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ofthisandthat Commentary |
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All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
May 30, 2015
Nobel Peace Prize? U.S. Pressure for Poroshenko
U.S. Pressures Nobel Committee to Declare Ukraine’s President a Peace
Prize Nominee, Leaked Letter
(Editor's note: You don't need a majority vote to be nominated, only to win the prize)
By Eric Zuesse
Source: Global Research
A leaked letter dated May 19th and sent by the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament,
Vladimir Groysman, to the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo Norway,
thanks her for “the efforts you have made to have Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko
nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” but continues: “Still we consider your assurances
of support by the two members of the Nobel Committee as insufficient,” because there
are five members of the Committee, and the support of 3 of them is necessary.
Thus,
“We expect further efforts aimed at shifting the position of Berit Reiss-Andersen,
Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and especially that of the Chair of the Nobel Committee Kaci
Kullman Five. Regarding the latter, we recommend that you take advantage of the
information you are going to receive from Germany. Your colleagues in Berlin have
assured us that the dossier will soon be delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. It is of
utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be
awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, since it could highlight the unanimous support
of Ukrainian integrity by the democratic community of the world. Assistant Secretary of
State Viktoria Nuland has highly estimated your job during her visit to Kyiv.”
The three mentioned Nobel Peace Prize Committee members are a politically varied
group. Ms. Reiss-Andersen is from the social democratic or “Labour” party; Ms.
Ytterhorn is from the libertarian or “Progress” party; and Ms. Five is from the
Conservative Party. The two unidentified members are Thorbjørn Jagland from the
Labour Party, and Henrik Syse from the Conservative Party. If this letter is correct,
those are the two who are referred to by the letter’s phrase, “your assurances of
support by the two members.”
The letter also makes a vague reference to the poor reputation that the Committee
has engendered on account of the Committee’s having granted the Prize to Barack
Obama in 2009 (a decision that the Committee’s Chairperson, Ms. Five, concurred
with and has been criticized for):
“We understand the difficulties you face when promoting the candidacy of the
President of Ukraine, therefore we ask you to exert additional leverages by engaging
those U.S. Senators who effectively cooperated with the Committee in 2009.”
Presumably, this means that whomever “those U.S. Senators” were, the Chairman of
Ukraine’s parliament thinks that they were “effective.”
President Poroshenko entered office on 25 May 2014 after a U.S.-sponsored coup in
Kiev that installed Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Ukraine’s Prime Minister on 26 February
2014, after the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs,
Victoria Nuland, had instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev on 4 February 2014 to
get “Yats” appointed as the junta’s leader; she issued that instruction to him by phone
on February 4th and the coup occurred on February 22nd; Yatsenyuk was then
appointed on February 26th, and he remains in power today.
One pro-Russian part of Ukraine, Crimea, then seceded and joined Russia, and
another, Donbass, seceded and was not accepted by Russia; it thus was bombed by
the Ukrainian Government during May through December 2014, since Donbass’s
repeated requests to be allowed to join Russia were spurned by Vladimir Putin. (Yet,
Ukraine accuses Russia of providing the fighters who are actually the men of
Donbass, who refuse to be ruled by the U.S.-coup regime.
Russia sends them guns, and volunteers have come from Russia and many other
countries to help the Donbass defenders.) German intelligence estimates that “up to
50,000” people were killed in that bombing campaign, but U.S. and other official
estimates are only around 5,000.
Even before Poroshenko took office, the new Ukrainian government of “Yats”
Yatsenyuk invaded Donbass, using bombers, tanks, rocket-launchers, and everything
it had; and, when Poroshenko gave his victory speech in the ceremonial Presidential
election on May 25th, he promised, and it was very clear from him, that: “The anti-
terrorist operation [he called the residents there ’terrorists’] cannot and should not
last two or three months. It should and will last hours.” (Another translation of it was
“Antiterrorist operation can not and will not continue for 2-3 months. It must and will
last hours.”)
But it did last months — Poroshenko’s prediction was certainly false; and, moreover,
he lost first one round of the war, and then another — his prediction of its outcome
was likewise false. And recently, he said that the war must be resumed for yet a third
round, in order that Ukraine win back both Crimea and Donbass. However, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry warned him on May 12th that he must not do that, and
that if he did he’d be violating the Minsk II ceasefire accords which had been arranged
by France’s Francois Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel. Then, three days later,
his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had arranged the February 2014 coup,
told both Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko to ignore what Kerry had just said, and that,
“We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate
our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other
regions of Ukraine.”
Perhaps a reason why the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament is boldly demanding the
U.S. State Department to arrange for Poroshenko to get at least a nomination for the
Peace Prize (and even goes so far as to assert that,
“It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be
awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize”) is that otherwise they will follow through on
Nuland’s statement of U.S. commitment, and re-invade Donbass. However, any
invasion by Ukraine of Crimea would be exceedingly unlikely, because that would give
Russia a virtual carte blanche to attack Ukraine, and neither the U.S. nor any other
power will go to war against Russia in such an instance; Ukraine isn’t yet a NATO
member, and NATO would be exceedingly reluctant to go so far as a third world war,
this time against Russia, in order to defend the Ukrainian Government from the
consequences of that Government’s own then-blatant ceasefire violation — especially
in the wake of what virtually everyone now recognizes to have been a U.S. coup that
had installed the present Ukrainian regime (and even EU officials were shocked to find
out that it had been a coup). And it was a very violent coup, which was followed
shortly thereafter by the extremely violent ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of the
residents in Donbass.
