Ray McGovern talking:
What I can speak to is how the Russians look at the Ukraine and how incredibly sensitive they are to what they perceive as threats to its frontier, to its near frontier, and particularly to republics that were once a constituter part of the Soviet Union, back in the days when I started analyzing the U.S.S.R. So the Ukraine is something special, not only historically, not only economically, politically, but for all kinds of strategic reasons.
Now, the question is: Who’s provoking this unrest? And, you know, what I know is that you really have to stick close to the evidence. And in this case, we have incredible evidence, based—based on an intercepted telephone conversation. And who’s speaking? Well, it’s the assistant secretary for European affairs, Victoria Nuland, talking to the ambassador—our ambassador in Kiev. And what she’s saying here—and I’ll just read one sentence: “Yats,” Yats, Yatsenyuk, “he’s the guy. He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know”—I guess as opposed to the guy you don’t know. Now, guess what. A few weeks after that, Yats—that’s Yatsenyuk—has become the interim prime minister of the Ukraine. Well, if I were a Russian, I would look at that and say, “Hmmm, who’s responsible for a lot of this?” I’m not saying that the National Endowment for Democracy is completely responsible, but they are a catalyst.
And when you have 65—count them, 65—projects in the Ukraine funded with $100 million, if I were a Russian, I would say, “Hmmm, looks like they’re trying to do with the Ukraine what they did to the rest of Eastern Europe,” what the U.S. pledged not to do, and that is to pluck these countries off one by one and have them join not only the European Community, but NATO. The Russians aren’t going to stand for that. And, you know, the people advising Obama might have warned him that you go a bridge too far when you threaten a strategic interest the Russians consider so sensitive as the Ukraine.
Flip this over and consider Putin or Lavrov, the foreign minister, handing out chocolate chip cookies to violent demonstrators in Mexico City or in Ottawa or in Toronto. You know, our near frontier is sacred to us. We even used to have something called the Monroe Doctrine. And so, mirror-image that to how Russia looks at things and how they feel tricked, really tricked, when in a position of weakness in 1990, 1991, Gorbachev said, “All right, all right, East Germany, we’ll pull our troops out of East Germany. You can have a reunited Germany, if that’s what you really want. But, you know, let’s stop there. Let’s not get the Warsaw Pact countries into NATO.” And, of course, that’s precisely what we did.
And so, you don’t have to be paranoid to be a Russian and say, “Now, wait a second. Here’s this conversation.” I’d say it’s a very telling conversation. It goes on to say, this fellow, Yats, you know, Yatsenyuk, he knows about economics: He used to be head of the central bank, and he knows he’s got to do suicide politically because he’s got to cut back on things—no more food stamps, equivalent, that kind of thing—so that they can meet the conditions of the IMF and Western Europe. You know, it’s not so hazy. It’s a choice between the EC and Western Europe and the Western Ukraine and the Soviet Union. And in this case, the Soviet Union has all the cards. And so, somebody [inaudible] should say to the president, “Look, Mr. President, you know, however much we would like to have regime change according to our own wishes, there are strategic realities that we have to remind you of, Mr. President. And one of them is that Putin and no Soviet leader is going to abide NATO infringing on the Ukraine.”
the intercepted phone conversation between the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Victoria Nuland, the top U.S. diplomat for Europe.
VICTORIA NULAND: Good. So, I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore. Russian interests exist, and they have since the ninth century, OK? That’s where Russia began, you know, Kievan Rus’, in Kiev. And so, this goes back a long way.
