Ukraine: The International War-Criminal Is Obama, Not Putin

Eric Zuesse

In February this year, the Obama Administration violently overthrew the freely-elected and Russia-friendly President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. We hired gunmen dressed to appear to be from the Yanukovych government firing into the “Maidan” crowd who were demonstrating against Yanukovych. This made it seem to be violence from him, not from Obama’s team. Obama further justified the overthrow by saying that Yanukovych was corrupt. But virtually all recent Presidents and Prime Ministers of that country have been corrupt. The Prime Minister who had preceded Yanukovych, Yulia Tymoshenko, was even in prison for it. Britain’s Guardian  noted in 2004 that, “According to Matthew Brzezinski’s 2001 book Casino Moscow, which devotes a chapter to Tymoshenko entitled ‘The Eleven Billion Dollar Woman,’ she was guarded by an entire platoon of ex-Soviet special forces bodyguards.” However, during the Obama Administration’s 18-24 February 2014 coup in Ukraine (called not a “coup” but a “revolution” by the coup’s supporters), they got her freed from her 7-year prison sentence, and she immediately announced her campaign to become Yanukovych’s successor as President. She was widely regarded as Obama’s preferred person for that post, but instead the person that she chose to lead the interim  government as Prime Minister became Ukraine’s leader (with the expectation that Tymoshenko would soon be elected and then take over), and Tymoshenko wasn’t elected, so Obama was faced with a predicament. Since the person whom she had placed in temporary control did Obama’s bidding, he has been allowed to stay on in the new permanent Ukrainian government, in his same official capacity, ruling Ukraine as the Prime Minister, just as he was during the “interim” government.

The way to remove a democratically elected President (and/or Prime Minister) is by constitutional means; and a coup is not constitutional — not even in Ukraine, and it’s certainly not supposed to be the constitutional means in the U.S. Yet we immediately recognized the coup-government, because we had actually installed it.

Obama’s agent planning and controlling the overthrow (besides the CIA, etc., providing essential support for it), was the Tymoshenko-backer Victoria Nuland, who told our Ukrainian Ambassador to choose (Tymoshenko’s friend) “Yats,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk, to become Ukraine’s leader, or Prime Minister, in the “interim government.” He’s the person who’s still the Prime Minster, even after the figurehead oligarch, Petro Poroshenko, became elected (over Tymoshenko) as Ukraine’s President, in the May 25th election, which was held only in the northwestern part of Ukraine, because Yatsenyuk’s troops were by that time (May 25th) bombing the nation’s southeastern parts, the parts where Yanukovych had won overwhelmingly the 17 January 2010 Presidential election, which was the last Ukrainian election when the entire country voted — the last election in a united Ukraine — the last actual Ukrainian national election.

Yatsenyuk has been bombing the southeast allegedly in order to compel them to accept the legitimacy of the coup government. And Yatsenyuk continues bombing them, even to this day. It’s his policy, and it’s backed by Obama. It wouldn’t happen without him.

In fact, almost immediately after Yatsenyuk became the leader of Ukraine, he sacked the existing three Deputy Defense Ministers, on March 5th, and replaced them with three rabidly anti-Russian neo-Nazis, who were committed to this bombing-policy. The person who was made the Minister of Defense, Mikhail Koval, has announced his intention to ethnically cleanse from southeastern Ukraine the “subhumans” who voted for Yanukovych, who will “be resettled in other regions,” meaning either Russia (if Russia accepts these Ukrainian refugees) or else concentration-camps inside Ukraine (and then perhaps death). “There will be a thorough filtration of people.” Their property will be confiscated, and “Land parcels will be given out for free to the servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and other military formations, as well as to the employees of Interior Ministry and the Security Service of Ukraine that are defending territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country in eastern and southeastern regions of Ukraine.” That’s the euphemism for the ethnic cleansing, and mass-theft. In other words, Obama’s rulers of Ukraine are offering their soldiers the opportunity to grab legally the property of their victims. Ukraine doesn’t have the money to pay for all the soldiers that are needed to do this ethnic cleansing; so, they’re being promised war-booty, instead. Sort of like paying them by tips: but with the bigger tips going to the killers with the most (or biggest) scalps.

When people in the area of the ethnic cleansing managed to shoot down one of the regime’s planes and its 49 soldiers who were in the process of perpetrating it, Yatsenyuk himself vowed revenge, by using similar language: ”They lost their lives …  in a situation facing a threat to be killed by invaders [i.e., by the residents, not by those troops from the northwest that they shot down] and sponsored by subhumans [presumably meaning Russians],” he said. “First, we will commemorate the heroes [the exterminators] by wiping out those who killed them and then by cleaning our land from the evil.” However, of course, that’s what he was already doing (“cleaning” the land), which is the reason why that plane was shot down in the first place: those troops were invaders and killers.

