Eric Zuesse

The lifelong Russia-enemy George Soros, and the Russian Government itself, are now openly fighting over which parts of the Ukrainian Government they’ll be getting in the bankruptcy proceeding that’s already unofficially starting.

Here’s the necessary background, so that the battle now occurring on the part of Ukraine’s creditors can be truthfully and honestly understood:

In December 2013 — just before the overthrow of the Russia-friendly Ukrainian Government of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, by Soros’s American President and major political-campaign investment, Barack Obama — Russia lent Ukraine $3 billion with a contract saying that if Ukraine’s debt would rise above 60% of Ukraine’s GDP, then Russia would be able to demand immediate repayment, and Ukraine agreed to the contract’s condition that Ukraine wouldn’t pay a cent to any other creditor before the entire due-balance on this $3 billion loan is returned to Russia.

Then, on 4 February 2014, Victoria Nuland of Obama’s State Department selected Ukrainian banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the person to take control over Ukraine as soon as Obama’s Ukrainian coup would occur, which turned out to be 18 days later, on February 22nd.

Soros’s and Obama’s plan was to privatize as much of the Ukrainian Government as possible in a fire-sale of its assets, such as the valuable gas-fields in the Yuzivska region in Ukraine’s southeast (where the civil war now is), so that Soros and the other investors would be able to get their money back, with interest. Furthermore, inasmuch as only Soros and other insiders would be in on this fire-sale, those same people would also be the bidders; and thus Ukraine’s assets would be sold to them at prices far lower than their actual worth as economic investments for the future. This would turn their prior Ukrainian bonds into super-discounted equity or stock in what now are Ukrainian Government-owned gas-fields, electrical power companies, factories, etc. Furthermore, Western agribusiness giants are now coming into Western Ukraine to buy up Ukrainian farmland, which is among the world’s most-fertile.

The basic privatization-scheme that’s being used here had originally been drawn up by the Harvard economist, and the then-World-Bank chief, Lawrence Summers, and by Harvard’s Economics Department, in the 1990s, as being the way for American insider investors and the U.S.S.R.’s Communist Party insiders, to buy the U.S.S.R.’s assets dirt-cheap, and thereby profit from the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. Those economists oversaw the sell-offs of industrial and other assets throughout many of the 15 nations comprising the Soviet Union, one of which is Ukraine, where the fire-sales are now occurring.

With this as the background, the world’s great newspaper, German Economic News, headlines, on January 10th (as translated by the present writer into English), “Putin v. Soros: Russia Grabs for EU-Billions to Ukraine,” and reports that:

“Just a few days after Angela Merkel cleared the way for a 1.8 billion euro loan from the EU’s tax-money for [Ukrainian Premier] Arseny ‘Yaz’ Yatsenyuk, Russia launched its interest in this money: Moscow is considering to mature a loan it had made to Kiev. Russia makes this move especially against the speculator George Soros.

Ukraine's ‘Yaz’ Yatsenyuk met with Chancellor Merkel, at the Chancellor's Office, on Thursday [Jan. 8].  No sooner was the Premier assured by the EU of receiving 1.8 billion euros, than Russia intervenes for the money — Moscow may trigger the state bankruptcy of Ukraine.

Russia could use the EU payments to Ukraine to mature a loan that is due at the end of January, and Kiev cannot use its own resources: Moscow could demand early repayment of a three-billion-dollar loan to Ukraine. Ukraine did not meet a number of conditions [of the loan-agreement], reported the Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Saturday [the 10th], citing government sources. Under these circumstances, Russia was forced to insist on the earlier payment.”

