Beleaguered Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy is still on the road, having arrived in Turkey, where he had a meet and greet with of all people Mindichgate-incriminated Head of the Defense and Security Council of Ukraine Rustem Umerov supposedly to restart peace talks with Moscow. Umerov has recently been heard on the Mindichgate tapes discussing a corrupt deal on bulletproof vests. Zelenskiy needs the support of the military, but Umerov did not and certainly will not have now command or authority inside the military. That is the domain of Ukraine’s most popular political figure, Kiev’s ambassador to the UK, and former commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (UAF) Gen. Valeriy Zaluzhniy, fired by Zelenskiy last year.
Head of Zelenskiy’s Office of the President (OP) Andriy Yermak was reportedly in Washington speaking with the FBI, which has a hand in the opening of Mindichgate. He reportedly is now in London, where he is likely to meet with Zaluzhniy and British governmental figues, such as MI6’s new Ukrainian-British director (https://gordonhahn.substack.com/p/is-the-uk-readying-a-coup-option). With Zaluzhniy and the FBI, Yermak’s hand in the developing pre-coup or coup crisis is stronger than that of Zelenskiy, who is potentially isolated in Turkey with Umerov, a wholly unpopular figure in Ukraine and an ethnic Tatar to boot.
But the army is no longer Zaluzhniy’s to have without a fight. It is also the feifdom of the neofascists such as Azov and its founder Brig. Gen, Andriy Biletskiy, who heads a 20,000-strong Azov army corps as well as other Azov-dominated units.
There are also reports that the Secretary of the U.S. Army Dab Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Randy George are in Kiev and are then scheduled to head to Moscow! They may be in Kiev to deliver an ultimatum to Zelenskiy in the form of the reported new U.S.-Russian peace plan he will be required to sign or face the consequences (arrest, removal from office by impeachment or coup, assassination), perhaps explaining why Zelenskiy remains away in Istanbul. However, this may prove a fatal mistake, as he has left door open to machinations.
Tonight Kiev stands empty without its president, its presidential chief of staff, its Security and Defense Council chief, its energy minister (with the country in an energy crisis), and perhaps who knows who else. Last night, Energy Minister Svetlana Grinchuk, who also is implicated in Mindichgate, fled Ukraine, joining a full cohort of Kievan wanderers – Zelenskiy, Yermak, Umerov, Mindich himself, and his sidekick Tsukerman. They are going faster than American politicians to Epstein island. Ruslan Stefanchuk, the speaker of the badly splintered Rada, rocked by Mindichgate, and head of the Cabinet of Ministers, Yuliya Svyrydenko, in her post for less than a year remain if talking about civilian leaders. Military Intelligence (HRU) chief Kyryll Budanov, a creature of the CIA remains, as presumably do at least some members of the UAF’s General Staff, including its chair Mikhail Gnatov, who just a week ago asserted military over civilian authority to Zelenskiy’s face.
This would be an excellent time for some of these figures, who remain in Kiev, to author a coup, it would seem, perhaps with the backing of those U.S. Army officials in town. It probably will not happen tonight, but who knows? Maybe tomorrow night, when Zelenskiy and Umerov can be arrested, as some official sources say they will be doing. At present a coup to replace Zelenskiy gives everyone among the present moment’s main players something of what they want. Zelenskiy remains a free (if likely hunted) man. The West’s Project Ukraine is rid of him and can be moved to its next course of action within the framework of Russian and American demands and ultimata. Russia achieves its special military operation’s goals at least for now. (Neofascist or others’ countercoups can turn over the chessboard and bring real chaos ala Ukraine’s 17th century Great Ruin or 1917-1920). At any rate, as an old American saying goes: “Get while the getting is good.”
PREVIOUSLY:
Ukraine is in the midst of a political crisis – on top of military, financial, and electricity crises – that amounts to a pre-coup situation. Westerners have been under the delusion promoted by many so-called political scientists that Ukraine in 2004 and 2014 underwent what in the parlance are called ‚social revolutions‘ or ‚revolutions from below,‘ from society. As in the case oft he overthrow of the Soviet communist single-party system and the collapse of the Soviet state in 1991, this is a misnomer or, at the least, an overstatement. At the most, revolution was just part of the tale of these political transformations, which in fact were closer to coups and/or revolutions from above. In such cases, the matter of illegally overthrowing the government involves one regime- or state-based group replacing another in power (coup) or leading such an effort in ordert o fundamentally change the social, political, and economic order (revolution from above).
In the Soviet case, we witnessed a revolution from below, with a revolution from below nascen but aborted. In Ukraine 2004, there was a palace coup. In 2014, there was a coup supported by a nascent revolution from bleow that was coopted and so aborted. That Maidan ‚revolution‘ was partially a revolution from above in that part of the ruling elite, representing oligarchic interests, took control of the popular Maidan demonstrations. Subsequently, revolutionary ultranationalist and neofascist groups to a considerable degree from below, orchestrated a coup which it sparked by carrying out a false flag massacre of both demobnstrators and police and which it then blamed on Viktor Yanukovych’s ‚old regime.‘ However, the neofascists never superceded the oligarch element of the revolution from above. The two forces uneasily shared power, with the ultranationalists and neofascists given secondary positions fort he most part in the organs of coercion: police, military, and security organs. Thus, Right Sector founder and former ‚coordnator‘, Dmitro Yarosh, has repeatedly called for ‚finishing the nationalist revolution.‘
Today, Ukraine is suffering from a third post-Soviet crisis; one not yet a revolutionary situation but on the cusp of one. Ukraine is, however, already in a pre-coup situation. Former president Petro Poroshenko, his European Solidarity party, and other civilian opposition leaders are moving towards a removal of Zelenskiy from power by one method or another as the ‚Mindichgate‘ corruption scandal explodes on the background of collapsing battlefronts, a disintegrating army, and the prospect of a winter without electricity, heat, and other basic living needs. …..
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About the Author –
Gordon M. Hahn, Ph.D., is an Expert Analyst at Corr Analytics, www.canalyt.com. Websites: Russian and Eurasian Politics, gordonhahn.com and gordonhahn.academia.edu
Dr. Hahn is the author of the new book: Russian Tselostnost’: Wholeness in Russian Thought, Culture, History, and Politics (Europe Books, 2022). He has authored five previous, well-received books: The Russian Dilemma: Security, Vigilance, and Relations with the West from Ivan III to Putin (McFarland, 2021); Ukraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West, and the “New Cold War” (McFarland, 2018); The Caucasus Emirate Mujahedin: Global Jihadism in Russia’s North Caucasus and Beyond (McFarland, 2014), Russia’s Islamic Threat (Yale University Press, 2007), and Russia’s Revolution From Above: Reform, Transition and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime, 1985-2000 (Transaction, 2002). He also has published numerous think tank reports, academic articles, analyses, and commentaries in both English and Russian language media.
Dr. Hahn taught at Boston, American, Stanford, San Jose State, and San Francisco State Universities and as a Fulbright Scholar at Saint Petersburg State University, Russia and was a senior associate and visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Kennan Institute in Washington DC, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Center for Terrorism and Intelligence Studies (CETIS), Akribis Group.