I've seen BOTH of these points being hammered on constantly by people on this board AND in the wider so-called "left" and even "socialist" circles. And they are BOTH wrong.

Just because you are anti-coup, doesn't mean you're pro Russian. The League for a Fifth International has consistently taken this (IMO correct) stance. Against BOTH eastern and western imperialisms AND vehemently anti-fascist. There's a group in Ukraine, mostly in the east, called Barotba which the League has supported almost from the first. They are for a workers' government made up of Ukrainians and not beholden to either the USA, the EU, OR the Russian Federation. Imagine that. Ukraine for the Ukrainians.

It is unfair to the vast majority of Ukrainians who are not pro-fascist. It's basically like global warming deniers. 1% of scientists are skeptics, 99% are not. 2% of Ukrainians voted for the fascists, 98% did not. In that vein why should half the focus be on the skeptics of global warming or half the focus be on the fascists in Ukraine?

It's a BS binary world view ushered in by mass media because it causes a discussion that is basically irrelevant but makes for a good story. That includes DU, btw. There are probably ten times as many posts about Ukraine's fascists here than there are about Maidan and its diverse array of activists. So a group representing 2% of Ukraine (I'd say it's more like 10%) gets 10x the coverage. It's really unfair and just shows a lack of coherent criticism.

The rest of your post is pretty much argument soup--throwing in a little bit of IMF here, Svoboda there, Yatsenyuk over there, and a whole host of assertion fallacies, all while trying to desperately spin that contrary to what you've played up, Svoboda isn't nearly the driving force in Ukraine as you want it to be.

You pretty much set a world record of saying everything while proving nothing.

Since you prefer to avoid this and throw in a lot of distraction through ridicule, I guess I'll have to answer it myself:

Yes, it is. Svoboda is in the Kiev government. Svoboda holds power ministries in the cabinet and, although Ukrainian chauvinist, oversees the ongoing crackdown on ethnic Russians.

Thanks for kicking this important thread.

Sure. Svoboda holds a grand total of three positions in the Ukrainian cabinet--a deputy prime minister position (one of several such positions), minister of agriculture, and minister of ecology and natural resources.

There is a grand total of 20 seats in the cabinet, so that means 17 of those seats are held by individuals from parties other than Svoboda. Right Sector, the other "neo-Nazi" "fascist" bogeyman doesn't hold any cabinet seats.

Frankly, I'm not sure what your point is here at all. You just seem to use it as a platform to throw out a bunch of random assertions--"February 2014 coup", the State Department "planning out the Ukrainian government", lots and lots of the word "fascism", Yatsenyuk, the IMF. And yet you've consistently been unable to put together an intelligible narrative as to how exactly all these supposed players alleged sprung into action and subverted democracy once and for all in Ukraine.

Oh, and the reason there were no parliamentary elections in May was because unlike the Ukrainian president Yanukovych, the Ukrainian parliament never fled Ukraine and thus there was no need to replace them.

Don't bother to thank me for kicking your post. I'm sure you would have gotten around to doing it yourself eventually.

Is Svoboda in the government? Yes. If they're so insignificant, and they just lost the election, why are they still in the government? This means Fatherland/Yatsenyuk considers neo-Nazis and Ukrainian ethnic chauvinists to be acceptable partners, including as ministers of public security during a bloody crackdown on ethnic Russians.

Sorry that I mention Yatsenyuk (the prime minister) and IMF (the current writer of Ukrainian government policy) as if they were relevant. I'll just make sure to wave a flag and say I love Freedom and hate Putin! Hooray!

You have no understanding how power works, sir.

Right now, although they are unpopular with the people, the Ukrainian ethnic fascists of Svoboda are in the government and overseeing the security forces performing a bloody crackdown on ethnic Russians in the East. Do you know why that is? It has nothing to do with parliamentary "procedure," but with politics in the Ukrainian parliament. It's because Fatherland party under Yatsenyuk chose to enter a coalition with the Svoboda fascists. This was considered the best choice.

Your inability to speak the simplest reality - the fascists are in the government in Kiev - is telling.

Do you support the Yatsenyuk government? Are you for its economic and political program? Did you support the Yatsenyuk government's abolition of Russian as an official language of the state?

In parliamentary forms of government, various parties often enter into coalitions, not so much for ideological purposes but instead merely in the hope that if a coalition is large enough, it will become the majority coalition. Think of it is as the TV show "Survivor". (Is that show still on the air? I don't know.)

As a part of that majority coalition under parliamentary procedure, it gets to have some participation in the cabinet. Hence the 3 out of 20 cabinet seats.

That much is true.

Problem is, you completely go off the rails after that point.

