Il y a 2 commentaires associés à cet article. Vous pouvez les consulter et réagir à votre tour.
1124L’Ukraine est, avec la Libye, l’un des deux modèles les plus achevés, les plus ciselés dirait-on, de la lumineuse politique humanitaristo-interventionniste des hordes technologiques, moralisatrices et civilisées du bloc-BAO. Ukraine et Libye sont les deux facettes de l’effet général du chaos ainsi créé au son des discours d’autosatisfaction. En Ukraine, c’est la pourriture corruptrice qui est favorisée, en Libye la pourriture massacreuse. Mais restons-en à l’Ukraine...
Deux évènements, qui concernent deux personnages et leur destin, forment un symbole de l’effet général obtenu depuis le “coup de Kiev” du 21 février 2014.
• L’arrestation de Nadia Savchenko, une pilote d’hélicoptère qui intervint durant la “guerre du Donbass” et fut accusée d’avoir abattu deux journalistes russes en reportage dans le Donbass. Son appareil ayant été abattu, elle fut capturée par les séparatistes, livrée aux Russes qui la firent passer en jugement. Elle fut condamnée puis graciée par Poutine (d’où des soupçons en Ukraine à son encontre) et renvoyée en Ukraine en 2016. Elle se lança dans la politique, fut élue députée et s’avéra être une opposante résolue au régime en place et à la classe politique corrompue. Elle vient d’être arrêtée (en Ukraine) sur l’accusation de terrorisme, accusée plus précisément d’avoir cherché à abattre le régime. L’héroïne du Maidan judicieusement surnommée The Joan of Arc of Ukraine par les Britanniques (The Economist) qui en connaissent un brin en la matière, est aujourd’hui prisonnière du Maidan. Savchenko avait été faite en 2014 “Héro(ïne) de l’Ukraine”.
• Le suicide (ou “suicide” ?) de l’ancien pilote de la Force Aérienne ukrainienne Vladimir Volochine, qui était le pilote du seul avion de combat ukrainien (un Su-25) qui prit l’air le jour de la destruction de l’avion de ligne du vol MH-17 abattu au-dessus de l’Ukraine en juillet 2014. La narrative-BAO est que cet avion fut abattu par un missile tiré par mes séparatistes voire (plutôt) par les Russes eux-mêmes. Volochine effectua une mission mystérieuse avec son Su-25. Il revint sans ses munitions et, selon un témoin, dans un état agité, disant à ses collègues qu’il s’agissait « du mauvais avion au mauvais endroit ». Deux jours plus tard, coïncidence heureuse, Volochine recevait l’Ordre du Courage de troisième classe. Volochine quitta l’armée en 2017, très amer semble-t-il, devint directeur-adjoint puis faisant fonction de directeur de l’aéroport international Nikolaïev, en même temps qu’il développait selon des voisins et des proches des “tendances dépressives” et “alarmantes”. Il a été trouvé mort dans sa salle de bains par sa femme, le 21 mars, d’une balle d’un revolver retrouvé proche de lui. La conclusion la plus favorisée est celle du suicide, mais il y a une enquête en cours pour un possible assassinat.
Deux textes de RT rendent compte de ces deux affaires, en même temps qu’ils rendent compte de la situation en Ukraine et rappellent les conditions de la destruction du MH-17. Le premier texte, du journaliste Neill Clarke, du 23 mars 2018, s’attache au sort de Savchenko ; le second, de la rédaction de RT le 21 mars 2018, concerne le pilote Vladimir Volochine.
________________________
What irony! Nadia Savchenko, a former hero of Ukraine’s 2014 ‘revolution,’ who was pardoned by Putin after being convicted of abetting the murder of two Russian journalists, has been arrested on terrorism charges. In Ukraine.
Ukraine used to be known as a 'bread basket.' It's transformation into Europe's basket case was made complete with the arrest this week of one of the symbols of the Maidan ‘revolution,’ which toppled the non-aligned government of Viktor Yanukovich four years ago.
Nadia Savchenko was the fiercely anti-Russian cropped-hair helicopter pilot who took part in the Euromaidan demonstrations and then fought as a volunteer in the Ukrainian Aidar battalion in the war in the Donbass. She was captured by rebels in Eastern Ukraine and was then transported to Russia and held in relation to the killing of two Russian television journalists, Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk, who had died in a mortar attack. She was put on trial in Russia and her defiance of the authorities there (she went on hunger strike), made her a poster girl in Western establishment circles. The Economist hailed her as “a Ukrainian Joan of Arc.”
The new Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that her trial was "a violation of all international agreements, all norms of law” and was “unacceptable.” He praised “the true, strong, martial Ukrainian spirit of a serviceman who doesn't betray the Motherland.” Savchenko was awarded the title “Hero of Ukraine.”
But that was then, and this is now.
Savchenko was pardoned by Vladimir Putin in May 2016 and returned home to bouquets and kisses. It’s all gone rather sour since. Perhaps the first ‘wrong step’ she made was announcing that she was ready to stand for her country’s presidency “if needed.” Given her popularity, that was understandable. But it also made her enemies from those who saw her as a threat. In fact, polls showed that she was level with President Poroshenko, without even starting a formal campaign. Having put her life on the line fighting for a cause she believed in, she then tried to end the conflict in which she had been directly involved, as she knew her country couldn’t progress without a settlement.
“If we can't make peace, then [the war] will last forever," she said. "And that has already become a burden for everyone. Everybody is fed up with that. People are tired. People want to live in peace," she told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service in 2016.
In December 2016, Savchenko met in Minsk with the leaders of the Ukrainian self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to organize a prisoner swap. When the news emerged, she was expelled from Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchnya (Fatherland) party. Savchenko had been elected to the parliament on the Fatherland party list in 2014 while in Russian custody.
