After Viktor Yanukovych was removed from power in early 2014 during the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, the chairman of parliament Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed to the role of acting president. The Ukrainian people were very upset for they believed that there would be no real change. You MUST draw a line between what the people did and what the West did afterward. These people who attribute everything to an all-powerful CIA plot have NO personal knowledge of anything and spew out their opinion as if it were fact. The whole “Fuck the EU!” comment by Victoria Nuland phoning with Geoffrey Pyatt was reported on February 7th, 2014 and it only illustrates that there were efforts to gain control of the situation in Ukraine, but it does not demonstrate that the CIA organized the revolution from the start. Yanukovych fled Ukraine on February 22, 2014, just about 3 months from the beginning of the protests.
Yanukovych was an oligarch and his police were shaking down businesses and forcing them to pay his two sons. He was running Ukraine the same way oligarchs ran Russia. You obey their commands or you die. If you had a business that was really doing well, Yanukovych and his sons would confiscate it. That is what caused the people to rise up, it was nothing the CIA managed to do. I had personal friends on the barricades. I was deeply concerned for their safety and was in regular contact offering my advice.
I can tell you that the West installed the leaders thereafter and the people were told if they dared to revolt against them, they would lose all support from both the EU and the USA. The puppet president, Oleksandr Turchynov served as the acting president from February 23 until June 7, 2014, and was the only person in Ukrainian history to serve in the role. During his tenure, Turchynov was addressed as “acting president” by other Ukrainian politicians and the media.
This was followed by a questionable 2014 election which took place on May 25th, with businessman Petro Poroshenko claiming to have won just over 54% percent of the vote. Yulia Tymoshenko was the runner-up with around 13%. Poroshenko was sworn in as president on June 7th, 2014. Poroshenko was a Ukrainian billionaire businessman known as the ‘Chocolate King’. However, our direct sources at the time in the East made it plain that they were unable to vote as the polling stations were destroyed by the pro-Russian terrorists/tourists. Those who would have voted in the East may have voted for Poroshenko because the general feeling was they needed a President who would have a majority vote with no run-offs to prevent civil war.
Nonetheless, Poroshenko was also a seasoned politician. He has served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2010, and as the Minister of Trade and Economic Development in 2012. From 2007 until 2012, he headed the Council of Ukraine’s National Bank. He is pro-West for economic freedom. The fact that he was a billionaire who has created businesses rather than inherited them or filled his pockets like Viktor Yanukovych, was good for he was seen as someone who would not rob the treasury and b beyond potential bribes. Yanukovych was not poor, but he was not a businessman in reality. Still, Ukraine’s east remained caught in a torrent of violence that was maturing into a civil war that we are really seeing today. This was a major challenge that tested Poroshenko who had promised to navigate between Russia and the West. But the fighting continued as the separatist rebellion in the Donets Basin continued. Poroshenko said at the time:
“The first steps of our entire team at the beginning of the presidency will concentrate on ending the war, ending the chaos, ending the disorder and bringing peace to Ukrainian soil, to a united, single Ukraine,” at a victory rally Sunday. “Our decisive actions will bring this result fairly quickly.”
Poroshenko has also said he wants to lead Ukraine to closer ties with the European Union. During his speeches, Poroshenko on numerous occasions has called the war in East Ukraine a “Patriotic War”, yet did not initiate implementation of martial law. Nevertheless, the violence that prevented many citizens in eastern Ukraine from voting, demonstrates the old anti-democratic attitude there. It is their way or no way – sheer dictatorship. Separatists in the region had vowed to disrupt the vote, and they largely succeeded in shutting that down knowing they would lose. If the vote would have been for leaving Ukraine at the time, then they would have made sure the people voted. But that was not the case.
Putin said a day before Ukraine voted that Russia would “cooperate with the authorities that will come to power as a result of the election,” but he added that he continued to consider Yanukovich the legitimate president of the country. Eventually, on June 18, 2015, Yanukovych was officially deprived of the title of President of Ukraine retroactively.
Poroshenko set up an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands to shelter his taxes from the sale of his company. Leaked documents from the Panama Papers from 2016 revealed that Poroshenko registered the company, Prime Asset Partners Ltd, on August 21st, 2014. He denied any wrongdoing and his legal firm, Avellum, overseeing the sale of Roshen, Poroshenko’s confectionery company, said that “any allegations of tax evasion are groundless”. The anti-corruption group Transparency International believes that the “creation of businesses while serving as president is a direct violation of the constitution”. His name was cited in the list of politicians named in “Paradise Papers” allegations.
This allegation of tax evasion arose during the 2019 election which took place on March 31st, with a run-off on April 21st. As a result of this election, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor and comedian with no prior political experience became the sixth President of Ukraine with 73% of the popular vote in the run-off against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko.
Within months of the election, on December 20th, 2019, Ukrainian law enforcement raided both Poroshenko’s party headquarters and gym on the orders of President Zelensky who has turned out to be ruthless and a questionable head of state. The raid was intended to eliminate any possible influence of Poroshenko going forward. It was used to launch criminal investigations focused of alleged theft of servers with classified information and tax evasion which is now always called money laundering. Zelensky outright accused Poroshenko of state treason, aiding terrorist organizations, and financing terrorism due to allegedly organizing the purchase of coal from separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine together with pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Poroshenko denied the allegations, calling them “fabricated, politically motivated, and black PR directed against [Zelensky’s] political opponents”.