You seem happy and willing to conflate the fact that Svoboda is a part of the governing coalition and assume they are the driving force behind the Ukrainian government and all its actions. Namely your characterization of the "bloody crackdown on ethnic Russians", which is a huge, huge oversimplification of the events currently happening in eastern Ukraine to say the least.

You freely throw around the word" fascists" without much thought, as to whether or not that term even applies in the given situation--much like conservatives in this country throw around the word "socialist" when referring to President Obama. Svoboda is certainly ultra-nationalistic; whether or not it falls under the category of "fascist" is still debatable by many. And then by your association of Svoboda as "fascist" (possible but not certain), the entire government of Ukraine then becomes fascist (which is without doubt not the case).

I'm not a Ukrainian citizen, so I'm not in the best position to comment on the entirety of policies put forth by the government. Regarding the policies on the Russian language and official state languages, that was never implemented and there are no plans to implement any such law at this time. Why you think that was the spark plug that precipitated all events that followed, I have no clue.

We know how a parliamentary coalition is formed.

The point is that your declared NATO and State Department partner, Yatsenyuk, chose to form his with a fascist party. You think this is fine. People who believe in democracy understand that no coalitions can be entered with fascist parties, who are about ending democracy. If one such was impossible, then they should have dissolved the parliament and had elections immediately. But it was more important to them to take power and implement the IMF austerity program!

And it's not about who's got a "simple" view of the Kiev government's massacres in the East. It's about whether you are employing sophistry and euphemism to disguise that this is exactly what has been happening.

The law abolishing Russian as a state language, following on the overthrow of the elected government and the entry of the Ukrainian ethnic fascists into a government, is what directly caused the response of the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea to call for secession. This cannot be disguised, either.

The situation in Crimea arose when well-armed men in green fatigues started showing up throughout Crimea several days after Yanukovych fled the country. These men were well-stocked and well-trained with all the equipment of the Russian military and with the only thing missing being the actual Russian insignia on their uniforms. Only after these men appeared was there calls for a hastily organized referendum to absorb Crimea into Russia. After this referendum was held with a rather dubious overwhelming majority (even after one considers the large ethnic Russian population there) and Crimea was annexed into Russia, Putin came out and admitted these were in fact Russian military.

Putin knew that the Ukrainian government was in its weakest and most vulnerable condition following Yanukovych's departure, and now was the time to in his mind reclaim what he thought to be Russian territory that Russia was entitled to, prior treaties be damned. It was Russia's own "unipolar moment", so to speak. Ukraine was in no condition to fight back, and naturally did not. Once Crimea was secured for Russia, he then made winking references to Eastern Ukraine as "Novorussiya" as armed militants took hold of government buildings in that region while people waived the Russian flag and chanted Russia's name. And now you have the "Vostok Batallion" comprised of Russians running rampant throughout Eastern Ukraine.

That's what's been going on in the East.

Now, as to your view of the greater situation of Ukraine and who you claim to be calling the shots, I honestly can't say I can make much sense out of it whatsoever. You do appear to like to repeat the word "fascist" a lot in conjunction with "Ukrainian", just like you liked to repeat the word "coup."

Apparently, the notion of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians taking to the street to protest ultimately resulting in the president abandoning his duties and his country after a failed crackdown on said protests was not an intriguing enough storyline for people like you. No, because if there is regime change anywhere in this world, dammit the "West" is somehow always behind it, actual sentiments of the indigenous population be damned.

So you ticky-tack together some semblance of a narrative involving the U.S. State Department, Yatsenyuk, small ultra-nationalist minority parties in Ukraine, IMF austerity, the EU, and various other hodge-podge and claim that what happened in February 2014 was a "coup"! Which is all fine and good for the conspiracy minded folk like yourself, except you leave out how this "coup" actually took place, i.e. the actual mechanics of it. When I called you out on it, you sheepishly but in a roundabout fashion admit you have no proof of such a coup.

Being called out on it, however, doesn't mean you stop using the word "coup" even though you've been thoroughly discredited when it comes to such a claim. This is disinformation, sir. It's also disinformation when you continuously attempt to paint Ukraine as some fascist society solely by virtue of a political party that is a small portion of the government, a small minority in the legislature, and a small minority in terms of public sentiment in Ukraine. Your efforts were dealt a serious blow when recent elections proved that last fact. Your OP reeks of desperation. It is nothing but an attempt to explain away yet another failure of your narrative.

Repeating "coup" over and over and over again does not mean one happened. Using the word "fascist" or "neo-Nazi" in almost every single mention of the Ukrainian government does not mean Ukraine is being controlled by fascists or neo-Nazis or is an inherently fascist society.

You've tried. You've failed. And yet you keep coming back for more.

