Today, they are still of some interest to the advanced German economy. The destabilisation of a growing number of countries in Asia and Africa is leading to an extension of the areas suffering from starvation and, accordingly, an increase in global demand for agricultural products. From this perspective, Ukraine’s black soil could prove to be a new Klondike and, generally speaking, the interests of Germany’s ruling elite today are no different from those of their distant predecessors. The forceful seizure of growing space in the 21st century is out of the question, however, and the roadmap for the acquisition of Ukraine’s riches needs to be radically different. Nowadays, it has taken on the appearance of a fruitful collaboration with Ukraine within the framework of the European Union, where Germany is determined to maintain its leadership in the future. 

Berlin has already done much to lay the groundwork for the successful rise to power of the people it needs in Kiev, and the person Germany has programmed to carry out its future plans in Ukraine is Vitali Klitschko. Why is Germany gambling on a high-profile sportsman with global renown who is inexperienced in politics? To begin with, it would seem that it is because after many years living abroad, Vitali Klitschko has become a real cosmopolitan.

The older of two boxing brothers, Vitali began his professional sporting career in 1995. He quickly acquired the nickname Dr Ironfirst in the sporting world, and since then has appeared more often abroad than at home. In 1997, the Klitschko brothers signed with international sporting consortium Universum Box-Promotion, moved to Germany, and were taken under the wing of German trainer Fritz Zdunek. Their first few fights were in Germany only, but then the location of the fights spread to encompass the whole world. Vitali has fought in the world’s most famous boxing rings. 

During his 15-year sporting career, Dr Ironfirst became a star of the first magnitude and one of the wealthiest professional boxers. He is an iconic figure in world boxing and is completely immersed in this international business. He is also a recipient of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2010). In 2011, meanwhile, he received the German national «Sportsman with a heart» award, together with his brother Wladimir, for his work as part of the Klitschko Brothers Foundation. 

Vitali Klitschko has been living in Germany for the last 15 years and is one of the country’s biggest taxpayers in the world of sport. Since 2008, he and his brother have been the faces of the McFit fitness centre chain (with an income of EUR 1 million each).

There is also another reason, however, why German political circles have gambled on Vitali Klitschko becoming the future president of Ukraine: he has a close connection with Germany, which has become something like a second home to him… His entire situation, social status and hopes for the future depend on this country. This man, who is dependent on a foreign country to such an extent that he cannot not become a spokesman for the interests of the country, is being raised to the pinnacle of power in Ukraine. 

The gamble on Vitali Klitschko is primarily a gamble on the youth of Ukraine. Klitschko tried his hand at public activities back in 2003, when he became head of the charitable Klitschko Brothers Foundation, and then adviser to the Ukrainian president (2006-2008). It is alleged that nearly half a million children and teenagers took part in Klitschko Brothers Foundation projects during the ten years of its existence, and that the Foundation’s financial contributions to sporting projects in Ukraine in 2012 amounted to more than 4 million hryvnia, or 65 percent of all expenditure of this type in Ukraine. 

Vitali initially dealt with issues surrounding sport in Kiev. He established the political party New Country, which went through a period of alliances with various political forces, but did not particularly stand out among them. In the same year, the New Country party was renamed the UDAR party (the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform).

In December 2013, the German publication German foreign policy wrote that the German government intended to gamble on the boxing champion Vitali Klitschko during the presidential campaign in Kiev in 2015 and bring him to power.

Vitali Klitschko and his UDAR party are not just receiving massive aid from the Adenauer Foundation. The whole setup of helping the party is evidence of how Germany is influencing the situation in Ukraine. In many ways, Vitali Klitschko is not just an ally; he is a product of German politics.

In January 2011, Klitschko held talks and consultations in Berlin at various politicals levels, while in the autumn of the same year the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation organised for him to stay in Thuringia, where he studied the experience of municipal politics. It should be emphasised that the Adenauer Foundation is just a façade for working with Vitali Klitschko. During visits to Berlin, he meets with politicians from a wide variety of levels and persuasions. He has constant contact with high-ranking representatives from the German Chancellor’s Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other German government agencies. He also had regular meetings with the former German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. The last time, Westerwelle appeared in public with Vitali Klitschko on Maidan Square in November last year. It is expected that the new head of the German Foreign Ministry Frank-Walter Steinmeier will continue the tradition of a close working relationship with Klitschko. 

