Some Factors Behind the Ukraine Crisis

Despite moral posturing from NATO, EU and the USA that there has never been any outside designs, the Ukraine has been manipulated as a dagger aimed at the heart of Russia. Through outside planning and massive funding, the Ukraine was detached from its organic relationship with Russia.

The extent to which the globalist network has targeted Russia through the Ukraine is readily seen by examining the annual financial reports of NGOs such as the National Endowment for Democracy, Open Society institutes, ad infinitum. Here we can discern the real meaning behind the rhetoric of Ukraine being a glowing paragon of ‘democracy’, ‘liberalism’, and the ‘open society’.

Among themselves, the globalists are boastful of the roles they play in the Ukraine. In 2016, Carl Gershman, president of NED, a veteran Leftist of the type that flocked to the U.S. side during the Cold War, stated that NED had been active in the Ukraine since the 1980s: “NED was there from the beginning, nurturing the active roots of civil society in the 1980’s.” [1]

In 2015 Gershman, the year following the overthrow of the Russia-aligned Ukrainian government, wrote in World Affairs that the Ukraine is pivotal for U.S. aims in encircling and subverting Russia, citing the geopolitical strategist Brzezinski:

… Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has often said. It is possible that out of the present crisis Russia will become a more normal country, even a democracy, where the central concern will no longer be expanding the power of Greater Russia but providing for the welfare of its people.

So the strategic goal for people who want to see a more peaceful and democratic world is a Russia that, like Ukraine, wants to be democratic and a part of Europe. Right now such a scenario seems very unlikely. But if Ukraine succeeds, there is the possibility for a better outcome. That is why Ukraine’s struggle for democracy, independence, and territorial integrity has consequences for the whole world. And it’s why the US has a profound stake in its success. By standing with Ukraine, we are not merely supporting their struggle. We are also defending our own national security and advancing the values of human freedom that America, with all its troubles, continues to represent.[2]

Gershman made it plain that a breach with the Ukraine must be created that would undermine Russia. This breach has major implications in the globalisation and Americanisation process, according to Gershman.

Leaping to the present day, the NED budget spent on the Ukraine during 2021 reached over $5,500,000. The focus is consistently on the training of “youth activists,” and on funding propaganda outlets, euphemistically terms “independent journalism.” [3]  For example:

Supporting Investigative Journalism in Donbas: $35000: To strengthen independent media reporting on public spending in the Donbas region of Ukraine. …

Donetsk Institute of Information : Fostering Independent Media in Donbas : $100000 : To foster independent media in eastern Ukraine. The organization will produce news, investigations, and analytical reports on the developments in conflict-affected regions of Ukraine. The group will publish materials on its website and distribute them via social media and email newsletters. It will also produce and broadcast episodes of its weekly television show Donbas Today, promoting it through video clips on social media. The group will continue to monitor printed and online media in the separatist-controlled areas to counter disinformation.

Center for Research on Donbas Social Perspectives : Supporting Independent Regional Media : $50500: To promote access to independent news and information about developments in eastern Ukraine. The organization’s popular news website will expand its analytical reporting on the conflict, continue to monitor the media and events inside the separatist-controlled territories, and debunk propaganda narratives. To reach international audiences with objective information about the conflict, the organization will translate its most important materials into English.

Caritas Mariupol : Promoting Independent Reporting in the Donbas
$39000 : To promote independent reporting and foster citizen journalism in the Donbas. The group will organize training and mentorship programs for rural journalists from the conflict-affected areas of eastern Ukraine. Following the workshops, participants will write and contribute reports on pressing local issues to the local newspaper as well as regional media outlets.

Anti-crisis Media Center : Fostering Independent Media in Donbas : $50000 : Public Summary: To foster independent media and public debate in Donbas. The Center will produce video reports on social and political developments in the Luhansk, Donetsk, and Dnipropetrovsk regions. It will also hold public events, including discussions, press conferences, roundtables, and seminars to address local issues. The Center will publish the content produced on its website and in social media, and stream its public events, so it will also serve as a convening platform for interaction among journalists, government and the public.

Truth Hounds : Monitoring and Documenting Human Rights Violations : $58000 : To monitor, document, and spotlight human rights violations. Focusing on war crimes committed in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the organization will train and carry out 10 monitoring missions to document conflict-related violations. Based on the findings and collected evidence, it will produce a series of reports and present them to Ukrainian and international institutions. The organization will also work with law enforcement agencies to improve their knowledge and implementation of international humanitarian law.

Charitable organization “Charity Foundation “East-SOS” : Documenting and Raising Awareness of Human Rights Violations : $47000 : To raise public awareness of human rights violations in Donbas. The organizations will identify Russia’s policies of persecution and colonization in the region, and document illustrative cases. The human rights watchdog will compile a comprehensive report, promote it through public events in Ukraine, and submit it to international bodies, including the UN Human Rights Council, the European Courts of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice.

Professional Development of Kharkiv : Strengthening Civic Activism among Youth : $110000: To strengthen youth activism and civic engagement. The group will support the organizational development of newly established NGOs across Ukraine. Through online trainings, the group will enhance the management, communications, and advocacy skills of young activists. The grantee will award mini-grants to participants to implement projects that promote greater participation of youth in social cohesion and democratic transformation in local communities.

Analytical Center of Ukrainian Catholic University : Fostering Policy Dialogue : $39000: To foster policy dialogue on key issues related to Ukraine’s occupied territories. The think tank will continue its in-depth research of state policy towards Ukraine’s occupied territories, organize a series of thematic roundtables, and publicize analytical materials to stimulate dialogue among civil society, government officials, and the public. The organization will develop policy recommendations and advocate for their implementation to key stakeholders and relevant institutions, promoting a value-based approach to public policymaking.

National Interests Advocacy Network ANTS : Supporting Social Innovations for Local Governance : $78000: To promote innovative local governance solutions and foster a new generation of leaders. The group will organize a hackathon to facilitate collaboration between activists and local authorities as they jointly develop innovative solutions for local governance. A team of IT specialist, project managers and governance experts will mentor participating teams. The group will provide technical and financial support to three hackathon winners for project implementation. It will also hold networking events to foster interregional connections between activists.

Target of Globalists

In 2014 a situation in the Ukraine was contrived that followed the same scenario as sundry other states that have been brought into the globalist fold. The riots on the streets of Kiev and elsewhere constituted a “colour revolution” of the sought that went like a dose of salts through the states of the former Soviet bloc, and through North Africa in the so-called “Arab Spring.”

Interestingly, while in 2014 riots broke out in the Ukraine globalist sponsored upheavals were also occurring in two other states that had Russian-alignments, Venezuela [4]  and Syria. [5]

The “Cold War” against Russia since 1945, after Stalin scotched globalist plans for a world state under United Nations auspices,[6]  only had a brief respite during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, Gorbachev having since shown his true colours as a globalist.[7]  Hence the long-running series of manufactured crises over the Ukraine does not represent a “return to the Cold War,” as foreign policy pundits have been claiming; the “Cold War” hardly stopped. The U.S. policy makers have stated plainly that Russia remains an enemy and that anyone who aims to reassert Russia as a world power – as Putin has – is a legitimate target of the USA.[8]  Indeed, as I argue in Russia and the Fight Against Globalisation, the conflict between Russia and the USA is an existential one, where two world-missions collide.[9]

The National Endowment for Democracy, established with Congressional sponsorship in 1983 by adherents of the Shachtmanite faction of Trotskyism and other “social democrats,”[10] having taken over some of the “Cold War” roles from discredited CIA projects, has always had a special interest in the Ukraine.

