Eric Zuesse

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who on 4 February 2014 was selected for his post by Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department, was quoted by Ukrainian media on Thursday March 12th of 2015 as saying that, “Ukraine is in a state of war with a nuclear state, which is the Russian Federation. Hostile countries over the past decade have spent billions of dollars rearming it.”

His quoted statement went on to blame Ukraine’s problems on Russia: “The country [Ukraine] is billions of dollars in debt, having been a corrupt and demoralized nation that has no gas in storage and no dollars to buy it. … [Russia] destroyed 20% of Ukraine’s economy, bombed the mines in the fighting, and produced a million displaced persons, who, as a result are forced to leave their homes.” [NOTE: Those bombs, some of which were firebombs, actually fell from Ukrainian Air Force planes, and were supplemented by Ukrainian Army missiles. The resident forces in the rebel area of the southeast that the Ukrainian Government is fighting against had no air force at all until recently, and very little even now. And, of course, any “rearming” of Russia is being done by Russia, not by “Hostile countries over the past decade.”]

The next day, March 13th, the same Ukrainian ‘news’ source headlined “Militants in the Donbass Are Professional Soldiers Led by the Army of the Russian Federation,” and ‘reported’ that, "Military units of illegal armed groups ‘DNR' and ‘LC' are formed on the organizational structure of Russian military units, and the main staff and command positions are appointed by the Russian officers. This was announced during a briefing for foreign journalists on the situation in the Donbas by Deputy Chief of Staff, Colonel Valentin Fedichev of the ATO [Anti Terrorist Operation].” [NOTE: On 29 January 2015, the Chief of Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said that, at least as of that moment in time, there were no Russian troops fighting against the Ukrainian Government’s forces, but only a few individual volunteers from Russia. There are likewise individual volunteers from several countries who are fighting for the Ukrainian Government. In addition, there are military advisors in the war from the U.S. and from Russia.]

On 7 January 2015, Yatsenyuk said in Germany:

“Russian aggression in Ukraine is an attack on world order and order in Europe. All of us still clearly remember the Soviet invasion of Ukraine and Germany. That has to be avoided. And nobody has the right to rewrite the results of the Second World War. And that is exactly what Russia’s President Putin is trying to do.”

[NOTE: There was no “Soviet invasioin of Ukraine and Germany.” Instead, Hitler’s German forces invaded both countries.]

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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 .