Yesterday I doubted that a certain Obama administration “leak” to the New York Times was truthful:
While Merkel and other EU politicians seems to want to calm the situation down the White House feels domestic political pressure to do more of “something”. That is likely why we see this “leak” in today’s New York Times:
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. “In another world,” she said.
This does not sound like typically Merkel but rather strange for her. I doubt that she said that the way the “people briefed on the call” told it to the Times stenographer. It is rather an attempt to discredit Merkel and to make it more difficult for her to find a solution with Russia outside of U.S. control.
The German government, through the conservative, Merkel supporting daily Die Welt, denied the correctness of that quote. Die Welt writes (my translation):
The chancellery is unhappy about the report in the New York Times. Merkel by no means meant to express that Putin behaved irrational. In fact she told Obama that Putin has a different perspective about the Crimea [than Obama has].
No, I am no supporter or defender of Merkel, but the tug over the Ukraine is as much between the EU and the United States as it is between the “west” and the “east”. Yes, the EU screwed up its Ukraine strategy by giving an ultimatum to Yanukovich to sign an association agreement and, when he rejected, by instigating trouble in Kiev. But what the U.S. is doing is worse. It managed to sabotage the February 21 comprise three EU foreign minister had negotiated between Yanukovich and his opposition and ordered fascist storm troupers onto the Ukrainian parliament to press it to illegally “elect” its favorite candidate to head the Ukraine. Six members of the fascists Bandera follower party Svoboda are now part of the illegitimate Ukrainian government. Certain U.S. policymakers seem to want war with Russia. The Europeans have very different interests.
All favored comments below the Merkel piece in Die Welt are taking the Russian position in this conflict and point out the fascists in the Ukrainian government. This in a paper with a usually conservative and very pro-American readership. The German public, despite an anti-Russian propaganda campaign in most main-strem media, is certainly not on the side of the United States and its NATO interventionists.
There is a long “tradition” of using fascist nationalist groups against Russia. That country lost over 20 million people fighting fascism and for Russians to see fascists ruling in Kiev is therefore an incredible assault on their national identity. Russians know their history and they certainly know who is standing behind these fascists. That is likely what Merkel told Obama about Putin’s perspective.
The Svoboda and the RightSector in the Ukraine see themselves in the tradition of Stepan Bandera, a Galician ultranationalist, brutal terrorist, fascist and later asset of many “western” secret services. An eyeopening book by the U.S. National Archives about Hitler’s Shadows – Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence and the Cold War (pdf) includes a chapter on “Collaborators: Allied Intelligence and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists”. Some excerpts:
British operations through Bandera expanded. An early 1954 MI6 summary noted that, “the operational aspect of this [British] collaboration [with Bandera] was developing satisfactorily. Gradually a more complete control was obtained over infiltration operations and although the intelligence dividend was low it was considered worthwhile to proceed….”
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Bandera was, according to his handlers, “a professional underground worker with a terrorist background and ruthless notions about the rules of the game…. A bandit type if you like, with a burning patriotism, which provides an ethical background and a justification for his banditry. No better and no worse than others of his kind…
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In April 1959 Bandera again asked West German intelligence for support and this time Gehlen was interested. The CIA noted that, “It [is] apparent that Bandera [is] seeking support for illegal ops into Ukraine.” The West Germans agreed to support at least one such mission based on the “fact [that] Bandera and group no longer the cut throats they were” and because Bandera “supplied proof [of] existing contact with inside assets.” A team trained and funded by the BND crossed from Czechoslovakia in late July, and the BND promised Bandera support for future operations if this one were to be even “moderately successful.”
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In June 1985 the General Accounting Office mentioned Lebed’s name in a public report on Nazis and collaborators who settled in the United States with help from U.S. intelligence agencies. The Office of Special Investigations (OSI) in the Department of Justice began investigating Lebed that year. The CIA worried that public scrutiny of Lebed would compromise QRPLUMB and that failure to protect Lebed would trigger outrage in the Ukrainian émigré community. It thus shielded Lebed by denying any connection between Lebed and the Nazis and by arguing that he was a Ukrainian freedom fighter. The truth, of course, was more complicated. As late as 1991 the CIA tried to dissuade OSI from approaching the German, Polish, and Soviet governments for war-related records related to the OUN. OSI eventually gave up the case, unable to procure definitive documents on Lebed. Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998. He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.
There is little doubt that U.S. secret services and certain neo-con politicians are still pulling the strings of the fascist movements in the Ukraine. Who else would have trained them, as Putin alleges, in neighboring countries. It is their russophobia that is now threatening European peace.