In short, Klitschko had every reason to sincerely thank the Adenauer Foundation in March 2012 for the help given to the UDAR party in its establishment. And they were not empty words. Just six months later, in October 2012, Vitali Klitschko’s party won 42 seats in the parliamentary elections, while Vitali himself headed the party and became a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on State Building and Local Government. In the summer of 2013, at the initiative of the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation, the UDAR party held a brainstorming session to discuss ways to increase its number of supporters and develop a pre-election strategy for 2015. 

In the run up to events on Maidan Square in November 2013, the Adenauer Foundation held a seminar with UDAR activists on the issue of Ukraine’s association with the EU. At the end of November 2013, the UDAR party visited Germany to familiarise itself with parliamentary activities, where it once again worked closely with representatives of the Adenauer Foundation. It should be said that the cost of getting Vitali Klitschko’s party to power is expected to be considerable. It is assumed that the Germans are perfectly able to organise effective control of its payouts to Ukrainian politicians eager for «grants». 

Berlin’s interest in Ukraine and Germany’s activities in this direction are increasingly reminiscent of the Teutonic Order’s preparations to march to the east. Only this time, the «Order» is putting a hired Ukrainian «bogatyr» up front. The signal for action will soon be given. Vitali Klitschko, while meeting with the head of the World Boxing Council José Sulaimán last summer, announced that he is planning to stand for office in the Ukrainian presidential elections in 2015… 

And this is not likely to change if Vitali Klitschko becomes the next president of Ukraine.More likely this affliction will then be manifested in full. Lacking the knowledge and experience needed to govern a country, Klitschko will inevitably become a pawn in the hands of people who will raise him to the top of the state hierarchy and ensconce themselves in the shadow of his "throne". Among them will be the American consultants who work with the UDAR Party. It is interesting to take a look at just what kind of companies are mediating in contacts between Klitschko and the U.S. Congress and American government agencies, as well as advising his staff on organizing the early presidential race …

Until recently, according to UDAR's political strategist Rostislav Pavlenko, the party was working with the American company PBN, which specializes in the field of so-called "strategic communications" on the markets of Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries. According to PBN's site, the key areas of the company's activities are "corporate and crisis communications, public and government relations, and financial communications and investor relations".

Considering that PBN's board of directors includes such people as Mikhail Gorbachev's former press secretary Georgy Oganov and chairman of the board of directors of the international investment company Alfa Capital Bernard Sucher, it is quite reasonable to assume that PBN is one of those Western organizations which have long attached themselves to post-Soviet countries like leeches in order to pump money out of them and into American banks using connections in the upper echelons of the government and big business.

The company's Ukrainian office is headed by American citizen Myron Wasylyk, a former State Department employee, member of the supervisory board of the U.S.-intelligence-linked Eurasia Foundation, and member of the supervisory board of the International Centre for Policy Studies, founded on the money of George Soros. This center, by the way, contributed to the writing of a draft of a free trade zone agreement between Ukraine and the EU that the president of Ukraine considered a threat to the national interests of the country. 

Wasylyk's wife, Maria Ionova, has been a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada for UDAR since 2012. It's not clear right away, of course, how she went from being a small entrepreneur and deputy's assistant in 2005 to suddenly becoming a consultant to the President of Ukraine (!) and then a member of his administration. This goes to show what kind of power the head of PBN's Ukrainian office had after the "orange revolution".

After the creation of UDAR, PBN started working with Vitali Klitschko's team, helping it establish ties with the White House, Congress, the State Department and the U.S. National Security Council. PBN set up a number of visits to Washington for the party leader and his assistants. It was this company that introduced Klitschko to Senator John McCain, as well as a number of State Department and National Security Council officials who react especially nervously to everything connected with Russia.

In helping Vitali Klitschko establish needed connections in the American establishment, the head of PBN's Ukrainian office mainly depended on his long-time acquaintance from his time at the Eurasia Foundation, Fiona Hill, who belongs to the most reactionary wing of American neoconservatives. She is best known for supporting the actions of the Wahhabis in Chechnya, thinking up justifications for the terrorist attack in Beslan, and opposing the designation of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terrorist group at hearings in the U.S. Congress. During the presidency of George W. Bush, Fiona Hill was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. She maintains close ties with the Ukrainian diaspora and considers herself a great friend of Ukraine (for some reason only the nationalist part).