The most pathetic of your moves is in believing there is any way to obscure the direct sponsorship of the banker Yatsenyuk by NATO, State Department, NED and the Western oligarch class of Peterson, Gates, etc., through Pinchuk, Horizon Capital and others. In this case it's of course particularly hard for you to distract from this with weak attempts at ridicule because of one of the main sources telling of this close and warm relationship is, of course, Yatsenyuk himself.

Partners of the Ukrainian coup d'etat prime minister... http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024946300

This connection is so self-evident that you could at least be honest and admit it. Yatsenyuk is the West's man, chosen by the State Department, encouraged to make a coalition with neo-Nazis as needed, and concerned solely with implementation of a neoliberal program as dictated by IMF and EU. Instead you engage in the false characterization that I point to this obvious connection only out of some anti-Western bias. It is your attitude that if there is regime change anywhere in the world, the West is never behind it and anyone who says so is a self-hating Westerner (or whatever). Sad that you choose these blinders.

On the other hand, you have no trouble with conspiracy theories no matter how lacking for evidence, as long as they involve dastardly Russians. No trouble seeing Russian imperialism in everything they do: in this case, every bad claim about them, whether it is true or not, is accepted. However, I have no need for a good guy-bad guy narrative. Ukraine has traded a predatory oligarch kleptocracy that favored Russian interests for a predatory oligarch kleptocracy in the pockets of Western interests. Nothing unusual in that; unfortunately regime changes of bad guy for bad guy are close to the norm. The difference in the new regime is that it wasn't elected, didn't disguise its function as an implementing arm of the IMF and EU, and was willing (and stupid enough) to ally with fascists and stir up ethnic troubles as a means of dividing the people. This backfired in Crimea and moved eastern Ukraine toward a new Yugoslavia-type war among competing ethnic nationalists (one hopes it can still be avoided).

The "stalled bill" abolishing Russian as a language of the Ukrainian state was enacted on the very first day of the coup government under Yatsenyuk. It was the law of the land, and only later reversed by the interim president. Before the reversal, the message had been sent: the new government had welcomed ethnic Ukrainian fascists who blamed all problems on Russian plots and Jews, and had catered to them immediately by abolishing Russian as a language of the state. Furthermore, the first choice of defense and security minister was one of the fascist party leaders. This is the most important ministry in most times, and even more so given the civil conflict -- an even more clear signal to ethnic Russians that the new government was willing to put the fascist attack dog in charge.

This was incredibly stupid, but what does one expect from a plunder team allied with fascists? Predictably, the overwhelmingly Russian area of Crimea, which was already home to Russian forces and bases, wasted no time in going its own way. This hardly required the "infiltration" of paramilitary forces from Russia itself. Seeing what had developed in Kiev, the majority of Ukrainian army forces who were already in Crimea went over to the Russian side. The subsequent election was stage-managed and under authoritarian-hysterical conditions, and I don't support annexations on principle (because of the obvious "Yugoslavia" effect this will encourage) but there's no doubt the result was a valid expression of the will of the overwhelming Crimean majority. The Kiev government should have and could have sought a deescalation at that point, before major hostilities began, and held parliamentary elections in peace throughout the country. As the eastern separatists began their protests, the Kiev government chose the way of crackdown and massacre, risking a civil war.

You still have time to save a little bit of face, not to go down as DU's most extreme apologist for Ukrainian fascism. Simple question: do you support the inclusion of Svoboda as a partner in the Kiev government? Would you have chosen a different route than to include fascists, even if this meant elections instead of a successful coalition? That is an essential litmus test at a time when fascism is on the rise throughout Europe. They don't get majorities, they don't come to power without assistance from liberal bourgeois parties who are ready to make a deal.

Begging the question (especially that one), association fallacy, red herrings, strawmen, loaded questions, ad hominem--you pretty much cover it all.

You self-promote well. I'll give you that much.

Your ultimate point is, well, I just don't know. It's all a jumbled mess. But clearly you want to us to believe that a) there was a western-backed coup in Ukraine and b) the Ukrainian government is fascist and neo-Nazi. (You use the term "fascist" six times in the post above and "neo-Nazi" once). It's reactionary, hysterical language across the board without actual constructing a fact-based narrative out of the jumble.

Of all that you've said, I can agree with you that Yatsenyuk liked the West, and the West liked Yatsenyuk. Great--we agree on that. But what of it? The West likes lots of foreign leaders, and not all of them are bad. Yatsenyuk's not a fascist, and I don't believe you are calling him one (At least I don't think--with you, I just can never know). And the mere fact that certain figures in the West may have liked Yatsenyuk and desired to see him in charge in Ukraine doesn't mean they meticulously planned out a specific plan in which Yanukovych would be forcibly removed from his office against his will, to be carried out by a specific small group of individuals. You've not shown that to be the case. The actual evidence on record (which you can see with your own eyes) doesn't support that to be the case, either. How did the "coup" happen? I've asked you over and over and over again, and you've never given me one single specific shred of evidence to support your claim.

