Περί Ουκρανίας

[Costas]

Conflict Fatigue Deepens in East Ukraine, Just Days Before Vote

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ANDREW ROTH (ΝΥΤ) MAY 20, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine — Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday faced an unaccustomed wave of anger from residents who expressed frustration over the violence and instability in the region, particularly recent mortar attacks around the embattled city of Slovyansk that have damaged several homes and terrorized residents.

The separatist movement has been showing signs of strain since President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said this month that he intended to pull back his troops from the Ukraine border, encouraged a national dialogue and tentatively backed Ukraine’s coming presidential election. Steelworkers easily wrested control of the port city of Mariupol last week under the direction of Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who owns the mills where they work, and Mr. Akhmetov has continued to pressure the separatists.

Thousands of Mr. Akhmetov’s employees took part on Tuesday in highly choreographed rallies throughout the region, collectively known as Donbass, to show support for Ukrainian unity and to denounce the continuing unrest. But the turnout fell far short of the hundreds of thousands that Mr. Akhmetov had hoped would attend.

In Slovyansk, a center of rebel activity, the separatist mayor, Vyachislav Ponomaryov, was accosted by some of the 200 residents in attendance at what resembled an impromptu, open-air town meeting. They demanded he put an end to the violence, which continued Tuesday with mortar shelling and sporadic gunfire on the outskirts of the city.

Video of the meeting showed a somewhat flustered Mr. Ponomaryov pleading with residents “not to panic” and promising that they would be compensated for damage to their houses because of fighting between rebels and government forces.

The events suggest a deepening conflict fatigue among residents of the east, potentially giving an enormous lift to the provisional government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, as the authorities seek to carry out a successful presidential election on Sunday.

In Moscow, senior Russian officials had already indicated tentative support for the election and for national round-table talks aimed at settling the crisis, with representatives of the Donbass region and the Kiev government, though leaders of the rebel groups were not allowed to attend. The talks are aimed, in part, at drafting an agreement on increasing the authority of local governments.

In a sign, however, that the rebel movement is by no means collapsing, there were reports that gunmen had stormed at least a dozen polling stations in Donetsk and Luhansk on Tuesday, confiscating ballots and other election materials and terrifying workers preparing for Sunday’s vote. Election officials in Kiev have said there will be contingency plans, including alternate polling stations, for voters in disputed regions, but the reports of ballots being stolen at gunpoint illustrated the challenges facing the provisional Ukrainian government as it tries to install a new government with a vote that the world will view as legitimate.

One important factor is the increasingly vocal role of Mr. Akhmetov, who owns factories throughout the east and holds enormous sway in the region. For weeks, Mr. Akhmetov refrained from criticizing the separatists, choosing instead to issue statements in support of a peaceful, united Ukraine.

But on Monday, after separatists seized control of a railway line, Mr. Akhmetov issued a scathing statement accusing them of attempting the “genocide of Donbass.”

“I will not let Donbass be destroyed,” he said.

On Tuesday, workers at a steel mill in Mariupol and at a metalwork facility in the city of Yenakiyeve, the rough-hewed hometown of the ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, left work at noon to listen to speeches in support of Ukrainian unity.

In Donetsk, the regional capital, as many as 1,000 of Mr. Akhmetov’s employees gathered at the Donbass Arena, the local soccer stadium that he owns, to watch Mr. Akhmetov’s statement broadcast on a jumbo video screen.

Some waved orange flags of the local Shakhtar soccer team. Many of those who attended said they had been brought to the arena by bus and did not know why they were there. The event ended after about 20 minutes.

The action, and Mr. Akhmetov’s statement, prompted an angry response from leaders of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, including a threat by its chairman, Denis Pushilin, to nationalize Mr. Akhmetov’s businesses. It is not clear the group has the authority or the ability to take such a step.

In Kiev, officials stepped up preparations for the voting on Sunday, including a memorandum of peace and understanding adopted by Parliament that was intended to reassure the public that substantial government changes were being undertaken along with the election of a new president.

The resolution, which was approved with 252 votes in favor, included promises of constitutional overhauls and offered assurances about the status of the Russian language as well as the ability of local governments to grant official approval to other “minority” languages.

The Kremlin on Monday repeated a previous assertion that Mr. Putin had ordered a withdrawal of Russian troops from along the Ukrainian border, but Western officials said they still saw no indication of a pullback.

While Russia has seemed to back away from the possibility of military action in the east, officials continued to demand that Ukraine begin to pay an outstanding bill for Russian natural gas that the Kremlin says amounts to $3.5 billion.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television broadcast on Tuesday, the Russian prime minister, Dmitry A. Medvedev, said that Russia might be flexible on the timing of the payments but that the debt must be paid. He also noted that Ukraine had recently received billions of dollars in loan assistance from the International Monetary Fund.

Officials in Kiev dispute the price that Russia is demanding for the gas, and the acting Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, issued a statement on Tuesday suggesting that the matter would be brought to arbitration in a Stockholm court.

With the presidential election just days away, a compilation of three new polls released on Tuesday showed the billionaire confectioner Petro Poroshenko with a big lead over former Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko. Among voters who said they had already made up their minds, 53.2 percent supported Mr. Poroshenko, the polls found, enough to avoid a runoff.

David M. Herszenhorn reported from Kiev, and Andrew Roth from Donetsk, Ukraine.

ΥΓ. Σε μια ομιλία του στη Στοά του Βιβλίου ο Πασχάλης Κιτρομηλίδης είπε ότι ο Ευγένιος Βούλγαρης, όταν έφυγε από την Ελλάδα, κατέληξε στη Ρωσία, όπου η Αικατερίνη η Μεγάλη, που τότε προσπαθούσε να εκρωσίσει τη γη των Τατάρων, τον έκανε αρχιεπίσκοπο Σλαβινίου και Χερσώνος, και πρόσθεσε ότι το Σλαβίνιο αυτό είναι το σημερινό Σλαβυάνσκ.

 

[Palavra]

Και μια καθυστερημένη αναφορά στις ουκρανικές προεδρικές εκλογές και στο φασιστικό-ακροδεξιό στοιχείο: Το Σβόμποντα πήρε 1,16% ενώ ο ακόμα ακροδεξιότερος Δεξιός Τομέας πήρε 0,7%. Και οι δύο μαζί αθροιζόμενοι, ούτε 2%. Ας μην μπω και στις συγκρίσεις με την Ελλάδα και στεναχωρηθώ...

Σχετικό: Ukraine: The Antidote to Europe’s Fascists?, του Timothy Snyder.

