The crisis in Ukraine has provided yet more evidence that the British media is variously ignorant, lazy and cannot be trusted to present news that is not infected with propaganda.
The reporting of the all-important background to the crisis in Ukraine has been nothing other than an exercise in deception. One wonders if any of the hacks have even visited and read the content on the page shown in the image.
Ask the average Briton what they understand about the Association Agreement that Ukraine was being asked to sign with the European Union, and thanks to the media they would either answer ‘a trade agreement’ or look blankly and say they have no idea. But it is not a trade agreement, it is something much more far reaching than that. It seeks to being about political dialogue in all areas of mutual interest that:
…shall be further developed and strengthened between the Parties. This will promote gradual convergence on foreign and security matters with the aim of Ukraine’s ever-deeper involvement in the European security area.
That has nothing to do with buying and selling goods and services. Indeed, a far more significant and crucial element of the agreement is the military dimension outlined in the agreement’s Title II: Political Dialogue And Reform, Political Association, Cooperation And Convergence In The Field Of Foreign And Security Policy.
While that sounds harmless enough, in Article 10 of the document above we find a focus on ‘Conflict prevention, crisis management and military-technological cooperation’, where we find this – section 3 – that would certainly have Moscow seething, particularly when one thinks about how the present Ukraine military has been developed, trained and equipped:
The Parties shall explore the potential of military-technological cooperation. Ukraine and the European Defence Agency (EDA) shall establish close contacts to discuss military capability improvement, including technological issues.
This is one of the areas the EU plans for ‘gradual convergence’ and ‘ever-deeper involvement’, with a country aligned historically, culturally, politically and militarily with Russia and the former Soviet Union. There is only one destination when the plan is ‘gradual convergence’ and ‘ever-deeper involvement’, and that is union. The EU’s plans for enlargment includes assimilating the remaining Russian satellites such as Ukraine, but Euro MPs are trying to kid us that only now has this idea come to the fore.
It would always be dangerous ground in the back yard of a country that is insecure, seeking to re-establish itself as a global power and spending big money on building its military capability. Therefore the Association Agreement was a clearly geopolitical plan with two aims:
- To increase the EU’s political and military control over neighbouring countries and continue gradual enlargement
- To weaken Russia’s political and military control over its neighbours and hem it in on its western and southern borders
What on earth could Moscow not like about all that, especially with the Russian Navy Black Sea fleet based in Crimea?
While the Russians would be content to see the EU agree a trade deal with Ukraine, of the kind the media would have us think was on the table, the political and military dimensions to the agreement, diplomatically referenced by the Russian ambassador to the EU, was a deliberate provocation in the shape of a power grab by the EU. Responsibility for all that has followed rests squarely with the EU and its expansionist, power crazed officials in Brussels. But does our media tell that story?
The lack of impartial news coverage resulting in the disgraceful lack public knowledge about this, despite the EU being our government, the agreement being presented in our name and it being ratified by the British government in Westminster, is the fault of our media – which is pushing the EU’s ridiculous propaganda without question or challenge.
Autonomous Mind 
These links are interesting less in the actual accuracy of the content but the way in which previous establishment figures see the matter.
Charles Crawford’s Blog –
http://charlescrawford.biz/MSH8MB288721
…will lead you to this ongoing discussion…
http://www.barder.com/4126/comment-page-1#comment-199123
…continued by ex-Ambassadors and the like.
This is what I come here for, not the UKIP/BNP bashing.
@benny – no reason why they should be mutually exclusive. AM tends to be fairly generous with his criticism across the board, which makes a change from narrow obsessives..
This my confirms suspicions, the eu is the aggressor, albeit with paper instruments, aided and abetted by the USA.
Care of global MSM compliance very few in the world would be able to see the reality. They haven’t been poking the bear they’ve rammed a red hot poker up his jaxi. I’m no fan of Putin, he’s no angel, but I hope he bites their heads of.