For example, NED had been avidly sponsoring “youth activists” in various sectors of society, including “educating” electorates on how to vote in the October 2012 elections. The 2012 NED financial report lists the NGO’s in the Ukraine that received $3,380,834 during that year.[11] The amount represents the upper end of funds sent by NED throughout the world, and as the above-cited 2021 report shows, the amount has only increased.

Ukraine was among the states targeted for a “colour revolution” in 2004; the so-called “Orange Revolution.” With the failure of that revolt, orchestrated from the outside, thet cry went up that the Ukraine was not as sufficiently “democratic,” a euphemism for not being sufficiently under the influence of U.S./globalist hegemony.

A symposium on the Ukraine held by the NED-linked International Forum for Democratic Studies lamented that “following its failure to consolidate the democratic gains of the much-celebrated 2004 ‘Orange Revolution,’ Ukraine under the rule of authoritarian President Viktor Yanukovych has suffered numerous setbacks in its struggle to achieve a more democratic system.”[12]

Brzezinski’s 2014 Assessment

Veteran globalist foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, while a consultant for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, when interviewed by Ukrainian Pravda, a journal connected with NED, lauded the rioting youth that precipitated the ousting of the Russia-aligned Yanukovych. Brzezinski praised their sense of “nationhood,” as “an optimistic sign.”[13]  He spoke of “independent nationhood.” This praise of Ukrainian nationalism by Brzezinski was odd, coming from someone who spent a lifetime, since his days as a young academic, condemning nationalism and asserting that international capitalism, founded upon a globalist elite that transcends territorial borders, is the next phase of historical evolution. Brzezinski did not even believe in “independent nationhood.” He believed that it is passé.[14]  However it is the line followed by all the other mouthpieces of globalisation, including the USA and the E.U., and all the pontificators at the United Nations, who were then, and are now, condemning Russia and upholding this contrived “Ukrainian nationhood.”

None, of course, are champions of nationalism, which they regard as anathema. It is another means of undermining Russia as the primary state that remains in the way of the “brave new world,” or the “new world order” as it has been called. Hence, “nationalism” is only used as a dialectical strategy, as part of a globalist agenda.

Brzezinski alluded to what is the real bugbear of the globalists: the fear that Russia will lead a Eurasian bloc which, we might add, would also find allies across the world, from India, to Venezuela to Syria.[15]  Hence the simultaneous actions against the latter two states in 2014, fomented by the same forces that were then, and are now, fomenting crisis over the Ukraine.

Brzezinski, as a principal spokesman for the globalists, talked of an “expansion of Europe.” He stated that the globalists want the Ukraine to be part of the E.U. as the start of a process that will integrate Russia also. He stated that this is the wave of the future, and that a Russia-led “Eurasian union” will fail. However, if the E.U. represented a truly independent third force, it would have been targeted as avidly by the globalists as Russia. Unfortunately, the E.U. has not emerged as a third force, but as an appendage of U.S. foreign policy.

From Brzezinski’s statements in 2014, we can see why the globalists were so eager to oust the Yanukovych regime, under whom there was a prospect of the Ukraine coming closer to Russia rather than opting for the E.U. The Ukraine is clearly an important part of the globalist agenda.

Soros Omnipresent

The globalist network of foundations and NGOs under the patronage of George Soros has had, like NED,  a particular interest in the Ukraine.

The Soros network operates in the Ukraine mainly through the International Renaissance Foundation. [16]  

The Soros network states of the present that,

Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine is an assault on democracy and a violation of international law. It has also posed a grave threat to civil society in the country—including the staff, partners, and grantees of the International Renaissance Foundation, a part of the Open Society Foundations, which has been working in the country since 1990.[17]

One might, on the other hand, say that perhaps the Ukraine at last stands a chance of liberation by Russia from the globalists and international predators. A realignment back to Russia would surely mean that the whole gaggle of “civil society” subversives and agitators, the vanguard of globalisation, would be sent packing, as they were in Russia by Putin. That is what the Soros apparatus means when it laments that there is a “grave threat to civil society.”

