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With
just days before presidential and municipal elections are to be staged
in Ukraine by the Western-backed, right-wing “interim government,” the
regime’s defense ministry announced Wednesday that its so-called
“antiterrorist operations” against dissident populations in the east and
south of the country are proceeding at full strength.
“The active phase of the
antiterrorist operations is currently continuing,” ministry spokesman
Vladislav Seleznyov said Wednesday. “Residents in the eastern regions of
Ukraine can observe this. There is currently a planned rotation of
troops and forces included in the antiterrorist operation.”
Washington and its Western
European allies are promoting Sunday’s election as a means of
legitimizing the Western-backed, neo-fascist-led coup which toppled
Ukraine’s elected president and installed an illegal regime whose
leaders were handpicked by US officials.
The idea that a legitimate
election could be held, as the army employs tanks, artillery and
helicopter gunships to suppress political opposition in large portions
of the country, is ludicrous. This fraudulent exercise is being staged,
with unconditional US support, just two weeks after the May 11 referenda
on autonomy in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that the State
Department denounced as illegitimate. The Ukraine crisis has provided a
unique window into the cynicism and hypocrisy of American imperialist
foreign policy.
Washington has stepped up
its own intervention, sending the US Navy guided missile cruiser Vella
Gulf to the Black Sea in conjunction with the vote. Meanwhile, Vice
President Joe Biden issued another threat against Russia, vowing during a
visit to Romania that if Moscow “undermines” Sunday’s vote, the US will
impose stiffer economic sanctions and step up the eastward drive of
NATO.
Since the Ukrainian regime
launched its “antiterrorist” operation, sending troops and National
Guard units composed of Right Sector neo-fascist thugs against eastern
and southern Ukraine, at least 127 people have been killed, according to
a United Nations estimate.
One clear indication of the
atmosphere in which the elections are being staged came last month when
presidential candidate Oleg Tsarev, a former deputy in deposed
President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and a supporter of
federalization, was set upon by a right-wing mob following a television
appearance in Kiev. Beaten to the point that he had to be hospitalized
in critical condition, he has since withdrawn his candidacy and called
for a boycott of the vote.
Similar and even worse
brutality has been meted out by the fascistic elements that form a
pillar of the regime against any political groupings deemed left-wing,
including the “Borotba” (“Struggle”) group and the Communist Party of
Ukraine (KPU), whose members have been killed, beaten, arrested and
faced assassination attempts.
For the first time since
the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the election is being held
under conditions in which no candidate representing the predominantly
Russian-speaking regions of eastern and southern Ukraine is
participating.
Meanwhile, the Kiev regime
is ruthlessly cracking down on Russian media inside Ukraine, arresting,
detaining, interrogating and deporting all those reporters whom it
suspects of failing to toe the propaganda line being set by Washington.
(See: Ukrainian regime detains journalists working for Russian media).
In tandem with this
repression, the Kiev regime, with US and German backing, is going
through the motions of “round table” discussions supposedly aimed at
defusing tensions between the regime and the eastern and southern
regions. These talks, involving politicians linked to one or another of
the country’s ruling billionaire oligarchs, have systematically excluded
any representatives of the populations that are protesting and are
under attack.
Ukraine’s parliament, the
Verkhovna Rada, voted overwhelmingly Wednesday in favor of a “memorandum
on peace and conciliation,” which purportedly was a product of the
“round table” exercise. The resolution called for returning the
Ukrainian troops now laying siege to the eastern and southern regions to
their barracks and an end to violence by all sides. It also stipulated
that Ukraine’s joining of any international union—such as the European
Union or NATO—must be approved by a referendum.
A provision that would have
provided amnesty for those who seized government buildings in eastern
and southern Ukraine was removed from the final version of the
memorandum.
The resolution was clearly
intended to distract from the real conditions on the ground that were
bluntly spelled out by the defense ministry and thereby lend the
election a false shred of credibility. They were likewise aimed at
placating the government of President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, which
had previously questioned the legitimacy of the election.
There was an indication
that as far as the Russian regime goes, the gesture had some effect.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said Wednesday that the
memorandum constituted “the first public and distinct, though late, step
toward the realization of the April 17, 2014 Geneva Agreements.”
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