Ukraine in the Crossfire

by Chris Kaspar de Ploeg

Overview

Ukraine is embroiled in a bloody civil war. Both sides stand accused of collaborating with fascists, of committing war crimes, of serving foreign interests. This proxy-war between Russia and the West was accompanied by a fierce information war. This book separates fact from fiction with extensive and reliable documentation. While remaining critical of Russia and the Donbass rebellion, De Ploeg demonstrates that many of the recent disasters can be traced to Ukrainian ultranationalists, pro-western political elites and their European and North-American backers. Ukraine in the Crossfire tackles the importance of ultranationalist violence during and after the EuroMaidan movement, and documents how many of these groups are heirs to former nazi-collaborators. It shows how the Ukrainian state has seized on the ultranationalist war-rhetoric to serve its own agenda, clamping down on civil liberties on a scale unprecedented since Ukrainian independence. De Ploeg argues that Kiev itself has been the biggest obstacle to peace in Donbass, with multiple leaks suggesting that US officials are pushing for a pro-war line in Ukraine. With the nation´s eyes turned towards Russia, the EU and IMF have successfully pressured Ukraine into adopting far-reaching austerity programs, while oligarchic looting of state assets and massive tax-avoidance facilitated by western states continue unabated. De Ploeg documents the local roots of the Donbass rebellion, the overwhelming popularity of Crimea's secession, and shows that support for Ukraine's pro-western turn remains far from unanimous, with large swathes of Ukraine's Russophone population opting out of the political process. Nevertheless, De Ploeg argues, the pro-Western and pro-Russian camps are often similar: neoliberal, authoritarian, nationalist and heavily dependent on foreign support. In a wider exploration of Russo-Western relations, he examines similarities between the contemporary Russian state and its NATO counterparts, showing how the two power blocs have collaborated in some of their worst violent excesses. A far cry from civilizational or ideological clashes, De Ploeg argues that the current tensions flow from NATO´s military dominance and aggressive posture, both globally and within eastern Europe, where Russia seeks to preserve the status-quo. Packed with shocking facts, deftly moving from the local to the international, from the historical to the recent; De Ploeg connects the dots.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780997896541
Publisher:	Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	04/14/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Chris Kaspar de Ploeg is a freelance journalist and political analyst. His publications have appeared in De Groene Amsterdammer (NL), Follow the Money (NL), Dissident Voice (US), De Wereld Morgen (BE), De Omslag (NL) and Spanning (NL). In the spring of 2016, de Ploeg joined Platform Authentieke Jouirnalistiek to write an investigative journalism series on Ukraine.

Read an Excerpt

Buckling under the pressure, a truce was declared and Yanukovych finally entered into negotiations with the opposition.Nevertheless, on the 20th of February, the violence culminated into an unprecedented tragedy when dozens of protesters and police were shot dead. The slain protesters would become known as "the heavenly hundred"; Yanukovych was immediately blamed for the tragedy, causing his downfall two days later. By now,however, the first and so far only 80-page academic research into the blood bath has been published by the Ukrainian scholar, Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Toronto, which was accepted for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, the largest academic conference of political scientists in the world that rejects the absolute majority of paper proposals in their peer-review process. A summary of the research was also included in a book published by the leading academic press, Routledge.4 Based on an enormous quantity of footage,intercepted radio-communications, eye witnesses, ballistic research, among other evidence, Katchanovski concludes that: ";Armed groups and the leadership of the far right organizations, such as the Right Sector and Svoboda,and oligarchic parties, such as Fatherland[the party of Tymoshenko and soon-to-be prime minister Yatsenyuk], were directly or indirectly involved in various capacities in this massacre of the protesters and the police. This mass killing was a successful false flag operation, which was organized and conducted by elements of the Maidan leadership and concealed armed group sin order to win the asymmetric conflict during the;Euromaidan and seize power in Ukraine."5Soon after the publication, Katchanovski's house in Ukraine, which he used for his research, was seized by a dubious trial... Some of his key assertions, however, have been corroborated by several Western media investigations, including, among others,the German public news agency ARD, American documentary maker John-Beck Hoffman, Reuters news agency, Foreign Policy Magazine, associate professor Gordon Hahn and eventually even the official Ukrainian trial.6 Furthermore, two Maidan protesters have publicly confessed to having shot policemen during the massacre.7 And perhaps most shockingly, exactly three years after the the massacre even the Deputy head of the Ukrainian parliament suggested that current top government officials were involved and therefore obstructed proper investigation.8

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 7

Prologue 9

Chapter 1 A Divided Country 12

Chapter 2 The Return of the Wolfsangel 21

Chapter 3 The Militarization of Maidan 29

Chapter 4 Far Right-backed Regime Change 36

Chapter 5 Oligarch-backed Regime Change 45

Chapter 6 Western-backed Regime Change 54

Chapter 7 Imposing Austerity 69

Chapter 8 Condoning Corruption 87

Chapter 9 Dismantling Russophone Ukraine 104

Chapter 10 The East Responds 115

Chapter 11 Civil War Darkens the Ukrainian Landscape 123

Chapter 12 The Ravages of War 137

Chapter 13 Dehumanizing the Donbass, Embracing the Far Right 154

Chapter 14 Beyond Populism: Assessing the Influence of the Far Right 162

Chapter 15 Repression and Diversion in Divided Ukraine 171

Chapter 16 Obstructing Peace 191

Chapter 17 The Imperial Desire for War 198

Chapter 18 Western Military Doctrine and the Normalization of War Crimes 224

Chapter 19 Seeing Beyond the Imperial Divide 236

Chapter 20 Divisions on the Western Front? 277

Chapter 21 Cold War Politics in the Age of Trump 295

Glossary of Acronyms 344

Index 348

Editorial Reviews

"...a thorough but sharply critical account of the role of the West in the now three-
year Ukrainian civil war, the political epicenter of the new Cold War." — Stephen Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies, Princeton University, Boston Globe

"highly informative analysis of the contradictions of the Ukrainian revolution..." — Richard Sakwa, Professor, Russian and European Studies, U Kent, Frontline Ukraine

"An impressive achievement."— Nicolai N. Petro, professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island (USA), formerly U.S. Fulbright Research Scholar in Ukraine

From the Publisher