Ukraina valde Ryssland före EU - stora protester som följd, länkar i inlägg2

On the eve of Saturday’s summit, Kolesnichenko, the Crimean lawmaker, suggested that such militias were needed to resist what he characterized as a “fascist rebellion prepared by Western instructors.” In an interview with Russia’s state-run paper of record on Friday, he posed a rhetorical question: “If I were to tell you that after the opposition comes to power … Nazi terrorist groups will appear on the border with Russia, would you believe me?”

Many of the people at the rally in Sevastopol were not just ready to believe. They were convinced of the imminent nationalist invasion. What scared them most were the right-wing political parties and militant groups that have played a role in Ukraine’s revolution. “What do you think they’re going to do with all those weapons they seized from police in Kiev? They’re going to come here and make war,” said Sergei Bochenko, who identified himself as the commander of a local militia group in Sevastopol called the Southern Russian Cossack Battalion.

In preparation, he said, his group of several hundred men had armed themselves with assault rifles and begun to train for battle. “There’s not a chance in hell we’re going to accept the rule of that fascist scum running around in Kiev with swastikas,” he said. That may be overstating the case. Nowhere in Ukraine has the uprising involved neo-Nazi groups, and no swastikas have appeared on the revolution’s insignia. But every one of the dozen or so people TIME spoke to in Sevastopol was certain that the revolt was run by fascists, most likely on the payroll of the U.S. State Department. That message has long been propagated in Russian state-run media, which millions of people in Crimea and eastern Ukraine rely on for information.

First, Mr. Yanukovych’s Party of Regions even turned against him, issuing a strongly worded statement that said he was responsible for the deaths last week and accusing him of betraying the country.

“The country finds itself deceived and robbed, but even this is nothing in comparison with the grief that dozens of Ukrainian families, who have lost their relatives, are feeling,” the party wrote in a statement on its website. “Ukraine has been betrayed. Viktor Yanukovych and his team are responsible for this.”

Lyudmila Matiyko is a scientist from Kiev.

"This should have happened months ago. Yanukovych is a coward. He has divided people. Not everyone agreed it should be through protests and violence, but everyone was united about the fact that he had to go.

He was twice sentenced to prison. The mayor was also sent to prison for something else. The people ruling our country were criminals. Can you imagine that happening in your country? It happens here because Ukraine is a very wealthy country and they are gangsters. I am suspicious of anyone in Ukraine who is incredibly rich.

I voted for Yulia Tymoshenko before, in 2004. She had the opportunity to make the right choices but she didn't free us from corruption. I am pessimistic about the future, I am not sure anything will really change, even after all this bloodshed."

The myth of prosperity to follow EU integration and bailouts is just that, a myth. The reality is pain and suffering on a scale far greater than the poverty and unemployment Ukraine, especially the western portion of the country, have already experienced. The most highly educated, those most equipped to take up the mantle of leadership, will flee en masse. Those leaders who remain will do so while lining their pockets and ingratiating themselves to the European and American financiers who will flock to Ukraine like vultures to carrion. In short, the corruption and mismanagement of the Yanukovich government will seem like a pleasant memory.

The “liberalization” that Europe demands will create massive profits for speculators, but very few jobs for working people. The best land will be sold to foreign corporations and land-grabbers, while the resources, including the highly regarded agricultural sector, will be stripped and sold on the world market, leaving farmers and city dwellers alike in grinding poverty, their children going to bed hungry. This will be the “success” of Ukraine. One shudders to think what failure would look like.

In Slovenia, another Eastern European country that has experienced the “success” Europe strives for, the economic dictates of Brussels have ravaged the country’s working people and its institutions. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a 2013 report in which it recommended that, as a first step, Slovenia act to “help the banking sector stand on its feet again,” adding that, “additional and radical measures are necessary as soon as possible.”

Furthermore, the OECD recommended the full privatization of Slovenia’s banks and other major firms, despite predicting a more than 2% contraction of the economy. In laymen’s terms, Europe recommends that Slovenia sacrifice itself and its people to the forces of international finance capital, nothing less. Such is the cost of European “integration.”

Russia has lashed out at the new regime in Kiev, accusing it of using “dictatorial” and “terrorist” methods to suppress dissent in the country, with backing from the West which is “acting out of geopolitical self-interest.”

“The position of some of our Western partners doesn’t show genuine concern, but a desire to act out of geopolitical self-interest,” said a statement on the Russian foreign ministry’s website.

“There is no condemnation of criminal actions by extremists, including manifestations or neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism. In fact, these are being encouraged.”