629 Putin defeats Western plan to colonise Ukraine - Israel Shamir

Putin defeats Western plan to colonise Ukraine - Israel Shamir

Newsletter published on 26 December 2013

(1) Putin defeats Western plan to colonise Ukraine - Israel Shamir
(2) Putin: Ukraine would have become "Agricultural Appendage" of EU
(3) Instructions for protesters in Ukraine are identical to those in
Egypt - Wayne Madsen
(4) Ukraine protests stoked by EU & US governments
(5) U.S. Ambassador meets Ukraine oligarch Dmytro Firtash
(6) Ukraine: The Myth of its Salvation through Western Investment (I)
(7) Maintaining Russian Power: How Putin Outfoxed the West
(8) Ukraine: Divided land, divided church
(9) Ukraine's Oligarchs hedge their bets, fearful of dispossession
(10) Ukrainian billionaire that nobody knows
(11) Firtash and other (disproportionately Jewish) Ukranian Oligarchs
(12) Ukraine's Jewish Billionaires - Jewish Russian Telegraph & JTA
(13) China land grab Ukraine

(1) Putin defeats Western plan to colonise Ukraine - Israel Shamir

israel shamir <israel.shamir@gmail.com> 20 December 2013 12:09

What really happened in the Ukrainian crisis

Putin scores a new victory in the Ukraine

By Israel Shamir

It is freezing cold in Kiev, legendary city of golden domes on the banks
of Dnieper River – cradle of ancient Russian civilisation and the most
charming of East European capitals. It is a comfortable and rather
prosperous place, with hundreds of small and cosy restaurants, neat
streets, sundry parks and that magnificent river. The girls are pretty
and the men are sturdy. Kiev is more relaxed than Moscow, and easier on
the wallet. Though statistics say the Ukraine is broke and its people
should be as poor as Africans, in reality they aren't doing too badly,
thanks to their fiscal imprudence. The government borrowed and spent
freely, heavily subsidised housing and heating, and they brazenly
avoided devaluation of the national currency and the austerity program
prescribed by the IMF. This living on credit can go only so far: the
Ukraine was doomed to default on its debts next month or sooner, and
this is one of the reasons for the present commotion.

A tug-of-war between the East and the West for the future of Ukraine
lasted over a month, and has ended for all practical purposes in a
resounding victory for Vladimir Putin, adding to his previous successes
in Syria and Iran. The trouble began when the administration of
President Yanukovich went looking for credits to reschedule its loans
and avoid default. There were no offers. They turned to the EC for help;
the EC, chiefly Poland and Germany, seeing that the Ukrainian
administration was desperate, prepared an association agreement of
unusual severity.

The EC is quite hard on its new East European members, Latvia, Romania,
Bulgaria et al.: these countries had their industry and agriculture
decimated, their young people working menial jobs in Western Europe,
their population drop exceeded that of the WWII.

But the association agreement offered to the Ukraine was even worse. It
would turn the Ukraine into an impoverished colony of the EC without
giving it even the dubious advantages of membership (such as freedom of
work and travel in the EC). In desperation, Yanukovich agreed to sign on
the dotted line, in vain hopes of getting a large enough loan to avoid
collapse. But the EC has no money to spare – it has to provide for
Greece, Italy, Spain. Now Russia entered the picture. At the time,
relations of the Ukraine and Russia were far from good. Russians had
become snotty with their oil money, the Ukrainians blamed their troubles
on Russians, but Russia was still the biggest market for Ukrainian products.

For Russia, the EC agreement meant trouble: currently the Ukraine sells
its output in Russia with very little customs protection; the borders
are porous; people move freely across the border, without even a
passport. If the EC association agreement were signed, the EC products
would flood Russia through the Ukrainian window of opportunity. So Putin
spelled out the rules to Yanukovich: if you sign with the EC, Russian
tariffs will rise. This would put some 400,000 Ukrainians out of work
right away. Yanukovich balked and refused to sign the EC agreement at
the last minute. (I predicted this in my report from Kiev full three
weeks before it happened, when nobody believed it – a source of pride).

The EC, and the US standing behind it, were quite upset. Besides the
loss of potential economic profit, they had another important reason:
they wanted to keep Russia farther away from Europe, and they wanted to
keep Russia weak. Russia is not the Soviet Union, but some of the Soviet
disobedience to Western imperial designs still lingers in Moscow: be it
in Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Venezuela or Zimbabwe, the
Empire can't have its way while the Russian bear is relatively strong.
Russia without the Ukraine can't be really powerful: it would be like
the US with its Mid-western and Pacific states chopped away. The West
does not want the Ukraine to prosper, or to become a stable and strong
state either, so it cannot join Russia and make it stronger. A weak,
poor and destabilised Ukraine in semi-colonial dependence to the West
with some NATO bases is the best future for the country, as perceived by
Washington or Brussels.

Angered by this last-moment-escape of Yanukovich, the West activated its
supporters. For over a month, Kiev has been besieged by huge crowds
bussed from all over the Ukraine, bearing a local strain of the Arab
Spring in the far north. Less violent than Tahrir, their Maidan Square
became a symbol of struggle for the European strategic future of the
country. The Ukraine was turned into the latest battle ground between
the US-led alliance and a rising Russia. Would it be a revanche for
Obama's Syria debacle, or another heavy strike at fading American hegemony?

The simple division into "pro-East" and "pro-West" has been complicated
by the heterogeneity of the Ukraine. The loosely knit country of
differing regions is quite similar in its makeup to the Yugoslavia of
old. It is another post-Versailles hotchpotch of a country made up after
the First World War of bits and pieces, and made independent after the
Soviet collapse in 1991. Some parts of this "Ukraine" were incorporated
by Russia 500 years ago, the Ukraine proper (a much smaller parcel of
land, bearing this name) joined Russia 350 years ago, whilst the Western
Ukraine (called the "Eastern Regions") was acquired by Stalin in 1939,
and the Crimea was incorporated in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by
Khrushchev in 1954.

The Ukraine is as Russian as the South-of-France is French and as Texas
and California are American. Yes, some hundreds years ago, Provence was
independent from Paris, - it had its own language and art; while Nice
and Savoy became French rather recently. Yes, California and Texas
joined the Union rather late too. Still, we understand that they are –
by now – parts of those larger countries, ifs and buts notwithstanding.
But if they were forced to secede, they would probably evolve a new
historic narrative stressing the French ill treatment of the South in
the Cathar Crusade, or dispossession of Spanish and Russian residents of
California.

Accordingly, since the Ukraine's independence, the authorities have been
busy nation-building, enforcing a single official language and creating
a new national myth for its 45 million inhabitants. The crowds milling
about the Maidan were predominantly (though not exclusively) arrivals
from Galicia, a mountainous county bordering with Poland and Hungary,
500 km (300 miles) away from Kiev, and natives of the capital refer to
the Maidan gathering as a "Galician occupation".

Like the fiery Bretons, the Galicians are fierce nationalists, bearers
of a true Ukrainian spirit (whatever that means). Under Polish and
Austrian rule for centuries, whilst the Jews were economically powerful,
they are a strongly anti-Jewish and anti-Polish lot, and their modern
identity centred around their support for Hitler during the WWII,
accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of their Polish and Jewish
neighbours. After the WWII, the remainder of pro-Hitler Galician SS
fighters were adopted by US Intelligence, re-armed and turned into a
guerrilla force against the Soviets. They added an anti-Russian line to
their two ancient hatreds and kept fighting the "forest war" until 1956,
and these ties between the Cold Warriors have survived the thaw.

After 1991, when the independent Ukraine was created, in the void of
state-building traditions, the Galicians were lauded as 'true
Ukrainians', as they were the only Ukrainians who ever wanted
independence. Their language was used as the basis of a new national
state language, their traditions became enshrined on the state level.
Memorials of Galician Nazi collaborators and mass murderers Stepan
Bandera and Roman Shukhevych peppered the land, often provoking the
indignation of other Ukrainians. The Galicians played an important part
in the 2004 Orange Revolution as well, when the results of presidential
elections were declared void and the pro-Western candidate Mr Yuschenko
got the upper hand in the re-run.

However, in 2004, many Kievans also supported Yuschenko, hoping for the
Western alliance and a bright new future. Now, in 2013, the city's
support for the Maidan was quite low, and the people of Kiev complained
loudly about the mess created by the invading throngs: felled trees,
burned benches, despoiled buildings and a lot of biological waste.
Still, Kiev is home to many NGOs; city intellectuals receive generous
help from the US and EC. The old comprador spirit is always strongest in
the capitals.

For the East and Southeast of the Ukraine, the populous and heavily
industrialised regions, the proposal of association with the EC is a
no-go, with no ifs, ands or buts. They produce coal, steel, machinery,
cars, missiles, tanks and aircraft. Western imports would erase
Ukrainian industry right off the map, as the EC officials freely admit.
Even the Poles, hardly a paragon of industrial development, had the
audacity to say to the Ukraine: we'll do the technical stuff, you'd
better invest in agriculture. This is easier to say than to do: the EC
has a lot of regulations that make Ukrainian products unfit for sale and
consumption in Europe. Ukrainian experts estimated their expected losses
for entering into association with the EC at anything from 20 to 150
billion euros.