[...]
The leaders of the European far right, helped by the recent woolly-headedness of much of the European left, are moving their peoples not back toward the nation-state (which is impossible) but toward Russian domination of Europe. Despite various disagreements, this is one point on which the European populists, fascists, and neo-Nazis agree: Putin is an admirable leader whose ideas on Europe are sound. Parties like the National Front, Britain’s UKIP, Italy’s Northern League, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, and Hungary’s Jobbik pose as nationalists while supporting the policies of a foreigner who makes no secret of his goal of dominating their lands.
[...]​

 

[Costas]

Ο αντι-Μαϊντανικός Peter Lee αυτοδιορθώνεται, όχι στο ίδιο το άρθρο τού Counterpunch (τόσος σεβασμός στους αναγνώστες;!) αλλά στο δικό του China Matters:

First, a correction. In the piece, I give credence to allegations that the Nachtigall Battalion (Ukrainian nationalists, largely Banderites, organized into a military unit under the direction of German military intelligence) participated in the first Lviv pogrom. These allegations are apparently false and the result of a Soviet forgery and disinformation campaign.

Και παρά τις κόντρες του με τον Timothy (που την πρώτη φορά τον λέει Thomas) Snyder, οι αναλύσεις τους για τον σημερινό ευρωπαϊκό φασισμό δεν διαφέρουν και τόσο. Επίσης, αποπειράται μια εξήγηση του χαμηλού ποσοστού της ακροδεξιάς στις προεδρικές εκλογές αναφέροντας το ποσοστό της στις βουλευτικές του 2012 (η Βουλή που προέκυψε τότε είναι η ίδια με τη σημερινή· δεν άλλαξε με την επανάσταση). Τέλος, εξηγεί τη γέννηση του ουκρανικού φασισμού μέσα από τη μέγγενη της σοβιετικής και της πολωνικής κυριαρχίας στον ουκρανικό εθνικισμό του Μεσοπολέμου.

Fascism: an “Ism” for the 21st Century
The Durability of Ukrainian Fascism
by PETER LEE / Counterpunch

Readers outside of Europe might not be aware of it, but spring is the fascist marching season in the Baltic republics.

In Estonia on February 16; February 16 & March 11 in Lithuania (anniversaries of 1918 and 1990 declarations of independence); and March 16 in Latvia (March 16, 1944 was first day the Latvian Legion fought alongside the Wehrmacht against the Red Army), local fascists parade to celebrate fascist principals and fascist heroes, most of whom collaborated in some ways with Nazi Germany during World War II while resisting the Soviet Union.

The big event for Ukrainian fascists is January 1, the anniversary of the birth of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959), leader of the OUN-B (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists—Bandera) fascist faction.

This year, 15,000 people marched by torchlight in Kyiv on January 1 to commemorate Bandera.

Eastern European fascism is a durable and alarmingly vital ideology. It is not just a matter of atavistic affection for Hitler and Nazism by bigoted cranks.

And Ukrainian fascism is more durable and vital than most. It was forged in the most adverse conditions imaginable, in the furnace of Stalinism, under the reign of Hitler, and amid Poland’s effort to destroy Ukrainian nationality.

Ukrainian nationalism was under ferocious attack between the two world wars. The USSR occupied the eastern half of Ukraine, subjected it to collectivization under Stalin, and committed repression and enabled a famine that killed millions. At first, the Soviets sought to co-opt Ukrainian nationalism by supporting Ukrainian cultural expression while repressing Ukrainian political aspirations; USSR nationalities policies were “nationalist in expression and socialist in essence”. Then, in 1937 Stalin obliterated the native Ukrainian cultural and communist apparatus in a thoroughgoing purge and implemented Russified central control through his bespoke instrument, Nikita Krushchev.

Meanwhile, the eastern [=western] part of the Ukraine was under the thumb of the Polish Republic, which was trying to entrench its rule before either the Germans or the Russians got around to destroying it again. This translated into a concerted Polish political, security, cultural, and demographic push into Ukrainian Galicia. The Polish government displaced Ukrainian intellectuals and farmers, attacked their culture and religion (including seizure of Orthodox churches and conversion into Roman Catholic edifices), marginalized the Ukrainians in their own homeland, and suppressed Ukrainian independence activists (like Bandera, who spent the years 1933 to 1939 in Poland’s Wronki Prison after trying to assassinate Poland’s Minister of the Interior).

Ukrainian nationalists, therefore, were unable to ride communism or bourgeois democracy into power. Communism was a tool of Soviet expansionism, not class empowerment, and Polish democracy offered no protection for Ukrainian minority rights or political expression, let alone a Ukrainian state.

Ukrainian nationalists turned largely toward fascism, specifically toward a concept of “integral nationalism” that, in the absence of an acceptable national government, manifested itself in a national will residing in the spirit of its adherents, not expressed by the state or restrained by its laws, but embodied by a charismatic leader and exercised through his organization, whose legitimacy supersedes that of the state and whose commitment to violence makes it a law unto itself.

That leader, at least for many Ukrainians of the fascist persuasion, was Stepan Bandera. The organization, his OUN-B faction.

This state of affairs persists in today’s successor to the OUN-B, Pravy Sektor, with its fascist trappings, leader cult, and paramilitary arm. The “mainstreaming” of the second major fascist grouping, Svoboda, looks more like a strategic repackaging in order to strive for greater electoral success by hiding its fascist antecedents.

So, unfortunately for apologists for the current Kyiv regime, the correct description of these two groups is not “nationalist” or “ultranationalist”; it is “fascist”. [Σωστό αυτό, με τον απαραίτητο αστερίσκο για το Σβόμποντα]

Fatally, the Ukrainian government has turned to fascist nationalism and heroes in order to forge a post-Soviet, essentially Ukrainian, identity for the post-1991 state.

In a recapitulation of a trend in eastern Europe to resurrect World War II era nationalist fascists—some of whom actively collaborated with the Nazis—as rallying points for anti-Russian sentiment, Bandera has also been adopted as a Ukrainian national hero: in 2010 President Yuschenko posthumously (and, according to a court in pro-Russian Donetsk, illegally) awarded Bandera the title of Hero of Ukraine.

The uncomfortable truth is that the government has invested enough effort into celebrating Bandera as a national hero that the epithet “Banderite” that pro-Russian elements apply to the Kyiv regime is not terribly far from the mark.

For obvious reasons, Russian propaganda has labored mightily to characterize Bandera as a Nazi, so that he can be condemned as a collaborator with Hitler in his war on the USSR and the world, and not an independence fighter against Russia and its brutal and extremely unpopular (for ethnic Ukrainians, at least) rule over eastern Ukraine.

Actually, Banderan fascism, with its focus on establishing a pure Ukrainian state, was only tangentially related to Hitler’s expansionist extravagances, which centered on an apocalyptic war against the “Judeo-Bolshevism” that, in Hitler’s view, stood between Germany and its rightful place as lord of a racially cleansed Europe and a global empire rivalling those of the United States and Great Britain.

