“In a perverse way, the more aggressive the posturing by Russia, the more likely it is that the West will stump up the cash needed to prevent Ukraine’s economy from spiraling into a crisis,” observed Neil Shearing, chief emerging-markets economist for the London-based consultancy Capital Economics. “Essentially,” Shearing continued, “if the geopolitical tug of war becomes more polarized — and Putin becomes more bellicose — the more likely it is that the West will answer by coming to the rescue of Ukraine.”

Shearing’s comments, which appeared in a March 4 Bloomberg/Businessweek article entitled “How Russia Is Pushing Ukraine Into the West’s Arms,” are, of course, correct — as the unfolding drama is proving day by day. Putin’s bellicosity and military response are indeed having the effect desired by the interventionist/globalist elites: Russia’s response to Ukraine’s upheaval is pushing reluctant Ukrainians into the arms of EU/IMF/NATO, as well as providing U.S.-EU-IMF leaders with the political and moral cover they need to “rescue” Ukraine with billions of dollars extracted from U.S. and EU taxpayers.

Another of the desired effects is the disorienting confusion wrought by a political world turned upside-down, as habitués of the interventionist Left, such as George Soros, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and denizens of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and PBS, suddenly sound like rabid anti-communist Cold Warriors, while many vocal opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine from the Libertarian and non-interventionist Right are now becoming unwitting apologists for Vladimir Putin.

However, the tumult in Kiev and Crimea is much less confusing if seen through the “convergence” prism provided by Soviet KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn, arguably the most important Soviet/Russian defector ever to make it to the West. Golitsyn worked in a top-secret department of the KGB that planned long-range strategy for the Politiburo and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). His books New Lies for Old (1984) and The Perestroika Deception (1990) exposed the intricate Soviet strategy of faking a spectacular “collapse” of communism to disarm the West. Without a visible communist enemy, the United States and the EU could be convinced to gradually merge (“converge”) — economically and politically — with the “new” Russia. No other analyst has come close to matching Golitsyn’s accuracy in calling the shots on the great sea-change events of the past several decades vis-à-vis the Kremlin and the West. Famous Russian dissident and Soviet Gulag survivor Vladimir Bukovsky, who had unprecedented access to Soviet classified documents, confirmed Golitsyn’s startling thesis. “These documents,” Bukovsky explained in a speech in Brussels in 2006 that was reported in The Brussels Journal, “show very clearly that the whole idea of turning the European common market into a federal state was agreed between the left-wing parties of Europe and Moscow as a joint project which [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev in 1988-89 called our ‘common European home.’”

Mikhail Gorbachev was making oblique reference to the ongoing reality of the convergence process when he described the EU, in a speech in 2000, as “the new European Soviet.” This convergence proc­ess is continuing with the deliberate and indispensible assistance of one-world glob­alists, most especially the usual stable of “elder statesmen” — such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and George Soros — from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

CFR Handprints Everywhere on Euromaidan

Let’s review some facts. The “Euromaidan” revolt that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych began, ostensibly, because Yanukovych, under pressure from Putin, pulled out of the partnership agreement between Ukraine and the EU. So-called experts repeatedly cited in mainstream media news reports have claimed that Ukrainians turned out en masse, several hundred thousand strong, in Kiev’s Maidan (Independence Square), to defy Yanukovych and show overwhelming popular support for joining the EU.

But multiple polls, by Ukrainian polling organizations as well as European and U.S. media, have shown that Ukrainians are, and have been, fairly evenly divided on whether or not to join either the EU or the Moscow-led Customs Union of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, with many Ukrainians unenthusiastic about either prospect. Even the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) 2013 survey sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID) showed only 37 percent of Ukrainians indicating support for joining the EU and 33 percent indicating a preference for the Customs Union. Most reasonable people would concede that 37 percent is far from proof of “overwhelming” support by Ukrainians for joining the bankrupt and sinking EU. Undoubtedly, even many Ukrainians who favor closer relations with the EU than with Russia are dubious about trading one corrupt regime for another corrupt one, and jumping from one sinking economy to another that is also sinking. So the Obama administration has been funding an NGO network to push Ukraine into the EU.

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs Victoria Nuland has been running point for Obama on this project. Nuland’s Machiavellian activities were exposed when her notorious hacked cellphone conversation with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt went viral on YouTube on February 6. Although her obscenity-laced dialogue became the focus of many news stories, the real story is the extent to which the telephone recording indicates that Nuland, Pyatt, and other U.S. officials and agents were/are managing the Ukraine turmoil from behind the scenes. During the conversation, Nuland is clearly attempting to play the kingmaker, determining who should — or should not — rise in the new Ukrainian government. Nuland and Pyatt view themselves (and the Obama administration) as the puppet masters and the Ukrainian politicians as their sock puppets. It’s obvious that Nuland and Pyatt see Arseniy Yatseniuk (whom they refer to as “Yats”) as their guy, while Vitali Klitchko (whom they call “Klitch”) is targeted for marginalization, most likely because he is seen as being too independent.