Nobel Peace Prize? U.S. Pressure for Poroshenko
U.S. Pressures Nobel Committee to Declare Ukraine’s President a Peace
Prize Nominee, Leaked Letter
(Editor's note: You don't need a majority vote to be nominated, only to win the prize)
By Eric Zuesse
Source: Global Research
A leaked letter dated May 19th and sent by the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament,
Vladimir Groysman, to the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo Norway,
thanks her for “the efforts you have made to have Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko
nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” but continues: “Still we consider your assurances
of support by the two members of the Nobel Committee as insufficient,” because there
are five members of the Committee, and the support of 3 of them is necessary.
Thus,
“We expect further efforts aimed at shifting the position of Berit Reiss-Andersen,
Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and especially that of the Chair of the Nobel Committee Kaci
Kullman Five. Regarding the latter, we recommend that you take advantage of the
information you are going to receive from Germany. Your colleagues in Berlin have
assured us that the dossier will soon be delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. It is of
utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be
awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, since it could highlight the unanimous support
of Ukrainian integrity by the democratic community of the world. Assistant Secretary of
State Viktoria Nuland has highly estimated your job during her visit to Kyiv.”
The three mentioned Nobel Peace Prize Committee members are a politically varied
group. Ms. Reiss-Andersen is from the social democratic or “Labour” party; Ms.
Ytterhorn is from the libertarian or “Progress” party; and Ms. Five is from the
Conservative Party. The two unidentified members are Thorbjørn Jagland from the
Labour Party, and Henrik Syse from the Conservative Party. If this letter is correct,
those are the two who are referred to by the letter’s phrase, “your assurances of
support by the two members.”
The letter also makes a vague reference to the poor reputation that the Committee
has engendered on account of the Committee’s having granted the Prize to Barack
Obama in 2009 (a decision that the Committee’s Chairperson, Ms. Five, concurred
with and has been criticized for):
“We understand the difficulties you face when promoting the candidacy of the
President of Ukraine, therefore we ask you to exert additional leverages by engaging
those U.S. Senators who effectively cooperated with the Committee in 2009.”
Presumably, this means that whomever “those U.S. Senators” were, the Chairman of
Ukraine’s parliament thinks that they were “effective.”
President Poroshenko entered office on 25 May 2014 after a U.S.-sponsored coup in
Kiev that installed Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Ukraine’s Prime Minister on 26 February
2014, after the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs,
Victoria Nuland, had instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev on 4 February 2014 to
get “Yats” appointed as the junta’s leader; she issued that instruction to him by phone
on February 4th and the coup occurred on February 22nd; Yatsenyuk was then
appointed on February 26th, and he remains in power today.
One pro-Russian part of Ukraine, Crimea, then seceded and joined Russia, and
another, Donbass, seceded and was not accepted by Russia; it thus was bombed by
the Ukrainian Government during May through December 2014, since Donbass’s
repeated requests to be allowed to join Russia were spurned by Vladimir Putin. (Yet,
Ukraine accuses Russia of providing the fighters who are actually the men of
Donbass, who refuse to be ruled by the U.S.-coup regime.
Russia sends them guns, and volunteers have come from Russia and many other
countries to help the Donbass defenders.) German intelligence estimates that “up to
50,000” people were killed in that bombing campaign, but U.S. and other official
estimates are only around 5,000.
Even before Poroshenko took office, the new Ukrainian government of “Yats”
Yatsenyuk invaded Donbass, using bombers, tanks, rocket-launchers, and everything
it had; and, when Poroshenko gave his victory speech in the ceremonial Presidential
election on May 25th, he promised, and it was very clear from him, that: “The anti-
terrorist operation [he called the residents there ’terrorists’] cannot and should not
last two or three months. It should and will last hours.” (Another translation of it was
“Antiterrorist operation can not and will not continue for 2-3 months. It must and will
last hours.”)
But it did last months — Poroshenko’s prediction was certainly false; and, moreover,
he lost first one round of the war, and then another — his prediction of its outcome
was likewise false. And recently, he said that the war must be resumed for yet a third
round, in order that Ukraine win back both Crimea and Donbass. However, U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry warned him on May 12th that he must not do that, and
that if he did he’d be violating the Minsk II ceasefire accords which had been arranged
by France’s Francois Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel. Then, three days later,
his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had arranged the February 2014 coup,
told both Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko to ignore what Kerry had just said, and that,
“We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate
our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other
regions of Ukraine.”
Perhaps a reason why the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament is boldly demanding the
U.S. State Department to arrange for Poroshenko to get at least a nomination for the
Peace Prize (and even goes so far as to assert that,
“It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be
awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize”) is that otherwise they will follow through on
Nuland’s statement of U.S. commitment, and re-invade Donbass. However, any
invasion by Ukraine of Crimea would be exceedingly unlikely, because that would give
Russia a virtual carte blanche to attack Ukraine, and neither the U.S. nor any other
power will go to war against Russia in such an instance; Ukraine isn’t yet a NATO
member, and NATO would be exceedingly reluctant to go so far as a third world war,
this time against Russia, in order to defend the Ukrainian Government from the
consequences of that Government’s own then-blatant ceasefire violation — especially
in the wake of what virtually everyone now recognizes to have been a U.S. coup that
had installed the present Ukrainian regime (and even EU officials were shocked to find
out that it had been a coup). And it was a very violent coup, which was followed
shortly thereafter by the extremely violent ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of the
residents in Donbass.