European Union action in Kiev and Donbass has been paid in blood

The European Union is not a benevolent institution. In Ukraine, its actions triggered a violent political crisis and a long and bloody war.

Hollande, Merkel and Poroshenko in Berlin on Aug. 24, 2015 (Axel Schmidt, Reuters)

Saturday 3rd September 2016 witnessed the odd spectacle of a protest in central London in favour of European Union membership.

It is odd for several reasons. First of all, it must be remembered the British political establishment, big business, the banks, the entire financial sector, the US government and all heads of European government were entirely anti-Brexit. In this sense, the marchers were protesting in favour of the establishment which is hardly a protest at all.

But then there was a more sinister undertone. Through a combination of ingrained Russophobia, incompetence, and acting as a political arm of the US Department of State, the European Union has come to represent death, terror and misery of the people of Donbass. Here’s why.

When the EU offered vague terms of an association agreement with Ukraine, it took a match to gunpowder. The gangs of ultra-right terrorists and political extremists, mainly in the parts of Ukraine which prior to 1945 were part of the Second Polish Republic, were simply waiting for a politically convenient excuse to burst into fits of mass violence. The notion of an EU-Ukrainian agreement was the precise political excuse these bandits needed to come out of hiding and into the global spotlight.

Forgetting the fact that the terms of association were vague, that the EU hadn’t and still hasn’t the money to cope with taking on Ukraine in any shape or form, and the fact that Ukrainian industry conforms to Russian rather than EU standards, this was always more of a political than an economic exercise.

But EU involvement goes far beyond this. In spite of the rabid neocon Victoria Nuland of the American Department of State famously being recorded saying ‘fuck the EU’, the EU provided the political cover and engaged in  political manoeuvres to help consecrate the US coup against the legitimate authority of President Viktor Yanukovych and the democratically elected ruling Party of Regions.

Then however, the EU showed its true colours. On February the 21st, 2014, the EU helped broker what was meant to be a peace deal between Yanukovych and the ‘opposition’ (aka the coup leaders), in spite of the fact that under international law, the democratically elected president had no obligation to make any concessions to a heavily armed and violent opposition which didn’t speak for the majority of the country’s population.

Led by Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski, German foreign minister Frank Walter Steinmeier and the comparatively silent partner, French foreign minister Eric Fournier, the agreement they crafted called for a cessation of violence, for the opposition to recognise that Viktor Yanukovych is and would remain President, the repeal of Yanukovych’s constitutional reforms, the gradual implementation of new constitutional reforms and new Parliamentary and Presidential elections to be help no later than December 2014, in which Yanukovych and his party could legally participate.

In spite of making concessions to the mob at the hand of the EU, Yanukovych had inadvertently signed his death warrant as his opponents had no intention of holding up their end of the bargain. For them, it was a grand delaying tactic. The accord was signed in an atmosphere of chaos in which Polish foreign minister Sikorski was filmed saying to the opposition that if they didn’t sign the agreement ‘they would all be dead’. This was of course a baseless statement which only helped to stoke tensions.

No sooner was the agreement signed than Yanukovych fled for his life. In the next 48 hours, his party was driven from power, offices of parties opposed to the coup were burnt down, religious leaders were beaten like animals, the state collapsed, the police were themselves on the run from gangs, and by the time the coup leaders illegally formed an unelected government, the country had been destroyed.

The aftermath of this coup has, of course, been the war in Donbass, a war stated by neo-fascist leaders in Kiev but a war which could have been avoided if the EU had acted responsibly rather than help the coup leaders take power.

I ask myself: do the men and women marching in London know that this is the great foreign policy ‘achievement’ for which they are marching ? Do they realise that after Britain had democratically voted to exorcise itself from this corrupt institution that they are actually dipping their hands in the blood of the children of Donbass who are being murdered by the Kiev regime that the EU brought to power? I suspect most of them do not realise this.

The has-been comedian Eddie Izzard marching for the EU in high heels and a pink hat is far removed from the killers marching with torches and Nazi flags. Such people have deceived themselves into thinking the EU has made the world safe for human cooperation, when in reality it has made it easier for Goldman Sachs to expand its operations. They think the EU is some sort of kind and gentle force in the world, when every foreign policy pronouncement it has made is one of economic or political aggression against states which don’t threaten the EU or its interests.

They don’t know that the EU has sleep-walked into a war which shows no signs of stopping, where schools have been bombed, hospitals attacked, and civilians executed like pigs. They don’t know because the media have carefully hidden these tragic truths.

The reality is that because of the confusion in Britain over Brexit, for the time being and possibly for a lot longer, nothing will change. But for Donbass the changes are irreversible. The dead will never become the living.

Whatever one’s views are on Brexit, people should understand the real price of EU action in Kiev and Donbass has been paid in blood.

newcoldwar.org