Barack Obama Flashcards
Dmitry Medvedev’s dates as President of Russia
May 2008 - May 2012
When did Obama state his intention to abandon the anti-ballistic missile system in Poland?
2014 (he didn’t end up abandoning it)
Who was the US-preferred candidate in the 2011-2012 Russian Presidential election? What were his politics?
Alexei Navalny
At least early in his political career, he was a far-right nationalist who had been not just anti-immigrant, but explicitly and violently opposed to ethnic diversity in Russia. In an earlier political ad, he called Russian Muslims cockroaches and suggested they should be shot.
Did polls show popular support for the 2013-14 protest movement in Ukraine?
No surveys “show a significant majority of the population supporting the protest movement and several show a majority opposed.”
p.261
Quotation: footnote 314
EuroMaidan Revolution
Ukraine 2014
Incumbent: Viktor Yanukovych
Replacement: Petro Poroshenko
PM: Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Nuland’s “guy”)
Oleksandr Turchynov was interim President
“Americans are highly visible in the Ukrainian political process. The US Embassy in Kiev is a center of power and Ukrainian politicians openly talk of appointments and dismissals being vetted by US ambassador Jeffrey Pyatt and even US Vice President Joe Biden.”
Leonid Bershidsky
“Ukraine is in Danger of Becoming a Failed State”
Bloomberg News November 6, 2015
“U.S advisors serve in almost a dozen Ukrainian ministries and localities and help deliver services, eliminate fraud and abuse, improve tax collection, and modernize Ukraine’s institutions.”
Victoria Nuland, in a congressional hearing
03/15/2016
“…the clear position of the United States has in part been what has helped lead to this regime change.”
“I think it is our role, including sanctions and threats of sanctions, that forced, in part, Yanukovych from office.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D, CT)
US Policy Toward Ukraine
Washington Journal, 02/25/2014
He’s conspicuously careful not to claim it was only because of US involvement that the coup happened.
Name the institutions responsible for whitewashing Ukrainian history.
Institute of National Remembrance
Archive of National Memory
Lviv Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement
p.301
The Lviv Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement has received funding from ________ and ________
The EU (“millions of euros”) and USAID (“hundreds of thousands of dollars”)
pp.301-302
For more info:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/02/the-historian-whitewashing-ukraines-past-volodymyr-viatrovych/
Which Ukrainian president signed a law recognizing the OUN and UPA as “resistance fighters”?
Petro Poroshenko
(One US-backed beneficiary of the Maidan Revolution)
p.302
“The uncomfortable truth is that a sizeable portion of Kiev’s current government - and the protestors who brought it to power - are, indeed, fascists.”
Andrew Foxall and Oren Kessler, “Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government,” Foreign Policy, March 18, 2014
What was Ukrainian presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko’s slogan in 2019?
“Army, Language, Faith”
What seems to have been the proximal catalyst for Putin’s Crimea coup de main?
Kuchma, Kravchuk, and Yushchenko’s calls for the Ukrainian government to deny the Russians Sevastopol in March of 2014.
Though Putin does claim he had made his mind up “on the night of the coup in Kiev.”
pp.313-314
What was the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s Crimea coup de main in 2014?
“They kicked Russia out of the Group of Eight Industrialized Nations (G8), closed the Russia-NATO Council, suspended scheduled EU-Russia meeting and announced new sanctions against Russian government officials and corporations.”
p.315
“…the current nationalistic fever will break in Russia,” which will then “give way to a sweaty and harsh realization of the economic costs.” Next, “Russia’s citizens” will conclude that the Kremlin had “squandered [their] national wealth on adventurism, interventionism and the ambitions of a leader who cares more about empire than his own citizens.”
Victoria Nuland on the projected consequences of new anti-Russia sanctions in summer, 2014.
pp.315-316, footnote 918
“There is virtually no evidence that [Putin] was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other territory in Ukraine, before [February 22nd].”
John Mearsheimer, “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2014
(p.316, footnote 920)
“Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine, not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protests in the Maidan, and Yanukovych then fleeing after we had broker to deal to transition power in Ukraine.”
“Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.”
President Obama, in:
“President Obama’s interview with Fareed Zakaria,” CNN, February 1, 2015
Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016
respectively
“The lavish Sochi Olympics, and the decision to release imprisoned Russian businessman Mikhail Khordokovski were the actions of a nation trying to assimilate into the world; the crisis in Ukraine imperiled Putin’s dream of creating an eastern version of the EU…The good news is that this is not part of a grand strategy where first they take Crimea, then Eastern, Ukraine, then Moldova, and then a piece of Estonia. This was a response to the collapse of the government in Kiev.”
- Michael McFaul
David A Graham, “Why Putin Turned Against the US,” The Atlantic, July 2 2014
Congress twice attempted to ban funding and aid to the Azov Battalion. When?
2015 and 2018
So, before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, but not long enough before to be able to plausibly claim that the Battalion had changed since then.
Name some outlets that featured stories about the problem of Nazis in Ukraine’s military.
NYT, The Telegraph, The Guardian, USA Today, Sky News, The Daily Beast, Foreign Policy, Bloomberg News, The Hill, Time, WaPo, Bellingcat
What was the first act of the new Rada after the 2014 coup?
To repeal the “Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law, which allowed the use of other languages [than Ukrainian] in official matters if regional parliaments agreed.” This was “a top demand of Svoboda.”
p.310
“The main mystical idea of Social Nationalism is the creation of the National Supercommunity - a single biological organism that will consist of New People - physically, intellectually, and spiritually developed persons. Of the mass of individuals, a Nation should appear, and from a weak modern man, Superman…
…the treatment of our National body should begin with the Racial purification of Nation… A campaign against Semitic-led untermenschen.”
Andriy Biletsky, leader of the Azov Battalion, 2007
“I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told Ukraine doesn’t really have a problem with its far-right. It’s all Kremlin propaganda; you’re personally helping Putin by talking about it; other countries have far right problems too, so why single out Ukraine? I’ve heard it all.”
“…Ukraine really does have a far right problem, and it’s not a fiction of Kremlin propaganda. And it’s well past time to talk about it.”
“They’re also trying to turn Kiev into a capital of the global far right, inviting neo-Nazis, and white supremacists from around the world to visit.”
Michael Colborne, “Why Does No One Care That Neo-Nazis Are Gaining Power In Ukraine?” The Forward, December 31, 2018
(Michael Colborne is a reporter at Bellingcat)
Remember: 2018 is when Congress tried to ban U.S. funding of the Azov Battalion the second time - the first was 2015.
“There should be clarity that Ukraine will not be a member of NATO. I think that is important for a variety of political reasons.”
“If you look at the map, it’s important for Russia from a psychological, strategic point of view. So Ukraine will not be a member of NATO.”
Zbigniew Brzezinski, “What Obama Should Tell Americans About Ukraine,” Politico magazine, May 2, 2014
Minsk I Agreement
5 September 2014
“…ceasefire, prisoner exchange, withdrawal of heavy military equipment and fighters from eastern Ukraine, all to be monitored by the OSCE. There was also a promise by Kiev to a reconstruction program for the Donbas, a new “special status” of autonomy and local elections.”
p.352
Minsk II Agreement
February 2015
“… elaborated on Donetsk and Luhansk’s special status, detailed OSCE responsibility for monitoring the ceasefire, and also essentially demanded the Ukrainian constitution be rewritten to establish stronger federalism for the region and protections for the Russian language.”
p.353
“In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor’s early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as ‘Merkel’s Moscow stuff.’ No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. ‘We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations,’ said one Berlin official.”
Matthias Gebauer, et al., “Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine,” Der Spiegel, March 6, 2015
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/germany-concerned-about-aggressive-nato-stance-on-ukraine-a-1022193.html
Kathleen Holzwart Sprehe, “Ukraine Says ‘No’ to NATO,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, March 29, 2010
Results?
For: 28%
Against: 51%
p.364