Soros has been lobbying very intensively, after the coup (see all about it by clicking on that link), to persuade the EU, IMF and U.S., to donate enough of Western taxpayers’ money, so as to enable Ukraine to buy enough weapons to win its war against the rebelling portion of Ukraine — the region which had voted 90% for the overthrown former President, Viktor Yanukovych — the region in Ukraine that’s often called “Donbass,” which is in Ukraine’s far east, and which has declared its independence, and which includes much of the Yuzivska gas-field. That region has consistently rejected the Obama-coup-imposed Government; and consequently its gas cannot be used to repay Ukraine’s debts unless Ukraine regains control over that land, where now, almost certainly, even more than 90% of the people reject that Government. (Click here in order to see the transcript of the EU officials’ phone-conversation in which their Foreign-Affairs Minister Catherine Ashton was informed by her own investigator, on 25 February 2014, that Yanukovych had been overthrown in a violent coup, rather than himself perpetrated the bloodshed, and that Ukraine’s current President, Petro Poroshenko, himself acknowledged to the EU’s investigator at the time, that it was a coup — which Ashton hadn’t known of until that moment.) This is the reason why the IMF informed the coup Government, on 1 May 2014, that unless it could regain control over the rebels’ land, which means eliminate its residents (since they would never accept a Government that is set upon exterminating them), the IMF would stop lending (actually donating, since these ‘loans’ will come at the end of the long  line in the bankruptcy proceeding that’s now inevitable) Ukraine more of its Western taxpayers’ money. Without those gas-fields and other assets, even the existing IMF loans to Ukraine wouldn’t likely ever be able to be paid back. New IMF loans surely won’t be.

On 6 January 2015, an aide to Poroshenko announced that, as the news-headline on this story the following day phrased it, “Ukraine Says $450 Million Was Stolen from Its Military in 2014.” This report also noted that, “This amount happens to be precisely the same maximum amount of money that the U.S. Government, in legislation that was supported by more than 98% of U.S. Senators and Representatives and that was signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on December 18th, will donate to Ukraine’s military for this year, 2015.” Both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly support Obama’s ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the people in that region of Ukraine and thus endorsed the $450 million donation by U.S. taxpayers. However, if the people we’re hiring to do that job are stealing as much money as we’re donating to them, then people like Soros could end up losing money on their bond-investments. This is the reason why Soros is pressing the European Union to donate lots more of their taxpayers’ money to this war. In the 5 February issue of the New York Review of Books, he says, “all the consequences of helping Ukraine would be positive. By enabling Ukraine to defend itself, Europe would be indirectly also defending itself.” He doesn’t mention that Ukraine’s Government resulted from a coup instead of from the anti-corruption demonstrators in the Maidan, and he portrays Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as being the aggressor for accepting Crimea back into Russia (where it had been during 1783-1954), and not America’s President Barack Obama as being the aggressor for perpetrating the coup and trying to oustRussia’s Black Sea Fleet from Crimea. Soros says:

“Putin’s ambition to recreate a Russian empire has unintentionally helped bring into being a new Ukraine that is opposed to Russia and seeks to become the opposite of the old Ukraine with its endemic corruption and ineffective government. The new Ukraine is led by the cream of civil society: young people, many of whom studied abroad and refused to join either government or business on their return because they found both of them repugnant. Many of them found their place in academic institutions, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations. A widespread volunteer movement, of unprecedented scope and power unseen in other countries, has helped Ukraine to stand strong against Russian aggression.”

Here is the type of people that Obama’s team actually placed into control over the actually coup-Government. It’s the opposite of “the cream of civil society.” In fact, the very same person who is described there led the organization, called Right Sector, which perpetrated the massacre of the people inside the Trade Unions Building in Odessa on May 2nd, the day after the IMF had said that if the opponents to the new regime weren’t eliminated, IMF loans to Ukraine would stop. And the main financier paying those Right Sector operatives to do that was this man, who recently hired two young people who are closely associated with the Obama White House.

The Russian novelist Zakhar Prilepin was quoted on 3 January 2015 in an interview by RIA Novosti Ukraine, after having travelled through Donbass and spoken with many people there, in order to understand why the separation from Ukraine had occurred. He said:

“I thoroughly questioned local guys what led them to battle, I think Ukraine should know the answers. One of the main points of reference was not even Maidan [the demonstrations, and the extreme violence there that produced the coup in February], which many looked upon with distaste, but suffered, and namely it [the start of the civil war] was the events in Odessa [the May 2nd massacre in Odessa] — and the reaction of thousands of Ukrainian bloggers on this obvious atrocity.”