For Galicians, the association would work fine. Their speaker at the
Maidan called on the youth to 'go where you can get money' and do not
give a damn for industry. They make their income in two ways: providing
bed-and breakfast rooms for Western tourists and working in Poland and
Germany as maids and menials. They hoped they would get visa-free access
to Europe and make a decent income for themselves. Meanwhile, nobody
offered them a visa-waiver arrangement. The Brits mull over leaving the
EC, because of the Poles who flooded their country; the Ukrainians would
be too much for London. Only the Americans, always generous at
somebody's else expense, demanded the EC drop its visa requirement for
them.

While the Maidan was boiling, the West sent its emissaries, ministers
and members of parliament to cheer the Maidan crowd, to call for
President Yanukovich to resign and for a revolution to install
pro-Western rule. Senator McCain went there and made a few firebrand
speeches. The EC declared Yanukovich "illegitimate" because so many of
his citizens demonstrated against him. But when millions of French
citizens demonstrated against their president, when Occupy Wall Street
was violently dispersed, nobody thought the government of France or the
US president had lost legitimacy…

Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, shared her biscuits
with the demonstrators, and demanded from the oligarchs support for the
"European cause" or their businesses would suffer. The Ukrainian
oligarchs are very wealthy, and they prefer the Ukraine as it is,
sitting on the fence between the East and the West. They are afraid that
the Russian companies will strip their assets should the Ukraine join
the Customs Union, and they know that they are not competitive enough to
compete with the EC. Pushed now by Nuland, they were close to falling on
the EC side.

Yanukovich was in big trouble. The default was rapidly approaching. He
annoyed the pro-Western populace, and he irritated his own supporters,
the people of the East and Southeast. The Ukraine had a real chance of
collapsing into anarchy. A far-right nationalist party, Svoboda
(Liberty), probably the nearest thing to the Nazi party to arise in
Europe since 1945, made a bid for power. The EC politicians accused
Russia of pressurising the Ukraine; Russian missiles suddenly emerged in
the western-most tip of Russia, a few minutes flight from Berlin. The
Russian armed forces discussed the US strategy of a "disarming first
strike". The tension was very high.

Edward Lucas, the Economist's international editor and author of The New
Cold War, is a hawk of the Churchill and Reagan variety. For him, Russia
is an enemy, whether ruled by Tsar, by Stalin or by Putin. He wrote: "It
is no exaggeration to say that the [Ukraine] determines the long-term
future of the entire former Soviet Union. If Ukraine adopts a
Euro-Atlantic orientation, then the Putin regime and its satrapies are
finished… But if Ukraine falls into Russia's grip, then the outlook is
bleak and dangerous... Europe's own security will also be endangered.
NATO is already struggling to protect the Baltic states and Poland from
the integrated and increasingly impressive military forces of Russia and
Belarus. Add Ukraine to that alliance, and a headache turns into a
nightmare."

In this cliff-hanging situation, Putin made his pre-emptive strike. At a
meeting in the Kremlin, he agreed to buy fifteen billion euros worth of
Ukrainian Eurobonds and cut the natural gas price by a third. This meant
there would be no default; no massive unemployment; no happy hunting
ground for the neo-Nazi thugs of Svoboda; no cheap and plentiful
Ukrainian prostitutes and menials for the Germans and Poles; and
Ukrainian homes will be warm this Christmas. Better yet, the presidents
agreed to reforge their industrial cooperation. When Russia and Ukraine
formed a single country, they built spaceships; apart, they can hardly
launch a naval ship. Though unification isn't on the map yet, it would
make sense for both partners. This artificially divided country can be
united, and it would do a lot of good for both of their populaces, and
for all people seeking freedom from US hegemony.

There are a lot of difficulties ahead: Putin and Yanukovich are not
friends, Ukrainian leaders are prone to renege, the US and the EC have a
lot of resources. But meanwhile, it is a victory to celebrate this
Christmastide. Such victories keep Iran safe from US bombardment,
inspire the Japanese to demand removal of Okinawa base, encourage those
seeking closure of Guantanamo jail, cheer up Palestinian prisoners in
Israeli prisons, frighten the NSA and CIA and allow French Catholics to
march against Hollande's child-trade laws.
***

What is the secret of Putin's success? Edward Lucas said, in an
interview to the pro-Western Ekho Moskvy radio: "Putin had a great year
- Snowden, Syria, Ukraine. He checkmated Europe. He is a great player:
he notices our weaknesses and turns them into his victories. He is good
in diplomatic bluff, and in the game of Divide and Rule. He makes the
Europeans think that the US is weak, and he convinced the US that
Europeans are useless".

I would offer an alternative explanation. The winds and hidden currents
of history respond to those who feel their way. Putin is no less likely
a roguish leader of global resistance than Princess Leia or Captain Solo
were in Star Wars. Just the time for such a man is ripe.

Unlike Solo, he is not an adventurer. He is a prudent man. He does not
try his luck, he waits, even procrastinates. He did not try to change
regime in Tbilisi in 2008, when his troops were already on the outskirts
of the city. He did not try his luck in Kiev, either. He has spent many
hours in many meetings with Yanukovich whom he supposedly personally
dislikes.

Like Captain Solo, Putin is a man who is ready to pay his way, full
price, and such politicians are rare. "Do you know what is the proudest
word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?", asked a James
Joyce character, and answered: "His proudest boast is I paid my way."
Those were Englishmen of another era, long before the likes of Blair, et al.

While McCain and Nuland, Merkel and Bildt speak of the European choice
for the Ukraine, none of them is ready to pay for it. Only Russia is
ready to pay her way, in the Joycean sense, whether in cash, as now, or
in blood, as in WWII.

Putin is also a magnanimous man. He celebrated his Ukrainian victory and
forthcoming Christmas by forgiving his personal and political enemies
and setting them free: the Pussy Riot punks, Khodorkovsky the murderous
oligarch, rioters… And his last press conference he carried out in
Captain Solo mode, and this, for a man in his position, is a very good sign.

Israel Shamir reports from Moscow for the Counterpunch, comments on the
RT and pens a regular column in the biggest Russian daily KP.

He can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

[Language editing by Ken Freeland]

(2) Putin: Ukraine would have become "Agricultural Appendage" of EU

http://larouchepac.com/node/29266

December 19, 2013 • 5:28PM

In Russian President Vladimir Putin's major Moscow press conference
today, to which over 1,300 Russian and foreign journalists were
accredited, the first question was about Ukraine. His answer, excerpted
below, implicitly emphasized the deindustrialization Ukraine would have
faced as an "agricultural appendage" of the EU, had it gone ahead and
signed the EU Association Agreement. He also pointed to the strong
remnants of the integrated economy of the nations of the former USSR,
and their vital role for today.

"What is the cause of these [Ukraine's] external problems? They are due
to the situation on the markets for Ukraine's main export products.
Ukraine sells a roughly equal amount of goods to Russia and the European
Union countries, for a value of around $17 billion in each case, if I
recall correctly. But the types and amounts of particular goods sold on
each market are different. Of the $17 billion worth of Ukrainian goods
exported to the Russian market, machinery and equipment account for $7
billion or more, but these particular goods account for only around $2
billion of Ukrainian exports to the EU, while agricultural goods and
produce account for more than $5 billion. You see the situation? One
only has to be an amateur in these things and make a little bit of
effort for everything to become clear....

"Next. I've told you about the structure of trade flows in Ukraine. Out
of the 17 billion worth of their exports, Russia buys 7 billion worth of
machinery and equipment, whereas Europe buys 5 billion worth of
agricultural products. But if Ukraine adopts EU commercial standards,
they won't be able to sell to us anything at all. Do you see? So,
Ukraine will immediately become —and this is just by definition, you
don't need to think about it too hard, just read the documents—an
agricultural appendage [to the EU]. But keep in mind that appendages can
be different too: some of them are healthy and others aren't. And a lot
of work will have to be done to get Ukrainian goods to the European
market. Where are these trade preferences? The documents say nothing
about any preferences.

Referring to the process of making Ukrainian products conform to EU
rules, he said "I think that's what concerns the Ukrainian leadership
today. After all, it is easy to say, yes, let's shut down a plant for a
while, that's okay, but then we'll have everything like they do in
Europe. But you need to survive until then. And many businesses will
close down forever; they won't survive at all. That's the point. At the
same time, is it possible to adopt these standards and trade rules? Yes,
it is possible and it is necessary; they are good rules. But it takes
time and investment. You need money, and not just 15 billion. You need
hundreds of billions to modernize industrial enterprises. These 15
billion [being invested by Russia] are to support the budget, to be able
to pay salaries, pensions and social security benefits....

"Incidentally, the machine-building industry products that we import
from Ukraine are part of our cooperation heritage from the Soviet Union.
There is a lot that is archaic there, but on the whole, it gives us huge
joint advantages, which we must use well and develop further. And we can
do it for the benefit of both the Ukrainian and Russian economies."

(3) Instructions for protesters in Ukraine are identical to those in
Egypt - Wayne Madsen

http://www.voltairenet.org/article181535.html

Ukraine: NATO's Eastern Prize

by Wayne Madsen

Voltaire Network | 16 December 2013

Instructions for protesters on Tahrir and Maidan in Arabic and Ukrainian
languages are identical. The source is evidently the same (Find here the
original U.S. colored revolution user manual for Egypt).

Ever since the democracy manipulation efforts of international hedge
fund brigand George Soros were joined with the artificial street
revolution tactics of CIA tactician Gene Sharp to form the core strategy
of the U.S. neo-conservative goal of imposing a «New American Century»
on the entire world, Ukraine has served as the prize of America's
interventionist foreign policy. And the neocons are still alive and
active as ever inside Secretary of State John Kerry's State Department.

In the wake of what has been called the «Orange Revolution II» [1] in
Ukraine, Kerry's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian
Affairs, Victoria Nuland, who previously served as Hillary Clinton's
State Department mouthpiece, threatened sanctions against Ukraine's
government led by President Viktor Yanukovych. Gazing over protesters in
central Kyiv from his hotel window, Arizona's fanatical Republican
Senator John McCain was licking his chops over the prospect of an
anti-Russian Ukraine coming into being. McCain is a Cold War throwback
and someone who remains mentally-unbalanced between flashbacks from a
prisoner of war cell in Hanoi and to present-day reality.

Ukraine, which resisted efforts by the European Union to integrate it
into Europe's banker-led federation of austerity and poverty, came into
the EU's cross hairs after it abandoned an «Association Agreement» pact
with the EU. Instead, Kyiv opted for a more lucrative economic union
with Russia. That move triggered off a mass street uprising in Kyiv's
Maidan (Independence) Square that demanded the resignation of Ukraine's
democratically-elected President and government.

The connections between the Kyiv uprising and the EU outside
manipulators are so apparent, the Kyiv square that has become the
«Tahrir Square» of Ukraine is called «Euromaidan.» The initial Tahrir
Square uprising in Cairo, which overthrew Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak, was partly manipulated by Soros-financed and Sharp-influenced
street demonstrators who took their cues from professional political
agitators hastily flown into Egypt from the United States and Europe.

The latest professionally-agitated spectacle in Kyiv's was spearheaded
by the same Soros/Sharp/National Endowment for Democracy/CIA hydra that
saw the overthrow of Ukraine's government in 2004 in the so-called
Orange Revolution. This time, not only is Ukrainian President
Yanukovych, but ultimately Russian President Vladimir Putin, are the
targets… [2]

Nuland, who is married to the neocon Robert Kagan, handed out snacks to
protesters on Maidan Square. Imagine the reaction of the United States
had a second-tier official of either the Russian or Chinese foreign
ministry handed out food to Occupy Wall Street protesters in Washington
and urged them to overthrow, by force if necessary, President Obama.
Yet, that is exactly the scenario Nuland engaged in by supporting
protesters in Maidan. Furthermore, she reprimanded Yanokovych for the
heavy security presence in Maidan. Nuland and Kerry, who also upbraided
Yanukovych, forgot the acts of police brutality committed by U.S. cops
against occupy protesters, as well as a plan by the FBI to use snipers
to assassinate the leaders of the group.

{photo} Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland dispensing biscuits
to Euromaidan protesters in Kiev. {end}

And Nuland and Kerry were very quiet when the Turkish government set
loose riot police on peaceful protesters in Taksim Square in Istanbul
earlier this year. After all, Turkey is a member of NATO and Ukraine,
for the time being, is not.

For Gene Sharp and his two NGO «babies,» OTPOR and the Center for
Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), vanguard
organizations for organizing «rent-a-riot» anti-government protests
around the globe, only nations resistant to the «New World Order»
designs of Wall Street and the Pentagon are fair game for receiving
cash, pamphlets, i-Pads and i-Phones, snacks, «themed revolution»
placards and banners, restored national flags from times past, and other
propaganda support [3]. Recently, it was discovered, through leaked
emails, that CANVAS founder Srdja Popovic was collaborating with the
CIA- and Pentagon-linked intelligence firm STRATFOR, founded by George
Friedman, whose ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-intelligence
establishments are well known [4].

The «Orange Revolution II» in Kyiv has also received favorable press in
central and eastern Europe and other parts of the world thanks to the
auspices of various Soros press entities, including the Center for
Advanced Media in Prague, a contrivance of the Media Development Loan
Fund, a project of Soros' Open Society Institute.

And as with all fake «themed» revolutions, an «embattled martyr» is
needed to rally the «rent-a-mob» to action. For the Ukrainian
demonstrator, the «Maiden of Maidan» is Yulia Tymoshenko, the former
Prime Minister who was imprisoned for corruption. Tymoshenko, who is now
held at a clinic in Kharkiv, has become the «Aung San Suu Kyi» of
Ukraine. But for many Ukrainians, the former Prime Minister is a
shameless attention seeker whose trademark braided hair coif is derided
by many Ukrainians as a «bagel» on top of her head.

For Orange Revolution II, the new «heroes» are ex-boxer and UDAR
opposition leader Vitali Klitschko and far-right nationalist Oleh
Tyahnybok. Their playbooks are written in Soros boiler shops in Prague,
London, Washington, and New York and not in Kyiv.

In the first round of themed revolutions sponsored by Soros and his U.S.
government collaborators and adhering to the Gene Sharp playbook, New
World Order template governments were installed in Ukraine and Georgia.
Headed by Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko in Ukraine and
Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, the pro-NATO and EU governments,
installed amid a flurry of «pro-democracy» fanfare, soon descended into
corrupt and nepotistic regimes. Tymoshenko and Saakashvili soon were
associated with the mafia and corrupt business moguls. Tymoshenko's
one-time business partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo
Lazarenko, began serving a prison term in California for money
laundering, corruption, and fraud. Meanwhile, Saakashvili became
entangled with the mysterious «Golden Fleece» charity in Cyprus.

The neo-cons never recovered from the end of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko
regime because Soros and the themed revolution agitators had invested so
much in the inserted government in anticipation of its NATO and EU
membership. Yushchenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, served
in the Ronald Reagan White House. Chumachenko also worked in the White
House Public Liaison Office where she conducted outreach to various
right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States,
including the other bastion of the neo-cons, the Heritage Foundation [5]

Now, «Responsibility to Protect» interventionists in the Obama
administration are trying to turn back the calendar to 2004 and bring
about another non-democratic ouster of an elected government in Ukraine.

Across Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Belarus, Romania, and other countries
of eastern and central Europe, the new generation of Soros agitators and
provocateurs are trying to launch another series of «themed
revolutions.» This time the goal is, once again, prying Ukraine away
from Russia and into the EU and NATO. Wayne Madsen

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation (Rusia)

[1] « Washington et Moscou se livrent bataille en Ukraine », par Emilia
Nazarenko et la rédaction, Réseau Voltaire, 1er novembre 2004. "Ukraine:
The Street Against the People", by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 29
November 2004.

[2] "The U.S. colored revolution user manual for Egypt", Voltaire
Network, 2 March 2011.

[3] "The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the
CIA", by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 4 January 2005.

[4] "Otpor! leader was working for Stratfor", Translation Alizée Ville,
Voltaire Network, 5 December 2013.

[5] Read also : « La biographie cachée du père du président ukrainien »,
Réseau Voltaire, 18 avril 2008.

(4) Ukraine protests stoked by EU & US gpvernments

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/pouring_fuel_on_ukranian_fires/14436

Pouring fuel on Ukranian fires

Tim Black

Spiked online Deputy editor

18 December 2013

[...] On 21 November, a small protest sprung up in Independence Square
in Kiev in response to Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych's
last-minute decision to turn his back on an agreement with the European
Union in favour of stronger economic ties with Russia. Since then, the
protest has grown in size and fervour, especially after the police
weighed in on 30 November. Icy barricades have now been thrown up, state
buildings occupied, and police clashes have become routine.

But if the spark for the protest was domestic, the fuel for its
continued conflagration has come from outside Ukraine, flown in from the
West, and bussed over from Russia in the east. Indeed, the behaviour of
foreign politicians from the UK, the US and Germany has been positively
reckless. It is as if Western officials don't know how to behave
anymore, as if whatever figurative rulebook for foreign affairs there
once was has been lost at some point over the past couple of decades.
Like so many of the West's recent overseas escapades, and
will-it-won't-it interventions, officials and politicians combine a lack
of foresight and strategic nous with shameless opportunism.

Last week, for instance, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, was all
too keen to side with Ukraine's anti-government protesters. 'The United
States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities
to meet the peaceful protest in Kyiv's Maidan Square with riot police,
bulldozers, and batons', he said, before uncritically identifying the
protesters with the Ukrainian popular will. 'As church bells ring
tonight amid the smoke in the streets of Kyiv, the United States stands
with the people of Ukraine. They deserve better.' Likewise, the UK
foreign secretary, William Hague, blithely lent the support of the
British state to the protesters. 'It is inspiring to see these people
standing up for their vision of the future of Ukraine: a free,
sovereign, democratic country with much closer ties to the European Union.'

Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, even travelled over to
Kiev and, having refused to meet President Yanukovych, proceeded to
fraternise with opposition leaders and take a tour of the protest camp.
There was no question of where his and the German government's support
lay. 'We are not indifferent to the fate of Ukraine', he said. 'You can
see from these demonstrations in the streets that the hearts of the
people of Ukraine beat for the European Union.' ...