Thus, if Vitali Klitschko becomes president (and it looks like Washington is pushing for just that, however much Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Oleh Tyahnybok might pout), the PBN Company's opportunities will be just as great as they were during Yushchenko's presidency. But then again, maybe not. Because, according to omniscient Ukrainian political scientist Kost' Bondarenko, UDAR recently started working with a different American company, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (GQR). 

Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is an even larger consulting company with operations in 80 countries. It does the same kinds of things as PBN. But perhaps the main difference between it and PBN is that in the U.S. GQR is oriented more toward the Democratic Party than toward the Republican Party, like Myron Wasylyk's organization.

The decision to replace one American coach with another is most likely connected with the fact that the closer the presidential elections in Ukraine get, the better those in UDAR are beginning to understand that now Vitali Klitschko needs to rely mainly on the American Democrats, who will still be in the White House in 2015. So reorienting on Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which consulted on the election campaigns of U.S. President Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Al Gore and has helped the Democratic Party in congressional and gubernatorial elections, is a wise move.

GQR is not a newcomer to Ukraine, or to the former Soviet Union in general. In 2007, for example, the company worked with the party Our Ukraine. The party's results were lamentable, but when UDAR was choosing a new partner, apparently old connections played a role. It didn't matter that GQR's previous election campaigns in Ukraine ended in failure; some pleasant aspects of collaboration apparently remained in the memories of Ukrainian and American colleagues. Maybe it was the pleasure of "carving up" the party's pre-election budget, who knows? Such things are closely-guarded secrets in any tight-knit team of political consultants.

GQR also has had successes in conducting presidential and parliamentary campaigns in a number of countries. They met with success, for example, in Romania, Germany and Great Britain, where GQR still has connections in government and political circles. And this will significantly increase the spectrum of opportunities for GQR to provide services to the future president of Ukraine, if everything goes well for Vitali Klitschko. At least for a while. Like for Mikheil Saakashvili, who GQR also brought to power and then taught to run Georgia according to American formulas until the Georgians got sick of it.

How everything will go later for Ukraine is difficult to say as of yet. Maybe, as with Georgia, Ukraine will have yet another Maidan revolution. It's already used to such things. Because however many times one might switch American coaches, the result is still the same – not to the advantage of the country they are coaching.

In the wake of what has been called the «Orange Revolution II» in Ukraine, Kerry's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, who previously served as Hillary Clinton's State Department mouthpiece, threatened sanctions against Ukraine’s government led by President Viktor Yanukovych. Gazing over protesters in central Kyiv from his hotel window, Arizona’s fanatical Republican Senator John McCain was licking his chops over the prospect of an anti-Russian Ukraine coming into being. McCain is a Cold War throwback and someone who remains mentally-unbalanced between flashbacks from a prisoner of war cell in Hanoi and to present-day reality.

Ukraine, which resisted efforts by the European Union to integrate it into Europe's banker-led federation of austerity and poverty, came into the EU's cross hairs after it abandoned an «Association Agreement» pact with the EU.  Instead, Kyiv opted for a more lucrative economic union with Russia. That move triggered off a mass street uprising in Kyiv's Maidan (Independence) Square that demanded the resignation of Ukraine's democratically-elected President and government.

The connections between the Kyiv uprising and the EU outside manipulators are so apparent, the Kyiv square that has become the «Tahrir Square» of Ukraine is called «Euromaidan.» The initial Tahrir Square uprising in Cairo, which overthrew Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, was partly manipulated by Soros-financed and Sharp-influenced street demonstrators who took their cues from professional political agitators hastily flown into Egypt from the United States and Europe.

The latest professionally-agitated spectacle in Kyiv’s was spearheaded by the same Soros/Sharp/National Endowment for Democracy/CIA hydra that saw the overthrow of Ukraine's government in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. This time, not only is Ukrainian President Yanukovych, but ultimately Russian President Vladimir Putin, are the targets…

Nuland, who is married to the bloody-handed neocon archangel Robert Kagan, handed out snacks to protesters on Maidan Square. Imagine the reaction of the United States had a second-tier official of either the Russian or Chinese foreign ministry handed out food to Occupy Wall Street protesters in Washington and urged them to overthrow, by force if necessary, President Obama. Yet, that is exactly the scenario Nuland engaged in by supporting protesters in Maidan. Furthermore, she reprimanded Yanokovych for the heavy security presence in Maidan. Nuland and Kerry, who also upbraided Yanukovych, forgot the acts of police brutality committed by U.S. cops against occupy protesters, as well as a plan by the FBI to use snipers to assassinate the leaders of the group.

And Nuland and Kerry were very quiet when the Turkish government set loose riot police on peaceful protesters in Taksim Square in Istanbul earlier this year. After all, Turkey is a member of NATO and Ukraine, for the time being, is not. 

For Gene Sharp and his two NGO «babies,» OTPOR and the Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), vanguard organizations for organizing «rent-a-riot» anti-government protests around the globe, only nations resistant to the «New World Order» designs of Wall Street and the Pentagon are fair game for receiving cash, pamphlets, i-Pads and i-Phones, snacks, «themed revolution» placards and banners, restored national flags from times past, and other propaganda support. Recently, it was discovered, through leaked emails, that CANVAS founder Srdja Popovic was collaborating with the CIA- and Pentagon-linked intelligence firm STRATFOR, founded by George Friedman, whose ties to the U.S. and Israeli military-intelligence establishments are well known.

The «Orange Revolution II» in Kyiv has also received favorable press in central and eastern Europe and other parts of the world thanks to the auspices of various Soros press entities, including the Center for Advanced Media in Prague, a contrivance of the Media Development Loan Fund, a project of Soros' Open Society Institute.

And as with all fake «themed» revolutions, an «embattled martyr» is needed to rally the «rent-a-mob» to action. For the Ukrainian demonstrator, the «Maiden of Maidan» is Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Prime Minister who was imprisoned for corruption. Tymoshenko, who is now held at a clinic in Kharkiv, has become the «Aung San Suu Kyi» of Ukraine. But for many Ukrainians, the former Prime Minister is a shameless attention seeker whose trademark braided hair coif is derided by many Ukrainians as a «bagel» on top of her head. 

For Orange Revolution II, the new «heroes» are ex-boxer and UDAR opposition leader Vitali Klitschko and far-right nationalist Oleh Tyahnybok. Their playbooks are written in Soros boiler shops in Prague, London, Washington, and New York and not in Kyiv.

Too many eastern and central European political activists have been «taken in» by the phony «democracy movements» funded by Soros. Needless to say, Soros is not someone who should be a spokesperson, let alone a funder, of what is supposed to be pro-democracy and pro-labor causes. Soros began his sordid career in hedge funds (a combination of a betting parlor and a Ponzi scheme contrivance) in the late 1960s under Georges Coulon Karlweis, the vice chairman of Banque Privée Edmond Rothschild in Geneva, Switzerland. 

In the late 1960s, Karlweis provided Rothschild funds to Soros's Quota and Quantum hedge funds. Karlweis was the grand master of global financial chicanery and shysterism, having been linked to schemes of Bernard Cornfeld's International Overseas Services (IOS), the firm that Robert Vesco looted before he went into fugitive status. Karlweis also had his fingerprints on the antics of Michael Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert's junk bond racketeer.

Soros has set himself up as a deep-pocketed prophet for liberal causes, yet he has diminished true progressives by spreading his ill-gotten profits through various front organizations. Soros’s Open Society Institute has supported various pro-democracy front organizations but these groups serve the interests of shadowy global financial corporations, like the Blackstone Group.

Blackstone's former director was Lord Jacob Rothschild, Soros' old pal and financial colleague. Soros, through his bought-and-paid-for «progressive» media entities has managed to stifle any news that casts light on his own anti-democratic and anti-progressive activities in Europe and around the world. 

In the first round of themed revolutions sponsored by Soros and his U.S. government collaborators and adhering to the Gene Sharp playbook, New World Order template governments were installed in Ukraine and Georgia. Headed by Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko in Ukraine and Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia, the pro-NATO and EU governments, installed amid a flurry of «pro-democracy» fanfare, soon descended into corrupt and nepotistic regimes. Tymoshenko and Saakashvili soon were associated with the mafia and corrupt business moguls. Tymoshenko's one-time business partner, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, began serving a prison term in California for money laundering, corruption, and fraud. Meanwhile, Saakashvili became entangled with the mysterious «Golden Fleece» charity in Cyprus.

