It’s Time for U.S. and European Allies to Step Back From Ukrainian Conflict

It’s Time for U.S. and European Allies to Step Back From Ukrainian Conflict
Posted on Feb 4, 2015
TruthDig.com
By William Pfaff

On a weekend when the United States augmented its program of financial aid to beleaguered Ukraine, President Barack Obama himself conceded to the American TV audience (those not watching Super Bowl preparations) that the official U.S. narrative concerning the war in Ukraine is not true.

Secretary of State John Kerry has since arrived in Kiev, bearing with him presidential authorization of another billion dollars in American loan guarantees to Ukraine and congressional support for this augmented aid to Kiev. Many in Congress would like the sum to be bigger yet. As it is, the U.S., the International Monetary Fund and the European Union have thus far committed a total of $27 billion assistance to Ukraine to get it to and through the “emergency” presidential election in the country scheduled for May.

NATO wants increased military assistance to the Ukrainian army of 6,000, which thus far has not proven a very effective opponent for the Russophone East Ukrainian secessionist rebel forces and the trans-frontier Russian “volunteers” bolstering them.

Since the conflict broke out a year ago, the official American story (reinforced by its European Union allies, although not always with enthusiasm) has been that it was instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin to block Ukraine from creating a democratic government, whose existence and example on the border of Russia might inspire the Russian people to themselves reject authoritarian government and overthrow Putin’s “kleptocracy”—to quote New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman, who describes Putin as “the Thug.”

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Obama does not. Interviewed by Fareed Zakaria last weekend on CNN, Obama said that “Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Maidan not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protest in the Maidan (in February 2014) and (Ukraine’s then-president Viktor) Yanukovych fleeing after we (the U.S. and the European Union) had made a deal to broker power in Ukraine.”

Full read here:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/its_time_for_us_and_european_allies_to_step_back_from_ukrainian_conflict_