Zelensky organized on January 6th, 2022 which was to the very day of the ECM turning point, that a Ukrainian court seized Poroshenko’s property and a few days later, on the 15th, Poroshenko announced via a video message on Facebook: “I am returning to Ukraine on a flight from Warsaw at 09:10 a.m. on January 17… to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression”, despite the case against him. Following his return to Ukraine, the prosecutor’s office asked a court to imprison him pre-trial. Ultimately, the court ordered him to wear an electronic bracelet, remain in Kyiv, and hand over his passport.
The Zelensky Government of Ukraine is becoming a ruthless tyrant. He has also imprisoned the leader of the opposition Viktor V. Medvedchuk, who was the People’s Deputy of Ukraine from August 29, 2019. Medvedchuk is the chairman of the pro-Russia political organization Ukrainian Choice and an opponent of Ukraine joining the European Union. From an economic perspective, for Ukraine to join the EU would be to substitute one authoritarian government with another. Even the EU has called upon Zelensky to release Medvedchuk.
Clearly, Zelensky is unqualified to be the leader of any state. He has called on the West to impose sanctions against Russia BEFORE any invasion. “We don’t need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen, and after our country will be fired at or after we will have no borders or after we will have no economy or parts of our country will be occupied. Why would we need those sanctions then?” He is totally out of control and relies upon claims of Ukraine territory while his Language Law reduces anyone who speaks Russian to a virtual non-citizen. Imprisoning the leader of the opposition and going after the former President to solidify a one-party system is not what the Ukrainian people rose up against in 2014.
Now President Biden is to impose new economic sanctions targeting Russia after Putin deployed troops to two pro-Moscow separatist areas of eastern Ukraine that are ethnically Russian. The Kremlin announced that there were no concrete plans for a summit between the United States and Russia on the looming Ukraine crisis. Nowhere in the Western Press does anyone bother to suggest that the Russian in their states have been stripped of rights by Zelensky who has even prisoned the opposition that argues to allow those people to make a choice since it is their lives. But they have now simply become pawns in this absurd game of politics where the West needs to demonize Russia for leaders to pretend to be relevant.
Meanwhile, the stupidity of this entire crisis is that we have the most incompetent people in governments ever. Germany is to appoint Jeniffer Morgan, the former head of Green Peace, and their Secretary of State. How in the world is this climate activist qualified in military matters? Then China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken discussed the Ukrainian tensions during a phone call. “The situation in Ukraine is getting worse,” was the response from China’s foreign ministry following the call. China correctly pointed out that this entire crisis was closely related to the delayed implementation of the new Minsk Agreement where these two provinces were to be independent but Ukraine demands imperialism. If this escalates, China will be on the side of Russia and the West will lose!
The first Minsk Protocol was signed by Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the pro-Russia separatist leaders back in September 2014. Ukraine and the separatists agreed to an immediate 12-point ceasefire deal including withdrawal of heavy weapons and prisoner exchanges. But the agreement failed to stop the fighting, with frequent violations by both sides – not just the pro-Russian separatists. It was then five months later when Ukraine lost territory to pro-Russia separatists. Minsk II was then signed between Russia and Ukraine, which was mediated by France and Germany. That was then a 13-point agreement signed in February 2015. That quickly broke down because there is simply an ethnic dislike of Russians that makes no sense for Ukraine to refuse to relinquish their claims.
Moreover, Minsk II was to include the withdrawal of weapons and monitoring of the ceasefire. There were to be local elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on their future status in Ukraine. The obstinate position of the Zelensky Government is now threatening the entire world. He refuses to recognize that Moscow calls itself a mediator to help Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics reach an agreement. Zelensky argues that point 10 of the Minsk agreement, which mentions the withdrawal of “all foreign armed forces” refers to Russia, while Russia denies having any military presence on the territories.
Russia argues that elections in the separatist republics should come before the withdrawal of military equipment, Zelensky insists on the opposite and does not want to allow the people to make a choice. There are more than 720,000 people living in Donetsk and Luhansk. They were recognized and given Russian citizenship under a simplified passport regime Russia adopted in 2019. Zelensky claims this is a violation of the Minsk accord to allow them to even apply for Russian citizenship. Zelensky simply refuses to relinquish any claim to this territory and refuses to grant any special status to these territories calling that unfeasible.
Consequently, the former comedian Zelensky is pushing not just Ukraine into war for a matter of pride, but he is trying to deliberately bring in the United States and Europe into World War III all because of what appears to be his personal hatred of Russians for the days of Stalin. Once more, we have this Eastern European crisis that sparked World War I, in a position to create World War III. The simple solution is to let the people of Donetsk and Luhansk decide with an election whereas those living in these provinces are entitled to decide their own fate.
The post Volodymyr Zelensky – The Man Intent on Creating World War III first appeared on Armstrong Economics.