"[A] shift in emphasis to domestic political issues."
Related: Slow Saturday Special: Ukraine Update
"4 top Ukraine officials investigated over crackdown; Opposition calls it a half-measure" by Maria Danilova | Associated Press, December 15, 2013
KIEV — Ukrainian authorities on Saturday moved to appease the thousands of demonstrators who have been barricaded in the center of the Ukrainian capital for weeks by opening investigations against four top officials over the violent police response to a small antigovernment demonstration last month.
But the opposition said the move was a half-measure that will not get them off the street....
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of government supporters gathered in the center of Kiev for a large counterrally in a square adjacent to the opposition rally on Saturday.
Say what?
The two demonstrations were peaceful but the atmosphere was tense as rows of riot police and barricades erected by opposition protesters separated the groups.
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"EU halts key trade talks with Ukraine; Says president is not being honest about intentions" by Andrew E. Kramer | New York Times, December 16, 2013
KIEV — The European Union on Sunday broke off talks with Ukraine on the far-reaching trade deal that protesters here have been demanding for weeks, and a top official issued a stinging, angry statement all but accusing Ukraine’s president of dissembling.
The bloc’s enlargement chief, Stefan Fule, wrote on Twitter that the words and actions of the president, Viktor Yanukovych, were “growing further and further apart,” even as the Ukrainian crisis was showing signs of deepening.
On Sunday, about 100,000 protesters clogged Independence Square and surrounding streets in Kiev, in one of the largest rallies in days.
The demonstrators heard several speeches, including one by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who was in the Ukrainian capital for meetings with opposition leaders and Ukraine’s foreign minister.
“Ukraine will make Europe better, and Europe will make Ukraine better,” McCain told the crowd. “We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe.”
McCain and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, who also joined the antigovernment demonstration, threatened sanctions against the Ukrainian government if authorities use more violence to disperse the protests, the Associated Press reported.
I don't recall seeing him at any Occupy Wall Street gatherings. These politicians horning in on this shows you it's all a controlled-opposition, CIA-supported coup attempt.
The European Union statement sent a pointed message to the crowd that the Ukraine government might well have to change before the EU agreement can be revived....
Knew that the moment this started.
Fule said Sunday that further discussions on the trade deal would hinge on receiving clear signals from Ukraine’s government, but that he had received no response. “Work on hold,” he tweeted, saying he had told a Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Sergei Arbuzov, that the government had to show “a clear commitment to sign.”
Officials in Brussels, the headquarters of the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, confirmed the decision to suspend the talks with Ukraine.
After years of negotiations with Brussels, Yanukovych was to sign the EU association agreement late last month, but then he announced that he would not because austerity measures demanded in a related International Monetary Fund loan were too stringent and because Russia had threatened trade sanctions.
Amazing, isn't it? Morsi turns down the IMF loan and bam, he's out after protests in the streets. Now the Ukrainian leader says he won't sign up and bam, his country is hit with protests!
His government began talks on rival trade and economic deals with Russia, even as Yanukovych said he intended eventually to sign the EU deal.
Oh, that will really get the EU mad!
Perplexed, high-level Western diplomats traveled to Kiev last week. Yanukovych told the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and an assistant secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, that he intended to sign the European trade deal, and would not join the rival Russian-backed customs union.
Ashton, after returning from her mission to Ukraine, said in Brussels on Thursday that she had assurances from the president of his intention to sign.
“Yanukovych made it clear to me that he intends to sign the association agreement,” she said.
By Friday, though, the Ukrainian government had again issued orders to ministers to plan to reconcile Ukrainian customs and trade legislation with the Russian-led customs union, not the EU, the newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda said, adding to a sense of drift in the government all the more ominous for the large protests in the capital.
Supporters of the political party of Vitali Klitschko, a champion boxer, marched to the headquarters of the Ukrainian national police, the SBU, where they pooled in front of the building and chanted, “Shame! Shame!” Others went to the Interior Ministry and central election office.
Adding to tension in the capital Sunday, Yanukovych’s political party, the Party of Regions, bused in thousands of supporters from provincial towns to gather in a park about a mile from Independence Square, placing the two large crowds in proximity and raising the prospect that groups from each camp would be in the streets overnight.
Implying their protest is illegitimate.
Honestly, I'm sick of this s*** swill media, folks.
Organizers of the progovernment rally said buses and trains chartered by the Party of Regions brought in thousands of people, mostly young men, Sunday morning. They included coal miners and laborers from the eastern Ukrainian industrial heartlands.