Bandera was not an important Nazi collaborator, albeit because he was never given a real chance. Ukrainian independence activists of every stripe threw themselves at the Nazis in the Thirties, seeing Germany as the only force that could destroy both of their hated oppressors—Poland, for the western Ukrainians, and the USSR for the eastern Ukraine.

However, the Nazis were contemptuous of Slavs, who were assigned the role of hewers of wood and drawers of water in the new Aryan order. Ukrainian workers transported to Germany as laborers were subjected to miserable and degrading treatment as they sweated for the Reich.

The notorious ethnic Ukrainian “Galician SS” and “Nachtigall” and “Roland” military formations apparently were kept on a short leash by the Germans, did not accomplish a great deal during World War II, and only saw serious action when the Nazis got really desperate.

The Nazis were above all determined to keep a tight grip on Ukraine, which was a central region for their concept of a Slav-free Lebensraum for Germans and a key zone for their military operations against the USSR. They recognized that Bandera’s bedrock interest was in creating a Ukrainian state free of anyone’s control and were well aware of his tendency toward bloody mischief. The Nazis detained him for most of World War II and only released in a “too little too late” effort to slow up the Red Army as it drove Germany out of eastern Europe in 1945.

Post-war, a German officer made the telling observation that the war in the east was not lost at Stalingrad; it was lost “long before that—in Kiev, when we hosted the swastika instead of the Ukrainian flag!”

Stepan Bandera was an unapologetic fascist and terrorist whose OUN-B faction launched an unimaginably brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing campaign through slaughter during World War II. Yale historian Thomas [=Timothy] Snyder, who is an enthusiastic cheerleader for almost all things EuroMaidan, draws the line at exalting Bandera.

The Nazis killed tens of millions of anonymous strangers in the East as part of a war of conquest meant to Germanize Europe to the Urals; the Ukrainians of the OUN-B murdered tens of thousands of their neighbors while trying to rip a national state out of the social and political fabric of eastern Europe.

Like Hitler, Bandera was keen to purify the “homeland” of impure elements. Unlike Hitler, Bandera only had the chance to turn his fury on his enemies—primarily the Poles of Galicia–for a few months.

5000 Ukrainian police defected with their weapons to join Bandera’s faction as Nazi rule crumbled in Ukraine, and provided the muscle for the most notorious Bandera action of the Second World War: the massacre of Poles in what is now western Ukraine.

Historians generally agree that Bandera’s forces committed systematic atrocities in order to institute a reign of terror that would drive out the Poles out.

Norman Davies:

Villages were torched. Roman Catholic priests were axed or crucified. Churches were burned with all their parishioners. Isolated farms were attacked by gangs carrying pitchforks and kitchen knives. Throats were cut. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were cut in two. Men were ambushed in the field and led away.

Timothy Snyder:

Ukrainian partisans burned homes, shot or forced back inside those who tried to flee, and used sickles and pitchforks to kill those they captured outside. In some cases, beheaded, crucified, dismembered, or disemboweled bodies were displayed, in order to encourage remaining Poles to flee.

Various estimates calculate that somewhere between 35,000 and 100,000 Poles died in the Bandera terror.

Bandera’s champions point to the fact that he was still in German detention when the massacres took place and there is no evidence that he explicitly ordered the massacres. But given his ideology, his detestation of the Poles, and his role as the charismatic leader of his faction, it seems unlikely his subordinates undertook this massive enterprise on their own initiative.

One of Bandera’s lieutenants was Roman Shukhevych. In February 1945, Shukhevych issued an order stating, “In view of the success of the Soviet forces it is necessary to speed up the liquidation of the Poles, they must be totally wiped out, their villages burned … only the Polish population must be destroyed.”

As a matter of additional embarrassment, Shukhevych was also a commander in the Nachtigall (Nightingale) battalion organized by the Wehrmacht.

Today, a major preoccupation of Ukrainian nationalist historical scholarship is beating back rather convincing allegations by Russian, Polish, and Jewish historians that Nachtigall was an important and active participant in the massacre of Lviv Jews orchestrated by the German army upon its arrival in June 1941. [Βλ. Correction στην αρχή της ανάρτησης]

It’s an uphill battle. Bandera had classified Jews as “second order enemies” thanks to their perceived role as collaborators and adjuncts to the Polish and Russian strategy of “divide and conquer” against Ukrainian nationalism. Anti-Semitism, indeed, is a staple of modern Ukrainian fascism and has undoubtedly contributed to the emigration of 60% of Ukraine’s Jews—340,000 people—since independence.

Shukhevych remains a hero to Ukrainian fascists today. Most importantly—since Bandera was assassinated in Munich by the USSR in 1959 and left no issue—he serves as the direct lineal ancestor of Ukraine’s key fascist formation, Pravy Sektor.

In February 2014, the New York Times’ Andrew Higgins penned a rather embarrassing passage that valorized the occupation of Lviv—the Galician city at the heart of Ukrainian fascism, the old stomping grounds of Roman Shukhevych and the Nachtigall battlaian, and also Simon Wiesnthal’s home town—by anti-Yanyukovich forces in January 2014:

Some of the president’s longtime opponents here have taken an increasingly radical line.

Offering inspiration and advice has been Yuriy Shukhevych, a blind veteran nationalist who spent 31 years in Soviet prisons and labor camps and whose father, Roman, led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army against Polish and then Soviet rule.

Mr. Shukhevych, 80, who lost his sight during his time in the Soviet gulag, helped guide the formation of Right Sector, an unruly organization whose fighters now man barricades around Independence Square, the epicenter of the protest movement in Kiev.

https://johnib.wordpress.com/tag/yuriy-shukhevych/

Yuriy Shukhevych’s role in modern Ukrainian fascism is not simply that of an inspirational figurehead and reminder of his father’s anti-Soviet heroics for proud Ukrainian nationalists. He is a core figure in the emergence of the key Ukrainian fascist formation, Pravy Sektor and its paramilitary.

And Pravy Sektor’s paramilitary, the UNA-UNSO, is not an “unruly” collection of weekend-warrior-wannabes, as Mr. Higgins might believe.

UNA-UNSO was formed during the turmoil of the early 1990s, largely by ethnic Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet Union’s bitter war in Afghanistan. From the first, the UNA-UNSO has shown a taste for foreign adventures, sending detachments to Moscow in 1990 to oppose the Communist coup against Yeltsin, and to Lithuania in 1991. With apparently very good reason, the Russians have also accused UNA-UNSO fighters of participating on the anti-Russian side in Georgia and Chechnya.

After formal Ukrainian independence, the militia elected Yuriy Shukhevych—the son of OUN-B commander Roman Shukhevych– as its leader and set up a political arm, which later became Pravy Sektor.

