Putin’s Subtle Message to Obama: Let's Talk

[KoKo]

Russian President Putin sought to cool the rhetoric over Ukraine with an appeal for a postponed referendum in the east and an order to pull back Russian troops, but another message was to President Obama – over the State Department’s head – that it’s time to talk

by Robert Parry


The Putin Conspiracy Theory

The demonization of Putin in the U.S. news media was so total that virtually anything could be said or written about him and anyone who objected to the “group think” was immediately dismissed as a “Putin apologist” or a conveyor of “Russian propaganda.”

Because of this endless vilification, Official Washington couldn’t see straight when it came to what Putin actually wanted. Amid the waves of U.S. propaganda, the State Department and the mainstream U.S. media promoted wild speculation about Putin planning to seize large sections of Ukraine and even reach into Moldova, if not the Baltic states.

Yet, Putin faced challenges enough in accepting Crimea’s request for annexation, including the expenditure of billions of dollars to upgrade the peninsula’s decaying infrastructure and building a bridge or tunnel from the Russian mainland. Putin wasn’t eager to take on the care and feeding of tens of millions of Ukrainians.

Putin’s military threats appeared mostly designed to stay the hand of the coup regime in Kiev which kept announcing plans to crush the “terrorists” in eastern Ukrainians who had taken up arms against what they considered an illegitimate government.

If Ukraine adopted some federalist system to give the sections of the deeply divided country more self-rule, Putin and his diplomats indicated that the interests of the eastern Ukrainians would be served. I’m told that idea became the basis for private discussions between the Kremlin and the White House, including apparently direct one-on-one talks between Obama and Putin.

So, Putin’s initiative on Wednesday, urging the eastern Ukrainians to forego a May 11 referendum on possible secession and his announced pullback of troops from the border, fits with his interests. Whichever way the referendum were to go it would have meant trouble for Putin, since a strong vote for joining Russia would have raised expectations to a dangerous level and a strong vote for staying in Ukraine would be a potential embarrassment.

The interests of the eastern Ukrainian protesters, however, appear to be different, since they rejected Putin’s request to postpone the referendum scheduled for Sunday. To them, a strong vote for autonomy or for joining Russia might be seen as a blessing because it could force Putin’s hand on a possible military intervention.

But Putin’s conciliatory words appear to have another audience, as a signal to Obama that – despite all the acrimony over Ukraine – Russia is willing again to play its helpful role in reducing tensions in the Middle East and possibly elsewhere.

If so, it is now up to Obama to decide what to do about his fractured foreign policy apparatus, now that he has seen additional evidence about the risk of having a State Department operating outside presidential control.

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/08/putins-subtle-message-to-obama/

[KoKo]

1. No one thinks Putin and Obama should talk?

What's Diplomacy all about?

[The Magistrate]

2. No One Believes, Ma'am, This Is Anything But Smoke

Putin's intent is annexation; any 'move' is not standing down from that ambition, is squid's ink.

[KoKo]

3. Another.."We Agree to Disagree." Dipolmacy is far better than WAR...or more

of our tax dollars spent on FOLLY with more lives lost to the MIC.

imho. But, you know that is what I think. 's I hope that Obama finally takes that High Road and delivers the Diplomacy we hoped for and expected from him.

[KoKo]

4. Disturbing New Reports...Eric Prince's "Latest Incarnation" has Mercenaries in Ukraine...

SIDEBAR Report: US private soldiers fighting in Ukraine
SIDEBAR Report: US private (Blackwater, Xi, Alcami) soldiers fighting in Ukraine
Source: dpa, Bild

Berlin (dpa) - Soldiers from a private US security company with a record of alleged atrocities in Iraq are supporting Ukraine‘s security forces in the volatile east of the country, the German newspaper Bild reported Sunday.

The report, citing Germany‘s federal intelligence agency BND, said 400 of the heavily-armed men employed by the group formerly known as Blackwater were deployed in the vicinity of Lugansk where pro-Russian separatists are seeking self-rule.

The BND declined to comment on the report, while the security company - now known as Academi - dismissed similar reports in March.

Bild reported that according to a BND assessment, US intelligence services had knowledge of the covert involvement of the private soldiers in Ukraine. BND representatives relayed the information to Germany‘s federal chancellory on April 29, Bild said.

Read more: http://en.europeonline-magazine.eu/sidebarreport-us-private-soldiers-fighting-in-ukraine_335068.html

Posted here on DU at:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014801753

It's all over the German press, but the Bild one is behind a pay wall.

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-krise-400-us-soeldner-von-academi-kaempfen-gegen-separatisten-a-968745.html
http://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article127862117/Hunderte-US-Soeldner-sollen-fuer-Kiew-im-Einsatz-sein.html

[eridani]

5. Robert Parry: Ethnic Russians Are People, Too

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/23669-ethnic-russians-are-people-too

So what does the New York Times have against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians? While the newspaper has fallen over itself insisting on the “legitimacy” of the coup regime in Kiev, despite its collaboration with neo-Nazis who spearheaded the Feb. 22 ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the Times editors can’t hurl enough insults at the ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the regime’s authority.

For weeks, the Times has called the eastern Ukrainian rebel leaders “self-declared” and ridiculed the idea that there was any significant backing for the rejection of the Kiev-appointed regional leaders; all the trouble was simply stirred up by Vladimir Putin. Now, however, the referenda in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk have demonstrated what even a Times reporter acknowledged was “substantial popular support for the pro-Russian separatists in some areas.”

But the Times editors still won’t give up their prejudices. For instance, Tuesday’s lead editorial begins: “If there were questions about the legitimacy of the separatist referendums in eastern Ukraine, the farcical names of the entities on which people were asked to vote — the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk or Luhansk — surely answered them.”

So, the votes – and the desires – of eastern Ukrainians shouldn’t matter because the Times disapproves of “the farcical names of the entities” that people voted for.

The Times then suggests that violence that marred the referenda was the fault of the rebels, not the Kiev regime’s National Guard, which includes the neo-Nazi militias that threw fire bombs at police during the Maidan protests in February and are now carrying out the most lethal attacks against protesters in cities in the east and south.

Of course, according to the Times’ narrative, these neo-Nazis from western Ukraine don’t exist, so the violence must be palmed off on others or be treated like the natural occurrence of a spring thunderstorm. In Tuesday’s editorial, the Times wrote: “But the gathering rumble of violence accompanying the votes is serious and is driving the Ukrainian crisis in a direction that before long no one — not President Vladimir Putin of Russia, not authorities in Kiev, not the West — will be able to control.”