(5) U.S. Ambassador meets Ukraine oligarch Dmytro Firtash

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/former-us-ambassador-to-ukraine-Firtash-admits-tie-91898.html

Former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine: Firtash admits ties to alleged
Russian crime boss

Dec. 2, 2010, 2:28 a.m. | Ukraine — by Staff reports

A secret cable from former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor in
December 2008 examines the role of billionaire Dmytro Firtash in
supplying natural gas to Ukraine.

The British newspaper The Guardian on Dec. 1 published a U.S. State
Department cable, classifed "SECRET," authored in December 2008 by
former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor. The brief describes
his Dec. 8, 2008 meeting with Ukrainian billionaire Dmytro Firtash and
the supply of Russian natural gas to Ukraine.  ...

U.S. State Department cables from Kyiv published by WikiLeaks can be
found here.

(6) Ukraine: The Myth of its Salvation through Western Investment (I)

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/12/14/ukraine-myth-salvation-through-western-investment-i.html

Valentin KATASONOV | 14.12.2013 | 00:00

[...] The main argument used by ideologists of European integration is
usually the foreign investment that is allegedly going to come from
Europe and breathe new life into the Ukrainian economy. This argument is
more than a little strange. Firstly, because for many years now foreign
investors have not really faced any kind of formal restrictions for
investing in the Ukrainian economy. Despite this, however, such
investment has not been forthcoming. After all, it is easier to conquer
Ukraine economically using goods rather than investment. Secondly,
because the policy of attracting foreign investment carried out by Kiev
has still not improved the country's economic situation even a little.
It is possible that it has even made the situation worse.

[...] As can be seen from Table 3 (information from the State Statistics
Service of Ukraine), the main focus of direct foreign investment is
Ukraine's financial sector, which accounts for one third of all
investments. Financial activities, together with trade and real estate
transactions, account for 55.2 percent of all accumulated direct
investments. These are types of activity that do not create social
wealth, just redistribute it. High-tech manufacturing attracted a
certain amount of foreign capital in the 1990s. Investors did not so
much buy up businesses for a song as the advanced technologies that had
been created or implemented by these businesses in Soviet times.
Incentives for Western investors to invest in industrial enterprises
fell noticeably after Ukraine joined the WTO. Customs barriers were
reduced dramatically and it became more profitable to supply Ukraine
with goods from more competitive countries than export capital to set up
the manufacture of these goods in Ukraine itself.

(7) Maintaining Russian Power: How Putin Outfoxed the West

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/how-vladimir-putin-ruthlessly-maintains-russia-s-grip-on-the-east-a-939286.html

By Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp

In one of his many foreign-policy successes this year, Russian President
Vladimir Putin has used power politics and blackmail to bring Ukraine
back into Russia's sphere of influence. But what is the Kremlin leader's
secret to success?

Six weeks ago, two men walked across Moscow's Red Square, one wearing a
coat and the other a bishop's robe. They proceeded to the Monument to
Minin and Pozharsky in front of St. Basil's Cathedral.

Kuzma Minin, a merchant, and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky were the leaders of
an uprising against the Polish invasion of 1611. November 4, the day on
which they liberated the center of Moscow more than 400 years ago, is
now a national holiday, a symbol of how a united Russian people can
defend itself against any foreign enemy.

Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia, and Vladimir Putin, the
secular ruler of the realm, placed a bouquet of red carnations at the
monument. Back at the Kremlin, the church leader had prepared a surprise
for the president, a certificate honoring Putin "for the preservation of
greater Russia."

"We know," Kirill said, launching into a hymn of praise for Putin, "that
you, more than anyone else since the end of the 20th century, are
helping Russia become more powerful and regain its old positions, as a
country that respects itself and enjoys the respect of all others."

President Vladimir Putin has led this country for the last 14 years, but
2013 has been his most successful year yet. Forbes has just placed him
at the top of its list of the world's most powerful people, noting that
he had "solidified his control over Russia." According to the magazine,
Putin has replaced US President Barack Obama in the top spot because the
Russian leader has gained the upper hand over his counterpart in
Washington in the context of several conflicts and scandals.

Indeed, at the moment, Putin seems to be succeeding at everything he
does. In September, he convinced Syria to place its chemical weapons
under international control. In doing so, he averted an American
military strike against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and
made Obama look like an impotent global policeman.

In late July, Putin ignored American threats and granted temporary
asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden, a move that stirred up
tensions within the Western camp. The Germans and the French were also
outraged over Washington's surveillance practices.

Since then, Putin has scored one coup after the next. In the fall, when
meaningful progress was made in talks with Tehran over a curtailment of
Iran's nuclear program, Putin once again played a key role.

And now, by exerting massive pressure on Viktor Yanukovych, he has
persuaded the Ukrainian president to withdraw from an association
agreement with the European Union that took years to prepare, just a few
days before the scheduled signing at a summit of EU leaders. In doing
so, he brought Ukraine back into Russia's sphere of influence, at least
for now.

Russian Power Play with Ukraine

Many are impressed by Putin's self-assurance and his ability to question
everything that is considered a political rule of the game outside
Russia. Prominent American blogger Matt Drudge once called Putin the
"leader of the free world," while another commentator dubbed him the
"Chuck Norris of international politics." Norris, a star of action films
like "The Way of the Dragon," has found a niche portraying hard-hitting,
patriotic and deeply conservative loners. Men like Drudge admire Putin
for seemingly ruling his giant country single-handedly, though often
with ruthless methods.

For others, however, Putin is a man who rules in the style of a
19th-century despot, one who does not feel committed to the European
political model. He favors a feudalistic approach instead, with a
dominant state; courtiers who fulfill their ruler's every desire, no
matter how arbitrary; an economy that purely serves the interests of
politicians; and a motto that reads: "What's mine cannot be yours." And
now the events in Ukraine and the role Putin has played in them raises
the question, once again, of who the man in the Kremlin really is and
what he wants. Is Ukraine, as it descends into turmoil, symbolic of a
new turning point in the relationship between East and West?

In recent years, Western capitals have viewed Russia as a difficult but
stable country -- and, most of all, as one that had lost much of its
significance on the world stage. The conflict over Ukraine illustrates
that the fate of not only 143 million Russian citizens, but also that of
most of Russia's neighboring countries within the former Soviet empire,
hinges on Putin.

While pro-EU demonstrators built barricades not far from the seat of
government in Kiev, the pro-Kremlin Moscow tabloid newspaper
Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a cover story predicting the collapse of
Ukraine. The pro-EU western parts of the country, formerly part of the
Habsburg Empire, were marked in purple. Meanwhile, the eastern
provinces, closely aligned with Russia for centuries, along with the
Crimean Peninsula were marked in red. At about the same time, a lawmaker
in Crimea urged Putin to send Russian forces to Ukraine to "protect us
from NATO aggressors, Western secret agents and paid demonstrations."

It was probably a mistake on the part of the West to stop treating
Russia as a potent adversary in the last two decades. And the outrage
over some of the things that have happened in Putin's realm has been
justifiable. They have included, for example, the Kremlin's use of
special police units to suppress the protests of tens of thousands of
Muscovites over election fraud in the 2011 parliamentary vote, or the
fact that Putin had two members of the female punk band Pussy Riot
locked away for two years, merely because they had staged a protest
performance in a Moscow church.

The uprising of disappointed pro-EU Ukrainians against President
Yanukovych is now revealing to the West the brutal methods with which
Russia is beginning to defend its interests beyond its borders.
Yanukovych's sudden change of course away from the EU was the result of
a cold and calculating power play by the Russian president.

Blocking the EU's Eastward Expansion

The world is seeing a resurgence of Cold War sentiments. Following
violent police crackdowns against protesters in Kiev, the United States
is considering sanctions against Ukraine, US State Department
spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki announced. Her boss, Secretary of State John
Kerry, had said earlier that he was disgusted by the police brutality,
saying that the response was "neither acceptable nor does it befit a
democracy." His words were not only directed at Yanukovych, but also at
the man pulling the strings, Vladimir Putin.

Russia fired back. For the West, democracy isn't even the issue, Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed. He argued that the West merely wants to
secure Ukraine as a trophy, so as to deal Russia a strategic blow.

In Moscow last Tuesday, 444 of 450 members of the State Duma, the lower
house of the Russian parliament, adopted a statement in which they
accused Western politicians of "open interference …in the internal
affairs of the sovereign Ukraine." The remark was a reference to
appearances by German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, former Polish
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczyski and US Undersecretary of State Victoria
Nuland on Kiev's Independence Square, where Nuland handed out sandwiches
to demonstrators.

"Unsanctioned rallies, blocking access to state authorities, as well as
the seizure of administrative buildings, rioting, and destruction of
historic monuments" -- a reference to the toppling of a statue of Lenin
in downtown Kiev -- "lead to destabilization in the country and may
cause serious negative economic and political consequences for the
Ukrainian population," the Duma deputies wrote, noting that a "coup
d'état" was underway in Ukraine. Ukrainian state television referred to
the European Union as an "anti-Russian" alliance because it was ignoring
Moscow's interest by seeking closer ties with Ukraine.