Now, fast-forward to today. Who is Geoffrey Pyatt? Well, Geoffrey Pyatt is one of these State Department high officials who does what he’s told and fancies himself as a kind of a CIA operator, because now the CIA doesn’t do much of this stuff, and so State Department have to do it. Now, who is he? He was in Vienna. What was he doing in Vienna? He was orchestrating the election of Amano, Amano to be head of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, because they didn’t like Baradei, the guy that they tried to get rid of earlier. But they knew that Amano—and it’s clear from cables from Vienna, from Pyatt, released by WikiLeaks, that Pyatt was glowing and saying, “Amano is so happy for all our support in making him head of the IAEA, and now he’s asked us for a little bit more money, because he’d like to fix up his office.” I mean, it’s so apparent what State Department types now are doing, in a self-styled sort of covert action, political action sort of thing, so to create the right results. And the IAEA is a big deal, OK? Pyatt played a very crucial role in that, and now he’s doing the bidding of the likes of Victoria Nuland, who I would describe as a neocon, prima donna assistant secretary of state for European affairs who is doing our country—doing no one any good, cookies or not.
it really depends more on who seizes control of these uprisings. If you look at Bahrain, you know, if you look at Syria—even Egypt, to an extent—these were initially popular uprisings. The question is: Who took them over? Who spurred them? Who provoked them even more for their own particular strategic interests? And it’s very clear what’s happened to the Ukraine. It used to be the CIA doing these things. I know that for a fact. OK, now it’s the National Endowment for Democracy, a hundred million bucks, 62 projects in the Ukraine. So, again, you don’t have to be a paranoid Russian to suggest that, you know, they’re really trying to do what they—do in the Ukraine what they’ve done in the rest of Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The other thing is, you know, Professor Snyder talks about the parliamentary vote, voting in the new government. Well, he must know that that was a rump vote. I think it was—I think it was unanimous, something like 253 to nothing, which, you know, really is sort of a nostalgic look back at the votes that I used to count in the Soviet Union. There’s something very smelly here. And people should realize that it is murky, but Russian interests are paramount here, and if the president thinks that he can face down Vladimir Putin on this issue, he’s in for a sorry miscalculation.
a lot of the people looking on what’s happened in Ukraine and how the EU and the IMF were trying to sort of wean the Ukraine, taking advantage of its basket-case economy—you know, a lot of people remember the old Pravda saying about the forces in the United States, wall-streetski krvopijci, OK? “Wall Street bloodsuckers.” Well, they know what’s happened in Greece. They know what’s happened in many other parts of Western Europe. And whether the Ukrainians, when they come to their senses, really think that the harsh measures that Yats has already threatened to introduce serves their economic and their political best interest, that’s a big question for me.
Now, the rest of it, it seems to me that we need to realize, number one, that the Russians hold very high cards here, not only military cards, but Western Europe is still largely dependent on gas from—natural gas from Russia, that goes through the Ukraine, and that Russia has lots of leverage on this kind of thing. Another thing is that Western Europe is not slavishly devoted to the United States the way it used to be, despite what Angela Merkel said yesterday. They had the NSA scandal. There’s been permanent damage done to the trans-Atlantic relationship. And I don’t think that we’re going to have a very willing coalition of the willing to impose economic sanctions against the United—U.S.S.—against Russia.
Now, the last thing I’ll say is that when these kinds of things happened, you know, in the old days, we used to get the stakeholders around the table, OK? And it’s got to be Putin, and it’s got to be Obama, and it’s got to be the head of Ukraine, past and present, and the stakeholders in the immediate vicinity. We should be able to work this kind of thing out. That seems to have been just kind of washed away from the considerations of politicians. Once that’s done, once you remove the neocons like Kerry, who almost got us in a war with Syria, and Putin bailed us out, OK, once you get away—get the tchinovniki, the bureaucrats, out of the picture, then you have a chance to sit down and say, “OK, now, what are the real interests here? Do we really want an acrimonious relationship because of the Ukraine? Let’s work things out.” It’s a really difficult situation. There’s the Western Ukraine. There’s the Eastern Ukraine. But before, we were able to work this kind of thing out. Let’s do it again.
— source democracynow.org
Ray McGovern, former senior CIA analyst whose duties included preparing the President’s Daily Brief and chairing National Intelligence Estimates. He was an analyst of Russian foreign policy for the first decade of his 27-year career with the CIA. McGovern is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.