Ray McGovern — Ukraine For Dummies

At Wednesday’s debut of the impeachment hearings there was one issue upon which both sides of the aisle seemed to agree, and it was a comic-book caricature of reality.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff led off the proceedings with this: 

“In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire…” 

Five years ago, when Ukraine first came into the news, those Americans who thought Ukraine was an island in the Pacific can perhaps be forgiven. That members of the House Intelligence Committee don’t know — or pretend not to know — more accurate information about Ukraine is a scandal, and a consequential one. 

As Professor Stephen Cohen has warned, if the impeachment process does not deal in objective fact, already high tensions with Russia are likely to become even more dangerous.

So here is a kind of primer for those who might be interested in some Ukraine history:

Not just the members of Congress that have a comic book conception of reality, but also the American public that gets its information from conventional media. Within this comic book conception of reality are two competing stories, the GOP version and the Democratic version. It can be difficult to determine which is the more ridiculous.

Former CIA analyst and presidential briefer Ray McGovern provides a backgrounder.

Consortium News
RAY McGOVERN: Ukraine For Dummies

Ray McGovern, retired from a 27 year career as a CIA analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief