by Dr. Jack Rasmus, copyright July 2014
Source: teleSUR English
July 14, 2014
(Written for teleSUR English, which will launch on July 24)
“As the military crisis in the Ukraine has intensified with the fall of key rebel cities, like Slavyansk and Kramatagorsk, and as new decisive conflicts for the capitols of Donetsk and Lugansk regions are about to take place, in the West some are beginning to ask why Putin has not more directly intervened on behalf of the rebels in the eastern breakaway regions? After initially having mustered Russian forces on the eastern border of Ukraine late last winter, why has Putin pulled back and ordered them to ‘stand down’?
When the Ukraine crisis entered a new stage last February 2014, the question of the day five months ago was ‘would Putin and Russia’ directly intervene militarily’? Today the key question has become ‘why hasn’t Putin intervened’ and ‘why does it appear increasingly that he will not’?
Over the past decade, the USA built up its support among proto-fascist elements on the ground in the Ukraine, funding these forces to the tune of a US admitted $5 billion. It then elbowed aside EU negotiators and intervened directly last February, when it appeared the European Union was about to strike an economic deal that was not politically aggressive enough in the USA view.
The USA has clearly wanted political regime change all along, not just a favorable economic deal with Ukraine. The so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ initiated a decade ago had succeeded only in part in breaking the Ukraine from the Russian economic and political orbit. The Ukrainian crisis of 2013 offered a new opportunity to complete the unfinished political task of the Orange Revolution. But the Europeans, mired in their own economic problems, were not interested in taking the lead.
In her publicly much quoted statement. ‘fuck the EU’, made last February on the eve of the coup by the USA’s leading diplomat on the ground at the time, Virginia Nuland, the USA clearly assumed direct control of the Ukrainian intervention from the Europeans. The European Union, together with the European-led IMF, would henceforth be left to negotiate the economic bailout with the Ukraine. But the USA would now drive the political policy.
The dichotomy between the USA and the EU that erupted into full view with the February 2014 coup in Kiev, when the USA took charge ‘on the ground’ is still evident today: Since the May 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary elections the USA has continued to push for harsher economic sanctions against Russia while directing the new Ukrainian Poroshenko government to undertake more aggressive military action in the eastern regions of the Ukraine. In recent months, moreover, it has become further clear that USA military, CIA , and no doubt USA special forces advisors have been calling the shots on the ground militarily for the Poroshenko government. USA advisors have been flowing steadily into the Ukraine since last May. And shifts concerning Ukrainian military tactics and strategy against the eastern regions in recent months have almost always coincided with high ranking US politicians and USA-NATO military personnel visits to the Ukraine.
In contrast, the EU governments have been trying to keep the economic sanctions against Russia limited to select individuals instead of entire economic sectors in Russia, as the USA has proposed, while calling for a ceasefire and immediate negotiations between the parties.
Given the aggressive USA political policy toward the Ukraine today, the question is: ‘ Why has Putin not responded more aggressively to the threat of the now potential severing of the Ukraine from Russian economic and political interests’? Why has Russia not militarily intervened to date and appears, with every passing week, even less likely to do so?
The possible answers to Russia’s cautious, measured response to USA aggressive political and military policies in the Ukraine are several:
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Dr. Jack Rasmus @drjackrasmus
Jack Rasmus 
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