Shekhovtsov on the far right

12 07 2014

Anton Shekhovtsov’s “Look Far Right, and Look Right Again” provides a sober assessment of the nationalist far right both in Russia, where it is well established, and in Ukraine, where it is making more inroads than some concede (but not as many as others claim).





Gregory: The case against Putin’s “success”

11 07 2014

In “Putin’s Failing Ukraine Scorecard,” Forbes’s Paul Roderick Gregory lays out the case against the more popular narrative that Putin has succeeded in “outwitting” the West in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

While I agree that Putin’s success in Ukraine itself appears limited, he remains very popular in Russia, and as the EU elections showed, seems to have a growing number of supporters in the European right (and far left). The jury is still out on whether and to what extent he is failing in his goals.





Levy: Donbass workers divided

11 07 2014

In “Workers of Donbass divided by Kremlin-backed violence,” People and Nature editor Gabriel Levy interviews an eastern Ukrainian labor activist and presents a view of a weak and marginalized left in eastern Ukraine.





Stephen Cohen rides again

11 07 2014

I am blogging less here these days, and I expect that will continue through the summer (unless some radical change occurs in Ukraine and its relations with Russia).

One thing I shouldn’t let go without mention, however, is Stephen Cohen’s recent article in The Nation, “The Silence of American Hawks About Kiev’s Atrocities.” I’m one of the many Ukraine-watchers who disagree with Cohen’s analyses of Ukraine, who find them overfocused on geopolitics, oversympathetic to Putin and his nationalist/neo-imperialist regime, and almost completely lacking in on-the-ground knowledge of Ukraine itself.

The letters responding to Cohen’s article are worth reading; they can be found here. My own — third from the bottom on that page — is harsher than is my typical style, but as a long-time reader of The Nation, I can’t help feeling betrayed by it on this issue. I’m generally in agreement with the Brookings Institution’s Steven Pifer’s more detailed response.

Other Ukraine scholars tend to be less generous with Cohen (see, for instance, Alexander Motyl’s “Contradictions Define Kremlin Apologists“). But he is influential on the left and his defenses of Putin’s Russia deserve a hearing (however misguided they may be). My disagreement is less with Cohen’s right to speak his mind than it is with The Nation‘s unwillingness to look more deeply into the issues he writes about. Since Cohen is married to the magazine’s editor-in-chief, that may not be surprising; but readers should still press for better from the leading newsweekly on the U.S. left.





Western leftist conspiracy narratives: or, the devil in the details

23 06 2014

An article is circulating in the western left that alleges that Ukraine’s new president Poroshenko has been a “mole” for the U.S. State Department since 2006. The article is just one example of the kind of narrative I’ve seen circulating widely in the western anti-American left that overstates the U.S.’s role in Ukrainian affairs. Notably, the writers of these narratives tend to eagerly swallow up the “information” being spread by an authoritarian, right-wing state — Russia — in order to prop up their theories.

Here are some comments in response.

(For the record, plenty of articles circulate that have propaganda value but little factual value. I have previously shared, on this blog, some of those produced by Russian propaganda sources. One that seems to be produced by Ukrainian propaganda sources, or at least that seems to be spreading among anti-Russian bloggers, claims that the recent UN human rights report alleges that Russian security services, or Russian special forces, were behind the Odessa deaths of June 2. The UN report says no such thing.)

Read the rest of this entry »





Jewish voices from Donetsk

20 06 2014

Avital Chizhik’s “Jewish Voices from the Frontlines of Donetsk” provides a ground level perspective on how that city has been transformed by the war in eastern Ukraine.





UN report on human rights in Ukraine

19 06 2014

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has released its third Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine.

The full 58-page report can be read here.

A brief overview can be read here.





Maidan & the Left: “Libertarian in spirit”

16 06 2014

In a report on the recent conference “The Left and the Maidan,” held in Kyiv in April, Russian trade unionist Kirill Buketov (of the Global Labour Institute and the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers) provides a detailed overview of the role of the political left in the Maidan movement.

Buketov argues that while the Maidan cannot be adequately described as either left-wing or right-wing in its political character — according to polls, “93% of the Maidan participants were distant from politics” and only 7% “had a political position and belonged to one political group or another” — in spirit it was “left-wing” and “libertarian.”

“Driven by protest against corruption and tyranny, against humiliation and oppression, by masses of people who felt their dignity had been offended by their rulers’ lies,”

Read the rest of this entry »





Poroshenko’s inaugural speech

8 06 2014

The inaugural speech of Ukraine’s new president, Petro Poroshenko, can be read in its entirety in English translation here.





More media war techniques

5 06 2014

While this web site is in Russian, the videos and images don’t require much translation. It’s a catalogue of examples of Russian state media “recycling” of images from other times and places — dead bodies, mutilated children, bombings, downed UN planes, et al. — in order to discredit Ukraine’s (former) opposition or its (current) interim government.

The sources include Syria’s current civil war (several images), Belgrade in the 1990s, Mexico’s drug war, the African Congo (that UN plane), and even a fire from Quebec’s Lac Megantic train derailment. All are presented as if these depict victims of “Kiev’s fascist junta” or on-the-ground images from eastern Ukraine.

See here for the article.

Then there is the army of internet trolls. Media studies dissertations can be written about this stuff.

 

 








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