Also after independence in 1991, the unapologetically fascistic Social Nationalist Party—with, inevitably, its own paramilitary, Patriots of Ukraine—was set up under the leadership of Andriy Parubiy.

Parubiy left the Social Nationalist Party in 2004, when it became the vehicle for the political aspirations of Oleh Tyahnybok and became the Svoboda Party. Parubiy’s motivations are relatively opaque, but I would argue he left to become the fascist Trojan horse inside Yulya Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party. Indeed, while Timoshenko’s political clout dwindled during her imprisonment, Parubiy was a key organizer of “volunteers” at Maidan and emerged as the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, charged with handling the “anti-terrorist” operations in the east.

Rather Panglossian analyses of Ukranian fascism usually take as their point of departure the dismal showing of Pravy Sektor and Svoboda in the 2014 presidential election.

The two fascist parties polled less than 2% combined in the 2014 presidential poll. However, this is probably a misleading indicator of their strength. Pravy Sektor’s Yarosh had announced he wouldn’t run an active campaign, presumably as part of a deal at the behest of EuroMaidan’s Western backers to help Petro Poroshenko avoid a run-off with Yulya Tymoshenko. As for Tyahnybok, Svoboda got 10% of the vote in the parliamentary elections of 2012, and it seems implausible that his backing has completely collapsed after his high-profile role in the triumphant Maidan troika together with Klitschko and Yatsenyuk.

In any case, as noted above, fascists do not regard the state, its constitution, and the electoral process as the vehicle for Ukrainian national aspirations. That role is reserved for the leader, the party, and the paramilitaries. What matters to fascists is their influence in the affairs of the nation, and in Ukraine that influence is significant.

When eastern Ukraine rose up, the current Kyiv government, admittedly laboring under significant disabilities of illegitimacy, incompetence, and penury, has experienced immense difficulties in rallying a multi-ethnic Ukrainian nation. It was almost a foregone conclusion that fascist paramilitaries would be called upon to supplement or even replace the wavering regime forces in the field.

In an eerie—well, perhaps, predictable—recapitulation of the OUN-B’s opportunistic military collaboration with the Wehrmacht, Pravy Sektor leader Dmytro Yarosh organized the “Donbass Batallion” to assist the Ukrainian government’s operations in the east. Pravy Sektor leaders and rank and file have also apparently augmented if not formed the oligarch-funded Dniepr Battalion–currently one of the few military formations operating in the east that is reliably and brutally loyal to the Kyiv regime.

Even though it is plausibly alleged that Russia is inciting and abetting resistance, local resentment against Kyiv and its heavy-handed tactics is undeniably present and apparently increasing, and perhaps with it the need for fascist backbone and muscle to subjugate the unruly east.

The optimistic European scenario is for Ukraine’s barely acknowledged fascist problems to melt away as European integration and prosperity do their moderating work, and Ukraine emerges as another Poland: politically stable, united, democratic, and reliably anti-Russian.

However, it is an ugly truth that Poland had its issues of national identity resolved by Hitler, Stalin, and the Holocaust, which stripped away the complicating nationalities issues posed by its German, Ukrainian, and Jewish populations. Before World War II, one-third of Poland’s population was “minorities”. Today, Poland is 96% “Polish”.

Ukraine, on the other hand, carries a legacy of division thanks to the USSR’s administration of eastern Ukraine before World War II, and Russian domination of the Kiev elite during the Soviet period. About 18% of Ukrainians are ethnic Russian; but 30% of the population is native-Russian speaking. In the western oblasts currently battling Kyiv, the percentage of Russian speakers ranges from 72% (Dnipropetrovsk) to 93% (Donetsk). Crimea, now annexed to Russia, was 97%.

Unless the Kyiv regime unwittingly solves its problem by escalating the crisis to the point that Russia annexes the eastern oblasts and removes Russian Ukrainians from the nationalist equation, a plausible forecast for Ukraine is failure, polarization, poverty, violence—and fascist political success as Russian ethnic and linguistic identity become signifiers for looming threats to the Ukrainian state.

But in evaluating the outlook for fascism in Europe, it is a mistake to think fascists are just fighting the last war—finishing up the de-Bolshevization and de-Russification of eastern Europe that Hitler was only able to begin.

Communism isn’t the only light that’s failing.

Ukrainian fascists love the Russia-hammering NATO, but detest the Russia-accommodating and supra-nationalistic EU.

And they aren’t alone. Fascism—and anti-EU sentiment—pervade parts of Europe that never felt Stalin’s wrath. In the last elections for the European Parliament, “eurosceptics” and xenophobic ultra-nationalists scored significant gains, led by Marine Le Pen, whose National Front took 25% of the French seats.

A lot of it has to do with the equivocal track record of globalized neo-liberal capitalism in the last decade. We’re all Pikettyists now, and it seems that among the most important outcomes of neo-liberalism are income inequality and oligarchs.

It is anathema to liberal democrats, but it should be acknowledged that fascism is catching on, largely as a result of a growing perception that neo-liberalism and globalization are failing to deliver the economic and social goods to a lot of people.

Democracy is seen as the plaything of oligarchs who manipulate the current system to secure and expand their wealth and power; liberal constitutions with their guarantees of minority rights appear to be recipes for national impotence. Transnational free markets in capital and goods breed local austerity, unemployment, and poverty. Democratic governments seem to follow the free market playbook, get into problems they can’t handle, and surrender their sovereignty to committees of Euro-financiers.

Fascism, with its exaltation of the particular, the emotional, and the undemocratic provides an impregnable ideological and political bulwark against these outside forces.

Fascism has become an important element in the politics of resistance: a force that obstructs imposition of the norms of globalization, and an ideology that justifies the protection of local local interests against the demands of liberal democracy, transnational capital, and property and minority rights.

Maybe it’s neo-liberalism, not fascism, that is facing a crisis of legitimacy and acceptance.

So the idea that fascism can be treated as a delusional artifact of the 20th century and the challenge of fascism to the neo-liberal order can be ignored is, itself, wishful thinking.

Even if the European Union grows and flourishes, it will continue to have a hard time outrunning the perception that it delivers its benefits preferentially to a limited subset of nations, corporations, and individuals, at the expense of the many.

In eastern Europe, add to the incendiary mix the perception that the EU, that bastion of liberal democratic and free market ideals, has very little will or even interest in standing up to Russia.

This sentiment will not exclusively spawn benign “Green” and “Occupy” progressive movement, that combine their allegiance to democracy and human and individual rights with their well-earned reputations for internal division, political impotence, and unwillingness to confront.