The pro-European Union protest leaders asked supporters to turn out Tuesday, when Yanukovych travels to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin. The two leaders have been negotiating on a desperately needed financial aid package that could include discounts on natural gas and, perhaps, a bridge loan for Ukraine.
There you go!
C'mon! This is all about geo-politics and the Jew World Order!
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"Ukraine’s ruling party asks for government reshuffle" Associated Press, December 17, 2013
KIEV — Ukraine’s ruling party, the Party of Regions, demanded a government reshuffle Monday but ignored the demand by opposition protesters that the president and government resign.
Lawmaker Hanna Herman, a member of the party, told an Internet TV channel Monday that the Party of Regions met with Prime Minister Mykola Azarov to ask for a ‘‘90 percent’’ reshuffle of his government.
Thousands of Ukrainians have occupied the square since Dec. 1, after President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to shun closer ties with the European Union and move instead toward Moscow.
Yanukovych has been attempting to appease protesters in recent days, and has suspended two officials over their alleged role in violent dispersal of protests on Nov. 30.
With talks on resuming credit from the International Monetary Fund stalled, Yanukovych will head to Moscow on Tuesday to see what Russia might offer in exchange for freezing a strategic trade deal with the EU.
Analysts say that if President Vladimir Putin offers anything to Ukraine, one of Europe’s poorest countries, it could be a mix of credit, investment pledges, and a discount on energy prices, particularly natural gas.
But the Russian leader may not be generous, given the ongoing crisis and the flip-flopping by Ukraine’s leadership about whether its allegiance lies with Moscow or Brussels.
Putin’s aim ‘‘will be to keep Ukraine on the edge and dependent on Russian credits, to continue to pressurize Ukraine to eventually sign’’ the Moscow-led Customs Union, an organization that now includes Belarus and Kazakhstan, said Timothy Ash, an emerging markets analyst with Standard Bank in London.
‘‘This is still Putin’s number one strategic objective,’’ he said.
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"Russia offers Ukraine a financial lifeline; Putin deals blow to US, Europe in influence contest" by David M. Herszenhorn | New York Times, December 18, 2013
MOSCOW — Playing a trump card in his diplomatic contest with the West over Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia would come to the rescue of its financially troubled neighbor, providing $15 billion in loans and a sharp discount on natural gas prices.
Is that generous enough?
It was a bold and risky move by Russia, given the political chaos in Ukraine, where thousands of antigovernment protesters remain encamped in Independence Square in Kiev, the capital. For the moment, however, Putin seemed to gain the upper hand over Europe and the United States in their contest for influence.
There was no discussion of what Russia might receive in return for its aid. Protesters in Kiev have been deeply worried that President Viktor Yanukovych would cut a secret deal to join a customs union that Russia has established with Belarus and Kazakhstan. That would largely preclude any possibility of reviving the accords with Europe, but Putin said the subject had not come up.
In Independence Square, where the large crowd was bolstered by people coming out of work, the initial reaction appeared to be a mix of fury and dismay, with people chanting, “Out with the crook!”
I'm sorry I can no longer stand this one-sided slop.
Leaders of the three opposition parties who are coordinating the protest said the demonstrations would continue. They also voiced suspicions about what Yanukovych had offered in exchange for a Russian bailout.
“Free cheese is only found in a mousetrap,” Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, the leader of the Fatherland coalition in Parliament, said in a speech. He asked for the patience of protesters — a tired and haggard lot now after 17 days of occupying the square, with a tent encampment and fires burning in barrels to keep people warm.
Occupy Ukraine!
Yatsenyuk asked the protesters to persevere, and said he was sure they would not give up. Addressing the Russian president, he said, “Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, this time you mistook my people for yours.”
Yanukovych, whose political fortunes have appeared bleak in recent days, praised Putin’s leadership.
“I will say openly: I know that this work wouldn’t have been done at this optimal speed if not for the Russian president’s political will,” he said.
While the implications for the protest movement were not immediately clear, Putin’s announcement, at a meeting at the Kremlin with Yanukovych, substantially alters the political landscape. It throws Yanukovych an economic and political lifeline that will spare him for now from negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, Europe, or the United States.
Putin said the money to aid Ukraine would come from Russia’s hefty reserve funds, and that the price of gas sold by Gazprom, the state-controlled energy behemoth, would be dropped to $268.50 per 1,000 cubic meters — less than the $380 Western Europe pays for Russian gas — from between $395 and $410, saving Ukraine $2 billion a year.
