by GH Eliason for the Saker blog
This is the story of two Ukraine’s, but it’s not the tired and typical before and after the coup tome. This is a side by side view of two Ukraine’s as they stand today in December 2017. Looking at it this way, you have to decide which Ukraine is the terrorist entity and which Ukraine works to save and better the lives of its people.
You get to tell me which Ukraine would make a good partner for the US, Europe, Russia, and the rest of the world. Which Ukraine would you want for your neighbor or to come to that BBQ?
For every story there has to be a backbone of facts it rides on, doesn’t there? And yet, despite a glut of facts, both you and the rest of the world are sometimes expected to ignore the grim realities and cozy up to the dysfunctional monsters of our time. And not just cuddle up but lean over and give em’ a big smooch too. Let’s look our Ukraine(s).
One Ukraine is centered in Kiev. It has not been attacked by a foreign nation since WWII. It has received and squandered tens of billions of dollars in IMF loans and international support. More to the point, tens of billions in aid has been stolen and will never be repaid. The money will never be used for reforms or to rebuild the economy.
Instead of starting the reforms that the aid was tied to, Poroshenko’s Ukraine has consistently and persistently lowered the standard of living for its own people. This Ukraine is a country that a failed state like Somalia can look down on today.
This Ukraine led the world in some medical treatments and now has consistently dropped its own health care standards and system to rival 3rd world countries.
Even more striking is that under the watchful eye of the Ukrainian-American Diaspora’s Ulana Suprun, who as Ukraine’s Health Minister pushed Ukraine to legalize the organ trade. Ukraine used to lead the world in the illegal organ trade has now legalized it and the Ukrainian government now takes your loved one’s organs without consent.
Suprun’s idea of health reform is destroying the health care for heart patients by denying them medications for life-threatening conditions. Borys Todurov, head of the Heart Institute in Kiev and a heart surgeon accused Suprun of negligence that he claimed has led to thousands of patients’ deaths. “I absolutely responsibly declare (and I can repeat it in court) that your negligence took more lives of Ukrainians than the war in recent years,” Todurov said.”
Suprun has likewise destroyed cancer treatment in Ukraine. She did this by systematically refusing to purchase the medications needed to treat cancers, heart conditions, and disease.
Her idea of giving children a great start was to just not purchase the vaccinations children normally receive against childhood disease. To what extent you might ask? Documented vaccinations dropped from 96% in 2007 to 20% in 2017.
To really understand the level of criminality US citizen and Diaspora activist Ulana Suprun has been involved with in Ukraine, you need to go back to February 2014. Ukraine was considered a friendly nation by the USA. Ulana Suprun violated the Neutrality Act by intervening and helping to overthrow the sitting president, Victor Yanukovych. The last time US citizens were prosecuted for this was in 2016. They are serving 25 year sentences for their trouble. Why isn’t she being charged?
How does this translate as this philosophy of death is passed into Ukrainian society?
Meet Alexandr Chernov, a man the Observer branded as Ukraine’s Dr. Mengele. In the same fashion that every western medical doctor subscribes to the Hippocratic Oath, Ukraine did too. The stresses on Ukrainian society with the new Ukrainian nationalist leaders has changed society to the point that doctors who have sworn to do no harm, now seek to harm, maim, and kill people they perceive as their enemies.
According to Chernov“Having ensured my own security, my number one priority was to inflict damage on enemy patients—to the soldiers on the enemy’s side—by means of medication.”
If I am making it sound like WWII Nazism is making a comeback in Ukraine, it’s because it is. Most of the parents of today’s Ukrainian leadership were Nazi soldiers and officers. They fought for Hitler and after WWII they slaughtered another 30,000 Ukrainian civilians in their homes.
It took more than 5 years for the Soviets to root out the OUNb and UPA (WWII era Nazi organizations) after WWII. They have come back with a vengeance to Ukraine. Ask Ulana Suprun, her father was a Nazi soldier. Before she came to Ukraine she served the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) which still celebrates its dead Waffen SS concentration camp guards and teach their children to emulate the actions of WWII Genocidists.
These issues are part of the reason that even Bloomberg is questioning why “The West Backed the Wrong Man in Ukraine.”
The other Ukraine, in Donbass, has worked to raise the standard of living for its people during wartime crisis and under military attack.
Until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Ukraine boasted some of the best hospitals in the Soviet Union. These were some of the best research, teaching, and treatment hospitals in the world for lung treatment and cancer.
In 2014, after the May referendum to demand federalization from Ukraine failed to be accepted by Ukraine, both regions of Donbass, Lugansk Oblast (region) and Donetsk Oblast were forced to declare independence from Kiev’s Ukraine.
Ukraine’s nationalist volunteers (neo-nazi, nationalist, Nazi) attacked both regions. Because of the attacks (which have not stopped in almost 4 years despite ceasefires), both regions formed new republics called Lugansk Peoples Republic (LNR) and Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR).
Since 2014 in LNR, banks and normal services were closed across the region. In the medical field; doctors, nurses, surgeons, administrators, ambulance drivers, and personnel from across the medical industry worked without pay for long periods. These professionals kept the hospitals running and treating patients.
During the worst fighting of the war in 2014, hospital ambulance crews went into the front line areas and picked up wounded soldiers and Kiev’s now trademark civilian casualties even though there was no way or means for them to be paid.
With the banks closed and Kiev cut off social benefits like pensions, there were no means for the most of the general populace to pay for even medications.
In Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR), hospitalization, treatments, and even surgeries remained free. Inside the hospitals, doctors and nurses pooled and share resources and even medications that quickly became almost impossible to acquire.