For some, resentment will, inevitably, congeal around nationalism and the perception that fascist resistance, defiantly militant, uncompromising, and irrational, racial and undemocratic, exclusionary and brutal, is the best instrument to achieve local identity and agency—power– in an ever bigger, more dangerous, and less responsive continental order.

Fascism, I’m afraid, isn’t just part of Europe’s past; it’s part of Europe’s future.

 

[Costas]

Ο Ζίζεκ για την Ουκρανία (London Review of Books / Guardian):

Why both the left and right have got it wrong on Ukraine
There's a historical irony in watching Ukrainians tearing down Lenin’s statues as a sign of their will to break with Soviet domination

(...)
The entire European neo-fascist right (in Hungary, France, Italy, Serbia) firmly supports Russia in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis, giving the lie to the official Russian presentation of the Crimean referendum as a choice between Russian democracy and Ukrainian fascism. The events in Ukraine – the massive protests that toppled Yanukovich and his gang – should be understood as a defence against the dark legacy resuscitated by Putin.

The protests were triggered by the Ukrainian government’s decision to prioritise relations with Russia over integration into the European Union. Predictably, many anti-imperialist leftists reacted to the news by patronising the Ukrainians: how deluded they are still to idealise Europe, not to be able to see that joining the EU would just make Ukraine an economic colony of western Europe, sooner or later to go the same way as Greece.

In fact, Ukrainians are far from blind about the reality of the EU. They are fully aware of its troubles and disparities: their message is simply that their own situation is much worse. Europe may have problems, but they are a rich man’s problems.
(...)
Europe can see in the Ukrainian protests its own best and worst sides, its emancipatory universalism as well as its dark xenophobia.

Let’s begin with the dark xenophobia. The Ukrainian nationalist right is one instance of what is going on today from the Balkans to Scandinavia, from the US to Israel, from central Africa to India: ethnic and religious passions are exploding, and Enlightenment values receding.
(...)
Έχει επίσης ένα έξυπνο πολιτικό ανέκδοτο της ύστατης σοβιετικής περιόδου:

Rabinovitch, a Jew, wants to emigrate. The bureaucrat at the emigration office asks him why, and Rabinovitch answers: ‘Two reasons. The first is that I’m afraid the Communists will lose power in the Soviet Union, and the new power will put all the blame for the Communists’ crimes on us, the Jews.’ ‘But this is pure nonsense,’ the bureaucrat interrupts, ‘nothing can change in the Soviet Union, the power of the Communists will last for ever!’ ‘Well,’ Rabinovitch replies, ‘that’s my second reason.’

 

[panadeli]

The entire European neo-fascist right (in Hungary, France, Italy, Serbia) firmly supports Russia in the ongoing Ukrainian crisis

as well as the Greek left.

 

[Costas]

Defying Russia, Ukraine Signs E.U. Trade Pact (NYT)

 

[Costas]

Donetsk becomes a ghost town as fearful residents flee conflict
Three months into crisis, businesses have closed, ATMs have run out of cash, and flowers are a guilty pleasure
(Alec Luhn in Donetsk / The Guardian)

 

[Costas]

Να κι ένα σύνθημα από τα Προπύλαια:



Βστάβαι Ντόνμπαςς

For the all-important national anthem, the breakaway republics favour old favourites such as the Soviet ‘Vstavai, strana ogromnaya!’ (‘Arise, vast country!’), but the Donetsk People’s Republic now has its very own (albeit still unofficial) anthem – ‘Arise, Donbas’ (original and covered) – courtesy of Donetsk punk rock band Den Triffidov (Day of the Triffids).
Maxim Edwards
openDemocracy | 9 June 2014

 

[Costas]

Η πολιτική κατάσταση στην Ουκρανία μετά την παραίτηση του πρωθυπουργού Γιατσένιουκ, από την Kyiv Post.

 

[Costas]

A Test for Ukraine in a City Retaken From Rebels
ANDREW HIGGINS / NYT AUG. 1, 2014

SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — When Denis Bigunov, a civil servant, recently returned to work after a long break, he found three prisoner’s hoods wrapped in masking tape stashed in his office at City Hall, sinister mementos left behind by the pro-Russian rebels who controlled this eastern Ukrainian city for nearly three months.

He donated the hoods to the local history museum “to remind people what really happened” here after masked gunmen seized control on April 12 and, cheered on initially by many residents, began a brutal drive to create a new order rooted in fanatical loyalty to Russia.

With the city now back in government hands and the Ukrainian military advancing steadily against other nearby settlements that had fallen earlier this year to the pro-Russian cause, Slovyansk has become a test of whether the central government in Kiev can both win on the battlefield and win back the loyalties of its rebellious east.

“We can’t just liberate these places by force of arms but need to change people’s thinking,” said Anton Gerashenko, an Interior Ministry official from Kiev who visited Slovyansk last week. He came to preside over the exhumation of corpses from a mass grave that he said had been left behind by the rebels before they fled south on July 5 to the city of Donetsk, which is still held by separatists.

After a day of digging, workers equipped with a bulldozer and shovels unearthed 14 decomposing bodies, each wrapped in a flimsy white shroud.

As it struggles to secure the consent, if not yet the trust, of Slovyansk’s largely ethnic Russian population, Ukraine has found that its best weapon has been provided by the rebels themselves — a legacy of violent thuggery and chaos that alienated just about everyone.

“It was a horror, a total horror,” said Arkady Glushenko, the chief surgeon at the Lenin Hospital, the city’s biggest. “Nobody wants a repeat of that.”

Another powerful tool in the hands of the Ukrainian authorities is the fear many residents have of retribution for their collaboration with the toppled pro-Russian leadership.

The new authorities, promising anonymity, have set up a hotline for residents to inform on rebel collaborators, and they have printed fliers warning that a new law mandates up to 15 years in jail for separatism. “Of course people are afraid,” Dr. Glushenko said. “They are frightened of being punished.”

Although a firm believer that Ukraine must stay united, and proud of his two sons in the Ukrainian military, the surgeon warned that vengeance against collaborators must be kept in check. He said he had stayed in Slovyansk throughout the period of separatist control and had often treated wounded rebels, not because he wanted to but because he had to. “You don’t argue with a Kalashnikov,” he said.

When the rebels first seized Slovyansk in April, they hoisted Russian flags, arrested the elected mayor, hunted down traitors and proclaimed the city a “great symbol of the struggle for human dignity.” Thousands of residents thronged a large square in front of City Hall to welcome the pro-Russian putsch, chanting “Russia, Russia” and posing for photographs with gunmen they hailed as their saviors from the fascists who had seized power in Kiev with the February ouster of President Victor F. Yanukovych, a Russian-speaker from Donetsk.

After pro-Russian gunmen fled as the Ukrainian military advanced, many of the same people rushed into the same square to greet Ukrainian military trucks as soldiers handed out free food. Virtually nobody now admits to having supported the separatists.