A TV commercial has been running on Ukrainian TVs ever since the start of the bombing-campaign, in which the chief local agricultural pest (the Colorado beetle), which Ukraine’s far-right frequently uses in order to symbolize the country’s Russian-speakers, is portrayed destroying crops and then being exterminated as the solution to the problem in Ukraine. The symbolism used there is immediately understandable to Ukrainians, though (and this is one reason it’s used, since they are advised by our CIA) not so easily understandable to people outside that country. Propaganda like this helps to rouse the racist nationalist sentiment to make them “exterminators,” heroes to their fellow-racist-nationalist haters of people whose native language is Russian.

Consequently, ever since May 2nd, when this extermination-program started with a bang, by an organized massacre of hundreds of regime-opponents via burning them alive in the Odessa Trade Unions Building, and then followed it up on May 9th by military actions throughout southeastern Ukraine, to kill the residents there, and then pursued it all over the region during the time since, thousands of residents in the region have been fleeing. This is the objective: to get rid of them, one way or another. Hitler called this “Lebensraum.”

Consequently, whereas the post-coup election was held only in the northwest, maybe the next general election will be able to be held throughout the country, after enough Yanukovych-voters have been killed or otherwise disposed of.

Obama is thus redefining “democracy.”

All of this is being done so that the U.S. will be able to base nuclear missiles in Ukraine, only a ten-minute flight to Russia’s command-center, so as to be able to conquer Russia too fast for them to get their retaliatory weapons into the air, so that we’ll “win” a nuclear war against them, in a pre-emptive one-strike blitz-attack to prevent “Putin’s aggression,” as our propagandists call it. George W. Bush invented the pre-emptive war, in Iraq, on 19 March 2003. Obama’s would be a prelude to a nuclear war. NATO surrounds Russia with our weapons, and Ukraine would be the keystone of that NATO attack. NATO was supposed to end when the Soviet Union did, but that was a lie. Obama is serious about U.S. military dominance of the world.

Perhaps the only way to stop this from happening would be to stop Obama, by prosecuting his war-crimes, which are clear and blatant. He installed and sustains a regime to slaughter and expel the residents of southeastern Ukraine. This prosecution and subsequent conviction would warn any future fascist who might somehow win America’s Presidency: if you try this, you too will be prosecuted for it. The world would be made much safer if he is held to account.

Senate Republicans have introduced a bill to ramp up U.S. military aid to the fascist regime that Obama has installed in Ukraine, so they obviously wouldn’t want to prosecute him for that — maybe they’d prosecute him for his “false birth certificate,” or his “death panels,” but not for his fascism, since they are even farther to the right than Obama is (if that’s even possible).

If the necessary action is to be taken against Obama, it thus will have to come from Democrats in Congress. And if they don’t introduce an impeachment resolution against him for it (and for his protecting Wall Street fraudsters, etc.), and prosecute him, for his real and serious crimes, then the Democratic Party will need to be replaced, just as the Whig Party was replaced by the Republican Party in order to end slavery.

Prosecution of Obama should be easy if there’s any merit to today’s Democratic Party, because the Republicans in Congress would support any measure against him. If there’s no merit to today’s Democratic Party, then the Democratic Party itself should disband as a Republican clone, and be replaced by a new party, an authentically progressive party, just like happened to the Whigs before Lincoln. Then we would truly have a progressive party versus a conservative party — a real choice and a real democracy. If Obama is not prosecuted, then we merely have two conservative parties.

If Democrats don’t take action and the Democratic Party is not replaced, then American “democracy” itself is gone — moribund — because Obama’s actions are even worse than George W. Bush’s, and this would be two Presidents in a row who need to be prosecuted but aren’t.

Thus, this really is decision-time for America.

The case is clear: ethnic cleansing is a war-crime, and it must be prosecuted. The neo-Nazis in Kiev are doing the bidding of their master in Washington. They are perpetrating war-crimes because he placed them in power to do what they’re now doing.

Only America’s Democrats can stop this, if they will. And only Democratic voters can replace them, if they won’t.

We should do it to prevent nuclear war, and also to restore honor to America.

On June 30th, Gallup headlined “Americans Losing Confidence in All Branches of U.S. Govt.: Confidence hits six-year low for presidency; record lows for Supreme Court, Congress.” If anything can turn this around, prosecuting Obama for his blatant and massively dangerous criminality here — entailing genocide in preparation for a nuclear attack, no less — would be the best, the essential, first step in the effort. It would finally establish accountability, in a country that now catastrophically lacks it. It would be transformative, and it is necessary.