New Ukraine president promises war & austerity
2014Michael Schreiber 2014-06Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 12 →
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While fighting rages in Ukraine’s eastern provinc es, the Kiev government, which came to power in a U.S.-backed coup in February, has made an attempt to shore up its shaky claims to legitimacy. This was achieved to a certain extent with the May 25 national elections, in which billionaire Petro Poroshenko, the “chocolate king,” triumphed over the other capitalist candidates, snagging 54 percent of the vote.
According to the official Central Election Commis sion, a meager 60 percent of those eligible went to the polls nationwide. The percentage included votes of over 400,000 Ukrainian citizens living in the United States and other countries but excluded the rebellious Donetsk region, where only about 15 percent voted. But the outcome was enough for the White House and the Western big-business media to term the election a victory for “democracy” and to hail the new executive in chief.
Obama met with Poroshenko in Warsaw on June 4, while pledging up to $1 billion in expenditures to beef up the U.S. military presence in Poland and other NATO countries bordering Russia.
Poroshenko had an advantage over the other presi dential candidates in that many see him as having gained his immense fortune though the “normal” chan nels of capitalist enterprise, unlike most other Ukrai nian oligarchs, who acquired their assets through out right theft of state property during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. He is also a rather adept political chameleon, having switched his allegiances several times by serving in office for competing gov erning regimes.
Poroshenko was an occasional speaker at the initial Maidan (Independence Square) protests, which de volved into fascist-controlled mobilizations that be came central to the February coup, in which armed militias led by the pro-Hitler Svoboda Party and the even more virulent Right Sector stormed the Ukrai nian parliament (Rada).
Poroshenko says that he hopes to sign an economic association pact with the European Union soon after his June 7 inauguration. The major task for Poroshen ko’s government will be to enforce the EU’s demands for austerity measures that will further cut living stan dards of the country’s working class.
At the same time that Western European govern ments are pressing for austerity, they have nudged Kiev to mend its relations with Moscow; the Europe ans are fearful of a possible cutoff of gas supplies from Russia since the pipelines run through Ukraine.
Following the overthrow of President Victor Yanu kovych, Russia suspended the broad discounts on gas shipments it had given Ukraine. The EU, Ukraine, and Russia are now about to open talks concerning future supplies and prices. As a condition of the negotiations, 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 2014 Instead of the current Kiev government of billionaires, led by working people.
(Above) Members of the rebel Vostok Battalion tear up a Ukrainian flag in Donetsk.
(Left) New Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
training the National Guard.
Meanwhile, in Donetsk, the largest city in the region, Kiev troops and airborne units were able to reclaim the airport, which rebels had briefly captured on May 26. Many DPR partisans were killed when a truck car rying their men away from the battle was hit by heli copter fire.
As warplanes screamed over Donetsk, Western press dispatches claimed that disorder, even “anarchy,” had overtaken this city of one million. An Agence France Presse (AFP) report of May 30 stated that the city had become “lawless.” Police were “nowhere to be seen” since many police officers have switched sides to sup port the insurgents.
One resident told an AFP reporter: “A few days ago, armed men in hooded tops arrived at two car show rooms. They demanded a dozen cars ‘for the revolu tion.’” The article stated that while many attacks have apparent criminal motivations, others “have a more political edge, such as the looting of a warehouse be longing to chocolate tycoon and newly elected Ukrai nian president Petro Poroshenko in the nearby town of Makiivka.”
The AFP dispatch commented that “one incident of criminality,” the looting of a supermarket near the city’s airport, “seems to have driven a wedge between rebel factions.” Whether that is true is open to debate, however, since the structure and political goals of the rebel groups are not completely clear. Apparently, the thefts stirred armed members of the Vostok Batallion (“East” Batallion), one of the major armed units fight ing in the Donbas region, to take over the regional ad ministration building in Donetsk, which the DPR had been using as its headquarters. On May 29, bulldozers were employed to clear the barricades surrounding the building.
People’s Republic leader Denis Pushilin later ad mitted that some of the stolen merchandise from the market had been found in the DPR offices. “We’ve be gun a cleanup of our ranks—we want to stop looting so this doesn’t happen any more,” Alexander Maltsev, a spokesman for Pushilin, told Bloomberg News on May 30. “We detained 12 people yesterday and set up checkpoints around the city.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has charged that there is “evidence of Russians crossing over, trained personnel from Chechnya trained in Russia, who’ve come across to stir things up, to engage in fighting.” The Kiev government and the Western media have made similar allegations, and point to the Vostok Bat talion as proof. And indeed, a few Vostok members (continued on page 7, in “South Africa What went wrong?”)