The deep divide between Russian and Western mindsets has become
especially apparent in Eastern Europe in recent months, where the EU has
been trying to advance its "Eastern Partnership" program since 2009. In
addition to Ukraine, the initiative relates to EU relations with
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Moldova. The West has been
offering free-trade arrangements and financial support in return for
reforms in the legal system, election laws and media in these six
countries. Exports of Western goods would aim to foster closer ties
between the eastern edge of the continent and the EU.

Brussels and its junior partners were discussing steel tariffs, wheat
exports and the purchase of Eastern European wine. When such ties
suddenly became an issue of geopolitics, the West was shocked. For the
first time since the beginning of its eastward expansion, the EU
encountered bitter resistance -- from Russia.

Exerting Pressure on Smaller Neighbors

Still, it wasn't a complete surprise -- and the EU should have expected
it. Since the early 1990s, Russia has been trying to keep the former
Soviet republics within its sphere of influence. Ignoring setbacks,
Putin is now using his power to achieve this goal. He threatens these
countries, holds them hostage, blackmails them or plays them off each
other. His actions, though cold and unscrupulous, have been highly
successful. "He who pays the piper calls the tune," Putin said.

To this day, Russia uses Transnistria, a state that broke away from the
Republic of Moldova in a 1992 civil war, to torpedo Moldova's
sovereignty, although no UN member state formally recognizes
Transnistria today. Moscow also plays the role of protector in Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, two regions that broke away from Georgia after the
2008 war, and it uses the puppet states to exert pressure on the
government in Tbilisi.


In the mind of Putin, a former KGB officer, a country that was once a
Soviet state and no longer wishes to be Moscow's vassal can only become
one of two things: a vassal of Washington, or a vassal of Brussels.

Smaller states of the former Soviet Union that rebel against Moscow
today can expect to face Putin's concentrated rage. In 2006, he banned
imports of Georgian wine and mineral water when Mikhail Saakashvili, the
country's pro-American president at the time, demanded the withdrawal of
Russian troops.

Ahead of a summit meeting in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where at
least Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova planned to sign association
agreements with the EU, Moscow boycotted Lithuanian milk products. Years
earlier, Russia had shut down a strategically important oil pipeline to
Lithuania, merely because the government in Vilnius planned to sell a
large refinery to Warsaw instead of Moscow and cease its reliance on Russia.

The manner in which Russia exerted pressure on Armenia this year was
especially conspicuous. Like Ukraine, the small Caucasus republic had
spent four years negotiating an association agreement with Brussels. The
country's president and prime minister rejected Moscow's demand that
Armenia join a Russian-led customs union, arguing that it was
"geographically impossible" and "pointless" -- until September 3, when
Putin summoned his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, to the Kremlin.

Shortly after the talks, Sargsyan told reporters that Armenia was not
going to sign the agreement with Brussels, after all, but that it would
join the customs union. Moscow had threatened to raise its prices for
Russian natural gas and had started selling arms to Armenia's archenemy,
Azerbaijan. Putin also offered the Armenians help in expanding its
railway system and a nuclear power plant that had been scheduled to be
shut down.

The Republic of Moldova was subjected to similar pressure. In September,
Moscow had suddenly informed Moldova that it could no longer export its
wine, the country's most important export product, to Russia. Putin's
officials also reminded the government in Chisinau that hundreds of
thousands of Moldovans earn a living as guest workers in Russia, and
that close to 200,000 of them had no valid residency permits and could
therefore be deported. Unlike Armenia, the Moldovan government chose to
sign the EU treaty nonetheless.

The pressure Moscow exerted on Ukraine before the EU summit in Vilnius
exceeded all of its previous efforts. In the summer, the Russians
blocked duty-free exports of pipes from Ukraine, as well as shipments by
Ukrainian candy maker Roschen, claiming deficient quality of the goods.
The move adversely affected two important Ukrainian oligarchs and was
designed to persuade them to talk President Yanukovych out of the
planned cooperative agreement with the EU.

In October, not long before the Vilnius summit, Russia suddenly
introduced new regulations for the transit of goods, causing long
backups of trucks waiting at the Russian-Ukrainian border. Then it
suspended imports of meat and railroad cars from Ukraine. Finally, the
Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom demanded payment of a €1.3
billion ($1.8 billion) debt for gas that it had delivered at some point
in the past.

  Part 2: Pulling Strings in Kiev

The Russian trade war was accompanied by an unprecedented propaganda
offensive. President Putin dispatched his economic adviser Sergei
Glazyev, a man with extremely nationalistic views, to Ukraine. He
painted a disastrous scenario for the Ukrainians if they signed the
agreement with the EU. Glazyev claimed that Ukraine would need at least
€130 billion to comply with EU rules. This, he said, would sharply drive
down the country's currency, so that Kiev would be unable to pay its
debts, citizens would be without heat and the country would eventually
be forced into bankruptcy.

"Why does the Ukrainian leadership want to drive its country into
economic suicide?" he asked. On the other hand, Glazyev noted, Ukraine
would generate an additional $10 billion in revenues if it joined the
Russian-led customs union.

Glazyev was named Russia's "Person of the Year 2013" at a ceremony in
Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior on Nov. 28, the day the EU
summit began in Vilnius, without Ukraine having signed the planned
agreement. According to officials, Glazyev received the award for his
contributions to "bringing Ukraine back into the economic union with
Russia."

Some might be surprised by Russia's blatant efforts to pressure Kiev.
But Ukraine, whose name is derived from an Old East Slavic word that
means "borderland," is Europe's second-largest country, and Putin needs
it if he hopes to build his planned Eurasian economic empire. Kiev is
also the historic cradle of the Russian nation, and the first East
Slavic realm was established there in the 9th century. In his speeches,
Glazyev repeatedly spoke of "our shared intellectual and historic
tradition."

At the same time, both Russians and Ukrainians are disdainful of each
other. In Moscow, Ukrainians are called "Chochly," a reference to the
unusual headdress of the medieval Dnieper Cossacks. Kiev residents refer
to Russians as "Moskali," which is also a derogatory term. The Russians
"have treated us as part of their property for the last 350 years,"
Leonid Kravchuk, the first president of independent Ukraine, once said.

Putin and Yanukovych are also not on good terms. The fact that the
Russian president eventually strong-armed Yanukovych has to do with the
mentality of the Ukrainian president. Yanukovych is a man who never
likes to commit himself and always keeps a back door open somewhere.
Putin had not believed that Yanukovych would actually sign the agreement
with Brussels. But when it became apparent in the summer that he was
prepared to do so after all, Moscow stepped in.

Even Putin has actually been disinclined to use such coarse tactics.
Russia is not "seeking a superpower status or trying to claim a global
or regional hegemony," Putin said last Thursday in his annual
state-of-the-nation address. However, the president still expects
countries like Ukraine to remain within Moscow's orbit.

'New World Leader of the Conservatives'

Following Snowden, Syria, Iran and other foreign-policy coups, Putin now
sees himself in a role that he finds equally gratifying: an "arbiter of
global politics."

"For Putin, all it took was 20 minutes with Obama on the sidelines of
the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg to avert a bombing of Syria and to lay
the groundwork for a solution to the Syrian chemical weapons problem,"
says a senior Russian diplomat.

According to an unpublished, 44-page report by the Institute for
Strategic Studies, the Kremlin's most powerful think tank, to which
SPIEGEL has gained access, Putin's authority is now "so extensive that
he can even influence a vote on Syria in the US Congress." The report
praises Putin as the "new world leader of the conservatives."

The report's authors write that the hour of conservatives has now come
worldwide because "the ideological populism of the left" -- a reference
to men like Obama and French President François Hollande -- "is dividing
society."

According to the report, people yearn for security in a rapidly changing
and chaotic world, and the overwhelming majority prefers stability over
ideological experiments, classic family values over gay marriage, and
the national-state over immigration. Putin, the authors write, stands
for these traditional values, while the domestic policies of traditional
democracies are hamstrung by the need for compromise. Last week, Putin
himself stated that the objective of his conservatism is to "prevent a
movement backward and downward, into the chaos of darkness."

These observations on the shift in the public mood may be correct, but
who wants to see Russia as a role model? The protesters on Kiev's
Independence Square apparently do not.

Putin's Russia is a poorly organized country whose power hinges on the
price of oil remaining above $100 a barrel. The colossus in the East,
with its nuclear weapons, mineral resources and foreign currency
reserves of $515 billion resembles the pseudo-giant in the children's
novel Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver by German author Michael
Ende: The closer one gets to him, the smaller he becomes.

Russia looks very good on paper, with a budget that has been almost
balanced for years and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 14 percent (compared with
80 percent for Germany). But growth rates of 6 percent and higher are a
thing of the past. The Kremlin expects a growth rate of only 1.3 percent
this year, which is too low in light of the country's massive need for
modernization.

In his address to the nation, Putin conceded that bureaucracy and
widespread corruption are stifling innovation and entrepreneurial spirit
in Russia.

To enhance this image and simultaneously counteract reporting critical
of Russia in the Western media, last week, Putin established the media
holding company "Russia Today," a modern propaganda machine intended to
improve the country's image abroad. He also issued a decree to
"dissolve" the deeply traditional RIA Novosti news agency, presumably
because its columnists were too dependent on Western positions in their
ideology.