In other words: Until the massacre in Odessa, residents in Donbass were willing to have some kind of federation arrangement with the post-coup Government; but, after the massacre, they knew that this new Government wanted them dead. That massacre was thus the real start of Ukraine’s civil war.

Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation (or Fund) was one of the three top financial backers of Ukraine’s Hromadske TV, which interviewed (and never criticized) a guest who said:

“Donbass, in general, is not simply a region in a very depressed condition, it has got a whole number of problems, the biggest of which is that it is severely overpopulated with people nobody has any use for. Trust me I know perfectly well what I am saying. If we take, for example, just the Donetsk oblast, there are approximately 4 million inhabitants, at least 1.5 million of which are superfluous. That's what I mean: we don't need to [try to] ‘understand’ Donbass, we need to understand Ukrainian national interests. Donbass must be exploited as a resource, which it is. I don't claim to have a quick solution recipe, but the most important thing that must be done — no matter how cruel it may sound — is that there is a certain category of people that must be exterminated.”

The other main funders of Hromadske TV are the U.S. Government and the Netherlands Government.

Soros’s NYRB article closes with a five-point analysis of where the tens of billions of dollars that will be required in order to exterminate those people should come from. He lists: Balance of Payments Assistance, European Financial Stability Mechanism, Macro-Financial Assistance Facility, European Union, IMF, Extended Fund Facility, European Investment Bank, World Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Paris Club.

He says that if they don’t come up with the funds: “Europe will be left on its own to defend itself against Russian aggression, and Europe will have abandoned the values and principles on which the European Union was founded. That would be an irreparable loss.”

On 1 January 2015, he headlined a Project Syndicate oped at Live Mint and other sites, “Europe at War: Supporting the New Ukraine in 2015 and Beyond Is the Most Cost-Effective Investment the EU Could Make,” and he said:

By invading Ukraine in 2014, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has posed a fundamental challenge to the values and principles on which the European Union (EU) was founded. …

Putin’s regime is based on rule by force, manifested in repression at home and aggression abroad. …

Russia annexed Crimea and established separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. …

The West, sadly, has provided embattled Ukraine with only a façade of support. …

All available resources should be put to work in the war effort, even if that requires running up budget deficits. Europe is fortunate that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has behaved as a true European with regard to the threat posed by Russia. …

Helping Ukraine to defend itself against Russian aggression would have a stimulative effect on Ukraine and Europe. The EU’s members are at war—and they need to start acting like it. …

Ukraine needs an immediate cash injection of, say, $20 billion, with a promise of more when needed. …

The “new Ukraine” is resolutely pro-European. …

Supporting the new Ukraine in 2015 and beyond is the most cost-effective investment the EU could make.

His call here was a more detailed presentation of the argument that the Financial Times had made earlier, on 30 November 2014, under the headline, “The Economic Collapse of Ukraine Must Be Halted: The IMF and Western donors need to inject $15bn of emergency funding.” Nobody mentions that those “Western donors” are taxpayers, and that the Ukrainian public aren’t being bailed out but that the Western aristocracy is.

However, Arseniy Yatsenyuk himself said essentially this very thing, on 9 January 2015, under a Ukrainian site’s headline (translated here) “IMF money will be used only for the payment of foreign debts - Yatseniuk,” which presented this quotation from him:

“I would also like to note that the money that we get in the framework of international financial assistance, does not go to finance the state budget deficit, it does not go to the payment of pensions, does not go to the payment of wages. All of this is happening in the first place, to perform our external obligations.”

Those “external obligations” were first stated, on 1 May 2014, by the IMF, when it demanded, basically, that the people in Donbass be exterminated. Western aristocrats want the land that’s there, not the people who live on it. And Western taxpayers are supposed to foot the bill in order to get rid of the residents in Donbass.

This is the deal that’s being proposed — and executed — in Western ‘democracies.’

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .