There seems to be a “suicide” epidemic afflicting opponents of the current Ukrainian government – nine opposition politicians and two journalists have mysteriously died since the beginning of the year. Here is the timeline of terror that has opponents of the regime fearing for their lives:

January 26 – Nikolai Sergienko , former deputy chief of Ukrainian Railways and a supporter of Viktor Yanukoych’s Party of Regions, reportedly shot himself with a hunting rifle. The windows were all locked from inside, and no note was found.

, former deputy chief of Ukrainian Railways and a supporter of Viktor Yanukoych’s Party of Regions, reportedly shot himself with a hunting rifle. The windows were all locked from inside, and no note was found. January 29 – Aleksey Kolesnik , the former chairman of the Kharkov regional government and a prominent supporter of the now-banned Party of Regions, supposedly hung himself. There was no suicide note

, the former chairman of the Kharkov regional government and a prominent supporter of the now-banned Party of Regions, supposedly hung himself. There was no suicide note February 24 – Stanislav Melnik , another former Party of Regions member of parliament, was found dead in his bathroom: he is said to have shot himself with a hunting rifle. We are told he left a suicide note of “apologies,” but what he was apologizing for has never been revealed, since the note has not been released.

, another former Party of Regions member of parliament, was found dead in his bathroom: he is said to have shot himself with a hunting rifle. We are told he left a suicide note of “apologies,” but what he was apologizing for has never been revealed, since the note has not been released. February 25 – Sergey Valter , former Party of Regions activist and Mayor of Melitopol, was found hanged hours before his trial on charges of “abuse of office” was set to begin. Whoever was responsible neglected to leave a “suicide” note.

, former Party of Regions activist and Mayor of Melitopol, was found hanged hours before his trial on charges of “abuse of office” was set to begin. Whoever was responsible neglected to leave a “suicide” note. February 26 – Aleksandr Bordyuga , Valter’s lawyer and former deputy chief of Melitopol police, was found in his garage, dead, another “suicide.”

, Valter’s lawyer and former deputy chief of Melitopol police, was found in his garage, dead, another “suicide.” February 26 – Oleksandr Peklushenko , a former Party of Regions member of parliament and chairman of Zaporozhye Regional State Administration, was found dead in the street with a gun wound to his neck. Officially declared a “suicide.”

, a former Party of Regions member of parliament and chairman of Zaporozhye Regional State Administration, was found dead in the street with a gun wound to his neck. Officially declared a “suicide.” February 28 – Mikhail Chechetov , a professor of economics and engineering, former member of parliament from the Party of Regions, and former head of the privatization board, supposedly jumped from the seventeenth floor window of his Kiev apartment. Another “suicide”!

, a professor of economics and engineering, former member of parliament from the Party of Regions, and former head of the privatization board, supposedly jumped from the seventeenth floor window of his Kiev apartment. Another “suicide”! March 14 – Sergey Melnichuk , a prosecutor and Party of Regions loyalist, “fell” from the ninth floor window of an apartment building in Odessa. Or was he pushed?

, a prosecutor and Party of Regions loyalist, “fell” from the ninth floor window of an apartment building in Odessa. Or was he pushed? April 15 – Oleg Kalashnikov, yet another prominent Party of Regions leader, died of a gunshot wound – the eighth since the beginning of the year.

Kalashnikov, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament and a very vocal and visible critic of the Kiev regime, was found shot to death in his home. This time, the authorities are having a hard time spinning it as a “suicide,” although they haven’t come right out and said it was murder. Kalashnikov had recently been campaigning for the right of Ukrainians to celebrate the victory of the Allies during World War II – a controversial topic in Ukraine, where sympathy for the Third Reich and its Ukrainian collaborators is rife among supporters of the current government. He had reportedly received numerous death threats because of his stand.

And as I write this, the news that two other prominent critics of the Kiev gang, both journalists, have been found dead is being reported. Historian and journalist Oles Buznya was gunned down by two marked gunmen while jogging near his home. He had recently resigned his position as editor of the newspaper Segodnya, stating that he would no longer put up with the censorship imposed by government pressure on his employers: he had also been forbidden to make any media appearances. Earlier this year, a group of Ukrainian “journalists” with the oxymoronic moniker of “Stop Censorship” demanded that Buznya be banned from making appearances in the media on the grounds that he was “an agent of the Kremlin.”

Buznya enraged Ukrainian ultra-nationalists by debunking the cult of poet Taras Shevchenko. Buznya, like Kalashnikov, was active in the antigovernment protests that have become more numerous in recent days as that war-torn country cracks down on political dissent and cuts pensions while prosecuting a vicious civil war against eastern “separatists.”

Within hours of Buznya’s murder – on either Tuesday or Thursday, accounts differ – journalist Serhiy Sukhobok was kiled in Kiev. The 50-year-old Sukhobok founded the news web sites ProUA and Okbom, and had been a business journalist in the Donbass. There are reports that his assailants have been found and arrested, but authorities aren’t releasing much information.

Both Buznya and Sukhobok are being described in the Western media as “pro-Russian,” but this is just a synonym for anyone who opposes the current regime. Sukhobok was born in Donetsk, and naturally sympathized with the poverty and neglect suffered by its people. Buznya, for his part, was an opponent of the perverted nationalism of the country’s ultras, and wanted true independence for Ukraine rather than assimilation into the EU super-state.

The narrative supported by the Western media – that the “revolution” which overthrew the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych was a blow struck against authoritarianism and for “European values” – is no longer credible. Indeed, in the face of these murders – covered up by the regime as “suicides” – it is a sick joke. The thugs who executed the coup – with the invaluable help of the US and German governments – are outright fascists who don’t even bother to disguise their colors. Between banning Russian films and declaring the WWII era Nazi-collaborator Stephen Bandera a “national hero,” these crazies are the ideological heirs of the worst of the pro-Nazi militias that murdered thousands of Jews at Hitler’s behest. Legislation recently passed outlaws all “Communist” propaganda and symbolism, as well as Nazi emblems – but hails the OUN, the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, which fought alongside the German SS during World War II.

Banning web sites and television stations they disapprove of, as well as the bass guitarist for the US rock band Bloodhound Gang, the warlords of Kiev are showing their true colors. However, the list of bans doesn’t stop there: it includes all inter-bank transactions over $10,000 and all gold transactions over $125. And to top it off, they’ve also banned Bitcoins – in the name of “protecting consumers’ rights”!

As a wave of terror and repression sweeps Ukraine, my early warning of where that country was headed has been proved all too accurate. And it has come to this largely as a result of intervention in Ukraine’s internal politics by the US and the EU – who did so in the name of “promoting democracy.”

Those “libertarians” who hailed the Ukrainian “revolution,” mostly in the unelected leadership of “Students for Liberty,” have a lot of explaining to do: it was they who denounced Ron Paul for his lack of support to the Ukrainian coup leaders, shamelessly smearing him as “pro-Putin” because he saw where Ukraine was going. Now that the regime they tried to prettify is arresting journalists and young people en masse for resisting the draft – and murdering its political opponents – we don’t hear a peep out of these phony “libertarians.”

US taxpayers have shelled out billions to a regime that is one of the most corrupt – and, now, one of the most repressive – regimes in the world. And the Obama administration continues to support the gangsters of Kiev, even stationing US troops there for “training” purposes – for they are the mutant progeny of Washington’s “democracy promotion” project. Ukraine is a convenient base from which to achieve the ultimate goal of this project – regime change in Russia itself, a deadly dangerous game that could well spark a nuclear confrontation.

What more evidence is needed that US foreign policy is utter madness?

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.