The neo-cons never recovered from the end of the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko regime because Soros and the themed revolution agitators had invested so much in the inserted government in anticipation of its NATO and EU membership. Yushchenko’s wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, served in the Ronald Reagan White House. Chumachenko also worked in the White House Public Liaison Office where she conducted outreach to various right-wing and anti-communist exile groups in the United States, including the other bastion of the neo-cons, the Heritage Foundation. 

Now, «Responsibility to Protect» interventionists in the Obama administration are trying to turn back the calendar to 2004 and bring about another non-democratic ouster of an elected government in Ukraine.

Across Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, Belarus, Romania, and other countries of eastern and central Europe, the new generation of Soros agitators and provocateurs are trying to launch another series of «themed revolutions.» This time the goal is, once again, prying Ukraine away from Russia and into the EU and NATO. 

The Russian, Chinese and Iranian officials also lend their support to demands of more radical voices within the protesters calling for the overthrow of the incumbent governments, and these same officials say nothing, therefore condone it, when statues of revered statesmen such as Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill are toppled and smashed to pieces with sledgehammers. 

Such a picture could only be a figment of the imagination because in the real world any such foreign involvement in the internal affairs of Western states would spark a diplomatic and media explosion of condemnation. International laws and treaties would be immediately and resoundingly invoked; subversion would be declared and vilified; and even acts of war would be demanded in retribution for such «outrageous foreign-backed sedition». 

And all the while, we can be sure, the Western media would amplify without question the grievances of their governments, and cast the role of foreign politicians as unwarranted, malicious interference in national sovereignty.

Yet all these infringements – and more – are taking place in the Ukraine where there has been a procession of Western politicians, government statements and media coverage in recent weeks arrogantly presuming the abnormal to be normal and arrogating the power to lecture an elected government on how to conduct its internal sovereign affairs…

This week we saw the EU foreign affairs chief Lady Catherine Ashton and the US deputy secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, fly into the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to insinuate themselves as arbiters between President Viktor Yanukovych’s government and the protesters encamped on the streets and in civic buildings. 

These two figures are but the latest in a long line of Western officials who have taken it upon themselves to pronounce on the decision by the Kiev government at the end of last month to suspend a trade deal with the European Union. 

US deputy president Joe Biden, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, and EU chief Herman Van Romquy are but a few of the other senior Western voices who are undermining the authority of the Ukrainian government by calling on Kiev to rethink its EU decision and to accommodate the demands of protesters. The Ukrainian authorities stand accused of denying a «European dream» to these protesters, a dream which moreover is a futile fantasy given the record levels of poverty across the EU. 

The government of Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected in 2010. It faces the next national election in 2015. Until then it has the legal authority to decide on all its policies, big and small, foreign and domestic. It seems preposterous to feel obliged to spell out this sovereign reality, a reality that is underpinned by centuries of international norms and laws. But this obligation to defend a cornerstone of sovereignty is a reflection of how the tsunami of Western political and media interference towards the Ukraine has managed to warp the agenda, and succeed, to an extent, in making the abnormal appear normal. A government defends its legal authority to make a foreign policy decision and subsequently to restore order on the streets of its capital, and somehow Western hysteria makes this into a virtual crime against humanity. 

It does not matter that there are large crowds in Kiev for the past three weeks opposing the government’s decision to postpone, or even at a future date to spurn, the EU pact. Protester numbers in Kiev centered on the Maidan (Independence Square) are estimated at 300,000, and so far the repeated calls by organizers, such as Vitaly Klitscho’s UDAR party or Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s Fatherland party, for «a million-man march» have not materialized. It is therefore questionable what democratic mandate these protesters have in a country of 46 million population where there have been few reported demonstrations outside of the capital. Certainly, in the industrial East of the Ukraine, support for the protesters in Kiev remains minimal. 

The Ukraine government is obliged to take such dissenting views into consideration and perhaps even allow them to influence eventual decisions. But it is surely putting the cart before the horse to expect it to relinquish its elected authority and allow government decision-making to be taken over by street protesters; especially when there is solid evidence that many of these protesters are serving a foreign agenda of sowing instability and regime change. 

