Donetsk Region's Independence From Ukraine Proclaimed
By Countercurrents
07 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Ukraine is now full of tension and chaos. People in regions are seeking autonomy while one region has declared independence. The ultra-nationalists have tried to storm Supreme Court building in Kiev.
Media reports on Ukraine said:
In the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, a group of activists have declared their region independent from Kiev. This comes after protesters stormed a local government building a few hours ago. Mass demonstrations against the country's new leadership started peacefully on Sunday, but the situation quickly escalated.
Pro-Russian protesters in Donetsk have seized the local power building, including the headquarters of the Security Service of Ukraine and proclaimed the creation of a People’s Republic of Donetsk.
Ukraine’s police and security services have not interfered, although officials in Kiev are threatening punishment for the rioters.
Protesters have erected barricades around the Council building.
A session of the people's Council of Donbass (Donetsk region) took place in the main hall of the Regional Council and unanimously voted on a declaration to form a new independent state: the People’s Republic of Donetsk.
The Council proclaimed itself the only legitimate body in the region until the regions in southeast Ukraine conduct a general referendum, set to take place no later than May 11.
“The Donetsk Republic is to be created within the administrative borders of the Donetsk region. This decision will come into effect after the referendum,” the statement said.
The Council in Donetsk issued an address to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for deployment of a temporary peacekeeping force to the region.
“Without support it will be hard for us to stand against the junta in Kiev,” said the address.
“We are addressing Russian President Putin because we can only entrust our security to Russia,” the statement said.
In the city of Kharkov protesters erected barricades around the buildings of the city and the regional administrations and the regional headquarters of Security Service of Ukraine.
There were brief clashes between supporters of the federalization of Ukraine and pro-EU demonstrators in downtown Kharkov. Protesters on both sides used fire crackers and stun grenades.
A demonstration against political repression in Ukraine has also being held in the southern regional center of Odessa.
Ultra-nationalists attempt storm Kiev Supreme Court
Radical activists representing nationalist Right Sector group attempted to storm Kiev’s Supreme Court building. They have blocked the entrances into the building and surrounded its perimeter.
The activists prevented Supreme Court employees from entering the building through the back door.
Car tires have been brought to the building, but haven’t yet been set on fire.
The activists disrupted the convention of judges that was scheduled for Monday.
A few judges, who were in the building before the attack, were led out by the activists shouting “Lustration!”
The protesters are demanding to adopt lustration legislation, which implies that people connected to a former regime may not get office with the new authorities.
Right Sector, the far right activists are concerned about the fact that the judicial authorities may grant almost 150 ousted officials with powers, despite their relationship to the ousted president.
Just over a week ago, a downtown shootout instigated by one of its members injured three, including Deputy Mayor Bogdan Dubas. As a result, Ukraine’s coup-imposed interior minister demanded that the organization leaves its Kiev headquarters.
The Right Sector is headed by Dmitry Yarosh. Russia has put Yarosh on an international wanted list and charged him with inciting terrorism after he urged Chechen terrorist leader, Doku Umarov, to launch attacks on Russia over the Ukrainian conflict.
The far-right leader has also threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory.
A Reuters report by Richard Balmforth and Lina Kushch said:
Pro-Russian protesters seized official buildings in the eastern cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk on Sunday night, demanding that referendums be held on whether to join Russia like the one that preceded Moscow's takeover of Crimea.
In Luhansk the demonstrators had seized weapons.
In Donetsk, home base of deposed Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovich, about 120 pro-Russia activists calling themselves the "Republican People's Soviet of Donetsk" seized the chamber of the regional assembly.
An unidentified bearded man read out "the act of the proclamation of an independent state, Donetsk People's Republic" in front of a white, blue and red Russian flag.
The activists later read out the text by loud hailer to a cheering crowd outside the building.
Russia has been pushing internationally a plan proposing the "federalisation" of Ukraine in which regions of the country of 46 million would have broad powers of autonomy.
Ukraine, while drawing up its own plan for "de-centralisation", in which smaller municipalities would be able to retain a portion of state taxes, says the Russian proposal is aimed at breaking up the former Soviet republic.
Ukraine government bond downgraded
Moody has downgraded Ukraine's government bond rating one notch from Caa2 to Caa3, citing the current political crisis and deepening economic instability as reasons for its negative outlook.
