WASHINGTON, April 15 (RIA Novosti), Lyudmila Chernova – CIA Director John Brennan was sent to Ukraine over the weekend to launch a military suppression of pro-federalization protests in the southeastern part of the country, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
“The CIA director was sent to Kiev to launch a military suppression [campaign] in eastern and southern Ukraine, former Russian territories for the most part that were foolishly attached to Ukraine in the early years of Soviet rule,” Roberts said.
Washington planned to use the events in Ukraine to eject Russia from its Black Sea naval base, overlooking the fact that the Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine were not willing to go along with the EU/NATO integration plan, Roberts said.
“Instead of admitting that its plan for grabbing Ukraine has gone amiss, Washington is unable to admit a mistake and, therefore, is pushing the crisis to a more dangerous level,” the former assistant secretary of the treasury said.
According to Roberts, the danger for Russia is that the Kremlin relies on international cooperation and the common sense of leaders in “Washington's European puppet states,” but the US does not want the Ukrainian crisis settled in a diplomatic and reasonable way.
“For Russia this could be a fatal mistake, as it provides Washington with time to build up forces on Russia's borders and in the Black Sea and to demonize Russia with propaganda and whip up the US population into a war frenzy. The latter is already occurring,” the former treasury official said.
Echoing Robert's argument, Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst and a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington DC, said that sending the CIA head to Ukraine only added to tensions in the country.
“It’s working against finding some kind of diplomatic solution to the crisis. I think on all sides we have action that has been taken that works against conciliation and compromise,” Goodman told RIA Novosti, adding that Ukraine should be allowed to create its own democratic government.
“Now it’s time for all the parties involved to sit down and discuss what needs to be done. There is no point in using military force … or intelligence signals to try to have an impact on the crisis. It will only lead to uncertainty and the possibility of further violence,” the former CIA analyst concluded.
CIA Director John Brennan visited Kiev last weekend, where he held a series of secret meetings with the current leaders of Ukraine. Soon after the visit, interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov announced the start of a large-scale operation in the southeast of the country involving military forces.
Reacting to Turchynov's statement, ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who considers himself the country’s legitimate elected leader, said that Ukraine has now entered a de facto state of civil war.
Rallies in support of federalization have been rocking the country since last month, with activists in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv occupying regional government buildings to put pressure on the country’s coup-imposed regime.