So, what right do the pro-EU demonstrators have to cripple the capital city, and the normal administrative running of the entire country? Legally, these protests are on very thin ice, especially in light of the Ukraine parliament rejecting a Vote of No Confidence in the government on 3 December. 

If the protesters have a case for European integration, then let them put it to the population at the next general election in 2015. But that reasonable, democratic alternative is not being explored. Instead, the legitimate functioning of the present government is being thwarted by illegal methods, and with the full encouragement of Western governments and media, as well as covertly through CIA-sponsored think tanks and non-governmental organizations, such the National Endowment for Democracy.

Let’s be clear: the methods of protest in Kiev would not be tolerated in Western capitals for a single minute, let alone three weeks. French riot police have fired baton rounds and tear gas to clear up to 30,000 protesting farmers off French roads in Brittany, barring them from getting anywhere near the capital. American police pepper spray peaceful sit-ins by anti-war students and shut them out of city parks. In London, laws have been enacted in recent years in order to make it illegal for any sort of encampment near Westminster, and all marches must apply for licenses otherwise they are declared illegal and forcibly halted with police truncheons and tazer-guns. 

The Ukrainian authorities were legally entitled and morally right to remove protesters from Kiev’s centre this week in order to restore the normal functioning of government buildings. Why should an entire nation be held hostage by people just because this latter group indulges in a «European dream»?

For Western governments and their media to make an outcry over heavy-handed policing is ludicrous both in the distortion of the legal, sovereign situation and also from the point of view of double standards in how these same governments react to protesters in their own countries.

US secretary of state John Kerry weighed in with this asinine nonsense: «The United States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest in Kiev’s Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers, and batons rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity… As church bells ring tonight amid the smoke in the streets of Kiev, the United States stands with the people of Ukraine,» he added. «They deserve better.»

This is Kerry’s diplomatic language for fomenting sedition in the Ukraine, without him even knowing what «the people of the Ukraine» really think. 

Meanwhile, the EU’s Lady Ashton said she was disturbed by police actions in Kiev, saying: «The authorities didn’t need to act under the cover of night to engage with the society by using police.»

Well, how else does pious Lady Ashton expect Ukrainian police to remove illegal and vandalizing protesters from occupying government buildings? Perhaps, she would prefer for them to be all appointed, unelected, to parliament by political patronage as she was. 

The irony of Ashton lecturing to the elected Ukrainian government on matters of foreign policy and policing is that the Lady has never faced an election in her entire political life. She owes her political career to the patronage of the British Labour party under Tony Blair who made her a baroness, a life peer, in 1999. Ashton has since ascended to become an appointed top European bureaucrat whose mission this week was to undermine the elected authorities in Kiev and to pressure them to negotiate with protesters on the streets, thus elevating the latter to the status of sovereign government. How ironic is that?

There are sound economic reasons for why the government of the Ukraine took the autonomous decision it did over the EU, which unlike Moldova and Georgia opted to not join the EU trade pact. Given the parlous state of the Ukrainian economy and the long-standing cultural and industrial links with Russia, not to mention the vital issue of cheap Russian gas supply, it is a matter for much careful deliberation. 

Accusations from Western governments that Moscow acted maliciously by using threats and blackmail to scuttle the prospective EU pact is a pejorative rush to judgment that: does not allow the Ukrainian government its sovereign right to make an autonomous decision on a matter of extreme strategic importance to the future development of that country; seems to recklessly dismiss the objective concerns about the impact on the Ukrainian economy from a premature association with the EU, as indicated only a few weeks by German Chancellor Angela Merkel; and, thirdly, the political reaction from the West seems intent on provoking geopolitical tensions that are out of all proportion to the subject in hand, namely closer EU association. 

The strong suspicion is that the hullabaloo being whipped by Western governments, media and unelected bureaucrats like Lady Ashton is motivated by an ulterior agenda of undermining Russia and isolating it from its neighbors. The strategic importance and location of the Ukraine makes it a prime assault path on Russia for Western powers, for which the EU issue is but a pretext. 