The Caa rating is a credit risk grading pertaining to investments that are both very poor quality and entail a high credit risk.
The current downgrade drops Ukraine from Moody's "extremely speculative" rating to "default imminent with little prospect for recovery."
Moody's said the country was unlikely to see Ukraine’s sovereign debt rating improve in the near future, stating its outlook for the country was negative.
In order to secure the IMF credit, the country of 46 million was forced to cancel fuel subsidies to private citizens and businesses, sparking a 50 percent hike in oil and natural gas bills.
Ukraine has also promised the IMF it will cut its budget deficit to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2016.
“The country is on the edge of economic and financial bankruptcy,” Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in Kiev last week. “This package of laws is very unpopular, very difficult, very tough.”
Economic sanctions are an act of war, says Ron Paul
Former US Congressman, presidential candidate Ron Paul said in an interview suspending of NATO cooperation with Russia is “going to make it worse, it’s just pestering and interfering…one thing is that my goal has always been to have cooperation and diplomacy rather than antagonism and talking back at each other, and sanctions; they don’t do any good at all!”
Ron Paul has been interviewed by Sophie Shevardnadze (SS) of RT.
SS asked: Afghanistan is really worried about NATO stopping cooperation with Russia over a number of Afghan-related projects. So what happens to those who are in the middle?
Ron Paul said: Governments get involved and then do dumb things, and people in the middle are always suffering. So if they suspend anything, it’s the little guy that usually gets punished, and people who run governments and people who run big businesses and have the money – they seem to do OK on this. So, those ones in the middle, they probably would lose jobs. It’s hard to say what’s going to happen, but any type of sanctions or retaliation is detrimental to both sides.
He said: If there are problems in the rest of the world, the people closest to it should deal with it. I’m not even a fan of NATO – if you look at, you know, what NATO is intending to do, they want prices to go up on energy, they want taxes to go up, they want to freeze wages – actually, these policies are exactly opposite of what I believe in. So, I think that when we talk about NATO de-escalating, the odds of that happening are slim to none. De-escalation in my view would be for us to mind our own business, and let somebody who is really involved - in particular, the Ukrainian people are the ones who should be deciding all this, which way they want to go, rather than the governments of Europe or even the Russian government for that matter. It should be the people of Ukraine to decide this, so I don’t like either side building up this animosity, and I certainly don’t like our taxpayers and our government participating in something so far from our home. I’d rather mind my own business and take care of our own affairs.
Answering to the question “It’s the American taxpayers who ultimately are paying for NATO expansion. You don’t think it’s worth their money - or is it?” Ron said: No, it’s wasted money, and it’s not the rich in this country that pay these bills. I mean, Congress just voted a billion dollars, which is just the beginning of their line of credit and their guaranteed loans going to Ukraine. NATO’s promising 18 billion dollars. We’re the biggest donors to the IMF. But the rich don’t pay for that, and actually, we can’t raise taxes right now because our economy is in bad shape. But we still pay for, because people still love our dollar and it’s a reserve currency, and we get to print it, but who suffers from that? The bankers are going to benefit, because if we send money to Ukraine, the bankers are going to be bailed out. As a matter of fact, even Russia may get some benefit from this too, ironically. As we send more money to bail out Ukraine, money is owned to Russia as well; they have to pay for the gas, so it may be an irony that Russia may benefit. But ultimately, the people of Ukraine are not going to benefit; they are going to suffer from austerity programs. And the people of America won’t benefit; even if it’s not direct taxation, the average person is going to suffer from the inflation, and in this country we have seen that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and it's because of a failed economic policy, and this is the reason I advocate sound money and free markets rather than government planning.
SS asked: Now, you yourself have called sanctions an “act of war,” and unilateral sanctions are a common tool for the West to pressure other nations, so…The US is at war with many countries, like Iran, Cuba – isn’t it?
