Right Sector activists left the hotel under police escort following the shooting, Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's interim Minister of Internal Affairs, announced on Tuesday.
Right Sector played a significant role beginning in late November at the Euromaidan protests in Kiev. It is a major ally of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party led by Oleh Tyahnybok, a member of the new Ukrainian government.
Right Sector fighters became notorious for using clubs, petrol bombs, and firearms against Ukrainian police and for wearing Nazi insignia. Russia put the leader of Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh, on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen warlord Doku Umarov to launch terrorist attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict.
Moscow has described the uprising in Kiev as an illegitimate fascist coup, which resulted in it taking steps to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine, including the reunification of Crimea with Russia.
Related: "Ukrainian Civil War Would Likely Spill Across Border – Expert"
"Most Wanted Ukrainian Ultranationalist Killed in Special Operation"
http://en.ria.ru/world/20140401/188962883/Ukraines-Right-Sector-Faces-Ban-After-Shooting-on-Maidan-.html
Ukraine: Secretive Neo-Nazi Military Organization Involved in Euromaidan Sniper Shootings
The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition.
His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices. Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe.
A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led to the collapse of the elected government.
But the West is not finished with destroying Ukraine. Now comes the IMF with severe conditionalities as prerequisite to any Western financial help.
After the famous leaked phone call of US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (photo, left) with the US Ambassador in Kiev, where she discussed the details of who she wanted in a new coalition government in Kiev, and where she rejected the EU solutions with her “Fuck the EU” comment,[1] the EU went it alone. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier proposed that he and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, fly to Kiev and try to reach a resolution of the violence before escalation. Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski was asked to join. The talks in Kiev included the EU delegation, Yanukovich, the three opposition leaders and a Russian representative. The USA was not invited.[2]
The EU intervention without Washington was extraordinary and reveals the deeping division between the two in recent months. In effect it was the EU saying to the US State Department, “F*** the US,” we will end this ourselves.
After hard talks, all major parties including the majority of protesters, agreed to new presidential elections in December, return to the 2004 Constitution and release of Julia Tymoshenko from prison. The compromise appeared to end the months long chaos and give a way out for all major players.
The diplomatic compromise lasted less than twelve hours. Then all hell broke loose.
Snipers began shooting into the crowd on February 22 in Maidan or Independence Square. Panic ensued and riot police retreated in panic according to eyewitnesses. The opposition leader Vitali Klitschko withdrew from the deal, no reason given. Yanukovich fled Kiev.[3]
The question unanswered until now is who deployed the snipers? According to veteran US intelligence sources, the snipers came from an ultra-right-wing military organization known as Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).
IMAGE: Members of UNA-UNSO marching in Lviv.
Strange Ukraine ‘Nationalists’
The leader of UNA-UNSO, Andriy Shkil, ten years ago became an adviser to Julia Tymoshenko. UNA-UNSO, during the US-instigated 2003-2004 “Orange Revolution”, backed pro-NATO candidate Viktor Yushchenko against his pro-Russian opponent, Yanukovich. UNA-UNSO members provided security for the supporters of Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko on Independence Square in Kiev in 2003-4.[4]
UNA-UNSO is also reported to have close ties to the German National Democratic Party (NDP). [5]
Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the crack-para-military UNA-UNSO members have been behind every revolt against Russian influence. The one connecting thread in their violent campaigns is always anti-Russia. The organization, according to veteran US intelligence sources, is part of a secret NATO “GLADIO” organization, and not a Ukraine nationalist group as portrayed in western media. [6]
According to these sources, UNA-UNSO have been involved (confirmed officially) in the Lithuanian events in the Winter of 1991, the Soviet Coup d’etat in Summer 1991, the war for the Pridnister Republic 1992, the anti-Moscow Abkhazia War 1993, the Chechen War, the US-organized Kosovo Campaign Against the Serbs, and the August 8 2008 war in Georgia. According to these reports, UNA-UNSO para-military have been involved in every NATO dirty war in the post-cold war period, always fighting on behalf of NATO. “These people are the dangerous mercenaries used all over the world to fight NATO’s dirty war, and to frame Russia because this group pretends to be Russian special forces. THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS, forget about the window dressing nationalists, these are the men behind the sniper rifles,” these sources insist. [7]
If true that UNA-UNSO is not “Ukrainian” opposition, but rather a highly secret NATO force using Ukraine as base, it would suggest that the EU peace compromise with the moderates was likely sabotaged by the one major player excluded from the Kiev 21 February diplomatic talks—Victoria Nuland’s State Department.[8] Both Nuland and right-wing Republican US Senator John McCainhave had contact with the leader of the Ukrainian opposition Svoboda Party, whose leader is openly anti-semitic and defends the deeds of a World War II Ukrainian SS-Galicia Division head.[9] The party was registered in 1995, initially calling itself the “Social National Party of Ukraine” and using a swastika style logo. Svoboda is the electoral front for neo-nazi organizations in Ukraine such as UNA-UNSO.[10]
One further indication that Nuland’s hand is shaping latest Ukraine events is the fact that the new Ukrainian Parliament is expected to nominate Nuland’s choice, Arseny Yatsenyuk, from Tymoshenko’s party, to be interim head of the new Cabinet.
