UKRAINE

It is awfully unpleasant and terribly unrewarding for an honest observer these days to join the Ukraine debate. If one wishes to be reasonable, he can be easily accused of pushing the pro-Russian line, and, of course, we all know that propaganda is a very dirty word. But if we take the Western approach, we are instantly and inevitably crossing the line between scholarly decency and militant Russophobia, and immediately stop making common sense.

The fatal flaw of today’s debate on Ukraine is that it is not about Ukraine, but it is all about Russia. Which means that Ukraine may well be beyond help, as the ailment is located outside its proper body.

Granted, it is utterly impossible not to mention Russia, when talking about Ukraine, but, on my part, I will try to avoid saying “Russia” from this point on… until further notice.

Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine… Let’s talk about Ukraine. What kind of country is it anyway, today, as we speak? If I remember correctly, the last time Ukraine voted for President, Mr. Yanukovich won, and his Party of the Regions enjoyed a comfortable democratic majority in the country’s parliament, Rada. Mind you, that election was on Mr. Yushchenko’s watch, so there was hardly any kind of conspiracy there to overthrow that darling of the West and to install an enemy of Western values in the citadel of Ukrainian democracy Kiev…

So, Yushchenko went out, and Yanukovich came in, all fair and square. The Ukrainians had made their choice. And here now comes the big question. Where are all those majority Ukrainians who voted for Yanukovich? Where are the majority members of his Party of Regions in the Rada? Have they suddenly disappeared, given up their democratic majority ghost, leaving all national offices to certain very questionable personalities who had never before counted for much in the political makeup of Ukrainian politics?

Incidentally, why are the senior rabbis of Ukraine so worried these days, following the dramatic downfall of Mr. Yanukovich? Why are they advising the Jews of Ukraine to flee the country, yes, to run for their lives, giving them the choice of safe haven between Israel and another country which I have promised not to name for a while? I suggest that those who were not aware of this pre-Kristallnacht turn of events read about this in Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz… After all, the State of Israel did not vote on the wrong side of the United States in the United Nations General Assembly the other day… Israelis therefore can be trusted not to disseminate anti-Western propaganda in such matters…

What I very much want to know these days is the whereabouts and the physical condition of the “People’s Governor” of the Donetsk Region of Ukraine Pavel Gubarev. There is a popular rumor which has been inflaming the people of Eastern and Southern Ukraine that, following his capture and dispatch to Kiev he was beaten into an irreversible coma and denied medical help. I do not intend to engage in rumor-mongering, but this particular rumor is highly significant. The best advice that the American and European VIP visitors can give to the current government in Kiev would be to produce the man, to allow him at least to be visited by his lawyers and independent European observers, which would surely help at least in part to reduce the domestic unrest and the growing threat of a civil war… That is, in case this widespread rumor is indeed merely a rumor…

Pavel Gubarev is not alone, of course. There are scores of known names of Ukrainian “dissidents” who have disappeared without a trace, many claimed to have been arrested and held incommunicado. Even by the admission of the authorities in Kiev, these are political prisoners (one of them is the head of Ukrainian TV, beaten up on well publicized videotape and then arrested for the crime of “keeping Ukrainians informed about current events,” according to his feeble self-defense before succumbing to physical violence.)

No, this is not anti-Western propaganda. These and many-many others are well-documented cases which American and Western media would not touch with a ten-foot pole. Human rights are demonstrably and violently abused by the people supported by the freest of the free, who do not seem to give a damn…

Why?!.....

And now the reader receives my notice. Russia is no longer a taboo word in this article.

The answer, the only answer why the West does not care about the human tragedy unfolding in Ukraine is because the West does not care about Ukraine. It cares about Russia, and doing mischief on Russia’s borders--- at all costs--- seems to be the preeminent strategic objective of the free world, ever since the last sensible American President, George Herbert Walker Bush-Senior left office, dismayed by the collapse of the USSR. A man of old school, he never saw Russia as a “regional power.” You don’t fool with Mother Nature, and you don’t fool with Russia. He understood that, but the next president after him, Mr. Clinton, didn’t, and those who came after him didn’t either. They all pushed the NATO military alliance to a close proximity and even into direct contact with Russia’s borders…

…Oh, please, do bring back Cold War!!! Then Russia was a fellow topnotch boxer, a full member of the exclusive superpower club. Cold War was a fight-fest between two mutually respectful titans. It was a love-hate relationship, and the world was much safer on account of that love and mutual respect than today, when there is no love and no respect on the part of the sole world power for the former superpower reduced to the inferior position of a “regional power,” not even to mention the severe shortage of love on the part of the superpower scorned. Today Russia is a nuisance to the United States. Needless to say, the negative feeling is reciprocated in spades, and what Russia sees in Washington today is a sworn enemy without any redeeming value…

Hence, Ukraine. Poor people, I pity the weakest of them, who suffer the most, and I fear the strongest of them, who are on the verge of a bloody civil war that may engulf the world.