“While the Russians would be content to see the EU agree a trade deal with Ukraine, of the kind the media would have us think was on the table”
Sounds familiar doesn’t it.
@benny,
The point is that you never get this level of analysis, exposure and demolition of the EU in a very fundamental way, from UKIP.
I wouldn’t expect them to lead with it, and lose the audience, they have to lead with simple and guarded statements, but I would expect it to be there as backup to their position, which they could point out, and it never seems to be.
So are we to take it that their view of the EU really is a simplistic and emotional one, with nothing else to it?
This is dangerous when we are dealing with an organisation which has always disguised its intentions and takes care not to be too obvious, and has most of the MSM including the BBC batting for it. It means that if the EU doesn’t conform to a stereotype bad guy wearing a black hat and making up rules about the curvature of bananas, they don’t recognise it, or its truly serious effects, and have nothing to say, when we most need them to make the case for independence.
So the sane reaction to EU negotiating with Ukraine is for Putin to invade and use force?
Seems you are to quick to ignore and excuse Putin’s medieval behaviour?
As much as I hate the EU and agree with your plea for a UK exit, the EU agreement is a negotiation which is within Ukraine’s right to consider. They are a sovereign nation and can decide whichever club they which to belong to.
Who are you to say otherwise?
@Frankie23 I think you are missing something out in the middle … Ukraine rejects the Association Agreement, there is rioting in Kiev, the government is deposed and an interim government takes over, THEN Putin “invades” (with troops already stationed in the country).
The point, surely, is that if the EU had not launched its provocative foreign policy, there would not have been an Agreement on offer, there would have been no dramatic rejection and no riots?
If only global politics were so simple Frankie, but it doesn’t work that way.
We need to deal in reality, not ideals. The fact is Russia and Ukraine are intrinsically linked.
When Yanukovych get a better offer from Russia for investment and trade, the EU agitated the opposition groups and stirred up the protests against the elected government. They have since acted as if the self declared government is legitimate, tried to act as kingmaker with Ashton endorsing convicted corrupt former leader Tymoshenko to be President again, all the while spouting claptrap about democracy. The EU wants to control Ukraine and refused to take no for an answer.
Is that a sane reaction from the EU?
Put the shoe on the other foot. Reverse the roles and actions and make the theatre of this an EU state, say Poland. Still think the same way?
Frankie, The eu isn’t trying to negotiate with Ukraine in the accepted sense, it’s trying to bribe it and buy it for it’s own ends and it has little to do with trade.
@RichardNorth The rejection of any agreement involved the hand of Putin and his Ukraine Govt cronies. There was no voice of the people. No democracy (as much as a scam that concept is today).
Putin is happy to offer a referendum to Crimean inhabitants to join Russian, or to stay within Urkaine (controlled by Russia). Some choice that is.
Why not offer a choice to Ukrainians & let them speak and decide their future. Overwhelmingly young Ukrainians, that country’s future, prefer the EU.
Finally, an invasion is an invasion once Russia’s troops went beyond their barracks and breached the agreement on their movements within Ukrainian lands.
Frankie, you are ignoring Russia’s much more substantial counter offer of investment that was accepted by Ukraine’s government. Are you saying Moscow had no right to do this?
Several thousand protesters in the Maidan, who engaged in violence, is not the voice of the people either. The EU launched a power grab and when it didn’t get its own way it encouraged protests. Then when a resolution was agreed and an election set for later in the year to give people their say, the protesters forced an putsch against the elected president to take control so the people had no opportunity to have a say in what happened.
If your anger is about the lack of democracy, ignoring the EU’s actions in Ukraine should be top of your list. Not because ‘it’s the EU’ but because they were wrong.
@AMind I disagree with your interpretation on the EU role in events there.
An ideal such as the principle of sovereignty is a concept Russia has crossed the line on and what is facing Ukrainians is a fearful factual reality of boots on their territory.
