Corporations are waiting on the sidelines as Ukraine teeters on the edge of total economic collapse. Soon it will be open season on Ukraine's most value resource: its fertile land

We thought Angela Merkel was just a US stooge. Make no mistakes, she is. But there had to be other reasons behind her stubborn pro-Kiev Junta attitude. These have now begun to surface. Not in the German or Western media of course, but they are surfacing.

Here is a revealing quote from Birgit Bock-Luna, who heads the office of Niema Movassat, MP for the Left-wing opposition party Die Linke. Bock-Luna told Ria Novosti last week: "The conflict in Ukraine is used to cover up a sale of farmlands in the interest of major corporations"

The corporate vultures are already circling Ukraine

According to Global Research, “Ukraine's farmland production matches Texas in size (…), or about one-third of Europe’s arable land. Its rich dark soil is highly valued. Ideal for growing grain (…) Monsanto and other agribusiness giants intend exploiting Ukraine’s agricultural potential.”

Frau Bock-Luna is not shy of naming the protagonists of this latest land grab by the West, carried by their clients in Kiev with a cluster bombs bonanza and cannon fodder galore (what Ukrainian soldiers are, and have finally understood they are, in the eyes of their government): “German agricultural concerns – AGRARIUS AG, Germanagrar CEE GmbH, KTG Agrar SE, Agroton and Alfred C. Toepfer International (ADM) – seize land using leasing schemes and generous loans from German and global money lenders.”

How much are tens of thousands of deaths worth in financial terms? How many hectares of Ukrainian black earth do you get by shelling residential areas? The quotes below, also by Bock-Lula, illustrate all of this in detail:

Alfred C. Toepfer International was given a $60 million loan to buy an additional 50,000 hectares in Ukraine, alongside 50,000 it already owns (…) large areas of Ukraine's arable lands could be used to grow genetically modified crops, away from the watchful eye of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which is EU's agricultural regulator. The Ukraine Investment Climate Advisory Services Project, Germany's agricultural center Deutsche Agrarzentrum (DAZ), and the German Advisory Group on Economic Reforms in Ukraine are some of the projects that helped to negotiate land grabs with Ukrainian government officials, lawmakers said.

And guess what, explains Bock Lula: "The previous Ukrainian administration was opposed to further relaxation of agricultural laws, but this changed after the coup, with the help of the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development".

Last summer, Counterpunch wrote: “On July 28, the California-based Oakland Institute released a report revealing that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under terms of their $17 billion loan to Ukraine, would open that country to genetically-modified (GM) crops and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture.”

Of course Euromaidan started with Yanukovych's refusal to sign the EU association agreement. Could the cuddly EU association agreement, with its focus on favoring more student exchanges, possibly have anything remotely to do with it?

Here again is Counterpunch, quoting the Oakland Institute's findings:

Whereas Ukraine does not allow the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, Article 404 of the EU agreement, which relates to agriculture, includes a clause that has generally gone unnoticed: it indicates, among other things, that both parties will cooperate to extend the use of bio-technologies. No doubt this provision meets the expectations of the agribusiness industry.

Now, that's a change! Maybe not what naive Maidan demonstrators and their Western media cheerleaders had in mind, but quite a change nonetheless.

Wasn't Euromaidan about getting rid of the oligarchs?

Bring on the world bank, agribusiness and GMO foods—then a failed puppet state, a Nazi revival, a bloody civil war—and Bob's your uncle.