The new head of Russia Today, Dmitry Kiselyov, attracted attention when
he said on a talk show that homosexuals should be banned from donating
blood or sperm. "And their hearts, in case they die in a car accident,
should be buried or burned as unfit for extending anyone's life,"
Kiselyov added. He has also compared the EU's bailout of Cypriot banks
with Hitler's expropriation of Jews. At the first company meeting of
Russia Today, Kiselyov said that the most important characteristic for
employees of the new state-run agency is not objectivity, but "love for
Russia."

The Rise of a 'Non-Liberal Empire'

It's been a decade since Anatoly Chubais, the architect of the
privatization of the Russian economy and still an influential
powerbroker in the Kremlin elite, wrote an essay in which he called for
a "liberal empire." He argued that Russia should bring the countries
lost after the collapse of the Soviet Union back into its sphere of
influence by enhancing its own appeal through democracy, freedom and the
rule of law. The same applied to Ukraine.

"Today the European Union is the liberal empire," says Moscow political
scientist Vladimir Frolov. "Putin is offering a different, non-liberal
empire," he adds, an empire that appeals to authoritarian rulers, such
as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President
Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose countries, like Armenian and Kyrgyzstan,
plan to join Putin's Eurasian customs union.

In Putin's model, only a leader knows what's best for his people. "The
non-liberal empire helps to explain Russia's turning away from Europe by
citing subversive European values," says Frolov, "and it allows the
Kremlin to hold onto the illusion that it is playing in the same league
as America, China and the EU."

No Putin project embodies this illusion quite as much as the 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sochi. They symbolize both Putin's dream of a new greatness
and his weakness. The Kremlin chief has had new highways, tunnels and
railroads constructed in the Caucasus, as well as a state-of-the-art
train station and two winter resorts. Corruption and nepotism were
partly response for an explosion in costs -- from the original estimate
of €9 billion to more than €37 billion. And only a national leader with
Putin's ambitions, and only a country with megalomaniacal tendencies,
could hit upon the idea of holding winter games in a Black Sea resort
town with a subtropical climate.

Russia intends to use the Olympics to present its unique features to a
marveling world, which explains why the Kremlin had 14,000 people carry
the Olympic torch along a 65,000-kilometer (40,600-mile) route
throughout Russia -- both of which are record figures. Naturally, the
torch relay began on Red Square, and of course the ceremony coincided
with Putin's birthday. The Kremlin sent a diver with the torch to the
bottom of Lake Baikal, the world's deepest freshwater lake. Cosmonauts
carried it into space in a rocket, camel riders took it across the
southern Russian steppes, sled dogs pulled it through the Arctic and an
icebreaker ferried it to the North Pole.

The Arctic Ocean is another place where the Kremlin is trying to impress
the world. To gain access to the mineral resources hidden under the
ocean floor, for which Russia is competing with other countries
bordering the ocean, Putin instructed his defense minister last week to
"expand Russia's military presence in the Arctic." This means rebuilding
10 Soviet-era bases in the Arctic Circle and beefing up Russia's Arctic
military presence.

Putin's strength is only relative because it feeds on the weakness of
the West. Europe's policy toward Ukraine is a perfect example.

Germany and the EU long believed that if they could convince Kiev to
sign a few dozen liberal laws, not even a politician as slippery as
Yanukovych could question the country's growing alignment with the West.
Instead of offering more money and clear prospects of EU membership, at
the end of the negotiations, they demanded the release of jailed former
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

In taking this approach, the EU wasn't exactly demonstrating a unique
insight into Ukrainian sensitivities. Tymoshenko doesn't have what it
takes to be a martyr, and Ukrainians have only limited sympathy for her.
Many recall her career as an oligarch in the 1990s and her populist
approach as prime minister. Indeed, they see no significant difference
between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych.

But Yanukovych's mentality is similar to Putin's -- and therefore not at
all like that of the EU. He isn't interested in values such as fairness,
the balancing of interests and freedom for the individual. Like Putin,
Yanukovych grew up in poor circumstances, where it was important to be
stronger than others and capable of bluffing and pouncing quickly.

For Yanukovych, the planned rapprochement with the EU was purely a
question of what he stood to gain from it. He wants to be re-elected in
2015, and there are two people, in particular, who could get in his way:
Tymoshenko and heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko.

The Germans have since dropped Tymoshenko like a hot potato, and now
they are focusing their attention on the man who is supposedly the only
leader of the opposition. Their goal is to build Klitschko into an
adversary of Yanukovych. But they are ignoring the fact that there are
actually three opposition leaders in Ukraine.

They also fail to recognize that the opposition is not the true leader
of the protests on Independence Square in Kiev, and that many Ukrainians
actually see their party leaders, including Klitschko, as collaborators
with the ruling elite. According to a poll, only 5 percent of the
protesters on Independence Square are there because opposition leaders
called upon them to participate. In fact, most have come to the square
for their own reasons.

As long as the West sugarcoats the reality in Eastern Europe, Putin will
hold onto his trump cards. He is more familiar with the situation, and
he enjoys better leverage to influence the former Soviet republics. He
also has no scruples when it comes to using ruthless tactics.

Backtracking and Bluster

It is Wednesday of last week as we meet for lunch with one of Putin's
top advisers at an upscale Italian restaurant near the foreign ministry
in Moscow. In Kiev, the protesters are building even higher barricades
in a heavy snowstorm.

The Kremlin official's eyes are bloodshot. The long nights at summit
meetings and the 19 foreign trips he has been on with Putin this year
have taken their toll. The official has brought along a message from
Putin. Over a meal of pickled squid and salami, he explains that his
boss is someone with whom "deals are possible as long as you talk to
him." But talking to Putin to achieve compromises, he notes, is
something the West does "far too little." Senior politicians like German
Foreign Minister Westerwelle, he says, should not associate with the
opposition in Kiev, and appearances on Independence Square are, "to put
it diplomatically, not correct." After all, he points out, there are no
Russian cabinet ministers there.

The man is persuasive. Russian ministers have no need to hurry to Kiev,
he says, since the Ukrainian president himself has been summoned to
Moscow on an almost weekly basis. Nevertheless, this time, Putin may
have miscalculated when it comes to Ukraine.

When Kiev went to the barricades for the first time in 2004 and the
Orange Revolution began, Ukrainians were protesting against election
fraud. To Moscow, it was ultimately irrelevant whether Ukraine was run
by men or women like former President Viktor Yushchenko, Tymoshenko or
Yanukovych. They were all representatives of different clans who were
fighting each other for the country's leadership -- and they were people
with whom Moscow could more or less come to terms.

But now there are people protesting on Independence Square who feel
cheated of their hopes for stronger ties with the EU because their
leadership has allowed itself to be bought by Russia. To them, Europe is
synonymous with democracy, self-determination and honesty, with an end
to despotism and corruption.

Moscow's clumsy attempt to put pressure on Kiev has changed the
situation, says Russian political scientist Vladislav Inozemtsev.
Ukrainian society, he notes, cares less about which member of the elite
is currently in power than about the direction in which the country is
headed. The number of pro-EU Ukrainians jumped dramatically this fall,
says Inozemtsev.

Yanukovych senses this. Last Thursday, he changed course and let it be
known that he did intend to sign the EU treaty at some point. But it
sounded like yet another one of his tricks, designed to finally get the
protesters off the streets.

He held a roundtable discussion on Friday afternoon, but it ended
disappointingly when Yanukovych failed to concede to any of the
opposition's demands. Instead, he had his staff make preparations for a
major rally of his supporters. Nevertheless, his prime minister
suggested the possibility of resigning, while former President Leonid
Kuchma described Ukraine as "bankrupt."

The game involving Kiev, Moscow and the EU hasn't been decided. It is
already clear, however, that Putin has done Ukraine a disservice with
his intervention and has reduced Yanukovych to a puppet. Russian
political scientist Inozemtsev believes that Yanukovych's chances of
winning the next election are slim. "It's highly unlikely in 2015 that
someone will be elected president who is prepared, once again, to
exchange Europe for cheap Russian gas."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

(8) Ukraine: Divided land, divided church

http://www.dw.de/ukraine-divided-land-divided-church/a-17296538

Protests in Ukraine have highlighted the division between the country's
two main Orthodox churches. One has an independent streak and is
protecting demonstrators from police. The other is subordinate to
Moscow. ...

In the early hours of November 30, dramatic scenes played out before the
monastery gates. A few hundred meters downhill, on the Maidan
Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), special police forces violently
cleared a camp set up by opponents of the government. Hundreds of
students were brutally beaten and chased into the surrounding streets.
They found refuge at the monastery. Priests blocked the path of the
baton-wielding police officers and did not let them through. ...

The monastery's opposition role does not appear to be a coincidence. It
was destroyed during the Soviet era and rebuilt in the 1990s. It belongs
to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate. That church
was founded after the independence of Ukraine and considers itself
independent. But the Russian Orthodox Church has blocked it from gaining
recognition as a part of the global Orthodoxy. The move was political,
said Kyiv Patriarchate spokesman Archbishop Yevstratiy. "Russia wants to
use the church to retain its influence over Ukraine."