Ron’s answer was: Well, if two countries get in war, one of the most important things that they do is that they put down blockade – they prevent trade so the various countries can’t get their raw products. So, in that sense, the economic sanctions is doing something that happens in wartime, and that is preventing a government from getting certain things that are needed for the war. So, this is the reason of course I’m opposed to this, because I think it’s wrong, and I keep thinking what's talked about here, in this country, when I was in office, is why don't we try to see it from the other perspective – how would we react if we couldn’t import something? What if China or Russia, or somebody came in and said: “You cannot import certain things, we’re going to prohibit you from trading?” The American people wouldn’t like that very much, and yet we too causally do that with others. But, in principle, it’s not quite like a shooting war, but it is a war. I mean it is something that’s used in an active war, in the ultimate for blockade – but sanctions is the form of blockade. Sanctions, “you can’t do this, you can’t do that,” and I think it only leads to escalation, and the countries that had sanctions…The sanctions against Iran have been on air for a long time, and on Cuba – but the leaders never suffer. The people suffer, in both countries, so this is the reason I think that sanctions in principle are wrong.
Another question to Ron was: You have called Ukraine’s unrest “US instigated.” What makes you say that, and what role did it play?
Ron replied: I’m aware, it’s been in the media, and it’s no secret because the people who’ve actually done it, actually said it - and that is our ambassadors in the State Department - who have said that we have spent in the last 10 years or so over five million dollars trying to bring the democratic process to Ukraine, and yet after the revolution and our influence there, we ended up with the government, and in so many places around the world, the government was the one we didn’t like. And so Yanukovich is somebody the Europeans didn’t like and the Americans didn’t like, and yet we have already been involved too much, and we were on the course to doing this in Syria, and all of a sudden we find that the bad guys were getting the money. Al-Qaeda is actually getting the benefits and look at all the mess…So, they’ve admitted that they have done that and of course it was in an interview between our ambassador and State Department saying that who should we have as a leader of Ukraine – I mean, this is nothing but trouble. I might be able to give you an opinion of what I think should happen in Ukraine; I have a personal opinion of what I think they ought to do, but I’m giving the political opinion of what I think our government should do, and that is to stay out of it, because we’ve been way too much involved, and I think the evidence is very clear that the Europeans and the Americans were very much involved in the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine.
Another question to Ron was: But this whole Ukrainian issue, the crisis around Ukraine – do you feel like it’s enjoying wide domestic support in America? Do people know, when they talk about Ukraine, what it means? What’s going on in Ukraine?
Ron answered: Well they know mostly what’s going on, from our news services and our government, and generally, the consensus of all the news media is that it's all one side; they are told that Russia caused all these problems, invaded a country and stole Crimea, and this sort of thing. That is basically the general thing, but now we’re starting to see a shift in attitude with the American people, which is very healthy, because there are others like myself, who have access to the internet and different ways of spreading information. We have people like Edward Snowden, who comes out and tells us what really is going on. And right now we are getting some polls that show us that, the polls in the US show that our president shouldn’t bomb Syria, and that we should talk to Iran, and right now the majority of people are saying…nobody in the US is calling for troops in Ukraine, so there is a shift. But right now, most of them sort of have bought into the idea that…it’s natural, nobody wants to blame their own government, people tend to be patriotic, they don’t want to blame themselves, and they don’t look at the details. But it’s not quite as bad as it seems beyond the surface, mainly because we have our internet to get some information out, and we are seeing some shifting of attitudes, which I think is very healthy in the direction of us minding our own business.
He said: Well, the NGOs, they get government money, and they are always in the business of influencing governments and different things around the world, radio broadcasting and different things…I don’t believe in any of that stuff. I believe that we should influence other people, though, by setting good examples. I have an ideal for a society which is free markets and personal liberty and limited government, and I think we should do it and set an example, and then others might want to say, “Hey, why is America doing so well,” so I want to influence them, but not with force, not by invasions and guns and propaganda..
He was asked: So in comparison to Crimean secession to Russia, President Obama justified NATO’s bombing of Kosovo and the US invasion in Iraq, of which he was a vocal opponent back in the day. Is there any room for comparison here?
Ron replied: I guess, a little bit, but we’re inconsistent about it because in Kosovo, there was just a declaration and we supported it; there was no election. So I think the president misspoke on that. So this referendum was much more open than what happened in Kosovo, and yet on numerous occasions we have supported certain events, whether there were elections or whatever. So I don’t think it's exactly the same and I think that we should not be so critical of what happened and just automatically say that this was illegal. The referendum was a lot more democratic than the overthrow of the Yanukovich government in the way I see it.
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