Whatever the preceding historical connections, the principle of sovereignty stands as the fact on which Putin’s actions should be judged. You seem to think that history gives Putin’s use of force in this land as his to use by right; as if his reaction is fair because he was provoked. I am sorry what reality are your principles based on?
Whatever our antagonism towards EU, the principle of sovereignty holds true.
An agreement was on the table. Ukrainian people could not vote on it and the agitation of the people has been brewing since the Orange revolution and escalated once Yanukovych rejected the agreement under Putin’s pressure of a not so invisible hand.
Yanukovych was “removed” under a Parliamentary vote after he ran away to his Russian protector in order to evade carrying out the demands of the agreement he signed with the opposition to return the country to the 2004 Constitution. Remember, he had unconstitutionally changed the Constitution to his own ends.
Russia’s hand has been all over Ukraine since independence. It has not been allowed to breath free. The connection with the EU was it’s chance of some fresh air, some fresh hope.
Putin’s strangulation continues and it is disappointing that antagonism towards the EU is seen as the foundation of support for Putin’s actions to invade a sovereign terrority.
@AMind
“Several thousands who engaged in violence” Now who is evading some facts. Very disappointing.
Students, pensioners, teachers, the young.
Putin’s counter offer was under the threat of force if rejected.
My argument is not about lack of democracy but breach of sovereignty. Yanukovych was removed by legitimate means. He ran away on the job, he eloped to be with his Russian keepers.
You seem to believe that “agreements” backed by force are morally equivalent to those backed & negotiated by paper.
You also imply that the EU hand was behind every single protester.
You do not understand Ukrainians and the sense of injustice they are having to live under as you stand by and support Putin’s right to put boots on their land by right.
Disclosure: I am married to a Ukrainian, educated in Ukrainian history & the Ukrainian language, who lived in Soviet times, with family in the East of Ukraine (Zaporozhye – to give it its anglicised Russian name), whose family are day to day Russian speakers, who are fearful of Putin and Russia and his use of brute force, and are sick and tired of the corruption and not so invisible hand of Russia in their country since independence).
What part of this is not getting through? This is an assessment of the facts, not driven by antagonism towards the EU.
The EU Association Agreement was on the table because it’s what the EU wanted. No protests, even though the deal was conditional on Tymoshenko being released from prison despite being convicted of corruption. Russia counter offered far more in return for far less from Ukraine because that’s what Russia wanted, and no pre conditions about how the country should treat former leaders who stole from the people. No protests. OK so far?
It was a no brainer for a bankrupt country to accept a deal for the billions on offer to help it develop and not have to bow to a long list of EU demands. Who complained? The political class being bribed by the EU, and the EU which saw its hopes of beginning the long take over of Ukraine slipping away.
There was as much mandate for Yanukovych to accept the Russian deal as there was for him to accept the EU deal. Yet there was no crisis until the EU started rabble rousing, demanding the elected president resign and encouraging a coup. Putin did nothing until long after the protests had turned violent and a group of politicians and protesters representing only part of the population seized control of the country.
You cannot speak of the ‘people’ of Ukraine. The country is bitterly divided along geographic, ethnic and political lines. As for breathing free, Ukraine was being bribed into living life the EU way, with a view to eventual EU takeover and rule from Brussels.
I can see now why you are taking such a blinkered view of events, given your position is driven by antagonism towards Russia coloured by emotional attachment to one side from the country. For every family like yours there is a family with the opposite view and wants the attachment to Russia.
Believe me I hold no brief for Russia. I have equal dislike for Russia and the EU, which is why I can take a detached view of events.
@Frankie23 If they are sick and tired of corruption, why do they want anything to do with the EU?
Amazingly, I am totally behind Putin on this.
And +100 to Richard North….. “if they are sick and tired of corruption, why do they want anything to do with the EU?”
I would think the greatest motivation for youger Ukrainians to become part of the eu is so they can leave it.
The Russians are fairly overt with their agenda whereas the eu isn’t, I would be hard pressed to decide which one was the more corrupt though with it’s covert intent I think the eu has the edge.