Do me a favor. Please don't strawman me. I've well read up on historical situations in places like Iran and Chile where unfortunately the United States has dirty hands in involving itself in and helping to plan out actual coups. Here's the thing, though. Those were actual coups. What happened in Ukraine was not an actual coup. And nothing that happened in Ukraine in February 2014 was remotely similar to what happened in places like Iran or Chile. Just because the US has historically been involved in some regime changes doesn't mean it is involved in every single regime change that there is. People in other countries can in fact rise up on their own without us making them do so.

The sad fact of the matter is I don't even know where you are trying to go with the whole "fascism" angle. Obviously, it's a scary word that evokes serious implications. How exactly it works into your "western led coup in Ukraine" conspiracy theory, I'm still trying to figure out. Do you even know how it's supposed to play into your argument? Again, I have to wonder if you've amped up on the "fascism" angle just as a means to distract from the fact that you can't prove the "western led coup in Ukraine" theory.

Listen. Svoboda is Svoboda is Svoboda and that's pretty much it. They were a small minority party when Yanukovych was in power, they're a small minority party after Yanukovych left, and most likely they'll continue to be a small minority party down the road. They've managed to ride some of the spoils of the parliamentary system of government in gaining a few cabinet seats for the time being; whether they actual hold onto those seats come next parliamentary election remains in doubt. Because they are a far-right party and I myself do not consider myself to be far-right, I personally would prefer they would not to have any meaningful positions of power in the government. But as a factor in Ukraine, they've been made out to be a roaring tempest in ultimately the tiniest of teapots.

The face of the Ukrainian government is not Svoboda. The face of the Ukrainian government is not fascist. The face of the Ukrainian government is not neo-Nazis. To argue otherwise is grossly disingenuous. However, being grossly disingenuous doesn't seem to be a restraining factor when it comes to your postings.

He will be selecting a new cabinet. And given that they didn't get votes he will be well justified in basically removing any right wing fascists from power. So in a few short days your "concerns" will be completely without merit.

"Concerns," you say? In quotes? Yeah, what's a few fascists in a European government, right?

The damage is done. Fascists are in the government, right now, they have been, and they have overseen a campaign of repression against ethnic Russians.

As for the economic damage, Poroshenko is unlikely to reverse the IMF-EU program. Interestingly, however, he did say he wanted more time to negotiate with the EU. (Shocking! I think your State Department and NED astroturf freedom fighters need to return to the square and make some riot on behalf of the freedom-bestowing neoliberal austerity program. Also, to make sure the abolition of Russian as an official language of the state sticks.)

And several dozen of the Party of Regions people fleeing to Russia (they got their pockets lined, after all, and would've probably been impeached or jailed). The fascists will be voted out. Poroshenko may wait until after the parliamentary elections he has called for, which would be a mistake. But they certainly do not have the same level of support as in the rest of EU. Your focusing on them merely existing is quaint, given the radical right wing nature of some of the US's Teabaggers.

FYI, Russian is the state language in Russia, so the attempts to officiate Ukrainian were merely following Russia's example. Or 28 of US states who require English to be recognized as the state language (there is no federal state language, however).

No, Svoboda's presence in a government is the result of the senior partner party's choice to form a coalition with Svoboda. If this was impossible, there was nothing stopping Fatherland and Yatsenyuk from calling parliamentary elections at a time when the country was still at peace, instead of allowing violence to escalate so that they could implement the EU-IMF economic program. God forbid the people should have gotten to vote, since of course the time before they had elected the other set of kleptocrats.

My focus is not on them "merely existing," so you are engaging in sophistry as usual. My focus is on them being welcomed into the government, given the defense ministry (until they fucked up with their extremism), and allowed to push through measures like the abolition of Russian as a language of the state.

My focus is also on the way you support them, twisting yourself up on behalf of ethnic chauvinism to the point where (given that your preferred government indeed abolished Russian prior to the president's reversal of it) you imply it's a minor matter for U.S. states to enact "English only." Clearly, you think it was better to have this coup government instead of waiting for the next election. You're implying Yatsenyuk, IMF, etc. is something worth fighting for even by these means of destroying the country. Too bad you're not the one there on the ground fighting to help them out.

PS - Those fucking commies, why didn't they vote for a government that included fascists?

Rec

from the neoliberal prime minister allied with the neo-Nazis in Kiev:

http://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/press-center/news/24185-mi-uvichnimo-pamjaty-gerojiv-ochistivshi-nashu-zemlyu-vid-nechistiarsenij-jacenyuk-u-spivchutti-ridnim-i-blizykim-zagiblih-vojiniv-u-lugansyku