Whatever the final truth, clear is that Washington has prepared a new economic rape of Ukraine using its control over the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
IMF plunder of Ukraine Crown Jewels
Now that the “opposition” has driven a duly-elected president into exile somewhere unknown, and dissolved the national riot police, Berkut, Washington has demanded that Ukraine submit to onerous IMF conditionalities.
In negotiations last October, the IMF demanded that Ukraine double prices for gas and electricity to industry and homes, that they lift a ban on private sale of Ukraine’s rich agriculture lands, make a major overhaul of their economic holdings, devalue the currency, slash state funds for school children and the elderly to “balance the budget.” In return Ukraine would get a paltry $4 billion.
Before the ouster of the Moscow-leaning Yanukovich government last week, Moscow was prepared to buy some $15 billion of Ukraine debt and to slash its gas prices by fully one-third. Now, understandably, Russia is unlikely to give that support. The economic cooperation between Ukraine and Moscow was something Washington was determined to sabotage at all costs.
This drama is far from over. The stakes involve the very future of Russia, the EU-Russian relations, and the global power of Washington, or at least that faction in Washington that sees further wars as the prime instrument of policy.
Writer F. William Engdahl is a geopolitical analyst and the author of “Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order”.
Notes
[1] F. William Engdahl, US-Außenministerium in flagranti über Regimewechsel in der Ukraine ertappt, Kopp Online.de, February 8, 2014, accessed in http://info.kopp-verlag.de/hintergruende/enthuellungen/f-william-engdahl/us-aussenministerium-in-flagranti-ueber-regimewechsel-in-der-ukraine-ertappt.html
[2] Bertrand Benoit, Laurence Norman and Stephen Fidler , European Ministers Brokered Ukraine Political Compromise: German, French, Polish Foreign Ministers Flew to Kiev, The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2014, accessed inhttp://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303636404579397351862903542?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303636404579397351862903542.html
[3] Jessica Best, Ukraine protests Snipers firing live rounds at demonstrators as fresh violence erupts despite truce, The Mirror UK, February 20, 2014, accessed inhttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ukraine-protests-snipers-firing-live-3164828
[4] Aleksandar Vasovic , Far right group flexes during Ukraine revolution, Associated Press, January 3, 2005, Accessed in http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20050103&slug=ukraine03
[5] Wikipedia, Ukrainian National Assembly Ukrainian National Self Defence, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, accessed inhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_National_Assembly_%E2%80%93_Ukrainian_National_Self_Defence
[6] Source report, Who Has Ukraine Weapons, February 27, 2014, private to author.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Max Blumenthal, Is the US backing neo-Nazis in Ukraine?, AlterNet February 25, 2014, accessed in
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/25/is_the_us_backing_neo_nazis_in_ukraine_partner/
[9] Channel 4 News, Far right group at heart of Ukraine protests meet US senator, 16 December 2013, accessed in
http://www.channel4.com/news/ukraine-mccain-far-right-svoboda-anti-semitic-protests