Ukraine: Wet Noodle Sanctions And Pressure For Constitutional Reform

March 17, 2014

As documented yesterday the "leaked" Russian non-paper which demanded constitutional reform in the Ukraine and more autonomy for its regions was at least partially accepted by Secretary of State Kerry:

In a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, their second since unsuccessful face-to-face talks on Friday in London, Kerry urged Russia "to support efforts by Ukrainians across the spectrum to address power sharing and decentralization through a constitutional reform process that is broadly inclusive and protects the rights of minorities," the State Department said.

That Kerry "urged Russia" is just a silly diversion. The idea of such changes in the Ukrainian constitution clearly came from the Russian side and were already part of the February 21 agreement which the U.S. supported coup government broke.

The Kerry call with Lavrov was followed by one between Putin and Obama. The White House readout of that call also mentions the constitution issue.

[President Obama] noted that the Ukrainian government continues to take concrete steps that would allow for the de-escalation of the crisis, particularly as it prepares for elections this Spring and undertakes constitutional reform, …

Using that acknowledgement of the Russian plan the Kremlin increased the pressure and went public with its demands:

Moscow, meanwhile, called on Ukraine to become a federal state as a way of resolving the polarization between Ukraine's western regions — which favor closer ties with the 28-nation EU — and its eastern areas, which have long ties to Russia.

In a statement Monday, Russia's Foreign Ministry urged Ukraine's parliament to call a constitutional assembly that could draft a new constitution to make the country federal, handing more power to its regions. It also said country should adopt a "neutral political and military status," a demand reflecting Moscow's concern about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO.

Russia is also pushing for Russian to become Ukraine's state language.

In Kiev, Ukraine's new government dismissed Russia's proposal Monday as unacceptable, saying it "looks like an ultimatum."

The Ukrainian puppet government still has to learn the business. As Kerry and Obama already conceded "constitutional reform" in the Ukraine there will be no way for the puppet government to get around this. It urgently needs money and those who could possibly pay, the IMF, the U.S. and EU, will make their demands heard.

Russia could also easily escalate and help the eastern and southern regions of the Ukraine to create their own state independent of Kiev or the seek, like the Crimea, incorporation into the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian government is right to call the Russian demand an ultimatum. It is exactly that and it will have to submit to it.

But that is not yet understood. The Ukrainian parliament, those now 300+ left from 450 original lawmakers after the others fled under threats of violence, decided to mobilize the Ukrainian military and moved a whooping 12% of its total budget into reestablishing some military force. But the Ukrainian military has been neglected for over 20 years:

“It is absolutely not a combat ready force. It’s sharply underfunded, and they don’t have any real air or surface to air or capacity compared to what Russia can deploy — even though Russia is no paragon of military readiness either,” Anthony Cordesman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told FoxNews.com.

The Ukrainian troops are still mostly conscripts and the professionals are paid only half of the average Ukrainian wage. How loyal this military will be to the coup-government is yet to be seen. I do not expect it to play any significant role.

Meanwhile the U.S. as well as the EU introduced some sanctions on some Russian and Ukrainian individuals though the White House "Fact Sheet" does not even say what those sanctions are:

In response to the Russian government’s actions contributing to the crisis in Ukraine, this new E.O. lists seven Russian government officials who are being designated for sanctions. These individuals are Vladislav Surkov, Sergey Glazyev, Leonid Slutsky, Andrei Klishas, Valentina Matviyenko, Dmitry Rogozin, and Yelena Mizulina.

There seems to be no real idea why (and with what) these individuals would be sanctioned. Does it make sense to sanction people because of their "status"?

Valentina Matviyenko: Matviyenko is being sanctioned for her status as Head of the Federation Council

Dmitry Rogozin: Rogozin is being sanctioned for his status as the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation.

Yelena Mizulina: Mizulina is being sanctioned for her status as a State Duma Deputy.

…

The sanctioned Russian people are all officials who are not even allowed to hold foreign assets. What is the U.S. going to do about them?

One paragraph in the "Fact Sheet" is a threat to Russian businessman and oligarchs:

The United States also will seek to hold accountable individuals who use their resources or influence to support or act on behalf of senior Russian government officials. We recognize that the Russian leadership derives significant support from, and takes action through, individuals who do not themselves serve in any official capacity. Our current focus is to identify these individuals and target their personal assets, but not companies that they may manage on behalf of the Russian state.

