Bill Van Auke — New York Times’ vision of Ukrainian “democracy”

The Times acknowledges that the election is a contest between “chocolate king” Petro Poroshenko, the recently released “gas princess” Yulia Tymoshenko and the banker Sergey Tigipko, all of whom are members of “the clique of very rich businessmen who have been at the root of the corruption of the Ukrainian government” and who “made their fortunes in the chaotic privatization of state assets” following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In other words, the Ukrainian people are being asked to choose between a trio of criminals and parasites who enriched themselves at their expense through the theft of state property.

The front-runner Poroshenko, according to the Times, “has political strengths” that include backing the coup that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych, supporting the turn to the European Union and having been “deeply involved in Ukrainian politics from the outset.” In other words, he is a deeply corrupt billionaire who appears prepared to subordinate himself to US policy aims.

Additional rays of hope are detected by the Times’ editors in the activities of Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest billionaire, and Igor Kolomoisky, who ranks second or third in terms of the accumulation of ill-gotten wealth.

Kolomoisky, who the Kiev junta appointed as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, is praised for putting up his own money for “bounties” placed on the heads of “terrorists,” i.e., those in the east who have staged protests against the coup regime in Kiev. Kolomoisky, a mafia businessman who has in the past organized gangs of armed thugs to physically seize rival companies, has been implicated as an organizer of the horrific massacre carried out by fascist elements in Odessa earlier this month.

Akhmetov, who is said to be worth $11.6 billion, began his career, according to a documentary study of Donetsk, as a “mafia thug.” A British historian specializing in Ukraine, Andrew Wilson, characterized him as an “enforcer” for a Donetsk crime boss who used extortion and physical violence to seize control of former state-owned property.

Akhmetov is lionized by the Times for “sending his steel and mining workers to recover occupied buildings in Mariupol and Makeyevka.” The editorial adds: “Mr. Akhmetov’s employees—and there are nearly 300,000 of them—evidently heeded his warning that their livelihoods would be uncertain under Russian control.”

In the same edition of the paper containing the editorial, the Times carried a news report asserting that the anti-Kiev protesters in eastern Ukraine had faced “an unaccustomed wave of anger from residents” and that steelworkers had “easily wrested control of the port city of Mariupol last week under the direction of Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who owns the mills where they work.”

It went on to report that, “On Tuesday, workers at a steel mill in Mariupol and at a metalwork facility in the city of Yenakiyeve … left work at noon to listen to speeches in support of Ukrainian unity.”...

 The newspaper characterized these events as “potentially giving an enormous lift to the provisional government in Kiev.”

The Times report was notably short on detail, in large measure because the events it describes never happened. Rather they were gleaned from releases issued by the billionaire Akhmetov’s press agents.

WSWS
New York Times’ vision of Ukrainian “democracy”
Bill Van Auke