Theft of Ukraine’s ‘Golden Loaf’ Reflects the Revolution’s Failings | TIME

The disappearance of a symbol of the revolution comes as President Poroshenko's approval rating crumbles

When revolutionaries stormed the mansion of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych one year ago, a few of them ran up the winding staircase to the master bathroom, expecting to find the golden toilet that was rumored to be in the house. Instead, as they rifled through the gaudy rooms that day, they found something better, or at least more bizarre: a golden loaf of bread, weighing about two kilograms, that a prominent businessman had given the President as a gift in an elaborate wooden box.

Of all the pieces of cartoonish opulence found on the palace grounds – including a stuffed lion, a golf course, a private zoo and a floating restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship – the golden loaf became the most famous token of the corruption that fueled the rebellion. In the months that followed, key chains and refrigerator magnets of the loaf were sold on Kiev’s Independent Square as mementoes of the revolution and its promise to make politicians stop stealing from the people. But on Tuesday, March 17, its symbolism came full circle when Ukraine’s new government announced that the loaf had itself been stolen.

“It turns out that the location of the famous golden loaf is unknown,” said Dmitri Dobrodomov, chairman of the committee in charge of combating corruption in Ukraine’s post-revolutionary parliament. “In essence, it was stolen. The question is: by whom?” said the lawmaker, an ally of Ukraine’s new President Petro Poroshenko.

It was another embarrassing setback for Poroshenko’s government, which has struggled to keep the pledges of the revolution over the past year as Ukraine fights a war with Russia’s proxy militias in its eastern regions. “With one hand we’re firing back at the aggressor, with the other we’re speeding up reforms,” Poroshenko said in a speech last month, on the one-year anniversary of the uprising that brought him to power. “Once we stop the war,” Poroshenko assured the nation, “it’ll just take a few years before everyone notices how Ukraine is changing.”

But Ukrainians are getting impatient. At the start of February, Poroshenko’s approval ratings dropped below 50% for the first time since he took office in June, according to a nationwide poll conducted by the Research & Branding Group, a leading Ukrainian pollster. More alarming for his government, nearly half of respondents in the survey (46%) said the revolution had failed to meet its goals of uprooting corruption. One in five said they were prepared to take part in another uprising to finish the work of the last one. “This is an incredibly huge number,” says Evgeny Kopatko, the director of the polling agency. “It shows that the protest potential is still extremely high. People just don’t see the changes that they were expecting.”

Complete story at - Theft of Ukraine’s ‘Golden Loaf’ Reflects the Revolution’s Failings | TIME

Vladimir Suchan: Logos politikos: Yanukovich is in the Kremlin, and Putin is gone

Ukraine today is in the midst of killing Russians, pro-Russians, and anyone suspected of supporting them, thus trying to restore Ukraine's "rightful" and "traditional" place in the bosom of its European "Fatherland," which traditionally loved Ukraine that much:

Ukraine under the junta is marching back to Europe, which means that it is marching with fascist columns on the east, and Europe is marching forward too, trying to put some democratic makeup on the faces of the fascist shock troopers, while the Russian government is trying to utter the best passable compliments to its Ukrainian and Western "partners" with gentle reminders of their joint responsibilities. At the same time, the Kremlin and Putin's fans are now turning what have been mere hints into ever louder rebukes to the antifascist resistance in east Ukraine to the effect that they are at best misguided fools.

Borys Filatov, a right-hand of Kolomeysky, explains the "miracle" of fascist peace in Dnienpropetrovsk. The method is the one, for which Yanukovich would have been hanged in the Hague. Maidan occupied and seized government property and buildings, shot the police and set them on fire. Then the US praised them for their "incredible non-violence." Now, Filatov explains what the new Maidan authorities do once in power:

Dnipropetrovsk is a firewall of pro-government sentiment in a restive region ...“I called them in and told them there is a red line,” said Borys Filatov, the deputy governor who made a fortune as a corporate lawyer. “I said, you can wave your flags and shout anything you want. But if you try to take over the building, there won’t be any of this ‘Please leave,’ like in Donetsk. We will shoot without warning. We will kill you.” He paused and seemed to ponder how his take-no-prisoners message sounds to an outsider. “I am sorry if I sound brutal,” he said." The West and its journalists were deeply in awe.