To gauge how provocative the Western interference in the affairs of the Ukraine is, the measure is simple. Just imagine the same level of interference in reverse on Brussels or Washington, and then imagine their reaction. There you are. It doesn’t bear thinking. That would be an impossible European or American dream.

Why reporting about the victory over the statue Reuters called Lenin the founder of contemporary Russian (instead of Soviet) state? At first glance it’s just a funny mistake but it speaks about a coordinated action taken against nonperishable symbols of Russia’s and Ukraine’s state unity in the past. This symbolic collision is going on and the statue of Bogdan Khmelnitsky may be the next victim of those who «fight the Moskali (Russians) for independence». The West has started a game in Ukraine and the stakes are high. The goal is to dig an insurmountable ditch between the two parts of Russian world. UDAR (Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reforms) party is the main political force the West counts on. Bild paints its leader Vitali Klitschko as a hero: he could enjoy sun on a Miami beach or somewhere else or spend the money he has earned in sports in a casino. Instead he is openly standing up to the «regime of Yanukovych», writes an enraptured commentator. The well-informed Spiegel reports that a number of European conservative parties and German Chancellor Angela Merkel herself are intent to render Klitschko their support while speaking publicly. UDAR is said to get «logistical support» from the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Konrad Adenauer Foundation) and the European People’s Party. The Party is a conglomerate of right-wing forces with Herman Achille Van Rompuy José Manuel Barroso as its vice-presidents. So all the grandees of EU politics are players in the game. 

Formally the government of Germany rejects the fact of rendering support to Ukrainian opposition. On December 4 a question about Ukraine was asked during a press-conference with German government officials and the given answer referred to the contacts with the Ukrainian opposition at the level of political foundations. In Germany they act like kind of offices of government-funded political parties with branches abroad. The Konrad Adenauer Foundation is one of them being linked to the conservative Christian Democratic Union (Germany)/Christian Social Union (Bavaria). Most likely the answer implied providing funds to Western political strategists who will consult Klitschko. The members of his team don’t try to hide the fact they have held talks about it with German, French and US companies. In the past UDAR has cooperated with US political scholars from PBN Сompany и Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Aside from funds and «specialists», public actions are taken, for instance Guido Westerwelle walking around Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) with Vitali Klitschko. No matter he is leaving politics because his Free Democratic Party suffered defeat at the last Bundestag election, Westerwelle is still filled with fervor. Before leaving for Kiev, the Minister tried to mediate between the government and the opposition. Too hastily, perhaps, because having consulted Washington, Brussels appears to choose the policy of isolating President Victor Yanukovych and his team. 

One more tendency has taken shape – the intensification of Eastern Partnership. Formally Berlin had kept some distance from this program. Moreover, media used to report that Germany (and France) was among the main opponents of it. This is understandable; Germans have other effective tools to influence Ukraine: the group of consultants to influence the government, the political foundations to literally exert influence on the Ukrainian political elite, the Goethe-Institute (Munich) for cultural impact. This country is beyond competition as the major Ukrainian trade partner. 

Germany had taken a tough stance before the Vilnius summit. Delivering a speech at the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin on November 18, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Ukraine must take «credible steps» in order to clinch a trade agreement with the EU, «We know that reforms cannot completely be carried out in a day. We also want to support Ukraine in its reforms, with offers of cooperation, with financial means from the European Neighborhood Policy. But the conditions for this must be achieved by Ukraine itself and not just sometime, but rather now», she said. With less than two weeks to go before the agreement is due to be signed at a summit in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the European Union has made clear that Ukraine has not done enough to meet the conditions for a signing». As one can remember, it was Germany supported by France who froze the Ukraine’s entry into NATO in 2008. Now the situation has changed and the way the tide turns cannot but evoke concern. When the Ukraine’s President took the decision to call off his signature on the free trade agreement with Germany, it immediately turned into hot (if not the hottest) supporters of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Ukraine joining Poland in its fervor. Experts did not lose time to come up with the text of declaration calling on Germany and Ukraine to intensify the bilateral cooperation within the framework of Eastern Partnership. When the Kiev’s decision to skip signing of agreement with the European Union became known, the first reaction of German Chancellor was to discuss the issue with President Vladimir Putin to assure him the Eastern Partnership was not targeted against Russia but then she moved to the position of Guido Westerwelle. The German central media outlets started to talk about a new iron curtain. The refusal of President Joachim Gauck to go to the Olympics in Sochi is a Cold War times gesture to cause perplexity in our days. Perhaps the former East German dissident Gauck still sees the world as an arena for ideological war. Or, perhaps, Berlin has decided that such an approach may serve the interests of Europe and its relations with Moscow?

