When 69-year-old former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lost to President Donald Trump Nov. 8, her failed campaign chairman John D. Podesta blamed FBI Director James Comey for opening her email scandal two weeks before Election Day. It didn’t take long for Podesta to finger Trump’s alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, something Hillary tried to do in the last presidential debate in Las Vegas. Calling Trump a “Russian puppet,” Hillary pushed Podesta’s conspiracy theory that Trump couldn’t be trusted in the White House because of his alleged ties to Putin. In the latest Russian conspiracy theory, the New York Times reports about Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen trying to broker a peace deal with Ukraine in which Russia leases back Crimea from Petro Poroshenko’s Kiev government in exchange for Russia removing troops from Southeastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s problems started Feb. 22, 2014 when a CIA-backed pro-Western coup toppled the Kremlin-backed duly elected government of Viktor Yanukovich while Putn sat helplessly by hosting the Sochi Winter Olympics. Putin couldn’t save Yanukovich from pro-Western revolutionaries led by former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, chasing him out of Kiev. Only a week after Sochi’s closing ceremonies, Putin moved in the Russian army, officially annexing Crimea. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine Feb. 19, 1954 while Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. Taking Crimea back March 1, 2014 stunned the U.S. and European Union, slapping Moscow with economic sanctions. Neither the U.S. nor EU takes the CIA-backed pro-Western coup into consideration when trying to understand Putin’s motive in retaking the former Russian territory.
Justifying his March 1, 2014 decision to annex Crimea, Putin held a March 17 referendum, asking pro-Russian residents who they wanted to control the strategic peninsula, home in Savastopol to Russia’s warm-water Black Sea fleet. Since taking over Crimea, former Soviet states like Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and once dominated countries like Poland feared another Kremlin takeover. Uncovering a flimsy proposal by Trump’s lawyer to resolve the Ukrainian crisis and end Russia sanctions fueled more Podesta-driven New York Times conspiracy theories, all leading to Putin meddling in the 2016 presidential race. New York Times can’t explain, if Putin helped Trump win the election, why Hillary won nearly 3 million more popular votes. To buy the New York Times theory, you’d have to believe that Putin only influenced voters in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Raising Cohen’s inept proposal to get Russia to lease back Crimea for 50 to 100 years, the New York Times fuels more Russian conspiracy theories. No one at the New York Times raises the rampant corruption in Poroshenko’s government, only blaming Putin for all Ukraine’s problems. Former Army aviator 35-year-old Nadiya Savchenko, who spent two years in a Russia prison, now seeks Poroshenko’s ouster because of corruption and incompetence. Whatever inept proposal Trump’s surrogates came up, it certainly wasn’t proof of Trump’s Russian conspiracy. Getting warring parties on the same page in Ukraine helps stabilize the region where some 10,000 residents in Southeastern Ukraine have lost their lives. Whatever peace proposals are on the table, whether official or unofficial, they don’t address corruption and incompetence in Poroshenko’s Kiev government.
Residents of Ukraine, especially in the Southeastern Donbass region, recall the stability under the former Soviet Union. Whatever the problems with the Kremlin, they met medical and pension obligations for residents, now living without resources from the Kiev government. It’s no wonder breakaway areas like Crimea and Donbass want a return to the old Soviet days when the government met its obligations to Ukrainians. Promising free market reforms in some murky future doesn’t pay rent or put food on the table. Reporting on Cohen’s limp proposal obscures the real issues preventing Ukraine from following the Minsk II agreement, offering Donetsk and Luhansk semi-autonomy in exchange for a permanent ceasefire, requiring Russia to withdraw military support to the Donbass region. Minsk II has been a failure primarily because Poroshenko’s government has little reach beyond Kiev.
When Trump’s now fired National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn talked with Russian U.S. Amb. Sergey Kislyak Dec. 28, 2016 after former President Barack Obama evicted 35 Russian diplomats, he did nothing wrong trying to reassure the Russian ambassador. Fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence for failing to reveal he talked about Obama’s sanctions. Instead of beating a dead horse about Russian conspiracies, the New York Times should give the public the big picture on Ukraine, including Poroshenko’s inability deal with pro-Russian groups in the Donbass region. Getting Minsk II to work requires Poroshenko to manage the Ukrainian government without corruption or incompetence. If Trump’s surrogates tried to float an inept peace plan, it’s not to benefit Putin but to stop the bloodshed in the region, helping the war-wracked poverty-stricken Donbass region.