The plan for nazification of east Ukraine is euphemistically dubbed brutal "neutralization." Otherwise, to use the plan's own other expression (p. 2), it could also be called "Fascism's new phase: back to normal" by means of massive state terror, which includes:

1. crackdown to be undertaken "irrespective of public opinion"
2. "gain" to be obtained: "decimation of activists and pro-Russian voters"
3. "gain" to be obtained: wholesale destruction and shutdown of the economy of Donbas, thus "relieving" the fascist regime of too many antifascist people
4. destruction of Donbass (genocide) will help save Kiev money by reducing gas
5. consumption and imports
6. use of "non-conventional weapons" (read: prohibited by Geneva Conventions and chemical weapons, etc.) is recommended
7. adults ought to be "relocated to [concentration] camps"
8. executions of people on the spot is recommended whether armed or not and irrespective of status, age, or gender
9. even children under 13 are to be moved away to concentration "facilities"
10. all wounded survivors should be persecuted for terrorism
11. large scale expropriations of private properties envisaged
12. areas of such state terror and massive deliberate repression shall be off the limits to any outside media
13. massive and systematic disregard of Geneva Conventions and laws of war
14. Everything on the ground and the whole course of the junta's so-called ATO or "anti-terrorist operation" conforms to this plan and fits it to a t.

This plan makes both the junta and RAND criminal organizations and war criminals.

Complete story at - Vladimir Suchan: Logos politikos: Yanukovich is in the Kremlin, and Putin is gone

Klitschko and Ukraine’s Love of Cars and Cash | Graham W Phillips

Opprobrium erupted across Europe at the December 24th beating of Ukrainian activist-journalist Tetyana Chornovol. It was taken as a given in near every media outlet that it had been ordered by someone close to President Yanukovych, due to Chornovol’s opposition activities, with flurries of tweets by diplomats and politicians alike jumping on the Big Vik bashing bandwagon.The Klitschko brothers were particularly vehement in their implication, and condemnation.

And then, something strange happened. A lot of people formerly pretty noisy, went rather quiet on the matter. It didn’t take much reading to work out why, either. You see, a man had been arrested for the beating. And he was indeed linked to a politician. The problem was, it wasn’t Yanukovych, it was the Klitschkos. You see, Vitali Klitschko may have latterly been world champion boxer turned would-be statesmanlike figure of Ukraine’s volatile political scene, notably abstaining when fists fly in the Verkhovna Rada, yet there are few who don’t believe that he, and his brother, once worked for notorious gangster Viktor Rybalko. Rybalko rang a string of rackets in Kiev in the 90s, with the Klitschko brothers reportedly hired heavies.

However, despite Rybalko being dead as of 2005, mowed down in a hail of machine-gun fire in Kiev, assailants never caught, offshoots of his criminal empire remain, including the so-called Savlohova gang, which highest profile Chornovol suspect Sergei Kotenko has been linked with. Klitschko, leader of the opposition UDAR party, of course, vigorously denied any links to Rybalko, as he has done many times before.

.....

And walking through any city, especially the capital of Kiev, one witnesses a cavalcade of luxury cars. Cars are a particularly highly prized commodity in Ukraine, with none of the shift towards smaller, more economically friendly vehicles seen in European countries. In the Kiev region alone, there are around 34,000 cars costing in excess of $100,000, among them Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce and Maybach. So prevalent are luxury motors in Ukraine that even Bentley is not regarded as a top brand in terms of exclusivity – with around 400 Bentleys in all Ukraine, compared to 30 Aston Martins.

But the love of a high-price car is not confined to Kiev, with Dnipropetrovsk near 7,000 and Donetsk well over 6,000. German marques are generally the favourite with over 65,000 Mercedes and BMW’s registered across Ukraine.

Complete story at - Klitschko and Ukraine’s Love of Cars and Cash | Graham W Phillips