Eric Zuesse -- The Lies that Are Used for Denying the Legitimacy of Crimea’s Breakaway

The Lies that Are Used for Denying the Legitimacy of Crimea’s Breakaway

by Eric Zuesse

December 25, 2019

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org

Crimea’s breakaway from Ukraine and rejoining Russia is treated in the U.S.-and-allied world as being justification for the explosive re-emergence in 2014 of America’s Cold War NATO alliance as being a restored war against Russia; and, so, whether or not that ‘justification’ is truthful is the paramount geopolitical issue in our era; and it will therefore be discussed and (via the links here) documented in this article.

Though international law is generally an unenforced mess that is interpretable far more by partisanship than by any clearly applicable principles of law, the U.S. Government does quite blatantly violate it on a routine basis, by means of coups and invasions against countries that never invaded nor threatened to invade the United States. If anything at all is clear in international law, it is that Crimea’s breaking away from Ukraine and rejoining Russia in 2014 was entirely and unquestionably legitimate, as will be documented here, by exposing the lies that are adduced on the U.S. side, in order to allege that it’s not legitimate.

How Ukraine’s War Is to Be Settled: Zelenskiy, Crimea, and Donbass

MAY 2, 2019

• A way needs to be found to restore Ukrainian voting rights and social services to Donbassers and yet to allow Donbassers to be protected by Russia against Ukraine’s nazis.

ERIC ZUESSE

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Submitted by Eric Zuesse:

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On April 30th, Ukraine’s Central Election Commission announced that after the final voting tabulations (which included more than 13% of Ukrainians living abroad), Volodmyr Zelensky had beaten the sitting President, Petro Poroshenko, by a vote of 73.22% to 24.45%. The biggest single issue that Ukraine’s new President will be dealing with is going to be whether to continue, or to end, Ukraine’s war against its two break-away regions, Crimea in the extreme south, and Donbass in the far east.

Ukraine’s ‘civil’ war had started in late February 2014, when the United States’ longstanding efforts at regime-change in that country (in order to install an anti-Russian government in the European country that has the longest border with Russia) finally succeeded. These efforts succeeded there in much the same way that the U.S. regime’s efforts at regime-change in 1953 Iran did, and that the U.S. regime’s efforts at regime-change in 1954 Guatemala did, and that the U.S. regime’s efforts at regime-change in 1973 Chile did: by means of a bloody coup. In each case, the U.S. coup replaced an existing democracy and it installed instead a fascist dictatorship, which was promptly followed by a ‘civil war’ when the U.S.-installed dictatorship targeted for extermination and/or expulsion the leaders and voters for that overthrown democracy. In each of these coup-cases, the first task of the newly installed dictatorship was to eliminate enough of the voters who had voted for and backed the democracy, so that any future ‘elections’ would install only other fascists and thereby continue that government as being a U.S. vassal-nation.

ARKADY SAVITSKY | 29.11.2018 | SECURITY / WAR AND CONFLICT | WORLD / MIDDLE EAST

With Azov Sea Events Stealing Spotlight, US Gathers Huge Military Force in and Around Syria

While the world attention is riveted to the situation in the Azov Sea and the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, US forces are getting prepared for a large-scale military operation in Syria.

US President Donald Trump announced this past March that the military personnel would be leaving Syria “very soon.” Looks like he has changed his mind since then. The five-ship strong Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group has recently entered the Mediterranean Sea. American, British, French and Israeli aircraft are conducting round the clock flights across the Syria’s airspace under the pretext of holding an exercise. The US-led anti-ISIS coalition aircraft are constantly on patrol. French Dupuy de Lome intelligence gathering vessel is also there, coordinating its activities with the American ships.

The US Army has rushed another 500 Marines to the Al Tanf base straddling the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq. 1,700 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which operates under US command, have also moved to reinforce the garrison. There are over a dozen of US military locations in northeastern Syria, including at least four air strips stretched from Manbij in the vicinity of the Turkish border to Al-Hasakeh, the hub of the pro-American Kurds-dominated SDF forces located in northern Syria.