Moscow's schism

Most believers in Ukraine belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the
Moscow Patriarchate. It has its headquarters in the famous Kyiv Pechersk
Lavra monastery on the steep right bank of the Dniper River. This church
is subordinate to the Russian Patriarch. ...

The two-decade-long division in Ukrainian Orthodoxy is reflected in the
attitude toward the current events. Where the Kyiv Patriarchate granted
demonstrators protection from the police, its priests praying alongside
hundreds of thousands of protesters on the Maidan, the Moscow-oriented
Patriarchate is behaving differently.

"Our priests may indeed go to the demonstrations, but only as citizens,
and not as churchmen," spokesman Grigori Kovalenko told DW. He denied,
however, that this was due to instructions from Russia. "There is no
influence on us from Moscow," he said.

(9) Ukraine's Oligarchs hedge their bets, fearful of dispossession

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/05/uk-ukraine-oligarchs-idUKBRE9B40MQ20131205

Hedging their bets, Ukraine's oligarchs sit above the fray

By Matt Robinson and Pavel Polityuk

KIEV Thu Dec 5, 2013 2:24pm GMT

(Reuters) - With 350,000 anti-government protesters packed into the
capital Kiev on Sunday, the anchor on Ukraine's top television channel,
firmly aligned with President Viktor Yanukovich, appeared to go off script.

"History is being made today," he said. "There is a feeling of having
woken up in a different country."

The opposition was enraged by Yanukovich's decision last month to ditch
a landmark accord to deepen relations with the European Union - under
Russian pressure - and by the brutal police crackdown against protests
that followed.

But the TV anchor's apparent sympathy for their cause seemed out of
place at Inter, the channel owned by Yanukovich's chief of staff, Serhiy
Lyovochkin, and wealthy industrialist Dmytro Firtash.

An energy and chemicals magnate, 48-year-old Firtash is one of Ukraine's
richest men and, as a major player in Ukraine's gas imports from Russia,
close to the government.

Coupled with reports that Lyovochkin had resigned as presidential
consigliere, Inter's uncensored coverage of the challenge to Yanukovich,
mirrored in other media controlled by the oligarchs, had some suggesting
the ground was shifting beneath the president.

With vast swathes of the economy in their hands, Ukraine's oligarchs
wield huge political power. Their fortunes, however, are wedded to those
of whomever holds office.

The crisis unleashed by Yanukovich's rejection of EU overtures in favour
of closer ties with former master Moscow has cast fresh light on the
intrigue and promiscuous politics of Ukraine's post-Orange Revolution
elite; like all good businessmen, oligarchs hedge their bets.

"By providing an information platform for the opposition, they are
buying insurance for themselves for the future," said Volodymyr Fesenko,
an independent Ukrainian analyst.

"Right now, the strategy of the oligarchs is clear - they will not seek
conflict with the president." But they "can run with the opposition,
too," he added.

TUG-OF-WAR

In terms of worth, Firtash is dwarfed by Ukraine's richest man, steel
and electricity mogul Rinat Akhmetov, 47. An ally of Yanukovich from the
hard-scrabble, Russian-speaking city of Donetsk in the east, Akhmetov's
fortune was estimated by Forbes this year at just over $15 billion.

He owns Ukraine's star soccer club Shakhtar Donetsk, including its
space-age stadium opened for last year's Euro 2012 championship. He is
often pictured watching games from the VIP box with Yanukovich.

Akhmetov and the next two ranking oligarchs - pipe manufacturer and
industrialist Viktor Pinchuk, 52, and billionaire businessman Igor
Kolomoisky, 50 - together accounted for more than 12 percent of
Ukraine's national output last year.

They have much at stake in the East-West tug-of-war played out in
Ukraine in the nine years since the Orange Revolution, when huge street
protests overturned a fraudulent presidential election won by Yanukovich
and policy tilted westwards.

In 2010, the rough-hewn former mechanic got his revenge when he beat
fiery Orange Revolution leader Yulia Tymoshenko to the presidency. She
was later jailed over a gas deal with Russia.

The trade and integration pact offered by the EU, and eventually spurned
by Yanukovich, offered promises and pitfalls for the oligarchs.

Free trade with the EU would mean a flood of competitive goods from the
bloc, and almost certain retaliatory price hikes for Russian gas, which
would hit both Akhmetov and Firtash hard. Firtash has a deal with
Russian energy giant Gazprom to import gas at favourable rates.

But new legal standards would bring greater protection from a predatory
tax regime and from state interference of the kind that saw Russia lock
up its former richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in 2005.

"I think the oligarchs were in the position of collectively wanting
Europe, but for different reasons," said Andrew Wilson, a senior fellow
at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

"They wanted Europe as krysha, 'protection' - first of all from the
Russians and, for some of them, protection from their own state."

Akhmetov has metal investments in Europe, and spent $220 million on
London's premier address, One Hyde Park.

Pinchuk has made a name as one of the foremost art collectors in the
world, rubbing shoulders with the likes of former U.S. president Bill
Clinton and pop star Elton John.

He is also a big donor to former UK premier Tony Blair's Faith
Foundation and, with his wife, owns a London home worth $130 million. He
gathers leaders every year at a palace in Yalta to discuss how Ukraine
can deepen ties with Europe.

Firtash, meanwhile, donates to Britain's top-tier Cambridge University.
Opening up to the West would seem a natural course, a path to legitimacy.

"POLITICAL WARFARE"

On November 21, however, Yanukovich bowed to Russian pressure and turned
away from the EU trade and cooperation deal.

The street protests shook the president, but he dug in. ...

A spokesman for Firtash declined immediate comment.

"He has links to Udar. Maybe he sees a political opportunity for them
here," said Wilson. "Oligarchs would hedge their bets in this kind of
situation. The first to defect may have a problem, would certainly be
threatened with the destruction of his business by Yanukovich.

"So it becomes this game where everybody is thinking about what everyone
else is thinking."

Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Kolomoisky and Firtash have been silent since the
crisis erupted. Lyovochkin's resignation as chief of staff was rejected. ...

"The most dangerous situation for them (the oligarchs) is when
everything starts to fall apart, where there emerges the risk of a split
in the country," said Fesenko.

"Business can't function normally in conditions of political warfare."

(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Matt Robinson;
Editing by Will Waterman)

(10) Ukrainian billionaire that nobody knows

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/97afedb2-d589-11da-93bc-0000779e2340.html

April 27, 2006 3:00 am

By Tom Warner

Dmytro Firtash, the 40-year-old Ukrainian identified yesterday as
effectively owning 45 per cent of RosUkrEnergo, could be the world's
most secretive billionaire.

He has never given a published interview. Until now, he has never had
his name and photograph published together. But his name often appears
in Ukrainian and Russian media, who had frequently linked him to
RosUkrEnergo and to two other gas traders, Eural Trans Gas and Highrock
Holdings, which are no longer active.

In the 1990s, Mr Firtash and his wife Maria built up several small
companies in their home town of Chernivtsy, the largest of which was
Kmil, which ran trucks, traded commodities and produced packaged food.

In 2001 Mr Firtash became director of Cyprus-registered Highrock
Holdings which acted as a barter agent between Naftogaz, Ukraine's state
oil and gas company, and Turkmenistan. Later Hungarian-registered Eural
secured exclusive contracts to supply Turkmen gas to Ukraine. After
RosUkrEnergo took them over in 2005, Eural revealed Mr Firtash as its
main beneficial owner.

(11) Firtash and other (disproportionately Jewish) Ukranian Oligarchs

http://tap-the-talent.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/Firtash-tells-his-side-of-story.html

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Firtash Tells His Side of the Story

His name is Dmytro Firtash, or Dmitry, as he calls himself in Russian.
He holds a 45% stake in RosUkrEnergo, the controversial middleman
company that has supplied Ukraine since 2006 but has no place in the
2009 Russia-Ukraine gas deal.

He used to be the most publicity-shy oligarch in Ukraine. Until last
Friday night.

It was then that he graced the airwaves on Inter's "Svoboda," apparently
sensing RosUkrEnergo's changing fortunes and yet exuding confidence and
engaging in bossy behavior. (Interestingly, the show featured a "moment
of truth" that somewhat confirmed rumors that Firtash controls Inter.)

At any rate, Firtash's debut on Ukrainian television made him the only
oligarch to date to participate in a live talk show. Click here to watch
the entire show.

Dmytro Firtash: The RosUkrEnergo Company is a normal company just like
all other companies. It's a company of stockholders. It's registered in
Switzerland. In this company, there are two stockholders: one
stockholder, with a 50% stake, is Gazprom and the other stockholder is
me. It's a company that has a well balanced contractual base, that's
first of all. What does this contractual base include? It includes the
purchase of Turkmen gas, 42 billion [cubic meters]; 8 billion cubic
meters of Uzbek gas; and the rest is Kazakh gas. Plus, we can buy up to
17 billion [cubic meters] of Russian gas. That gives us a total of 62
billion [cubic meters] of Middle Asian gas and a reserve of 17 billion
[cubic meters] that we buy from Gazprom. Now we'll talk about where we
sell it. Actually, for RosUkrEnergo, Ukraine is just one episode, and it
may be not the most successful one. Why? Because RosUkrEnergo sells gas
let's see where: Romania, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Slovakia and England.

