WHO OWNS “DEMOCRATIC” UKRAINE NOW?

Who is picking up the broken pieces of Ukraine at knockdown prices? Who will continue to pick up those pieces as prices slide further? The one with the deepest pockets that's who. Ukraine is no more.

Ukraine up until the end of 2013 was a sovereign country with a population that was split between those who spoke Russian and those who spoke Ukrainian. It had a vigorous political culture where each faction was represented in its parliament, the Rada. Admittedly these factions fought not only with words at times but often enough with their fists. Still, the democratic system was there and functioned tolerably well. Electoral inspectors monitored the elections and delivered their verdicts. The east of the country voted one way, the west another, with mixed results in the centre. The choices divided quite clearly between the predominantly Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking populations.

The president and government of Ukraine that existed at the time of the Maidan riots had been democratically elected and had received the blessing of the officials who monitored the elections that had brought them to power. No one would claim that the riots, in which approximately 17 young policemen and over a hundred civilians died represented anything approaching a democratic process. Yet the entire western world welcomed the removal of the democratically-elected officials and their replacement by U.S.-approved replacements.

The above was only the start of the rot that has led us to the situation found in Ukraine today. The violence with which the new, West-sanctioned authorities came to power and which was predated by the violence often seen within the Ukrainian parliament (and often outside it) would torment the Ukrainian nation from late 2013 onward. This violence, meted out to those Russian-speakers of eastern Ukraine, was simply a continuation of a broken system and the rise of the violent ultranationalists who had created a reign of terror on Kiev’s Maidan.

Over 16,000 died in the reign of terror which continued from early 2014 to the present day. The vast majority of the dead were innocent civilians, however this hardly mattered to those who wished fervently to ethnically cleans the entire Russian-speaking population from eastern Ukraine. Such people cared not a whit whether men, women, children, neither old or young died as they fired mortars and missiles at their dwelling places day and night. Hospitals, schools, Soviet-era residential blocks were commonly hit due to their height. When mortars or missiles missed such targets they hit everyday homes and town centres killing at random.

It must be understood that the mentality of those doing the killing had been in existence in western Ukraine for a great many years. It incorporated a gang-like structure where young thugs delivered their own reign of terror, inflicted on anyone they deemed deserved it, usually due to the person speaking Russian or evidencing a pro-Russian stance. These thugs had slogans which they yelled as they paraded up and down the streets of western Ukraine such as “Russians on knives!” When they were not marching or beating people up they were having swastikas tattooed on their bodies or dawbing them on walls and Jewish gravestones.

This is the lawlessness of a minority of Ukrainians that received a huge boost of power in the years after the violent coup they had taken part in, in 2014, the coup blessed by the western powers and which had seen U.S. officials including a senator, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and the Assistant Secretary of State provide their fulsome support. The lawless behaviour where police were constantly attacked with every kind of weapon the rioters could devise did not faze the U.S. officials a bit, they blessed these acts of criminality looking forward to the day when they could have their choices of president and government take over.

The new president and government took power without the proper parliamentary majority to legitimise them. Nevertheless the primary figures (including those from the most extreme, Svoboda Party, formerly the Social-Nationalist Party among them) toured European capitals immediately afterwards feted by such prominent figures there as Angela Merkel. The West had achieved what it hoped for, it had trained the activists through western NGOs to initiate the changes they deemed necessary and deployed the most violent Ukrainian to complete the task begun by them.

The period between 2014 and 2022 saw western mass media emphasis a totally one-sided narrative concerning the conflict that began in eastern Ukraine. No mention was made of the siege of the areas that had risen up to reassert their right to have a say regarding who led them. The say they had previously enjoyed, to vote for those who represented their language and pro-Russian stance had been wrenched violently away from them by the coup of 2013-14. Now they were to be targeted as terrorists, every last man, woman and child. All would be blamed on ‘Russian aggression’, nothing was to be said of the daily and nightly barrage of mortar shells and missiles by the Ukrainian army.

While the attacks upon the civilian populations in the east occurred the illegitimate presidents and governments in the west set about jailing opposition figures and banning the Russian language from TV and radio. Yet another reign of fear and  terror was initiated in what had once been a vigorous but generally law-abiding democracy. Things from this point went downhill at a faster and faster pace even as political and media elites in the West talked of a ‘Democratic Ukraine’. Ukraine was no longer democratic and the Russian response to this fact, the daily slaughter in the east of Russian-speaking civilians and the desire of the coup-leaders to create a dictatorship with a view to joining NATO provoked Russia endlessly. 

The western powers pressured Zelensky to walk away from peace talks that were making progress in Istanbul just a month into the conflict. We can only assume that they believed that the combination of the barrage of western sanctions applied to Russia plus the amount and quality of weapons and munitions the West could supply the regime would bring about the defeat of the Russians. We have all been witnesses that neither worked out for the West and certainly did not work out for the Ukrainians. Between a thousand and two thousand Ukrainian troops are leaving the battlefield dead or injured currently. Half a million, most of them the best troops the Kiev regime could field, have departed. They are now regularly being replaced by older, far less well trained conscripts, many dragged forcibly off the streets.

But Ukraine is not only losing men, it is losing land. Each day Russia takes more territory. And, with Vladimir Putin’s deal where he offered to more or less stop where they are now being rejected Russia will inevitably continue to take more and more as the Ukrainian army crumbles. Ukraine is losing its ability to be a viable state. It’s economy is in ruins as is its energy production capacity. And finally, and arguably the most humiliating loss of all, Ukraine is losing what land it still retains and all the business enterprises on it, to the U.S. asset management company Blackrock. What will Ukraine look like at the end of this conflict, this seemingly endless process constantly pushed forward by the western powers? Your knowledge of the situation based on all of the above should allow your imagination and insight supply the answer.

‘BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with US$10 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2023. Headquartered at 50 Hudson Yards in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, BlackRock has 78 offices in 38 countries, and clients in 100 countries. BlackRock is the manager of the iShares group of exchange-traded funds, and along with The Vanguard Group and State Street, it is considered to be one of the Big Three index fund managers.Its Aladdin software keeps track of investment portfolios for many major financial institutions and its BlackRock Solutions division provides financial risk management services. As of 2023, BlackRock was ranked 229th on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.’