To the G7: Russia Did Not Invade Crimea, or any Part of Ukraine!

15.06.2018 Author: Deena Stryker

To the G7: Russia Did Not Invade Crimea, or any Part of Ukraine!

Column: Politics

Region: Russia in the World

Since I left France for a return to the US almost twenty years ago, I’ve noticed that both the French and the Italian so-called progressive press repeat the same lies as the US, in stark contrast to the period of the Vietnam War, when there was still a real anti-war, anti-capitalist left in Europe. The dumbing down of the ‘free’ press goes hand in hand with that of their respective government overseers. When President Trump chided his colleagues at the G7 for continuing to blackball Russia, they responded in conformity with previous US policy: ’Putin annexed Ukraine!’ The apparent ease with which these words tripped off the tongues of men and women whose education was based on a reverence for history, is appalling.

The first world war left a defeated Germany an economic basket case, where wheelbarrows of worthless currency were needed to buy a loaf of bread. Soon Hitler came along and declared that Germany needed more ‘room to live’ (Lebensraum). In particular, he took up the claims of Germans living in southern Bohemia, known as the Sudetenland, for equality with Czechs. In March 1938, the future allies against Nazi Germany, England France, etc., allowed him to take over the area. A year later, he invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia, setting off World War II.

Donald Trump at G7: ‘Crimea is Russian because everyone there speaks Russian’

The Donald reportedly awestruck the G7 by what we all know – Crimea is Russia

by 

MATFEY SHAHEEN

June 16, 2018, 02:37

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Donald Trump just blew the minds of G7 leaders, when he, according to Buzzfeed, casually said:

“Crimea is Russian because everyone who lives there speaks Russian.”

That one sentence was enough to trigger lamentation, and impotent helpless rage in the stenographers union, also known as western media. Trump also allegedly said that Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

According to Transparency International, after more than 4 years from the “revolution of dignity” Ukraine has 130 rank in corruption perception, among 176 states, “out-performed” by such countries as Guatemala, Nigeria, Turkmenistan and Somalia.

This is something Ukrainians are all aware of, as they suffer daily under a government that literally tried to legalize corruption.

NO JOKE: Ukraine coup regime introduces bill to legalize corruption

Buzzfeed claimed that Trump told this to G7 leaders via “two diplomatic sources”, who just so happen to be anonymous. Half of the sources the corporate media uses these days have been anonymous lately.

Still, it’s no secret Trump has been known to, at times, say reasonable things about Russia, as he seems to understand at least in theory, that ‘getting along with Russia is a good thing’. He certainly says it many times, but the jury is still out on whether he means it, or is actually capable of achieving better relations. To be clear, it’s not Russia which has done anything to cause the bad relations.

While we don’t have a video of Trump saying those words, he has recently spoken on camera about Russia in relation to the G7.

Specifically, Trump said:

Russia should be in this meeting. Why are we having a meeting without Russia being in the meeting. I would recomend Russia should be in the meeting, it should be a part of it. Whether you like it or not, and it may not be politically correct, but we have a world to run, and at the G7, which used to be the G8, they through Russia out. They should let Russia come back in, because we should have Russia at the negotating table.

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM -- Gaza Massacre Exposes Western Hypocrisy on Russia’s ‘Annexation’ of Crimea

FINIAN CUNNINGHAM | 18.05.2018 | WORLD / EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST

Gaza Massacre Exposes Western Hypocrisy on Russia’s ‘Annexation’ of Crimea

This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new 19-kilometer bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with mainland southern Russia. Thousands of kilometers away, in occupied Palestine, a massacre was being carried out by Israeli soldiers with full support of the United States as it opened a new embassy.

The two events are not as disparate as one might think at first glance. They both involve “annexation” – one fictitious, the other very real. But Western hypocrisy inverts the reality.

While US dignitaries were opening the new American embassy in Jerusalem amid pomp and ceremony, some 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters were shot dead in cold blood by Israeli snipers. Among the dead were eight children. Thousands of others were maimed by live fire. The bloodshed could increase in coming days.