More details are emerging on the forces the imperialist powers relied upon to oust Yanukovych. Yesterday, Russian media leaked a phone discussion on the Ukrainian protests between EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet. Contacted by the French-based euronews TV channel, Estonia’s foreign ministry confirmed the authenticity of the recorded telephone call.
The call shows that top EU officials who publicly praise the new regime as an exemplar of democracy privately view it as criminal. It also suggests that Western-backed operatives carried out deadly provocations, killing protesters and blaming their deaths on Yanukovych in order to push for regime-change.
Paet was reporting on his latest trip to Ukraine, where he met for discussions with various “civil society” operatives involved in the Maidan protests. He told Ashton, “There is no trust towards these politicians who return now to the coalition. People from Maidan and civil society say they know everybody who will be in the new government, all these guys have dirty pasts.”
Ashton expressed no disagreement with Paet’s statements, simply saying, “Yes.” She later proposed to send financial advisors to tell the Ukrainian regime how to implement austerity measures.
Paet also reported that members of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, were being beaten by armed opposition thugs on the Maidan—a comment that elicited no reaction from Ashton, who seemed uninterested in defending the Rada against the far-right forces.
She said she had had discussions with members of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions, telling them to appear contrite over the killing of protesters in order to defuse popular anger.
Paet responded by citing information provided to him by doctors active in the protests: “It was the same snipers killing people from both sides… It’s really disturbing that the new coalition does not want to investigate what exactly happened. There is now a stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”
Paet stressed with Ashton that he feared this could “discredit from the very beginning this new coalition.”
Ashton insisted that investigations could not be allowed to undermine the new regime.