“They are happy to welcome whoever gives them food,” said Konstantin Batozsky, an aide to the Kiev-appointed governor of the Donetsk region, which includes Slovyansk.

The Ukrainian authorities have restored electricity, water, salaries to municipal workers and pension payments to the older Ukrainians, who now make up around half the city’s shrunken population of roughly 80,000, around two-thirds the number who lived here before the rebels took control.

They have also flooded the city with troops, some of them poorly trained irregulars, and strengthened the local police force — its loyalty somewhat suspect — with officers from western regions of Ukraine where anti-Russian sentiment is strong.

Ukraine has been helped in an odd way by Russia, whose tightly controlled news media has issued a series of hair-raising stories alleging Ukrainian atrocities that have made locals only more wary of bucking the new authorities. LifeNews, a Russian television channel, broadcast a report titled “Witch Hunting,” saying that Slovyansk was being turned into a huge prison camp like Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States detains terrorists. Channel One, in a particularly gruesome piece of propaganda, reported that Ukrainian troops had crucified a 3-year-old boy in front of his mother in the central square.

Even locals who detest the Ukrainian government in Kiev, the capital, dismiss the crucifixion story as a grotesque lie. Until the Russian TV report, nobody here had ever heard of any such incident.

True or not, Russian propaganda has helped halt open resistance to the new Ukrainian order. Residents who actively supported the rebels have nearly all fled.

“You would have to be an idiot to stay here,” Lybova Nazarayeva, the director of an orphanage that suffered heavy damage when Ukrainian forces began shelling a rebel base next door, said of the pro-Russian residents. “You would only get killed or arrested. They all left for Donetsk.”

Loudspeakers atop City Hall, used by the rebels to play Soviet-era martial music, now blast Ukrainian state radio. Big posters have gone up across the city proclaiming that “Slovyansk is Ukraine.”

But long-closed Soviet-era factories that once dominated the local economy are still rotting away and many other businesses have shut, their premises scarred by shrapnel and bullets. There is no mood of joyous celebration at what Ukrainian officials trumpet as the city’s “liberation.”

Anger and animosity bubbles just below the calm surface. In each workplace, everyone knows who did what during rebel rule, creating poisonous currents of suspicion.

Nikolai Mishkin, a technician at a communal heating plant here, said his boss had worked zealously with the rebels, even inviting them to store their armor in the plant’s courtyard and climb its brick chimney to scout Ukrainian military positions. “He was very aggressive in his enthusiasm,” Mr. Mishkin said, adding that he had not seen his boss since Ukraine’s forces arrived.

Local residents who suffered under rebel rule complain that Ukrainian authorities have not done enough to punish residents who sided with the separatists. A group of local pro-Ukrainian activists gathered outside City Hall last week to demand a thorough purge of all officials who collaborated with the rebels.

The only prominent figure who is known to have been arrested so far by the Ukrainians is Nelly Schtepa, the former mayor, who initially supported the pro-Russian gunmen but then spent nearly three months locked up by the rebels in City Hall. She is now being held by Ukrainian authorities in Kharkiv, the largest city in eastern Ukraine, awaiting trial on charges of separatism.

Interviewed last week by monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Ms. Schtepa admitted making statements that supported the rebel cause but said she had been forced to do so by her rebel captors, who she said had beaten and tortured her. A rebel-designated “people’s mayor” who replaced her is missing and is widely believed to have escaped to Donetsk.

The organization for security said the Kharkiv detention center where Ms. Schtepa was being held now was clean and well-kept, unlike the filthy City Hall cellar where she and many other prisoners had been held. Rebels also used that basement for target practice, leaving the floor littered with spent cartridges.

The new police chief of Slovyansk, Igor Ribalchenko, said investigators had started collecting information about residents suspected of actively supporting the rebels but added that the widespread collaboration of ordinary people would not be punished.

“Most people were simply afraid because there were armed terrorists walking around” and they had no choice but to obey, he said. He said that eight police officers who had openly sided with the rebels had fled. An Interior Ministry commission is investigating the rest of the 300-member force. The police chief added that he saw no need for a sweeping purge of the force, despite the fact that its officers put up no resistance when rebels seized the city and then helped them solidify their power.

This cautious stand has infuriated people like Victor Butko, the owner of a printing business and editor of a small local newspaper shut by the rebels. Grabbed by pro-Russian gunmen before the arrival of Ukrainian troops, he was held for days in a fetid cellar beneath the local headquarters of the state security service.

Passing three police officers guarding the mass grave left by the rebels last week, Mr. Butko cursed them for not resisting the separatists, shouting: “You are to blame for all this. You all did nothing. You should have picked up your guns and shot them.”

The officers looked at their feet nervously.

As some residents who fled during the rebel occupation trickle back home, a semblance of normal life slowly returns. But, Mr. Butko predicted it would take a generation before Slovyansk shook off its flirtation with Russian nationalism. “The biggest problem here is not economics or anything physical,” he said. “It is moral. The problem here is in people’s heads.”

 

[Costas]

Έκθεση της Διεθνούς Αμνηστείας: Abductions and Torture in Eastern Ukraine

 

[Costas]

Η επικαιρότητα της Ουκρανίας έφτασε και στους τοίχους της Πλάκας, μέσω Τομ:

 

[nickel]

Καλημέρα. Βάλτε τώρα που βράζει. Μου είπαν ότι αυτό το άρθρο του Νιλ Φέργκιουσον είναι καλογραμμένο.


Financial Times: August 1, 2014 6:29 pm
War: In history’s shadow

By Niall Ferguson
It is dangerous to believe that the skirmish in Ukraine will not develop into a calamity
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9c62a0a0-18ad-11e4-a51a-00144feabdc0.html

 

[Costas]

(Το άρθρο που λινκάρισες είναι πίσω από "χρηματότοιχο";)

Ukraine Strategy Bets on Restraint by Russia
By ANDREW E. KRAMER (ΝΥΤ)
DONETSK, Ukraine — The warnings from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the White House over the past week could not have been graver in tone: The Russian Army, they said, had massed enough forces on the border with Ukraine to invade.

The last time Russian troops appeared to menace Ukraine, in the spring, the Ukrainian military quickly halted attacks on pro-Russian separatists to avoid the chance of touching off a new war in Europe. Not this time.

Buoyed by successes against the separatists over the past two months — and noting that the Russians have threatened an invasion in the region before without following through — Ukrainian commanders have pressed ahead with an offensive to drive the rebels from their stronghold in Donetsk in the east.

The army continued to fire artillery into the city nightly, and paramilitary groups raided outlying villages despite warnings from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that he could intervene at any time to protect Ukrainians who favor closer ties with his country. And the Ukrainians have flaunted their victories.

