EU Referendum


Ukraine: the EU is failing the test


25/07/2014



000a Mail-024 Glover.jpg

We pinned down the provocative role of the EU in relation to the Ukraine and Russia, way back in February, and Booker put the lid on it the following month.

Now, four months later, from a newspaper that seems determined to cast Putin as the spawn of Satan, pinning every ill it can imagine on the Russian President, we have in Steven Glover, what can only be the token contrarian, hired to argue the case that "the EU is guilty of precipitating this crisis, and arguably of causing it".

A fatal combination of vanity, hubris and naivety characterised EU policy towards Ukraine before its elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed in a popular uprising earlier this year.

Now, writes Glover, the same EU, which recklessly attempted to lure Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence, reveals itself as being feeble and divided, and utterly incapable of dealing with the alarming consequences of its actions.

On that basis, the piece's headline asserts that, if it wasn't for the blundering EU, MH17 might not have been downed. Glover himself argues that, if Putin were really as crazy and militaristic as Adolf Hitler, as some commentators have suggested, he would presumably have sooner or later helped himself to the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine.

Hence, we have a "divided, cowardly and unprincipled" EU set against a not quite so bad Putin, putting the EU seriously on the naughty step, Now that Russia is blatantly misbehaving, Glover writes, "the same European nations that thoughtlessly baited the Russian bear are running for cover in the most undignified way".

Glover doubts he is another Hitler. It seems much more likely that he is a nationalist and an opportunist who regarded the wooing of Ukraine by the EU, and the removal of President Yanukovych, as a sufficient provocation, while the EU is engineering its own downfall by its "such a timid response", which comes after the "needlessly aggressive" provocation of Russia.


However, while Glover might have fingered the EU correctly, I don't think he is anywhere close to understanding the Russians. And even if Putin himself is not a cold, calculating homicidal maniac, some of the people around him, such as his economic advisor, Sergei Glazyev, are barking mad, people who make paranoia sound normal.

Glazyev (see YouTube video) who characterises Ukraine as a US occupied country, with the "Kiev Nazis" intent on the genocide of the people of Eastern Ukraine (Donbass). Thence will the Americans, and their puppets in Kiev, militarise Ukraine and launch an invasion on Russia. They are intent on the construction of a Nazi dictatorship and the total mobilisation of the people against Russia.

By the end of the year, says Glazyev, there will be any army of half a million men ranged against us, with military equipment being brought out of storage, making a very powerful military machine targeting us, fired up by Nazis ideologically indoctrinated against Russia.

This is not something we can "sit out", the man says. After Donbass, the next target is Crimea, creating the pretext for a war against Russia – and regional war in the first instance and ultimately a "fourth world war".

Thus, within a six-month window of opportunity – after which he thinks it will be too late – Glazyev believes Russia should mount a pre-emptive strike, taking out the Ukrainian military capability. And, although he doesn't spell it out, he's thinking in terms of shock and awe. This is a man who is apparently ready and willing to go to war.

In this comfortable country of ours, it is hard to get inside the minds of the Russians and the Ukrainians, but the very fact a senior political figure can so readily talk about the need for war – and apparently have a strong following – tells us that we are dealing with something unimaginable in British politics.

Back in Ukraine, though, the leader of the "Kiev Nazis", prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced his resignation today, after the parliament blocked legislation on tighter controls over the energy sector in the face of dwindling natural gas supplies from Russia.

Stresses in the system are growing, and can only intensify. And there, Glover makes the very same point were making those months ago. In the face gowing threats to peace and stability, the EU has been exposed as a wayward toddler passing itself off as a world power.

The truth is, he says, that most European countries do not want to jeopardise their trade with Russia. Many of them are reliant on Russia for their oil and gas supplies, Germany in particular. Some 35 percent of its oil, and 42 percent of its gas, is imported from Russia.

And for those reasons, it seems the EU is not able to deal with the growing bellicosity of two parties who seem to be leading us inexorably to war. This is far more than the loss of MH17, terrible though that was, and far more then whether a number of EU member states manage to keep their citizens warm in winter.

This is a war that will potentially rip apart central Europe, one that could drag in the larger part of continental Europe, turning the clock back a century or more. It is a crisis which the New York Times says is testing the EU's resolve. And, as it stands, the EU is failing the test.

FORUM THREAD