Viorel Ursu, division director of Open Society’s Europe and Eurasia programme, lauded Soros in messianic terms, as the great hope and dear friend of the Ukraine:

We have been working in Ukraine for more than 30 years. We were one of the first foundations there following the end of the Soviet Union. Our founder, George Soros, has a special place in his heart for Ukraine, and has devoted a lot of time, emotion, and resources to the country.[18]

Ursu states that the Soros network was the first NGO into post-Soviet Ukraine, and focused on the re-education of the young, from the age of kindergarten onward. He states of the ideological void left by the implosion of the Soviet bloc,

So we made education a priority, from kindergarten on up to higher education, to scholarships allowing study abroad to bring fresh perspectives. Libraries were a big focus, and publishing textbooks.[19]

They have had thirty years to indoctrinate Ukrainians into becoming obedient citizens in a globalised world. They focused on controlling education, textbooks and what went into libraries.

With what Ursu calls “free and fair elections” following the 2014 riots, “civil society” had been “strengthened.” He states that the present conflict is not only a military affair, but “an information war” where “the media play a big role in telling the real story, and calling Russia by its name, as the aggressor;” [20] that is, the mass media is compliant and can be relied on the follow the globalist agenda. The mass media is being mobilised in the “information war” against Russia. As we have seen with the budget of NED, for example, money has long been lavished on creating this media compliance, especially with the training of journalist, editors, producer et al, and the capturing of social media to the extent of being a primary factor in fomenting and organising “colour revolutions.” 

Ursu is correct in seeing the present conflict as being one of world importance.

Notes:

[1] Carl Gershman’s remarks to the Washington conference 2016; “Ukraine’s success after 25 years,” https://www.ned.org/ukraines-success-after-25-years/

[2] Gershman, “A fight for democracy: why Ukraine matters,” World Affairs, Jan. 22, 2015; https://www.ned.org/a-fight-for-democracy-why-ukraine/

[3] NED Grants, Ukraine 2021, https://www.ned.org/region/central-and-eastern-europe/ukraine-2021/

[4] See for example, National Endowment for Democracy, ‘Venezuela’, 2012 annual report, http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/latin-america-and-caribbean/venezuela

[5] K. R. Bolton, ‘Attack on Syria planned nearly two decades ago’, Foreign Policy Journal, September 16, 2013, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2013/09/16/attack-on-syria-planned-nearly-two-decades-ago/

[6] K. R. Bolton, Stalin: The Enduring Legacy (London: Black House Publishing, 2012), 125-139.

[7] K. R. Bolton, Russia and the Fight Against Globalisation (London, 2018), 139-156.

[8] K. R. Bolton, Stalin, 137-139.

[9] K. R. Bolton, Russia and the Fight Against Globalisation.

[10] K. R. Bolton, Revolution from Above (London: Arktos Media Ltd., 2011), 218.

[11] National Endowment for Democracy, NED 2012 Annual report, http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/ukraine

[12] ‘Ukraine’s Lessons Learned: From the Orange Revolution to the Euromaidan’, National Endowment for Democracy, February 12, 2014, http://www.ned.org/events/ukraine-lessons-learned-from-the-orange-revolution-to-the-euromaidan

[13] Segei Leshchenko, ‘Zbigniew Brzezinski: Yanukovych understand that has no chance of fair elections. So went under the umbrella of Putin’,  Ukrainian Pravda, January 15, 2014, http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2014/01/15/7009577/

Leshchenko, who conducted the Brzezinski interview, is a NED Fellow.

[14] Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technotronic Era (New York: The Viking Press, 1970), 29.

[15] K. R. Bolton, Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific: Emerging Conflicts, New Alliances (London: Black House Publishing, 2013), 174-180.

[16] Open Society Foundations, http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/offices-foundations/international-renaissance-foundation

[17] Standing up for Ukraine, Open Society Foundations, February 24, 2022; https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/q-and-a-standing-up-for-ukraine

[18] Ibid.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.