When pro-Ukrainian militiamen reclaimed the village of Marinka from pro-Russian forces, they captured the action with a GoPro camera mounted on a fighter’s shoulder. The video showed them marching into the village, yelling and waving their rifles in the air, firing wildly.

Despite growing jitters in the West, Ukraine’s military leaders say they are making a well-calculated gamble, betting that Mr. Putin feels he has too much to lose to invade, including the possibility of crippling international sanctions. So while Western officials view each new Ukrainian artillery barrage in Donetsk as drawing the country closer to the brink, the Ukrainians see their unchecked advance as further confirmation that Mr. Putin is mobilizing troops only as a scare tactic to keep them from reclaiming territory.

The government in Kiev is “calling Putin’s bluff,” said Oleh Voloshyn, a former Ukrainian diplomat, who said political leaders dismissed Mr. Putin’s moves as “psychological pressure.”

“If we pause, it would show Putin that any time he puts troops on the border, we will stop,” Mr. Voloshyn said.

Ukraine was given just that option on Saturday when a separatist leader, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, offered what appeared to be an unconditional cease-fire to prevent a large-scale “humanitarian catastrophe.” On Saturday night, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s minister of the interior said Ukraine would not halt its offensive.

As Ukraine continued its all-out assault, the international maneuvering over Ukraine’s fate continued.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, spoke by telephone with Secretary of State John Kerry and called for “urgent measures to prevent an impending humanitarian catastrophe.” The statement seemed to increase worries in the West that Russia might use the Ukrainian offensive as a convenient reason to send in troops — which it says are on exercises near the border — as a peacekeeping mission or to deliver humanitarian aid to areas under siege. Mr. Kerry cautioned Russia against intervening on the “pretext” of providing aid.

Statements issued by the White House said that President Obama had spoken with both Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and that all had agreed that any Russian intervention, “even under purported ‘humanitarian’ auspices,” without Ukrainian government agreement would violate international law.

Russia’s testiness over Ukraine’s boasts of increasing successes was clear on Saturday. A senior aide to President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine said that diplomatic consultations overnight Friday with unspecified foreign officials had halted a Russian military column approaching the border.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, shot back, saying “Kiev is more and more inventive in creating fairy tales,” according to Reuters.

If the Ukrainians’ calculations about Mr. Putin’s willingness to engage directly are wrong, Mr. Obama and other Western leaders will face yet another crisis at a time of mounting danger in Iraq and as hostilities between Israel and Hamas continue.

So far, despite growing anxiety, the West seems loath to try to stop the Ukrainians, particularly after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, for which the United States blames the separatists.

There are plenty of reasons for Mr. Putin to be wary about committing troops to a war.

The separatist zones of eastern Ukraine that were well defined just several months ago are now amorphous, with the front lines shifting after the Ukrainian military retook 75 percent of the territory initially seized by pro-Russian rebels.

Beyond that, loyalties in eastern Ukraine are split, increasing the risk that the portion of the population that supports Kiev would aid any insurgency against Russia should it invade. An invasion would also be costly, not only because of the likelihood of stiffened sanctions, but because it could plunge the region into an economic free-fall, bleeding funds from whichever country wins on the battlefield.

But Western leaders and analysts remain unconvinced Mr. Putin will be willing to be taunted endlessly or to permit extensive deaths of pro-Russian civilians. The United Nations said recently that at least 1,543 civilians and combatants on both sides have died since mid-April.

“The Russian president has a record of brash, emotional and forceful behavior, and he could just ‘go for it,’ ” Cliff Kupchan, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group, a risk analysis organization, wrote last week in an analysis published by the group. The Eurasia Group estimated the likelihood of a Russian invasion at about 35 percent.

Some of the only backers of the notion that Mr. Putin will surely not invade appear to be the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine who crave his help. Yuri, a commander of about 500 pro-Russian fighters defending Donetsk, said he does not believe the Russians will cross the border.

“Russia,” he said, “is afraid of starting World War III.”

For the moment, it is clear the Ukrainians are emboldened.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian military operation in the east, Col. Aleksei Dmitrashkivsky, said morale is high. “The threats to send Russian peacekeepers into Ukraine have been around since April, but nothing happens,” he said. “The Ukrainian Army is learning quickly how to fight. Volunteers who join the army want to defend this land. We are not afraid.”

The Ukrainian military strategy, commanders say, centers on encircling Donetsk to squeeze off the lifeline of supplies from the other separatist stronghold, the city of Luhansk, and from the Russian border. On Saturday, a rebel website, citing the separatist military commander Igor Strelkov, said the Ukrainian Army had cut off resupply routes.

The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern: The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar, followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk who are willing to plunge into urban combat.

Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times, uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a Swastika as its flag.

In pressing their advance, the fighters took their orders from a local army commander, rather than from Kiev. In the video of the attack, no restraint was evident. Gesturing toward a suspected pro-Russian position, one soldier screamed, “The bastards are right there!” Then he opened fire.

 

[Earion]

War: In History’s Shadow – Skirmish in Ukraine Could Develop Into a More Strategic Event by Niall Ferguson

..................................

As we commemorate the outbreak of the first world war, let no one swallow the old but tenacious lie that their “sacrifice” was a necessary and noble one. On the contrary, the war is best understood as the greatest error of modern history. That is a harsh truth that many historians still find unpalatable. But then, as AJP Taylor once observed, most people who study history only “learn from the mistakes of the past how to make new ones”.

 

[nickel]

(Το άρθρο που λινκάρισες είναι πίσω από "χρηματότοιχο";)

Δεν έχω πληρώσει δεκάρα για τη συνδρομή μου στους FT, πάντως. Και, ευχαριστούμε, Earion.

 

[Costas]

Δεν μπορώ να πω ότι με εντυπωσίασε η επιχειρηματολογία του άρθρου. Τι σχέση έχει η δολοφονία του αρχιδούκα της Αυστρίας το 1914 με την κατάρριψη του αεροπλάνου των Μαλαισιανών Αερογραμμών; Τέλος πάντων.

Φωτορεπορτάζ (23 φωτογραφίες) από την εκκένωση της πλατείας Μαϊντάν του Κιέβου προ ημερών. (Kyiv Post)

 

[Costas]

Press-freedom groups cry foul over Ukraine sanctions bill
(Transitions Online)
Press freedom watchdogs are urging the Ukrainian government to cancel parts of a pending sanctions bill targeted at Russia that would give the authorities broad control over the country’s media scene.

Lawmakers approved the first draft of the bill 12 August and will consider the legislation again 14 August, AFP reports.

The measure would affect “online broadcasts in the country, the Internet, and other means of communication,” according to a broadly worded government statement.

