(Not So) Random Questions About Recent Ukraine Developments

by Gordon M. Hahn

• What does Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement that Donbass (Donetsk and Luhanks) should remain with Ukraine in an interview to Italian journalists Putin say about: (1) the alleged ‘Novorossiya project’; (2) Putin’s plan to restore the Soviet empire; and (3) Western – especially American – rusology, media, and academia?
• What does the DNR’s and LNR’s offer the next day to remain part of Ukraine say about: (1) the alleged ‘Novorossiya project’; (2) Putin’s alleged plan to restore the Soviet empire; and (3) Western – especially American – rusology, media, and academia?
• Does the DNR’s and LNR’s refusal to recognize Crimea as part of Russia say anything about: (1) the alleged ‘Russian war’ in Donbass; (2) Russia’s alleged control over the separatists; and (3) the separatists allegedly being comprised largely of Russian citizens and servicemen sent by Moscow to seize Donbass and Ukraine as part of a strategy for restoring the USSR?
• Why hasn’t the neo-liberal foreign policy orientation of the Barack Obama Administration led to pressure on Kiev to engage in ‘truth and reconciliation’ per South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commissions and has led instead to a mass lustration and a neo-fascist witch hunts against anti-Maidan elements, gays, and pro-Russian elements?
• Activists from the radical, neo-fascist Right Sector party have in recent days attacked a gay pride parade in Kiev, attempted to initiate another (“third”) Maidan revolution against Petro Poroshenko’s Miadan regime, and held a threatening neo-fascist march in Lviv, a hotbed of neo-fascism in Ukraine. Questions: Why hasn’t the leader of Right Sector Dmitro Yarosh been arrested? Why hasn’t the Poroshenko regime’s offer of a position as an advisor to the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff to Yarosh been withdrawn? Why hasn’t the Right Sector’s “Volunteer Ukrainian Corps” or DUK been unarmed or at least forced to be integrated into the regular armed forces? Why hasn’t a single U.S. official addressed these issues in a public statement?

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Gordon M. Hahn is an Analyst and Advisory Board Member of the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; Senior Researcher, Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group, San Jose, California Analyst/Consultant, Russia Other Points of View – Russia Media Watch; and Senior Researcher and Adjunct Professor, MonTREP, Monterey, California. Dr Hahn is author of three well-received books, Russia’s Revolution From Above (Transaction, 2002), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), which was named an outstanding title of 2007 by Choice magazine, and The ‘Caucasus Emirate’ Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland Publishers, 2014). He also has authored hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and other publications on Russian, Eurasian and international politics and wrote, edited and published the Islam, Islamism, and Politics in Eurasia Report at CSIS from 2010-2013. Dr. Hahn has been a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2011-2013) and a Visiting Scholar at both the Hoover Institution and the Kennan Institute.