Putin's strange new claims

Most Americans will dismiss the strange claims made by Vladimir Putin about the uprising which launched Ukraine into its current state of chaos.

When asked whether the so-called “self-defense” forces in the Crimea who had blocked Ukrainian soldiers were from Russia, Putin insisted they were local volunteers from the Crimea and not Russians.

Pressed on why then they seemed so well-trained, Putin replied “My dear friend, look how well-trained the people who led the [anti-Yanukovych] attacks in Kiev were. It's obvious knowledge they were trained in Lithuania, Poland and in Ukraine. They were prepared by instructors, trained for a long time.”

“Everything they did was professional, like in the Russian special forces,” he added.

Russia Today quotes the former head of Ukraine's Security Service, Aleksandr Yakimenko, to this same effect.

Q: Where did those snipers come from?

AY: First shots were fired from the Philharmonic building. Maidan Commandant Parubiy was in charge of the building. On February 20, this building was used as a base by the snipers and people with automatic weapons. They basically covered those who were attacking the demoralized policemen running in panic, hunted down like animals. They were followed by armed people with different kinds of weapons. At that point, somebody opened fire at those who attacked the police, and some of them were killed. All this fire was coming from the Philharmonic building. After this first round of fire, about 20 people came out of this building – this was witnessed by many. These people wore special combat clothes and carried sniper rifle cases, as well as AKMs with scopes. There were witnesses, and not just our operatives, but also Maidan activists from Svoboda, Right Sector, Batkivshchyna, and UDAR.

The snipers split into two groups – 10 men each. The Security Service lost track of one of the groups. The other group took a position at the Ukraine hotel. Killings continued. In the beginning, when the shots were scattered, I was asked by Right Sector and Svoboda to mobilize a Special Forces unit and remove the snipers from the buildings.

Q: So you think they were mercenaries?

AY: No doubt.

There is also an allegation of direct CIA involvement:

Q: Is it true that Nalivaichenko allowed the CIA agents to work in the Security Service building?

AY: Yes, that’s true. He also handed personal files of his own employees over to the CIA agents to study. But their mission was interrupted by an armed coup. The Maidan do not appoint these people; rather, it’s the US that does it. It’s enough to look at the newly appointed officials: Parubiy, Gvozd, Nalyvaichenko are all people who followed somebody else’s orders, the orders of the US, not even Europe. They are directly linked to the American intelligence. They sought to delay the negotiations and prevent the incumbent president from striking a deal with Russia and Russia from helping to prop up the social and economic order in Ukraine. After that they were planning to depose the president and integrate Ukraine into Europe, using Russian money. Who was troubled by the victory of the EU and the pro-integration forces? Only the US.

All the orders were given either by the US embassy or by Jan Tombinski, a Polish representative who worked in the EU mission in Kiev. Poland played an invaluable role in the coup. It has always dreamt of restoring its former power and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Ever since the Maidan kicked off, our security service registered a dramatic increase in diplomatic correspondence coming in to various Western embassies in Kiev. There is one more mystery. Straight after this influx of correspondence we saw some foreign money at the Maidan and in Kiev exchange bureaus: the new, re-designed US dollar bank notes.

Q: So they were bringing in cash?

AY: Yes. Poroshenko, Firtash, Pinchuk – they all poured money into the Maidan. With all their assets in foreign banks, they found themselves trapped. So they had to follow orders from the West. All they were supposed to do was back the Maidan; otherwise they would have lost all their assets. They were thinking about their money rather than their own country. Unfortunately we couldn’t prevent the casualties, the people, mainly those who had come from the Western regions, were sent into the line of fire. The Maidan militants had left the barricades after the sniper fire started. But time will set the record straight.

As I said: Most Americans will immediately dismiss these claims as propaganda. I am not so sure. We've been lied to on so many occasions that I feel no obliged to take this administration's word on anything involving Ukraine.

The man's right about one thing: Time will set the record straight.

In the past, I've been hesitant to ascribe a direct role to the CIA in the Ukraine coup. The whole business was too daring, too over-the-top, too redolent of the Agency adventurism that prevailed throughout the 1950s and '60s. But now I'm open to the idea.

If the Agency has gone back to its wild and reckless roots -- what does that fact say about Obama?

One thing is clear: The plan -- whatever the plan was and whoever the planners were -- did not go as planned. I think Obama understands this now. That's why he's backtracking, looking for a way out. Here are the some neo-connish words published today in the WP:

Again Vladi­mir Putin is flagrantly disregarding the warnings and “red lines” of the Obama administration. He has reason to do so: President Obama also doesn’t observe them. Despite Mr. Kerry’s clear words, sanctions that have been prepared against cronies of Mr. Putin and companies involved in his Ukraine ad­ven­ture remain on ice at the White House, where they have languished for more than a week.

You can see where this is going. They're trying to use the "You're not a real man" jibe to press Obama into a disastrous action, possibly into war with Putin. The fact is, when it comes to sanctions, Putin holds all the cards. By "cards," I mean gas. Ukraine can't long survive without natural gas, and they buy the stuff from Russia. But Ukraine can't pay the bill for the gas they have already received.

So that's that. The Ukraine gambit never had a chance.

Speaking of Putin and Poland: Now that the new cold war is in full swing, propagandists are accusing Putin of murdering the President of Poland via an engineered plane crash. Check it out. The primary evidence favoring this theory concerns the extremely large number of aircraft fragments, suggestive of a mid-air explosion, not a debris field left by a crash.

Well...maybe. Possibly. But where is the evidence of authorship?