April 13, 2015

Ukraine: Right Sector Breaks Ceasefire, Newsweek Smears Akhmetov

Serious fighting has again started in east Ukraine. The AP reports:

On Sunday alone, the OSCE recorded at least 1,166 explosions, caused mainly by artillery and mortar shell strikes in northern Donetsk as well as on its outskirts including the airport, now obliterated by fighting. The OSCE also reported intense mortar fire outside the village of Shyrokyne, by the Azov Sea, but said its representatives were repeatedly barred from accessing the village on Sunday.

The AP report does not say who or what started these battles. It is dancing around the really important issue of who broke the ceasefire with this:

Col. Andriy Lishchynskyi, a Ukrainian representative for monitoring the cease-fire in the east, blamed the clashes on "a highly emotional state and personal animosity" between the fighters on both sides, according to the Interfax news agency.

Yeah, that is what a "Ukrainian representative" would probably say. What are the readers to assume from that?

The AP writers certainly read the relevant OSCE spot report. So why did they leave out this part?

Both the Ukrainian Armed Forces representative and the Russian Federation representative to the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC) told the SMM that the Ukrainian side (assessed to be the Right Sector volunteer battalion) earlier had made an offensive push through the line of contact towards Zhabunki (“DPR”-controlled, 14km west-north-west of Donetsk), ...

The Nazis from the Right Sector Azov battalion attacked, broke the ceasefire and started the fighting.

But readers of just AP reports will not learn that.

There is a comparable issue with this smear piece by Newsweek. It is somewhat laudable in that it is the first one I see in the "western" media which reports on the issue of the eight political functionaries who were "suicided" in Ukraine by unknown perpetrators:

When Melnychuk’s body was found on 22 March, police initially told local journalists he had committed suicide. But it soon emerged that alarmed neighbours had called police on hearing of a late-night struggle. Pathologists found he had been badly beaten before the fall. Later the same day, Odessa prosecutors registered Melnychuk’s “suicide” as a murder, and arrested a former police officer they describe only as “citizen K”. In reply to a legal request by Newsweek for information on investigations into the deaths of seven other former officials, all tied to Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, the General Prosecutor’s Office responded that all the information about all the deaths was a state secret – a staggering claim to make about a series of apparently unrelated civilian deaths they told the press were suicides. After an intervention by the Presidential Administration, the General Prosecutor’s Office disclosed that four of the seven deaths are being investigated as murders, with another investigation as yet unclassified. The two remaining cases had been closed with no evidence of a crime. No other information was provided.

That is all well and correct so far. But then the Newsweek piece by Maxim tucker weirs off into Lala-land.

Tucker claims that the most likely man behind these death is the the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. Akhmetov is the billionaire financial backer of the Party of the Regions who has many business interests in east Ukraine. Tucker asserts that Akhmetov had those people killed because they had helped him when he acquired, through bribes and violence, companies that the state privatized. They knew too much according to Tucker.

But these people were involved in many privatizations and not all of those went to Akhmetov. They were all also loyal to Akhmetov, long time servants of him and there was no sign that they were changing sides or worked against him. He simply had no reason to kill them.

Other oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoisky, the man behind the current prime minister Yatsenyuk and the financier behind the Azoz Nazis, have just as much interest to cover the tracks of their illegal acquisitions. They also saw the deceased party functionaries as the opposition to their rule. In any neutral investigation their ownerships of various companies and holdings would be just as much in question as Akhmetov's. As witnesses with knowledge of all wild privatization the killed people were much more likely to accuse them than they were to accuse Akhmetov. These oligarchs are, in my view, much more likely to have ordered the killings.

The Newsweek smear piece does not even mention that as a possibility. It simply asserts, with zero evidence, that Akhmetov must have been the man behind the murderers.

It seems to be a rule for "western" reporting on Ukraine (and elsewhere) that anything that may show a negative light on "our" puppets will be left out or, if that is no longer possible, be blamed on the other side.

Posted by b on April 13, 2015 at 17:26 UTC | Permalink

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