I came to Gazprom and said, "Guys, let's sit down and do the right
scheme. Let's make everyone happy." We calculated the volumes and
figured how much gas Ukraine would take. [...]

Sure. Let's do some questioning. Why? Because that's a very eloquent yet
highly evasive piece of rhetoric. It raises more questions than answers.

He says, "Actually, for RosUkrEnergo, Ukraine is just one episode, and
it may be not the most successful one." Really? Would there be any such
thing as RosUkrEnergo without Ukraine, in the first place?

Couldn't Gazprom do it all on its own? Doesn't Gazprom buy Middle Asian
gas in its own right? Why the middleman? (Vice Premier Oleksandr
Turchynov raised these questions during the show but received no response.)

Is it true that when RosUkrEnergo became Ukraine's supplier in early
2006, they didn't even have a website?

Would a company registered in Zug, the world-famous Swiss tax haven, be
allowed such preferential access to the gas pipeline and storage
facilities in, say, France or Germany?

Compared to these countries, how much did RosUkrEnergo pay for transit
and storage while using Ukraine's state-owned gas pipeline and storage
facilities?

Finally, is there a relationship between RosUkrEnergo and the Party of
Regions? [...]

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/110606.html

Original video source: http://www.intersvoboda.com/uk/video

Posted by Taras at 2:43 PM

5 comments:

elmer said...

Here's a Jewish guy with a Swiss corporation, tied in with rooshan
oligarchs, talking about how he personally "subsidized" - Ukraine!

The cheekiness - and delusion - of this guy is absolutely astounding.

If you equate Ukraine with a few select oligarchs in Ukraine - he's right.

He subsidized a few oligarchs in Ukraine, who own commercial industries,
users of natural gas, who benefited from low prices.

Those same oligarchs, who benefited from this "subsidy" scheme, pay
incredibly low wages to Ukrainian workers - while Firtash collects
billions for nothing, for being a middleman.

He produced nothing, he created nothing, except a scheme for himself,
and for a few corrupt oligarchs - and some Kremlin/Gazprom insiders.

He's just a middleman, who skimmed money off gas deals.

This is what he is glorifying and defending.

What a disgusting parasite.

What is even more disgusting is that Yushchenko defended and supported
this scheme.

Now he's out there whining, and trying to make manure look like holy water.

Absolutely, pathetically disgusting.

The fact that the people in the audience bought off on this guy's shit,
and applauded him, is even more disgusting - and indicative of the fact
that those people in the audience who applauded are brain-dead.

4:37 PM ...

(12) Ukraine's Jewish Billionaires - Jewish Russian Telegraph & JTA

http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2006/09/ukraines_Jewish.html

Ukraine's Jewish Billionaires

Jewish Russian Telegraph
JTA via Baltimore Jewish Times:

September 04, 2006

Ukrainian Jews' Influence Gets Mixed Reviews

Vladimir Matveyev

JTA Wire Service

AUGUST 31, 2006

Kiev, Ukraine

For Ukrainian Jews, success can be considered a dangerous thing. The
large number of Jews on a list of the 100 most influential Ukrainians
has created a mixture of pride and anxiety in the country's Jewish
community.

About 20 of those who made it to this year's list are Jewish. The list
is published annually by Korrespondent, a Russian-language Kiev weekly.

Jews make up no more than one half-percent of Ukraine's population of 47
million, and some fear the overrepresentation of Jews among the
country's business and political elites may strengthen anti-Semitic
stereotypes.

"In the eyes of the public, this can create a wrong impression that Jews
in Ukraine are very wealthy and the Jewish community is prospering,"
said Ilya Korchman, a Jewish pensioner from Kiev.

Yet Ukrainian Jews have a reason to celebrate, he said: The heavy Jewish
representation on the list "is a result of the many talents of Jews, who
are really influential in Ukraine." One Kiev Jewish activist and
researcher agrees.

"Ukrainian anti-Semites will use this list for their propaganda
purposes," Alexander Nayman said. "And at the same time, the good people
will have more respect toward Jews."

The general public hasn't seemed to pay much attention to the
preponderance of Jews on the list. Instead, many focused on the fact
that for the first time in four years, Ukraine's president didn't top
the list.

Business tycoon and lawmaker Rinat Akhmetov, believed to be the
wealthiest man in Ukraine, moved up to the top spot from fifth place
last year. He replaced President Viktor Yushchenko, who was second this
year.

The shift is being attributed to the changing nature of the Ukrainian
elite, where business leaders came to play a more prominent role after
the 2004 "Orange Revolution" and subsequent political turmoil.

"Business is taking political power into its hands," political expert
Vladimir Malinkovich told JTA.

All the Jews but one on this year's list are business leaders.

The highest-ranking Jew on the list is Igor Kolomoysky, 42, a co-owner
of the Privat business group that has interests in the metal and
financial sectors. Kolomoysky, who was eighth on the list last year,
moved up to the sixth spot.

Viktor Pinchuk, 45, another Jewish business tycoon and son-in-law of
former President Leonid Kuchma, was ranked 12th on the list, the same as
last year.

Eduard Shifrin, 46, president of the Zaporozhstal steel holding and
co-chairman of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, was ranked 87th.

One of the Jews whose influence fell after the Orange Revolution is
Yevgeny Chervonenko, 46, former minister of transport and communications
who now serves as a regional governor in eastern Ukraine. Chervonenko,
who is vice president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, slipped
from 27th to 89th.

The only Jew on the list who is a not a member of the country's business
elite is Rabbi Ya'akov Dov Bleich, 42, who ranked 62nd.

Ukraine's longest-serving rabbi, the Brooklyn-born Bleich has lived in
Kiev since 1989 and has been chief rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine since 1990.
Bleich appears on the list for the fourth year in a row, but his
authority has been somewhat undermined over the past few years by the
election of two other chief rabbis of Ukraine.

Bleich is the only non-Christian cleric on the list.

A longtime Ukrainian Jewish leader, Josef Zissels, was among 20 experts
from different fields on the board that helped the magazine compile the
list.  [link]

So far, so good.

posted by: jrtelegraph

(13) China land grab Ukraine

http://rt.com/business/china-ukraine-agriculture-lease-267/

Hungry China wants to 'borrow' land from 'bread basket' Ukraine for 50 years

Published time: September 24, 2013 11:10 Edited time: September 24, 2013
19:17

Reuters / Claro Cortes IV

The Chinese plan to lease 5 percent of Ukraine's total land to grow
crops may be nothing more than a pipe dream. Ukrainian officials say
they know nothing of the deal, reported in a Chinese newspaper over the
weekend.

Food demand in China is expected to grow along with industrialization,
and China has been land-grabbing across the globe, with 7.4 million
acres (3 million hectares) in Ukraine being the most recent prospect.

The South China Morning Post reported China's Xinjiang Production and
Construction Corps (XPCC) had a 50-year plan for crop and pig farming,
spanning over 9 percent of Ukraine's arable land.

If executed, the deal Kiev-based KSG agro would make Ukraine China's
biggest overseas farming center.

However, in Kiev the proposal has caught officials by surprise.

Sergey Kasyanov, Chairman of KSG agro, explained the misunderstanding.

"We are not going to sell or transfer a lease or sublease to the
Chinese. The project pertained to installing a drip irrigation system in
those 3 million hectares in the next year," Kasyanov told Vesti 24 in a
TV interview.

China's reported 'land grab' would include eastern territories near the
Dnieper river, Kherson, and Crimea, well-known for its coastal beaches.

Ukraine lifted a ban on foreigners buying land last year.

"I don't have any information on the subject, unfortunately. I know that
Chinese companies occasionally show interest," Igor Livin, the Chairman
of the Association of the Ukrainian-Chinese Cooperation told Vesti 24.

Ukraine's Prime Minister Sergey Arbuzov, who is on an official trip to
China, confirmed Ukraine is interested in attracting new investment from
China, but made no mention of agriculture, instead focused on banks. ...

Land Grab

China has upped its overseas farming investments to counter any future
food shortages, and in 2013 bought Australia's biggest cotton farm. The
Post reported China has over 2 million hectares of land abroad that it
uses for agriculture.

Worldwide 115 million acres are leased to foreign investors.

Big foreign land buyers include Britain, the US, China, the UAE, South
Korea, South Africa, Israel, India, and Egypt, according to a recent
report from the 'Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences'. The
study found between 0.7 and 1.75 percent of agricultural land is being
transferred from local to foreign hands.

These countries are seeking greener pastures to grow crops in Congo,
Sudan, Indonesia, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Australia,
according to the report.

'Land grabbing' can be a mutually beneficial relationship, as foreign
investors can 'get more' out of the land using newer agriculture
technology, and the local 'host' can profit. However, forcible
relocation of people and soil erosion are risks.

Land has made a comeback – from cattle, private ski resorts, hunting and
fishing clubs, to the Maine coastline – for American entrepreneurs who
prefer to take a stake in natural real estate to diversify and hedge
their assets against the risky gold, oil, and stock prices.

Rising grain prices also give investors incentive to turn to land.