Dunja Mijatovic, who oversees media issues for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the legislation would allow authorities to ban or restrict television, radio, and Internet media, the print press, and telecommunications services.

Although it has not said so explicitly, the government is likely trying to block Russian broadcasts on its territory. Most of those broadcasts are of state-controlled media sympathetic to separatists in eastern Ukraine. When Crimea came under Russian control, one of its new authorities’ first acts was to shut down Ukrainian broadcasters and replace them with Russia-controlled media.

Reporters Without Borders protested the media provisions in the sanctions bill. Johann Bihr, director of the group’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk, said if passed the law would be “a major setback for freedom of information in Ukraine,” AFP reports.

Mijatovic said the restrictions represent “a clear violation of international standards and thus directly curtail the free flow of information and ideas.”

In addition to the media provisions, the measure would allow Ukraine’s courts to try in absentia those wanted for terrorism, war crimes, massacres, or crimes against the country’s security, and to seek to confiscate the global assets of those convicted, according to a separate government statement.

 

[Costas]

Τα απόνερα της Ουκρανικής κρίσης στην 41η Σκακιστική Ολυμπιάδα (στη Νορβηγία), που μόλις τελείωσε:
(Wikipedia)
On 16 July 2014, the organising committee announced that some national teams have missed the 1 June deadline to submit their team line-ups. They included Central African Republic, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Cambodia, Oman, Pakistan and Senegal in the open as well as Afghanistan and Russia in the women's section.[34][35] The organisers have also stated that the regulations regarding the deadline apply for all and no exemptions will be allowed to anyone. Particularly surprising was the disqualification of Russia's women team as reigning champions from the previous Chess Olympiad. The chess media linked the missed deadline with Lagno's case of changing the federation and reported that the Russian Chess Federation allowed the deadline to pass away until her transfer from Ukraine to Russia becomes official. Namely, Kateryna Lagno had to strengthen Russia's women team following the retirement of Nadezhda and Tatiana Kosintseva from the national team. FIDE sharply criticised the decision of the organisers not to allow these teams to compete at the Olympiad. FIDE Vice President Israel Gelfer said that the ultimate decision of allowing teams to compete lies in the hands of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov; in addition, he accused Garry Kasparov and advocated on cancelling the Olympiad. Gelfer said that the organising committee was influenced by people who are working for Kasparov and that they are using it for election purposes.[36] Kasparov promptly responded and referred to Gelfer's statements as 'bizarre', stating that to punish 175 teams for the mistakes of one is an absurd arrogance. He also criticised FIDE for allowing the Russian Chess Federation to violate the rules and receive an exception and said that it is real threat to the global chess community.[37] On 21 July, the organising committee informed FIDE President Ilyumzhinov that, while they stand by the interpretation of the regulations, they will allow the teams who have missed the 1 June deadline to play.[38]

Η ίδια υποστήριξε ότι η αλλαγή ομοσπονδίας είχε ξεκινήσει πριν από ένα χρόνο.
[Υπάρχουν αρμοδιότεροι από μένα γι' αυτά τα ζητήματα...]

 

[drsiebenmal]

[Υπάρχουν αρμοδιότεροι από μένα γι' αυτά τα ζητήματα...]

Δεν είναι εδώ η θέση, αλλά τέλος πάντων... :)

Για το θέμα που ανέφερες, Κώστα, ανήκει στα συνήθη βαρετά θέματα παγκόσμιας σκακιστικής πολιτικής, αλλά η ουσία είναι ότι ο Κασπάροβ (και οι διοργανωτές) δεν είχαν διαβάσει καν τους κανονισμούς που είχαν αναρτήσει στην ιστοσελίδα των αγώνων, σύμφωνα με τους οποίους σε μια τέτοια περίπτωση (καθυστέρηση ομάδας που έχει δηλώσει συμμετοχή αλλά δεν έχει δηλώσει σύνθεση) το θέμα λύνεται με ένα μικρό πρόστιμο --επειδή συνήθως συμβαίνει με μικρές και κακά οργανωμένες σκακιστικές δυνάμεις. (Το ξαναδιάβασαν όταν άρχισαν οι αγριάδες...)

Για μένα, το αξιοσημείωτο της Σκακιστικής Ολυμπιάδας που μόλις έληξε είναι η καθαρή νίκη, για πρώτη φορά, της Κίνας στους άνδρες (τους «ανοιχτούς» αγώνες, όπως ονομάζονται επειδή δεν υπάρχει περιορισμός φύλου στις συνθέσεις) μπροστά στην πάντα αξιόπιστη επισκέπτρια των θέσεων κορυφής Ουγγαρία (που θα πρέπει όμως να αντικαταστήσει εξίσου αξιόπιστα τη σκακίστρια θαύμα Τζούντιθ/Γιούντιτ Πόλγκαρ που ανακοίνωσε ότι μετά από αυτό το αργυρό μετάλλιο αποσύρεται από την αγωνιστική δραστηριότητα) και την (πραγματική έκπληξη στην κορυφή) Ινδία, τη χώρα όπου σύμφωνα με τους θρύλους γεννήθηκε το σκάκι ως τσατουράνγκα και η οποία βρέθηκε για πρώτη φορά τόσο ψηλά χάρη στη δύναμη των νέων σκακιστών της, βεβαίως, αλλά και τα τερτίπια του αγωνιστικού συστήματος και των κριτηρίων άρσης της ισοβαθμίας. Στις αμέσως επόμενες αντρικές θέσεις οι συνήθως ύποπτες για μετάλλια ομάδες της Ρωσίας, του Αζερμπαϊτζάν και της Ουκρανίας (2η ως 5η ομάδα είχαν ίδιο αριθμό νικών). Στις γυναίκες, τα πράγματα ήταν πιο φυσιολογικά, με πρώτη τη Ρωσία (αυτήν που χαρωπά προσπάθησαν να αποκλείσουν οι διοργανωτές), δεύτερη την Κίνα και τρίτη την Ουκρανία. Η εμφάνιση των δικών μας εθνικών ομάδων ήταν δυστυχώς η χειρότερη εδώ και πολλά, πάρα πολλά χρόνια.

Α, ναι, και στις εκλογές για την προεδρία της Διεθνούς Ομοσπονδίας, ο Κασπάροβ τις έχασε με 110-61, αποξενώνοντας με τη στάση του ακόμη και παραδοσιακές ομάδες του δυτικού κόσμου που ανήκουν συνήθως στην αντιπολίτευση (οι διεθνείς αθλητικές ομοσπονδίες σπανίως διοικούνται από εκπροσώπους χωρών του λεγόμενου πρώτου κόσμου, καθώς ισχύει η αρχή «μία χώρα, μία ψήφος»).