In One Of His Final Pieces,Written in 2014, Michael Parenti Wrote A Prophetic Article About Ukraine.

Michael Parenti, In One Of His Last Articles, Prophetically Predicted The Aftermath Of The Maidan Coup.

This week, the influential left-wing scholar Michael Parenti passed away at the age of 92.

Parenti was well known for his sharp criticism of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. imperialism throughout his life, waking up many to the reality of it and the lies used to justify it.

This is best underscored in one of his last published articles, “Ukraine and Regime Change”, which was published in the book “Flashpoint In Ukraine: How the U.S. Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III”, where he predicted to a tee what the result of the 2014 U.S. backed coup in Ukraine would be.

Correctly Calling Out U.S. Funding Of The Coup

Parenti correctly pointed out how the regime change operation against Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, mirrored previous U.S. regime change operations, writing:

regime change is a form of action designed to make it impossible for the existing government to govern. We have seen this well-orchestrated chaos and endless disruption in various countries. Militantly organized groups are financed and equipped by outside western interests. NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) surface in substantial numbers and produce rebellious publications and events designed to unsettle the besieged government—in Ukraine’s case, a government that was democratically elected not long before. The NGOs handle billions of dollars worth of supplies used to mobilize and sustain the protests. Even though they are supposed to be independent (‘nongovernmental’) some NGOs get all their funds from the U.S. government. An Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, proudly exclaimed that the United States had poured some $5 billion into the struggle for regime change.

All of this has since been vindicated. As journalist Branko Marcetic reported , “Just two months before they (Maidan protests) broke out, the NED’s (National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA cutout) then president, pointing to Yanukovych’s European outreach, wrote that ‘the opportunities are considerable, and there are important ways Washington could help.’ In practice, this meant funding groups like New Citizen, which the Financial Times reported ‘played a big role in getting the protest up and running,’ led by a pro-EU opposition figure. Journalist Mark Ames discovered the organization had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from US democracy promotion initiatives.”

Correctly Calling Out Far-Right Infiltration And The Maidan Massacre False Flag.

Michael Parenti then wrote that the protests were overtaken by far-right paramilitary groups, who fired snipers into crowds in the Maidan square, which was then falsely blamed on Viktor Yanukovych’s forces- all facts which have now been proven correct.

Parenti wrote, “In Ukraine, crypto-fascist groups like Svoboda, the Right Sector, and others secured ample funds to keep thousands of people fed and comfortable enough on the streets of Kiev for weeks at a time, complete with well-made marching flags, symbols, and signs in various languages (including English). Svoboda henchmen were being financed by someone. They wore insignia that bore a striking resemblance to the swastika. Svoboda’s top leaders openly denounced ‘Russian scum,’ and ‘Muscovite Jewish mafia.’ Disguised men in unmarked combat fatigues attacked unarmed police and security guards. They moved among the gathered crowd and at times, according to independent sources, delivered sniper shots into the crowd—which could then be readily blamed on the nearly asphyxiated government. Meanwhile the western media reported everything the way the White House wanted, for instance, unfailingly referring to the perpetrators as ‘protestors.’”

Indeed, as the aforementioned Branko Marcetic reported, “The driver of this violence was largely the Ukrainian far right, which, while a minority of the protesters, served as a kind of revolutionary vanguard. Looking outside Kyiv, a systematic analysis of more than 3,000 Maidan protests found that members of the far-right Svoboda party — whose leader once complained Ukraine was run by a ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia’ and which includes a politician who admires Joseph Goebbels — were the most active agents in the protests. They were also more likely to take part in violent actions than any group but one: Right Sector, a collection of far-right activists that traces its lineage to genocidal Nazi collaborators.”

Even more impressively, Michael Parenti correctly noted that the “Maidan Massacre” was a false flag carried out by Right Sector, a fact which has now been proven by Ukrainian-Canadian academic Ivan Katchanovski.

After carefully studying the trial on the massacre and the verdict from it, Ivan Katchanovski noted, “51 out of 72 wounded Maidan protesters, with whose shooting on February 20 Berkut policemen (Yanukovych’s forces) are charged and whose testimonies were revealed, testified at the trial and the investigation that they had been shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings or areas, had themselves witnessed snipers there, or had been told by other Maidan protesters about such snipers. 31 of these wounded protesters testified at the trial and/or the investigation that they had been shot from the Hotel Ukraina, the Bank Arkada, and Zhovtnevyi Palace, the buildings on Muzeinyi Lane and Horodetskyi Street, or other Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. At least 33 wounded protesters testified that they had either witnessed snipers there and/or were told about snipers in these Maidan-controlled locations, mostly in the Hotel Ukraina, by other protesters.”

He also uncovered that :

The findings of forensic medical examinations done by government experts for the prosecution were first made public during the Maidan massacre trial, and revealed that the absolute majority of protesters were shot from the side or back, and from top to bottom. Most videos and photos, however, show that the absolute majority of those killed and wounded had the Berkut police (Yanukovych’s police forces) in front of them and at ground level, whereas the Maidan-controlled buildings were generally behind them and on the left and right side.

Forensic medical examinations indicate that 40 out of the 48 killed protesters were shot from a high angle. At least 36 of them were killed at a time when the Berkut policemen were filmed on the ground.

48 out of 51 wounded protesters had steep entry wounds, consistent with the theory that they were shot by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings, or on the roofs of these buildings.