For Putin, outmaneuvering the effort by European leaders to draw Ukraine westward is the latest in a string of deft foreign policy moves that have served to reestablish Russia as a major power. These include Russia’s proposal to disarm Syria of chemical weapons, which precluded a US military strike.
For which he should have won the Peace Prize.
At the same time, Putin’s ability to announce a major bailout of Ukraine highlighted the contrasts with the West, where a rescue plan on such a scale would typically require protracted debate and negotiation. In Russia, it is a decision that Putin, in consultation with a close coterie of aides, can make.
Right, it is Russia that is the dictatorship.
But there are risks for Russia in the deal, and the possibility remains that Putin may come to regret his decision.
Says the agenda-pushing jewspaper with its fingers crossed.
Should the Ukrainian economy continue to deteriorate, the country might find itself facing default again in the not-to-distant future, experts say, confronting Putin with an even larger headache. The exposure of Russian banks and other businesses to the Ukrainian economy is estimated at some $40 billion.
Everything seemed to work out in Cyprus, remember?
But those potential problems were not on the agenda Tuesday in Moscow, where Putin stressed the differences in approach between Russia and the West, which he often accuses of meddling.
“With the goal of supporting the budget of Ukraine, the government of the Russian Federation made the decision to issue in bonds from the Ukrainian government part of its own reserves from the National Welfare fund in the amount of $15 billion,” Putin said, seated next to Yanukovych.
It was not immediately clear whether Russia’s investment in Ukrainian debt would be legal, under Russia’s own requirements for the management of its sovereign funds.
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"Ukraine’s prime minister hails deal with Russia" by Andrew E. Kramer | New York Times, December 19, 2013
KIEV — Ukrainian officials on Wednesday praised a financial aid package from Russia as the country’s only hope to prevent economic collapse, although it was signed in defiance of a large and sustained protest in the capital....
The announcement seemed to have a deflating effect on the protesters, a tired and haggard group after spending more than three weeks encamped on Independence Square. A church choir sang. Protest leaders asked for patience as they scrambled to devise a new strategy.
Awwwwwwww!
The protests were ignited by the government’s last-minute failure to sign political and free trade accords with Europe, which had been seen as an alternative to the Russian deal.
Their demands, though, had expanded....
They know what they want, as opposed to those Occupy Wall Street slobs!
The government is now prepared to negotiate with the protesters over those demands, Viktor Pinchuk, one of Ukraine’s most powerful businessmen, said in an interview. Concessions now from Yanukovych on these domestic political issues could defuse the demonstrations, even though the main demand, for European integration, went unmet.
On Wednesday, opposition leaders said they had moved closer to obtaining enough votes in Parliament to dismiss the government, signaling the shift in emphasis to domestic political issues.
And thus the coverage goes covert.
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"Antigovernment demonstrations enter second month in Kiev"Associated Press, December 23, 2013
KIEV — About 100,000 people rallied in Ukraine’s capital Sunday to demand the ouster of the president and his Cabinet as mass antigovernment protests entered their second month.
But it is not being covered every day now.
The rallies were sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision last month to choose ties with Russia over integration with the 28-nation European Union. That deeply angered many Ukrainians, who favor the democratic structures of the West over Russia’s autocratic government.
After a violent police crackdown on a peaceful rally, the demonstrators turned against Yanukovych himself and have transformed Kiev into a giant protest encampment.
The U.S. suppression of Occupy wasn't described that way!
Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko urged the crowd to spend New Year’s Day and the following weeks on Kiev's Independence Square to force Yanukovych into calling early presidential and parliamentary elections. The movement is also trying to widen opposition support in the east of the country, which remains largely loyal to Yanukovych.
Yanukovych’s concessions of releasing some jailed opposition activists and suspending several top officials over the crackdown have failed to end the protests. After several attempts to clear the protesters by force drew strong condemnation from the West, he now appears set on waiting them out.
Whose hypocrisy was then condemned by the world.
Yanukovych’s position was strengthened last week by a major bailout package from Russia to help Ukraine fend off a possible default. The aid includes a $15 billion pledge to buy Ukrainian government bonds and a sharp decrease in the price Russia charges Ukraine for natural gas. The opposition has dismissed the agreements as a sell-out and insisted that Ukraine’s future lies with the European Union.
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