@AMind
And what part of boots on the ground is not getting through, if you want to make it personal?
You attack Western media for not reporting facts (agree there) and yet you report your own opinion as fact.
As for my apparent “blinkered view against Russia” [personal attack] I am happy for Russians who want to live in a free land such as Ukraine…there are many of them and many of them consider themselves Ukrainian with no need for Putin’s defence army.
I am scared & fearful for Russians in their homeland who live under Putin’s threats, where he has only 15% of the people’s support for this action and has jailed his opponents and pounced on protestors.
As for the EU agreement it was on the table because Ukrainian Govt wanted to be part of that process. Ukrainians wanted that deal. They were optimistic for their future and future standards of living. When Yanukovych backtracked, the people rose. No EU encouragement was needed to bring people to the street despite what you think.
As for Tymoschenko’s guilt, what has that got to do with Russia placing boots on the ground?
Russia set no pre-conditions? Of course it did. 10% of Russian GDP is invested in Ukrainian Govt debt. It wants to manage the country.
It wants a continued puppet government not a sovereign state capable of following its own direction. Yanukovuch was Putin’s man.
Why do you evade the issue of boots on the ground and evade the principle of sovereignty?
Listen all, I repeatedly state to the Ukrainians and the Russians I meet, in their own language, the awfulness of the EU behemoth.
But believe me, compared to the Soviet style force and absence of objective legal system imposed by Putin on the ex-Soviet nations, the EU would be a picnic for the people.
There’s no point to this when you’re just going to ignore and evade the observations I’ve made because you have a version of events in your head from which no amount of evidence will make you deviate.
You talk of sovereignty yet the EU was asking Ukraine to sign a deal that would leave it without any. Boots on the ground? Hardly a surprise when Crimea is home to the Russian Black Sea fleet by agreement and a self declared government – which sought to ban even the use of Russian as a language – was about to hand the country over to eventual EU control in return for all the political bribes they would enjoy.
If you think EU agreement was equivalent to an invasion of Ukraine and the equivalent of boots on the ground, then really your thought process and underlying principles of what is right and wrong needs to be seriously re-visited.
Finally, Crimea is Ukrainian territory.
Finally
I suggest you change the “About” narrative you stand by:
“I believe in democracy, *liberty* and *sovereignty*.”
Really? I do no think so.
You’re focused on the outcome rather than the cause. There would not have been any invasion if the EU’s territorial ambitions and political bribery had not been visted upon the country.
Crimea is Ukrainian only by virtue of an accident of history following an administrative adjustment by Kruschev. The USSR never expected to fragment and Russia never expected to lose its territory, which it still controlled through one of her satellite soviets republics. It was because of Crimea and how the collapse of the USSR saw it taken from Russian control that there were tensions with Ukraine. Not that it in any way changes the timeline of recent events.
And before Russia claimed Crimea, whose territory was it, if we are going to play that card.
Whether USSR expected to fragment or not, in law Crimea is sovereign territory of Ukraine. It is an automonous region (not country) whose Parliament (which operates under Ukrainian law) has been taken over by Russia by force. The invite by Crimea leaders was unconstitutional in Ukrainian law.
The legal analysis of the situation has actually been covered very well by BBC in this article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26481423
The point is as far as the Russians are concerned, and for that matter the majority of people in Crimea, the region is Russian and should have remained under Moscow’s control.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Irrespective of Russian behaviour, which you are focused on, the issue we see today has been brought about by the EU’s desire for territorial expansion as part of its aim to be a rival to Russia in the area.
You may not like the fact the EU has formented this problem because you and yours think it was the antidote to Russian control, but the reality is the EU bears responsibility for what has happened.
Another hard fact is that there are powerful countries with interests in others that comprise their sphere of influence. China, the US, Russia, Iran, South Africa… these are all regional powers and encroaching on their interests – which they also see as defensively important – will prompt a response. The EU knew this before it started tapping up Georgia then Ukraine, but the bloc’s arrogance led it to continue anyway, believing it could thumb its nose at Russia without a response. The EU miscalculated and Ukraine is now suffering for it.
