IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

 

There is an ongoing and deliberate attempt by foreign powers to spearhead the destabilization of Ukraine including its state structure.

There is a long history of colored revolutions in Ukraine going back to the 1990s.

The protest movement in Kiev bears a marked resemblance to the “Orange Revolution” of 2004 which was supported covertly by Washington. The 2004 “Orange Revolution” led to the ousting of the pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, spearheading  into power the Western proxy government of  President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko.

Once more Viktor Yanukovitch is the target of a carefully staged “pro-EU protest movement”. The latter was launched following president Yanukovitch’s decision to cancel the “association agreement” with the EU.

The mechanisms of interference are in some regards different to those of 2004. The protests are supported directly by Brussels and Berlin (with EU officials actively involved) rather than by Washington:

“The right-wing parties leading the protests in coordination with EU officials and politicians had called for a “million man march.” Ultimately, some 250,000 to 300,000 people gathered on Maïdan (Independence) Square. It was the largest protest in Kiev since the 2004 “color revolution” organized by US and European imperialism—the so-called Orange Revolution that ousted the pro-Russian Yanukovich and brought the pro-Western tandem of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko to power.
Evgenia Tymoshenko, the daughter of former prime minister and billionaire natural gas magnate Julia Tymoshenko, whom Yanukovich has jailed, read a message from her mother calling for Yanukovich’s “immediate” ouster. (See Alex Lantier, December 8, 2013)

The following article first published in November 2004, focuses on the October-November 2004 “Orange Revolution” directed against  then prime minister Viktor Yanukovich, while also providing details on the insidious role of the IMF and the World Bank in imposing the neoliberal economic policy agenda on behalf of the “Washington Consensus”. 

Michel Chossudovsky, December 2013

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IMF Sponsored “Democracy” in The Ukraine

by

Michel Chossudovsky

November 2004

Opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko in the Ukrainian presidential elections is firmly backed by the Washington Consensus.

He is not only supported by the IMF and the international financial community, he also has the endorsement of The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) ,  Freedom House and  the Open Society Institute , which played a behind the scenes role last year in helping “topple Georgia’s president Eduard Shevardnadze by putting financial muscle and organizational metal behind his opponents.” (New Statesman, 29 November 2004).

The NED has four affiliate institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI) , the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) , and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS). These organizations are said to be “uniquely qualified to provide technical assistance to aspiring democrats worldwide.” See IRI, http://www.iri.org/history.asp )

In the Ukraine, the NED and its constituent organizations fund Yushchenko’s party Nasha Ukraina (Our Ukraine), it also finances the Kiev Press Club. In turn, Freedom House, together with The Independent Republican Institute (IRI) are involved in assessing the “fairness of elections and their results”. IRI has staff present in “poll watching” in 9 oblasts (districts), and local staff in all 25 oblasts:

“There are professional outside election monitors from bodies such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but the Ukrainian poll, like its predecessors, also featured thousands of local election monitors trained and paid by western groups. … They also organised exit polls. On Sunday night those polls gave Mr Yushchenko an 11-point lead and set the agenda for much of what has followed.” (Ian Traynor 26 November 2004, the Guardian, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/TRA411A.html )

Needless to say these various foundations are committed to “Freedom of the Press”. Their activities consist not only in organizing exit polls and feeding disinformation into the Western news chain, they are also involved in the creation and funding of “pro-Western”, “pro-reform” student groups, capable of organizing mass displays of civil disobedience. (For details, see Traynor, op cit) In the Ukraine, the Pora Youth movement (“Its Time”) funded by the Soros Open Society Institute is part of that process with more than 10,000 activists. Supported by the Freedom of Choice Coalition of Ukrainian NGOs , Pora is modeled on Serbia’s Otpor and Georgia’s Kmara.

The Freedom of Choice Coalition acts as an Umbrella organization. It is directly supported by the US and British embassies in Kiev as well as by Germany, through the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (a foundation linked to the ruling Social Democrats). Among its main “partners” (funding agencies) it lists USAID, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Freedom House, The World Bank and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

(Complete list at http://coalition.org.ua/en/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=51 )

In turn, Freedom of Choice Coalition directly funds and collects donations for Pora (See http://pora.org.ua/en/content/view/83/95/ )

The National Endowment for Democracy

Among the numerous Western foundations, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), although not officially part of the CIA, performs an important intelligence function in shaping party politics in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and around the World.

NED was created in 1983, when the CIA was being accused of covertly bribing politicians and setting up phony civil society front organizations. According to Allen Weinstein, who was responsible for establishing the NED during the Reagan Administration: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” (Washington Post, Sept. 21, 1991).

In the former Soviet Union including the Ukraine, the NED constitutes, so to speak, the CIA’s “civilian arm”. CIA-NED interventions  are characterized by a consistent pattern. In Venezuela, the NED was also behind the failed CIA coup against President Hugo Chavez and in Haiti it funded the opposition parties and NGOs, in the US sponsored coup d’Etat and deportation of president Aristide in February 2004. (For details, see Michel Chossudovsky, 29 Feb 2004, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO402D.html )

In the former Yugoslavia, the CIA channeled support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) (since 1995), a paramilitary group involved in terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav police and military. Meanwhile, the NED through the  “Center for International Private Enterprise” (CIPE) was backing the DOS opposition coalition in Serbia and Montenegro. More specifically, NED was financing the G-17, an opposition group of  economists responsible for formulating (in liaison with the IMF) the DOS coalition’s  “free market” reform platform in the 2000 presidential election, which led to the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic.

Copy and Paste? The Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) has a very similar mandate in the Ukraine, where it directly funds research on “free market reforms” in several key “independent think tanks” and policy research institutes. The Kiev based International Center for Policy Studies (ICPS) is supported by CIPE. It has a similar function to that of the G-17 in Serbia and Montenegro:  A group of local economists hired by ICPS was put in charge of drafting, with the support of the World Bank, a comprehensive blueprint of post-election macro-economic reform.