MOSCOW, September 5 (RIA Novosti) - “NATO is the enforcer of American financial and commercial power” globally, which is the primary reason for the bloc’s expansion, Adeyinka Makinde, a London-based legal lecturer specializing in intelligence and security matters, told Radio VR.
That explains why the US is so eager to co-opt Ukraine, the expert said, warning that Kiev’s fate will be grim. Contrary to what the current Ukrainian authorities think, once the United Stated gets into Ukraine, through NATO or the EU, the country “is going to be plundered and looted”, Makinde stated. As the EU financial package shows, “it’s going to be about austerity, cutbacks, social welfare [cuts], [and] selling off public assets at basic prices just like it happened in Russia in the Yeltsin years.”
Makinde also believes that the US could get involved in the Ukrainian conflict in the same way that it was involved in Libya, by “taking somewhat of a back seat”. In March, 2011 the United States participated in enforcing a no-fly zone over the war-torn country under the guise of a humanitarian operation aimed at protecting civilians, which in reality was designed to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the expert pointed out. However, the US didn’t play an active part in NATO-led Operation Unified Protector, and largely remained in the background.
The lecturer also stated that the level of brinkmanship and belligerence emanating from NATO is extremely worrisome. In that regard, the talk about the new expeditionary forces, which the alliance plans to create as a response to the crisis in Ukraine and Russia’s role in it, is only heightening the tension between the West and Russia. On Monday, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen announced that the alliance had devised a Readiness Action Plan, which would establish “a very high readiness force able to deploy at very short notice”. He referred to it as a spearhead within NATO’s existing Response Force.
Makinde is convinced that the West needs to be aware of the historical ties that connect Russia and Ukraine. “Kiev is the origin of the Russian state and the Russian people. We are talking about a thousand years here.” Despite that, the Western countries remain either ignorant or indifferent, and have orchestrated a coup in Ukraine and helped Ukrainian nationalists come to power, who have already managed to inflict lasting damage. For instance, one of the first things they did after seizing power was to pass an edict revoking the official status the Russian language had in several of the country’s regions.
Ukrainian nationalists, including right-wing elements like the Svoboda party and the Right Sector, maintain a rather narrow and very xenophobic interpretation of nationalism, which doesn’t include the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine, Makinde said. As long as those people remain in power, there will be no unity in the country. “What is considered Ukrainian nationalism needs to evolve further than the anti-Semitic, xenophobic, and anti-Russian sentiment.” He insisted that issue has to be addressed at the same time that the two sides of the Ukrainian civil war are trying to negotiate a lasting ceasefire, otherwise Ukraine will not survive as a single state.
Makinde believes that Ukraine has a chance to avoid falling apart if it becomes a federation, in which all regions will be engaged in fruitful economic and cultural cooperation but maintain a high degree of autonomy. It could be a confederacy along the lines of Switzerland, the expert suggested. “Ukraine can continue, but not if it is governed from a center in Kiev,” he said.