So no matter what you say about Russia, and much of it is true, the responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine rests with the EU. No argument you can make changes that.
It would be far better if Ukraine were truly independent and democratic, but that is not in the country’s DNA and its political class is too corrupt to turn the country’s wealth into strength and give it the ability to stand tall in the world in its own right. That just leaves the Crimea mess. If a majority in Crimea want to secede from Ukraine and govern themselves or join with Russia, that should be a matter for them, just as it was for Kosovo. Crimea’s history cannot be airbrushed and its connection to Russia is far from eroded.
No the EU is not the antidote to Putin’s Russia. The issue is Putin, not Russia, anyway.
A western outlook to western values is seen as the necessary change in attitude of this nation – a move towards modernism but more importantly a move towards a legal system based on objective laws and away from politicised decision-making and political corruption.
Your own observations are simplistic and entirely ignorant of Putin’s strategic intentions IRRESPECTIVE of any EU behaviour. You seem incapable of appreciating Putin’s influence on Ukraine and seem willing to ignore Ukraine’s sovereign right to make it’s own decisions.
And again you ignore the boots on the ground reaction from Putin.
A sovereign nation is under attack. You dismiss this as EU provocation without a single understanding of the most recent years of Putin’s influence on Ukraine or even its entire history.
You claim objective knowledge and sorry to say for someone making this claim without having an insight into the people or the nations themselves beyond a textbook means your outlook is no different to that of the general media.
Sorry, I should have added, Putin has been preparing to take Crimea and increase agitation in the East Ukraine regions ever since he came to power. His aim is to maintain a sphere of influence over the now sovereign nations, denying them the right to independence.
He uses and manipulates the West and he seems to have done a very good propaganda job.
I am not going around in circles with you. You have not read my posts properly and think repeating the same phrases somehow makes them true, so there is no point me reading your repetition. Taking the partial view of your family members and presenting them as representative of all Ukrainians is plain silly. Nothing you have said has in any way challenged the facts about what brought this situation to where we find it today.
Frankie23 – “…..a move towards a legal system based on objective laws and away from politicised decision-making and political corruption.”
Leaving aside Russia/Putin for a moment, where on earth do you get the impression that the EU is not politicised nor corrupt? It’s precisely becasue the EU IS both politicised and corrupt (not to mention unelected) that there is an increasing demand for its curtailment.
I feel very sorry for Ukrainians having to make the choice between the devil they know and the devil they don’t however the Ukrainians should at least take heed of the warnings about EU dictatorship AND corruption.
The Achilles’ Heel of the EU was always over-eager expansion and the notion that a crisis could always be turned into a beneficial crisis requiring more Europe. They steadfastly rejected ideas of a two speed ‘Europe’, although it looks as if they are being forced to come round to that idea. There was always going to be a limit to the possibilities of deception and some crises that were going to result in a general realisation that that more Europe was about as useful as painting the garden gate purple.
It was never going to be a serious military power, apart from on paper, because it’s never had the cohesion gained from force or approval, as it’s always sought its ends by deception and obfuscation, and the artificial fear created by beneficial crises. It’s never had the idea of being a serious military power in mind, apart from a paper exercise. Actually, militarism was the very thing its creation was supposed to avoid. It’s been lured into it. It’s trying to turn itself into a state, and a state must have armed forces and be willing and able to impose its will on other states. It is at least trying to assemble armed forces it can command.
As for what’s happening in the Ukraine, I have no idea, but I get the impression it’s like Belgium on steroids. It isn’t properly a state and never has been and came about by accident. If you try to divide it up, you can’t because the various loyalties sort out on a street by street basis.
What I do find odd is the that the EU seems to be acting as a US proxy when there’s such a strong anti-US undercurrent in the EU.