Whatever. Putin has some 70% of the Russians in favor of him. He does not have to be considerate of this or that oligarch. The Russians are laughing off this wet noodle assault. None of these sanctions will influence their decision making. They will publish a retaliatory list and equally meaningless sanction some U.S. and EU officials and that will be it.

The U.S. now has the unpleasant task to silence the blowhards and fascists in the Ukrainian puppet government and to push them to accept some meaningful constitution creating process. The Russian government will keep all options open in eastern and southern Ukraine until a new acceptable Ukrainian constitution is done and in place. It can for now sit back and amuse itself about the empty blustering coming out of Brussels and Washington DC.

Posted by b on March 17, 2014 at 15:25 UTC | Permalink

Comments

i fear deeply for venezuela & el salvador

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 18 2014 22:42 utc | 301

#301 Syria and Lebanon also.

Posted by: Nora | Mar 18 2014 22:49 utc | 302

Nora (302)
Yes, absolutely. And let’s not forget that both Venezuela and Syria are already in the making since quite some time.
(I didn’t want to answer to the “facts” man)

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Mar 18 2014 22:53 utc | 303

I don’t always agree with you, Mr. P, but you’re my favorite democracy-loving computer program! :~)

Posted by: Nora | Mar 18 2014 22:56 utc | 304

# 303: Speaking of Syria:

The U.S. said Tuesday it’s ordering the Syrian Embassy and its two consulate offices — one of them in Troy — to shut down. […]
All three offices “must immediately suspend operations” and any employee who’s not a citizen or permanent resident “must depart the United States,” said Daniel Rubinstein, the U.S. government’s Special Envoy for Syria.
“Syrian diplomats at the embassy and Syrian honorary consulates are no longer permitted to perform diplomatic or consular functions,” Rubinstein said in a statement released Tuesday by the State Department.
The move comes two weeks after the U.S. State Department said it’s restricting the movement of Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari, who had been speaking across the U.S. at events, including ones in Dearborn and Livonia with the Syrian-American Forum.
Tuesday’s decision was made because “the Syrian Embassy has suspended its … consular services, and in consideration of the atrocities the Assad regime has committed against the Syrian people,” Rubinstein said. “We have determined it is unacceptable for individuals appointed by that regime to conduct diplomatic or consular operations in the United States.”

Nobody has ever accused the US government of not being able to multitask.
By the way, I noticed today that even Juan Cole refers to the Syrian government as a “regime” – and he’s considered to be a “critical thinker”.

Posted by: Demian | Mar 18 2014 23:16 utc | 305

whatever the empire touches it tuns it into shit

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 18 2014 23:18 utc | 306

The Philospher speaks:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/how-moscow-is-moving-to-destablize-eastern-ukraine-a-959224.html
“Putin is on his way to becoming the leader of the real free world,” Dugin writes. “It is only Putin who decisively confronts American hegemony. The Russian president is a bulwark against Washington’s policy of installing puppet governments around the world through bloody coups.”

Posted by: truthbetold | Mar 19 2014 0:38 utc | 307

I like Mr. Pragma’s commentary in many ways and not least it provides an optimistic perspective checkmating Sorrentine’s previously relentless dogmatic pessmism where the Empire always won and wins, carrying out brilliantly constructed labyrinthine strategies in the process.
Yeah, JS, Abe Lincoln was certainly a war criminal fascist-who jailed and conscripted forcibly masses of Yankee youth to fight in a war they were protesting-against the incipient Empire.

Posted by: truthbetold | Mar 19 2014 0:44 utc | 308

@kalithea #254

I’m sure the German people will be thrilled to know they’re working for Greece and now Ukraine.

how silly of me – I was convinced the Greek people were working for the German banks

Posted by: claudio | Mar 19 2014 1:05 utc | 309

Fairleft,
The reason Yanukovich won, with a ruling system that was pro-West, is there are so many areas that are not “pure Ukrainian”. This coup has made Russian consciousness inside the Ukraine a lot stronger, but, even so, basing your conclusion on a survey is unsound. If the Eastern regions had the same referendum that the Crimea had, it’s easy to think that those areas that voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovich would vote even more overwhelmingly for Russia. The areas that voted 55% for Yanukovich might be areas that Russia wouldn’t even want.