He also noted that the bullet examinations from the massacre matched those of Right Sector and other pro-Maidan militants and not the Berkut police force, writing:

The forensic ballistic examinations presented at the trial found that 19 protesters were killed on February 20 by bullets which match the calibers not only of AKM Kalashnikov assault rifles, but also of hunting versions of Kalashnikovs, and other weapons, Videos showed protesters with hunting firearms in the Hotel Ukraina during the massacre

A forensic ballistic examination conducted by government experts with use of an automatic computer-based IBIS-TAIS system, found that the bullets extracted from killed protesters, trees, and the Hotel Ukraina rooms did not match police database for Kalashnikov assault rifles of members of the entire Kyiv Berkut regiment, including the special Berkut unit deployed

Predicting The Fallout From The Coup.

While Parenti reporting on the events of the Maidan coup exactly right is impressive enough, what makes Parenti’s article especially impressive is the fact that he also predicted the aftermath of the coup to a tee.

Parenti wrote, “This manufactured uprising in Kiev is something we have seen in numerous other countries: from Venezuela to Thailand during this very same time frame. The scenario is much the same, and the goal of these western-financed attacks has been to make the world safe for the 1%, the global super rich. Ukraine citizens who think they are fighting for democracy will eventually discover that they are really serving the western plutocracy. They will be left with a new government filled with old intentions. Ukrainians will end up with nothing to show for their efforts except a still more depressed and more corrupt economy, an enormous IMF debt, a worsening of social services, and an empty ‘democracy,’ led by corrupt neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists.”

(Emphasis: Mine)

This is exactly what the result of the Maidan coup was.

Forbes magazine noted at the time that, after the coup, the U.S. installed Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the interim prime minister of Ukraine because, “Yanukovych resisted the International Monetary Fund’s demand to raise taxes and devalue the currency” while, “Yatsenyuk doesn’t mind”.

As Ukrainian political scientist Konstantin Bondarenko documented , the results of the IMF-imposed “reforms” included:

-“Ukraine’s GDP shrinking by approximately 17%”.

-The exchange rate going from “8 hryvnias (Ukrainian dollar) to 1 U.S dollar” in 2013 to “23 hryvnias to the dollar” in 2015

-Inflation rising from 24.9% in 2014 to 43.3% in 2015

-a “significant decline in industrial production during the first two years” after the coup, leading to Ukraine losing “its economic cluster that manufactured goods with high added value (machine engineering)”

-“mining and metallurgical complex, energy (coal production), chemicals, food production”, “sustained significant losses”.

-“an increase in unemployment and the emigration of citizens from Ukraine to neighboring countries—primarily to Poland and Russia.”

-“utility rates increasing by 123%, reaching up to 20% of family income” from the IMF introduced policies

Parenti was also spot on about the prevalence of “neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists” in the post-Maidan Ukraine.

After the coup, the UK’s Channel 4 news reported that, “the far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum” and Foreign Policy Magazine reported that, “The uncomfortable truth is that a sizeable portion of Kiev’s current government — and the protesters who brought it to power — are, indeed, fascists.”

U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna noted in 2018, “Ukraine’s 2015 memory laws went even further by glorifying Nazi collaborators and making it a criminal offense to deny their ‘heroism.’However, unlike the Polish law, this move by the government in Kyiv has received little to no public response from the United States. The groups and individuals extolled by Ukraine include Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), as well as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). These paramilitaries and individuals in some cases collaborated with the Nazis and bear responsibility for the murder of thousands of Jews, 70,000-100,000 Poles, and other ethnic minorities between 1941 and 1945.”

Khanna added, “It’s particularly troubling that much of the Nazi glorification in Ukraine is government-supported. Examples include the 2017 pro-UPA campaign conducted by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory; the naming of streets after Bandera and Shukhevych by the Kyiv city council; and L’viv’s 2017 ‘ShukhevychFest’ which took place on the anniversary of the 1941 L’viv Pogroms in which 4000 Jews were killed.”

He added, “Last November, Radio Free Europe reported on the presence of torches and Nazi salutes at a 20,000-person march in honor of the 75th anniversary of the UPA. These torchlight marches are closely linked to organizations such as the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, an armed group that was prohibited from receiving U.S. weapons and training by the recently signed Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018. Rather than disband Azov, the government incorporated it into the Ukrainian National Guard overseen by the Ministry of the Interior. The group is widely known to be closely connected to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.”

Furthermore, Parenti correctly predicted that the coup would lead to an American confrontation with Russia, writing:

The U.S. empire’s ultimate intent is to encircle and reduce Russia to a frightened and discombobulated satellite. But that is much easier said than done. At this time, as I write, Moscow reportedly no longer accepts telephone calls from the White House. Meanwhile protests against the NATO-supported Ukrainian regime are on the rise. Anti-Kiev activists are seizing administrative buildings and calling for a referendum on federalization. Ukraine’s acting President, Aleksandr Turchinov, put the Ukrainian army on full alert due to the “threat of a Russian invasion.” Turchinov admitted that the government in Kiev could not control the situation in eastern Ukraine. It did not even seem able to control the situation in Kiev itself.

Obama may have a few tricks and trumps left to play. But he is fishing in troubled waters and might invite more danger and tribulation than he—or we—can handle. As Putin put it: “The situation is serious” and we need “to find serious approaches to the solution.”

Michael Parenti’s prophetic article on Ukraine underscores how important much of his foreign policy analysis was and why it will be deeply missed by many.

---

Note to readers: The Dissident is a reader-supported outlet. If you liked this article, consider becoming a paid subscriber.