Twenty years ago Zbigniew Brzezinski defined the main goal of the West’s Ukrainian policy – to separate Ukraine from Russia at all costs. Today it is clear the definition is still acute as it was back then. The words of former Chancellor of Austria Alfred Guzenbauer come to mind. He said the association agreement was destined to prevent Russia from «laying its hands» on Ukraine. (1) Brussels was the first foreign stop of newly elected President Victor Yanukovych, the integration with Europe was declared the national priority for the government of the country. The ensuing Kiev’s weekly accounts about the progress on the way of concluding the association agreement with European Union seemed to be moving even to Stefan Fule, the EU’s commissioner for enlargement. But to no avail. At some definite moment Berlin took a special position: it all of a sudden became obsessed with the need to provide medical aid to Yulia Timoshenko. They say this humanitarian action matched a political calculation. Anyway, hospitality is practiced and the doors of hospitals are open for political opposition acting in the interests of the West. It has become kind of a calling card for German foreign policy. Germany is very democratic: it treats everyone equally making no distinction for ranks, be it Libyan militants who toppled Gaddafi or those who belong to Syrian anti-government forces. No way could Germans miss the chance to restore the health of Yulia Timoshenko or make her enjoy freedom as the potentially strong candidate opposing Victor Yanukovych at the 1915 presidential election. The plan stymied and the question popped up – if not Yanukovych, then who is it going to be? Who’ll be the West’s favorite son in the fight for the top position in the country? 

Today the answer is known. 

In Vilnius Angela Merkel told the incumbent Ukraine’s President without interpreter in English, «We expected more». As media reported, the German Chancellor answered no to Yanukovych as he approached her with the request to help him get a loan from the International Monetary Fund. The German media immediately started to compare the Ukrainian President with doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to it, the Yanukovych-Hyde spoiled the Vilnius summit, while the Yanukovych-Jekyll is hoping to sign the agreement as soon as possible and is clenching his fists while telling Chancellor Merkel about the pressure exerted on him by Russia. (2) The media made no bones about it saying Yanukovych was «as cunning as a fox» which wants to make the European Union and Russia clashc (3).

So, who do German politicians view as the Ukrainian leader after the already looming fall of the «dictatorial regime»? Who does Europe want to be its would-be partner at the talks on the Ukraine’s association with the European Union? Respectable Europeans could not condescend to holding talks with someone like Oleh Tyahnybok, who finds that the Moskali (Russians), the Germans or the Jews are all the evils not worth choosing. (4) Not so long ago he was decorated with the Gold Cross merit medal by veterans of voluntary trooper division SS «Galichina».

The West views Vitaly Klitschko as the next leader of Ukraine. It opts for him; he is the man of the West’s choice. An information campaign to create him the image of the West’s favorite person and the winner of the 2015 presidential election is still to be launched, though some signs are already tangible. Not only central German media outlets, but the local ones as well (it means the signal is given to the media from the very top) report about the «Ukrainian opposition is rallying around this politician». While highlighting the events in Ukraine, he gets more attention than others and is painted in better light than anyone else: Klitschko tried to make the parliament pass a no-confidence vote against the government, Klitschko wants Ukraine to unite, Klitschko is preparing the opposition for new protests (5)… Respectable Frankfurter Allgemeine tells the readers that Klitschko is a promising politician, aside from being the reigning World heavyweight boxing champion meaning he’s got brains not only the fists. Conservative weekly FOCUS emphasizes that only three Ukrainian politicians managed to unite the opposition and nothing is standing in the way of Klitschko to take his place together with Yushenko and Timoshenko. Those who know something about his private life write in their Internet posts that it sounds peculiar to believe that «another clown of the West» who has lived twenty years in Germany and the United States of America will now «rescue Ukraine». It does not matter so much actually. What really matters is his statement that he made out loud for everyone to hear, «We will continue our fight… the days left for Yanukovych to stay in power are numbered», he said it in an interview for a German newspaper. The boxer added there are fights without rules ahead…