Posted by: Ozawa | Mar 19 2014 1:56 utc | 310

thomas 289 FUCK OFF YOU SAYANIM SCUM! Cockroaches like you do not belong here where the light shines, go away and hide in your cesspool.
Now you revealed the whole scheme of your operation against MoA on behalf of some zionazi disgusting pseudo-intelligence agency. You came here to provoke people into discussions that would according to your delusional plan result in shutting down this site on grounds of Holohoax “denial”.
That means:
1) MoA is so influential that the fucking disgusting subhuman creatures at the Tel Aviv decided to attempt to shut it down
2) This is how the sayanim stinking pests operate – good to know, another sign of desperation from your criminal gang of revolting humanity haters
Farewell and fuck you and your perverse cult.

Posted by: PissOffHasbaraScum | Mar 19 2014 2:09 utc | 311

Sergey,
I think the point to keep in mind is that the USSA is now resembling the old USSR. The corruption, mismanagement, and moral decay is far advanced. I know this from my family’s past and current work in the military-industrial complex. There is the big wildcard of all the secret stuff, such as space weapons, undersea bases, and more, but the problem is there. Now, it’s true that US software has been a bright light, but the overall situation is a lot worse than before. It’s also hard to recruit as many great minds in the secret stuff as they can’t live normal lives once they agree to spend their time underground in New Mexico, at least if you consider modern big-city life normal.
By the way, why should Russia invade when she can simply fund and help an uprising in the Russia-speaking areas? The Western Nazis will run everything into the ground fairly soon, and the Russian government can make promises to support and reward those who help what is seen as being in Russian interests. So the oligarchs might lose everything if they support Kiev. As it stands, just the threat of a Russian invasion makes it hard for certain groups or individuals to do things in Kiev.

Posted by: Ozawa | Mar 19 2014 2:12 utc | 312

Ozawa,
Another consideration is that the Kiev regime isn’t even pretending that it has an army, but is talking of assembling a “National Guard”, consisting largely of their goons. This suggests that a significant portion of the military is not loyal to the regime. It is unlikely that only ethnically Russian Ukrainian citizens hate fascists: hating fascism was part of Soviet identity in general.
I also read in a Ukrainian Russian language blog post by the Ukrainian minister of the interior that he fired 90% of police administrators after the coup.

Posted by: Demian | Mar 19 2014 2:17 utc | 313

@Sergey “All the years till 2000s Western Ukranian nazi surge it was widely believed that Russian/Ukranian/Belorussian are more or less the same.”
And this is the whole point of all of this. This is why the west has funneled billions of dollars to the Western Ukrainian Nazis, why the western intellectual class is busy writing books about Stalin’s GULAG (when they ought to be writing about Viet Nam), why the Ukrainian famine has gone from human tragedy to pre-planned genocide, why the Lenin statues are coming down. Why Svoboda has elevated “the heavenly hundred” (who they probably had shot – to a man) into saints at the behest of Ashton.
The west wins here if they can truly convince more and more Ukrainian people that they are impossibly different from Russian people.
The same exact plot they have for all of us really.
And that’s what I am most afraid of. Because for the west, the more blood spilled the better. Anything to put in one persons head some hate for another. Shia/Sunni. Ukrainian/Russian. Venezuelan/Colombian.
Whatever it takes.
I posted this before, but it bears repeating. The Germans had planned to dominate the Soviet Union by constructing ethnic consciousness where once there previously wasn’t one:

In a memorandum sent to Rosenberg in March 1942, Nazi anthropologist Otto Reche argues for the disappearance of ‘Russia’ both as an ethnic and political concept, and the promotion of a new plethora of ethnicities based on medieval Slavic tribes such as the Vyatichs and Severians.[34] Even White Ruthenia, and in particular the Ukraine (“in its present extent”) he deemed to be dangerously large.[34] Heinrich Himmler had already advocated for such a general policy towards Eastern Europe in 1940.[35] A top-secret memorandum in 1940 from Himmler entitled “Thoughts on the Treatment of Alien Peoples in the East” expressed that the Germans must bring back people that were of Germanic blood and were racially suitable back to the Reich and to fight the struggle against the Jewish Bolsheviks who he refers to in the memorandum as the subhuman people of the East [Untermenschenvolk des Osten], and for them to acknowledge and cultivate as many ethnic splinter groups in German-occupied Europe as possible, including Ukrainians, “White Russians” (Belarusians), Gorals (see Goralenvolk), Lemkos, and Kashubians.[35] The Eastern Ministry responded that Reche’s emphasis on the plurality of ethnic groups in the Soviet Union was correct “in itself”, but was skeptical about his proposal to resurrect obscure and extinct nationalities.[34] He defended his proposal by arguing that “[sic] in the area of ethnicity much has already been successfully brought back to life!”, but inquired as to whether names connected with the main towns in each area might serve this role instead.[34] A memo date written by Dr. Erich Wetzel (NSDAP Office of Racial Policy) on April 1942 details the splitting up of Reichskommissariat Moskowien into very loosely tied Generalkommissariats.[36] The objective was to undermine the national cohesion of the Russians by promoting regional identification; a Russian from the Gorki Generalkommissariat was to feel that he was different from a Russian in the Tula Generalkommissariat.[36] Also, a source of discussion in the Nazi circles was the replacement of the Cyrillic letters with the German alphabet.[37] In July 1944, Himmler ordered Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the head of the RSHA, to begin the exporting of the faith of the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the occupied east.[38] Himmler considered the Jehovah’s Witnesses of being frugal, hard-working, honest and fanatic in their pacifism, and that these traits were extremely desirable for the suppressed nations in the east.[38]
“>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_%28political_system%29

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 19 2014 4:13 utc | 314

Posted by: kalithea | Mar 18, 2014 10:23:36 AM | 207
if you agree with Pragma,.i doubt you understand

Posted by: brian | Mar 19 2014 4:25 utc | 315

Ozawa at 310:
Like others you’re just a good soldier, defending King Pragma, and so you must try your best to fight the simple fact that there are no other Russian majority regions in Ukraine except for Crimea, because the Great Pragma says there are such Russian majority regions. He of course has presented no evidence at all for that bizarre assertion. Nevertheless, he is the Great Pragma, so Ozawa knows his loyal servants must take up arms against the one who criticizes. And so the attack on the 2001 Ukraine national census.
My answer: Everyone knows that the 2001 census is not perfect but it’s the best evidence available on ethnicity. Also, the 2001 census is very consistent with the 1989 census and all the Ukraine censuses going back to 1959. They all consistently show Ukrainian ethnicity from 73 to 78% of Ukraine’s population. The censuses also show Russian ethnicity ranging from 22% down to 17% in 2001.
You say as a fact that “This coup has made Russian consciousness inside the Ukraine a lot stronger …” But you present no evidence of that. And what do you mean by ‘Russian consciousness’? Are you saying that large numbers of those who identify as Ukrainian are switching their ethnic identity to Russian because of the coup? Seems unlikely, and you present no evidence.
You also say “If the Eastern regions had the same referendum that the Crimea had, it’s easy to think that those areas that voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovich would vote even more overwhelmingly for Russia.” More overwhelmingly than Crimea? No, it’s not easy to think that, you’re just making a guess, and you present no evidence. Also, your contention is not related to my point, which is about ethnicity and not voter preferences. (But I hope the voters have a chance to express their preference.)
My point was and is that the only majority Russian ethnic region in Ukraine was Crimea. If Mr Pragma recognized that basic fact he would understand that Putin hasn’t ‘abandoned’ Ukraine’s ‘other’ majority Russian regions because there aren’t any. He would also understand that Crimea’s majority Russian ethnic population, along with its recent history as part of Russia (history not _recently_ shared by most of the rest of Ukraine), likely played a large role in Putin’s decision to protect Crimea and allow it to enter the Russian Federation.

Posted by: fairleft | Mar 19 2014 6:12 utc | 316

Fairleft,
You do know that the Eastern Ukraine is simply Southern Russia, right? You say that I know little about that part of the world, but what do you know? How many of your relatives are from there? At least I have relatives from the Ukraine. What have you got?
The word “Ukrainian” is not the only issue. The issue is what language people use in daily life. The new Nazi government wants to ban Russian. How would you feel in their shoes? If you were, say, 1/4 Russian, 1/4 Ukrainian, 1/4 Belarussian, and 1/4 Volga German living in Eastern Ukraine, and had always spoken Russian in pretty much all parts of your life, what would you think of this regime?
My thinking you are full of it has nothing to do with the KGB robot Pragma.

Posted by: Ozawa | Mar 19 2014 12:44 utc | 317

Ozawa at 317: Your king has no clothes, he’s wrong, so you have to change the subject and make up stuff about the person who exposes his error. Crimea is/was the only region in Ukraine with a Russian ethnicity majority. That’s all I’m saying, and even Pragma has admitted (well, in his untruthful lying way) that he got the facts wrong.

Posted by: fairleft | Mar 20 2014 6:31 utc | 318

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