And, sure enough, Arseniy Yatseniuk and a lineup of similarly “acceptable” politicians — nearly all of whom are “former” communists and/or have close ties to Ukraine’s ruling mafia oligarchs — have taken over the new interim government in Kiev.

In a December speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation in Washington, D.C., Nuland, who had just returned from Kiev, boasted that “we” had “invested” more than $5 billion in the Ukraine over the past couple decades to promote “democratic institutions … and a good form of government.” A video of that speech also has gone viral. Nuland has not provided any breakdown of that $5 billion, either as to the “we” sources (government and/or private) or the identity of the recipients, but, clearly, one could fund a considerable astro-turf movement with that amount of cash. And, apparently, that is precisely what “we” have done.

Victoria Nuland, of course, was not acting on her own initiative; she was acting under the direction of Secretary of State John Kerry — and others. Nuland and Kerry are both members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the subversive “think tank” that has dominated the executive branch of the U.S. government, the Federal Reserve System, and both of our major political parties for much of the past century. She is married to Robert Kagan (CFR), a Brookings Institution fellow and Washington Post columnist who is a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), one of the most important neoconservative fronts promoting perpetual war and intervention.

During the presidency of Bill Clinton (CFR), Nuland served as chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott (CFR), who was Bill Clinton’s roommate at Oxford — before being tutored in Moscow by the KGB’s most famous “journalist” agent, Vitali Yevgenyevich Lui, aka “Victor Louis.”

During the Bush administration, Nuland was the principal foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney (CFR), a committed “Republican” globalist who boasted at a CFR luncheon that he had successfully kept his CFR membership secret while a congressman so that his conservative constituents in Wyoming wouldn’t find out. Cheney has joined John McCain (CFR) and other interventionist Republicans in stirring the Ukrainian pot. Prior to serving under Kerry, Nuland served Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is not herself, formally, a CFR member (although her husband, Bill, and daughter, Chelsea, both are), but who in a speech to the CFR infamously referred to the CFR as the State Department’s “mother ship” and confessed that the State Department looks to the CFR “to be told what we should be doing and how we should think.”

While working for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland was a key operative directing the CFR/State Department-scripted Arab Spring demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (produced from the same template as Maidan) that brought about the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral victory in Egypt. Subsequently, Nuland was also a key operative in another bloody fiasco: Benghazigate. It was Nuland, recall, who orchestrated the Benghazi coverup, drafting the State Department’s revised “talking points memo” used by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice (CFR) to spread disinformation about the deadly attack during her round of media appearances on September 16, 2012.

Other CFR luminaries with notable roles in the Ukraine turmoil, either directly as operatives or as media facilitators, are: Nuland’s predecessor as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs and currently Special National Security Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region Philip H. Gordon; billionaire investor/activist George Soros; the National Endowment for Democracy’s Larry Diamond and Nadia Diuk; former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine Steven Pifer; former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Ivo Daalder; former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright; lobbyist and political consultant Douglas E. Schoen; Brookings Institution senior fellow Fiona Hill; PBS/CBS commentator Charlie Rose; and Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder.

George Soros’s Giant Footprint in Ukraine’s Turmoil

Billionaire philosopher king and media darling George Soros deserves particular mention, due both to his giant footprint in Ukraine and to his longtime commitment to world government and leadership within the CFR. Similar to his operations in dozens of other nations, he has, over the past couple of decades, poured tens of millions of dollars into Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), ostensibly to assist them in transforming their country into a more “open” and “democratic” society.

Many of the participants in Kiev’s “Euromaidan” demonstrations that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych were members of Soros-funded NGOs and/or were trained by the same NGOs in the many workshops and conferences sponsored by Soros’ International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) and his various Open Society institutes and foundations. The IRF, founded and funded by Soros, boasts that it has given “more than any other donor organization” to “democratic transformation” of Ukraine.

The International Renaissance Foundation’s Annual Report for 2012, the latest available, states, “IRF provided UAH 63 million in funding to civil society organizations — more than any other donor organization working in this field in Ukraine.” The “UAH” reference used above refers to the Ukraine hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency, which is worth about 11 cents in U.S. currency. That translates into, roughly, $6.7 million that IRF provided to Ukrainian groups in 2012; not a huge sum compared to many other political and social campaigns, but more than merely “significant.” In the cash-starved Ukraine, Soros’s dollars go a long way toward seducing and co-opting all legitimate political opposition into the Soros-approved “progressive” camp.

According to the IRF’s own website, this one Soros conduit has funneled “more than $100 million in support to numerous Ukrainian non-government organizations (NGOs), community groups, academic and cultural institutions, publishing houses, etc.”

In a February 26 column he penned for Project Syndicate that was carried by hundreds of newspapers and websites, Soros argued that the EU and the IMF must initiate a new Marshall Plan for Ukraine, meaning, of course, transfers of money from EU and U.S. taxpayers to the politicians, organ­izations, and institutions approved by the globalist/socialist/corporatist operatives running the EU and IMF. Perhaps the key point in Soros’s essay, entitled “Sustaining Ukraine’s Breakthrough,” is this: “Ukraine will need outside assistance that only the EU can provide: management expertise.”

George Soros is all about management by “experts,” i.e., central planning, the hallmark of every socialist, fascist, or communist regime. In fact, he is one of the planet’s premier advocates of global central planning and control. Hence, he is a longtime fervent supporter of the United Nations, the IMF/World Bank, the WTO, global population control through the WHO and UNFPA, and virtually every other internationalist endeavor to subvert national sovereignty and advance the building of an omnipotent world government.

Over the past several years Soros has been particularly emphatic in pushing for a central EU Treasury, or European Fiscal Authority (EFA), which he says is “the missing ingredient that is needed to make the euro a full-fledged currency with a genuine lender of last resort.” The European Central Bank (ECB), says Soros, has insufficient powers to do what is needed, even though he admits it has illegally usurped powers — which he applauds. In mid-March, Soros was in Britain to promote his new book, The Tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival?, and to push for an EU with ever-expanding powers, and the incorporation of Ukraine into that EU. Soros is the convergence globalist ne plus ultra, sim­ultaneously promoting revolution from above and below, funding faux “peoples’ democracy” while also knitting corporate and banking elites together into a global ruling oligarchy.

Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso (a “former” Maoist Communist), and ECB President Mario Draghi (a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman and managing director) have already lined up a multi-billion package for Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew into Kiev on March 6 to pledge $1 billion from America. However, many Ukrainians, all across the political spectrum, are leery of coming under the control of the IMF-EU-ECB “Troika,” and rightfully so. This is the same Troika that devastated the citizens of Cyprus last year, raiding their bank accounts to pay off the bonds that socialist politicians and Goldman Sachs saddled them with. Ukrainians do not want to trade the corruption and oppression of Yanukovych’s pro-Kremlin regime for another dictated by the EU and IMF.

However, his great wealth, foundations, media presence, and network of activist NGOs notwithstanding, George Soros’s power and influence — in Ukraine and elsewhere — stem not so much from these oft-cited trappings of power, but from the fact that he is a player, an insider, in the top rank of globalists who are pushing and shoving “global governance” upon the entire planet. First and foremost, he is not only a veteran member of the CFR, but a leader in and major financial supporter of the organization. His Soros Fund Management is a President’s Circle Corporate Member of the CFR and Soros himself served as a director of the CFR for a dec­ade (1995-2004). In addition, he has been a key participant in many CFR events, including serving as presider at the CFR’s 2000 conference, “Latin America: Sustaining Economic & Political Reform,” a major send-off promoting the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Oligarchs R Us

One of the billionaire oligarchs who benefited from the Ukraine’s phony “privatization” program — which funneled massive state assets into the pockets of “former” communists and their cronies — is Victor Pinchuk, with whom Soros has been very active. Soros’ foundations and the Victor Pinchuk Foundation collaborate on funding many NGOs and projects, in Ukraine and elsewhere. And Soros is a participant in Pinchuk’s Yalta European Strategy (YES) conferences, annual extravaganzas held in the Crimea at Livadia Palace, a summer retreat of Russian czars on the Black Sea. The YES confabs feature current and former presidents, prime ministers, potentates, financiers, corporate execs, and celebrities. Besides Soros, U.S. participants have included Bill Clinton, William Daley (Obama’s White House chief of staff), Robert Zoellick (Bush’s trade representative, then president of the World Bank), Newt Gingrich, and Condoleezza Rice, to name a few — Democrats and Republicans, CFR globalists all.

Cadres from the Pinchuk-backed Fatherland Party, the political base of former prime minister and wealthy oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko, now dominate the interim government in Kiev: Arseniy Yatseniuk is serving as prime minister; Oleksandr V. Turchynov is chairman of the parliament and acting president; and Stepan Kubin has been named as chairman of the central bank. The Tymoshenko/Fatherland sent a strong signal of business as usual with the appointment of billionaire oligarchs Sergei Taruta and Ihor Kolomoysky as governors, respectively, for Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. Other oligarchs have jumped on board in various capacities.

Another very important Soros-Pinchuk tie is their mutual connection to the famous (or infamous, as you prefer) Rothschild banking dynasty, the ultimate insiders of one-world intrigue and global East-West convergence. In 2011, George C. Karlweis, advisor to Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his Banque Privee, revealed that it was Rothschild who provided Soros with the startup money — and, undoubtedly much (illegal) insider trading intelligence — for Soros’ fabulously successful Quantum Fund. Longtime Rothschild advisor Jean-Pierre Saltiel sits on the board of Pinchuk’s Yalta European Strategy, as well as the oligarch’s global steel and metallurgy conglomerate, Interpipe, Inc. Saltiel is the past president of Rothschild Conseil International, one of the fabled family’s major bank holding companies. Interestingly (but not so surprising), Rothschild agent Saltiel also sits on the board of PIK Group, Russia’s largest residential real estate developer, founded by Putin-allied oligarchs Yuri Zhukov and Kirill Pisaerev (and still run by Pisaraev).

You see, Soros, Rothschild, Pinchuk, and the other oligarchs of the U.S., Russian, EU, and Ukrainian corporate-banking elite have no aversion to working together. They sit on the boards of each other’s corporations and foundations, palaver at luxurious soirées, and scheme multi-billion-dollar deals together.

Soros gave a strong clue as to what the scripted outcome of the scenario would likely be for Ukraine. His solution would see Russia as a “partner,” and Angela Merkel (the “former” communist from East Germany who now runs the unified Germany) would be the broker. “Germany should take the lead,” Soros said in his February 26 Project Syndicate column cited above. “Chancellor Angela Merkel must reach out to President Vladimir Putin to ensure that Russia is a partner, not an opponent, in the Ukrainian renaissance.”

Putin as Prod for “Convergence”

Merkel appears to be doing just the opposite, threatening Putin with sanctions, including freezing of Russian bank accounts and restrictions on travel in the EU, unless Putin “de-escalates” the situation and comes to the bargaining table. But, in reality, she is “reaching out” to Putin, and he, after providing what is deemed an appropriate level of drama, will likely come to the table and de-escalate. Contrary to Russia’s current bellicose posturing, it is in the Kremlin’s interests to offload Ukraine onto the taxpayers of the EU and the United States, and it fits perfectly with their long-term strategy of “convergence” with the EU and the United States.

Which doesn’t mean, of course, that Putin & Company won’t extract a secession/acquisition bargain in Crimea (and eastern Ukraine, perhaps), as they did with the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions in the 2008 invasion of Georgia. But the Putin/Kremlin inaction during the Euromaidan overthrow of Yanukovych, as well as the coordinated inaction of the Kremlin’s Ukrainian oligarchs — and then their sudden switching to support for Maidan — provide strong evidence that the Putin regime planned to let Yanukovych fall. Ukraine’s two richest oligarchs, Rinat Akhmetov and Dmitry Firtash, for instance, who control much of the country’s mass media, as well as its natural resources (and who have always been reliable Kremlin agents), played a key role in ousting Yanukovych. Germany’s Der Spiegel reported on February 25:

Last Tuesday’s bloody conflicts tipped the scales. On Wednesday both Akhmetov’s and Firtash’s TV stations changed their coverage of Independence Square: Suddenly the two channels, Ukraina and Inter, were reporting objectively on the opposition. The message of the oligarchs was clear: We’re letting Yanukovych fall.

As in the transmutation described in Orwell’s Animal Farm, when it became almost impossible to tell the pigs from the men, it is now becoming increasingly difficult to detect any substantive differences between the ruling elites of Russia, China, the EU, and the United States. And, as the EU and the United States adopt more socialist policies and police-state measures, there is less and less distinction between our societies and the one ruled over by Putin and his Kremlin cronies. Soros, Pinchuk, Putin, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Akhmetov, Firtash, and their ilk see themselves as the caesars or pharaohs in their long-schemed-for “new world order,” a term that Soros, Kissinger, Brzezinski, and their fellow globalists have frequently invoked to limn their vision of convergence into a one-world system of “global governance.”

Employing the indispensible insight and analysis provided by Golitsyn and the detailed information in his books, it is difficult to view the orchestrated chaos that has been unfolding in Ukraine without recognizing unmistakable evidence that it is being directed along a pre-planned path toward EU-U.S.-Ukraine-Russian convergence. Putin’s role is to rattle the sabers menacingly enough to frighten reluctant Ukraine to join the EU, while also convincing American and EU taxpayers to be forthcoming with the foreign aid and IMF funding that will “rescue” Ukraine and avert a war.

And, after the hyperventilating CFR policy “experts” move on to their next project and things settle down, we will look around to find Putin and his oligarchs carrying on business as usual with the new Ukrainian government and its oligarchs — as well as with the Obama administration and “our” oligarchs.

^{Photo: AP Images}