Nationalist rivals tried to portray Savchenko – quite ludicrously – as a Kremlin stooge, showing the level of discourse in ‘democratic’ Ukrainian politics.
She formed her own public movement ‘Civil Platform RUNA.’ But the ex-soldier’s frustrations with her country, post-Maidan, were hard to contain. She railed against corruption, and the way Ukrainian politicians behaved like ‘kings.’ The anti-Russian darling of the West became rather less appealing now she was attacking a government that the Western establishments supported and had helped bring to power.
Moments after lawmakers had voted in the Rada to strip her from immunity as an MP, she was arrested.
According to State Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Savchenko, along with an alleged accomplice Volodymyr Ruban, had been plotting "to violently overthrow the constitutional order and seize state power in Ukraine. To achieve this, they planned a large-scale terrorist attack on the center of Ukraine's capital, where administrative and large residential buildings are concentrated."
Lutsenko produced a video, which shows Savchenko saying “I propose a coup” and calling for government buildings and leading politicians including Poroshenko, to be blown up. Savchenko says she was set up by undercover agents. Once again, she has gone on hunger strike.
What a mess! Arresting a former ‘revolutionary’ for wanting to topple those who came to power following the Euromaidan protests is symptomatic of the way things have gone Ukraine since 2014. Corruption – which we were told was the main issue motivating the protestors four years ago – remains widespread. The economy has gone backwards, not forwards – hardly helped by a collapse in trade with Russia, where 26 percent of Ukraine’s exports ended up in 2012. “Today, not only does the country compete with Moldova for the dubious distinction of having the lowest salaries in Europe, its GDP per capita is now below El Salvador and Libya, wedged between Laos and Vietnam in raw dollar terms,” noted Bryan MacDonald in February.
According to the UN, about 60 percent of Ukrainians live below the poverty line. And things are likely to get a lot worse, with the news that fuel prices could grow by 22-24 percent in 2018.
Meanwhile, the political situation has grown increasingly farcical. Savchenko is only the latest supporter of the 2014 ‘revolution’ to get into trouble. The former Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili was appointed governor of Odessa in 2015. But having fallen out with Poroshenko, he was stripped of his Ukrainian passport and deported. In December, he had been freed from a police van by his supporters, only to be re-arrested. Ludicrously, it was alleged that Saakashvili, who went to war with Moscow in 2008, was part of a Russian conspiracy.
Savchenko’s sister Vera, as reported by RT, says she expects Ukraine’s international “partners” and particularly the US to react to her sister’s arrest. “I would like to look at the reaction of those people, who fought for her [Nadezhda Savchenko], of the US representatives… I would like to see the reaction of these people to the actions of our corrupt authorities.”
She shouldn’t build her hopes up. What’s happened to Ukraine is very similar to the outcome of other US-backed regime-change operations. A government that doesn’t do what the State Department wants is removed, then the country descends into chaos. Living standards plummet as wages fall and prices rocket and everyday life becomes much harder for ordinary people. Meanwhile, the US and its allies (and establishment-friendly media) have turned their attention to another country that needs ‘sorting out.’ We saw this in Yugoslavia (Serbia), Iraq and Libya.
Ukraine’s sorry plight is only to be expected. Those who expected better should have been paying closer attention.
________________________
A former pilot with the Ukrainian military, who was once accused of shooting down MH17 plane in 2014, has died in an apparent suicide. He was flying his Su-25 on a combat mission on the day of the tragedy.
Vladislav Voloshin, the 29-year former pilot, died in his apartment in the city of Nikolayev on Sunday from a gunshot wound. The incident has been described by the Ukrainian police as a suicide. According to the police, his wife heard a shot from another room and the man was rushed to a hospital but succumbed to his injuries later.
Law enforcement recovered a PM pistol with filed-off numbers from the scene and sent it to a laboratory for tests. The former pilot has been “depressed” and showed “alarming tendencies,” police said, citing testimonies of his relatives.
While the incident was described as a “suicide,” a criminal investigation has been launched under the “premeditated murder” article of the Ukrainian penal code. The police said the investigation is “required by the procedure in such circumstances.”
Voloshin was thrust into the media spotlight in connection with the 2014 MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine. The aircraft went down on July 17, killing all 298 passengers and crew members on board, including 80 children.
In 2015, a key witness, Evgeny Agapov, an aviation armaments technician with the Ukrainian Air Force, testified that on July 17, 2014, a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 jet aircraft piloted by Voloshin “set out for a military task” and returned without munitions. Agapov has also claimed that the pilot returned from the sortie very agitated and told his colleagues that the plane was “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” The testimony fuelled a narrative that MH17 might have been downed by a Ukranian plane with an air-to-air missile, however, this was not backed by the material evidence available.
Coincidentally, Voloshin received the third class Order For Courage on July 19, 2014, only two days after the MH17 tragedy. Voloshin’s citation quite vaguely reads: “for personal courage and heroism shown while protecting the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
The decorated pilot, however, retired from the military in 2017, issuing an open letter, full of complaints about low pay, bad logistics and equipment, as well as other violations in the Ukrainian Air Force. Shortly after his retirement, Voloshin became a deputy director of the Nikolayev International Airport. Several months ago, he was promoted and became the acting director of the facility.
While Western media pinned the blame for the MH17 tragedy on the eastern Ukraine rebels and ultimately Moscow within hours after the crash, an investigation still did not yield any solid results. The Joint Investigation Team (JIT), consisting of multinational experts, including Dutch and Ukrainian ones, has not yet named any possible perpetrators. The most recent update on the investigation, released earlier this year, did not shed any light on the inquiry itself, only stating it was “extended until January 1, 2019” and would remain “a matter of a long period of time."
Forum — Charger les commentaires
-
