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A Changing Narrative in Ukraine

April 6th marked
a dramatic change in narrative for the Maidan takeover in Ukraine. It became a
matter of either/or, with no more in-between ground for the Maidan government
to stand in. It would either have to show actual support for the democratic
reforms it sold to the world with its coup on the previous government; or it
would use the coup as a vehicle to install an ultra-nationalist government in
its place.

On April 6^th,
protesters opposing Maidan rule pushed their way into government buildings in
the south-eastern regional capitals of Donetsk, Kharkov, and Lugansk. In
Donetsk, the ultra-nationalist Pravy Sector tried to squelch the protests right
away by sending in around 20 people armed with Molotov cocktails and weapons. However,
locals spotted the intruders, confiscated their weapons and Molotov cocktails,
and sent them back to Kyiv after a duck walk through the corridor of shame.
They were forced to walk past the people without their masks.

At around 9:50
the next morning Interior Minister Avakov, one of the Maidan oligarchs, stated
in an interview that the protests in south-east Ukraine had been effectively
quenched. Over the last week and a half the Ukrainian government has tried to
arrest every protest leader it can find and charge him with being a separatist.
Conviction carries a jail sentence of 5 to 8 years.

By 10 a.m.,
live video showed that all three regional governments were still controlled by
the protesters. The first reaction from the Kyiv junta came from Oleg Lyashko,
MP and presidential hopeful. You may know Lyashko as ‘I’ll hang you by the
balls and have you f***ed’  -Oleg.
Like the true believer in democracy he constantly shows himself to be, he said,
in effect, Give me 10,000 guys and I will deal with the plague in the
south-east. By this he meant cleansing south-east Ukraine of its residents.

In this video,
which shows Pravy Sektor blocking the Rada (Senate) in Kyiv, Lyashko is introduced as the guy that brought
bullets and gasoline to Pravy Sektor. In other videos, this presidential
hopeful brags about throwing Molotov cocktails at the Berkut, the police force  charged with protecting the legally elected government.

Yulia
Tymoshenko, the ultra-nationalist former prime minister of Ukraine, went to
Lugansk during the protests with teams from Avakov, now Interior Minister in
the Maidan government, and Turchynov, its appointed interim president.
Tymoshenko told police and the Ukrainian SBU (similar to the U.S. FBI) that the
protesters in Lugansk were not just separatists, but real terrorists and that
government forces “don’t need to stand on ceremony in dealing with them!” The
order was to shoot the protesters, after it was found out that the police
didn’t offer much resistance.

In the morning
of April 7, the protesters started building barricades and asserting control
over more buildings. T hey also broke into the
administration building of the Security Service of Ukraine in Lugansk, seizing a
weapons room and the weapons that were stored there.

From the time of the coup until today, everything from Kyiv directed at
the largely ethnic-Russian population in the south-east has been laws that make
the residents second-class citizens, coupled with pronouncements, like Lyashko’s,
to kill the
citizens that live there.

The “Russian Minority”
Represents Real Ukrainians

Ethnic Russians in south-east Ukraine have in fact lived in this region
for hundreds of years. And, though they are now called the “Russian
minority,” they proved to be the majority in the last election. Victor
Yanukovych was elected president by their votes.

Across the country, these are the people that are robbed at gunpoint,
killed, kidnapped, or beaten by what is now the Kyiv government. The militant
right-wing Pravy Sector is now an official organ of the government and has been
sent to quench the uprising in the south-east.

South-east
Ukraine is also the industrial and manufacturing region of Ukraine, and the place
where most of the jobs are. During the first three weeks after the junta in
Kyiv took power, it took a deduction of 200 hryvnia from everyone’s pay to
support the families of Maidan sniper victims. This was done with no one even
being asked.

The banks here, most notably Privat Bank which is owned by the oligarch Kolomoyskyi, are limiting and freezing the
accounts of people throughout the south-east region. For the last month, persons
working in the coal and manufacturing industries have been told that if they
joined the protests, or even spoke about them on the job, they would be fired.
And, for the last two weeks,
30% of the workers’ pay has been deducted to support the new National Guard,
which is composed mostly of Pravy Sector fighters who have been threatening the
population of the region.

Yulia Tymoshenko was quoted last week as saying, “It doesn’t matter
who wins the presidential election, we all win. We all hate Russia!” By
“Russia,” she also means the people of south-east Ukraine who won’t accept being
ruled by an ultra-nationalist government. Moreover, the election has no viable
candidates, so that whoever wins will provide no more than token representation
for the eastern half of Ukraine.

When Secretary of State John Kerry said about the protests in the
southeast, “This doesn’t appear to be spontaneous,” he was absolutely
right. The protests are an act of desperation by people that have been entirely
rejected by the militant Bandera-influenced ultra-nationalist-oriented junta
that has taken control of their country. This Galician faction, with its roots
in a World War II alliance with Hitler, represents just 1-1/2% of the country’s
total population.

The official White Hous e line about the protests, as presented by
spokesman Jay Carney, is that “There’s strong evidence that some pro-Russian
protesters who have taken over government buildings in eastern Ukraine were
paid, and not local residents.”