This was when Russia started doing its now famous humanitarian aid convoys into LNR and DNR. The lifesaving aid brought medical equipment and medications desperately needed because contrary to international law, Kiev shut down pathways for even heart medication or insulin to reach the besieged region.
The hospitals, in turn, dispense the medications at no cost to the patient. As long as the prescribed medication has been brought over by Russia it is free. This alone has saved countless lives in LNR. Russia has also brought in state of the art diagnostic equipment.
What constitutes a legitimate patient in LNR? In Kiev’s Ukraine, if you are from Donbass, you are discriminated against and people have been refused treatment. In LNR, if you show up at the hospital, they will spare no expense and treat you.
It doesn’t matter where you are from. People have been and are crossing the contact line between Ukraine and Donbass to go to LNR hospitals for medical treatment, surgeries (they can’t afford in Ukraine), and even to deliver babies. As of August 2017, Lugansk Republic Hospital had delivered over 135 babies for women that live in Ukraine controlled areas.
LNR surgeons treat Ukrainian soldiers brought in as well as they treat any other patient. There is no difference in the level of care given to anyone. Lugansk hospitals treat all foreigners with the same level of care as you would expect in any western hospital and for the most part, without the unlimited resources available in the west.
Even though the Lugansk People’s Republic is in its 3rd year of development as a nation, it is picking up the tab for hospitalization within its borders at the same time it has been fighting a war to keep nationalists from killing the people that live here.
The availability and commitment to treating sick or injured hospital patients is only one metric that tells what kind of society you are dealing with. There are many other metrics and we’ll start exploring further in the next segments.
But tell me honestly, which Ukraine would you want to deal with? Which one do you think its own people support? Who would you have over to your BBQ? Sometimes, the choices are really that simple.
GHE
Excellent report.
GH Eliason,
Thank you and good to have your reports back at the Vineyard.
We value highly such SitReps from Donbass.
US Empire has incredible ability to corrupt most of its allies if not all. Those as old as i do remember those years in Southern Vietnam too. The more Washington pushed money to lackeys the more that system was corrupted. And when the final test came – they run like hell to US with bloody hands and pockets full of Yanki dollars.
The West, NATO and EU, used every method available to overthrow Yanukovich in 2014. Yanukovich was prepared to sign that Agreement with the EU, which at the last moment introduced the stipulation that Ukraine should also join NATO, proving that the EU is nothing more than the civilian component of NATO. As for NATO, it needed Ukraine, so that it could position its missiles right next to Russia’s borders, giving itself an advantage in a possible military confrontation. In fact Russia was to be presented with an ultimatum: Either surrender, or we fire those missiles, as you would not have time to fire back. Well, it did not turn out that way.
What is both disgraceful and barbaric is that no holds were barred. Not only did the West permit oligarchs from being created in order for the country to be more easily controlled, the West also resurrected Nazis from the past, needing them for dirty work. It should have known that a reaction would ensue, as it did. Now analysts are wondering if even a federalized Ukraine could survive as one entity. Personally I believe it will fall apart. The corruption, poverty and dismal economic state will act as a catalyst. The Eastern regions will eventually rejoin Russia, it being inevitable. The Central region will most probably join Russia. As for the Western region, the former Galizia, it most certainly will not join Russia, its future status open for debate. Putin is playing the waiting game, and the game will succeed. He will win once again.
“As for the Western region, the former Galizia, it most certainly will not join Russia, its future status open for debate.”
From Russia’s perspective, Galizia not joining her should be a source of blackest despair: “Not even a tribe of sewer rats would have us, boo-hoo”.
“This Ukraine led the world in some medical treatments and now has consistently dropped its own health care standards and system to rival 3rd world countries.”
Most likely, the Ukros’ take on the subject is that medical treatment, whatever the circumstances, is for ‘lesser beings’. With Ukraine a 3rd world cesspit already, the typical raw contempt prevalent among its doctors and nurses of society’s poor is a given. But in the Ukraine, this might prove acceptable to the majority population. After all, killing Russians takes precedence way above saving Ukro lives.
There are a number of negative trends, other than those which have already been mentioned, which are driving Ukraine in a downward trajectory. Firstly, an unprecedented demographic crisis. In 1991 Ukraine’s population stood at approx. 52 million. The most recent figure put the population at 42 million, again approx. This is little short of catastrophic, a trend also was seen across Eastern Europe, particularly the Baltics. The reasons for this are 1. Falling birth rates, 2. Increasing death rates, 3. Mass migration, political and economic, particularly to Russia (with approx. 2 million Ukrainian Guest-workers) and Poland.
Ukraine’s credit rating according to the New York Credit agencies is as follows;
Moody’s Caa2
S&P B-
Fitch B-
Which are termed ‘Highly Speculative to Substantial Risks’ This is Junk Bond territory. In basement territory Ukraine’s ratings are about the same as El Salvador or Mongolia. This country is not going to collapse, it already has, and is kept on a life support by European tax payers. Things will not improve, they cannot while the crackpot crowd of Neo-nazis and oligarchs control the show.
Lee, not by EU taxpayers. Basically, their currency is kept at artificial levels on the orders of the USG to Wall Street & the City of London. This can be indefinite too, as is happening to the gold & silver prices etc.
Russia, China and the BRIC’s will fix that problem with time. The rest of the world seems to be pulling away also. Without the money control, all other control will slip away.
Davi,
Quite correct.
Question remains: will the banksters start a full blown war, complete with flags and stuff, to try and save their asses? If they think they got away with 911 – there is no limit to evil.
Terrible outlooks. Then again, I never considered earthly existence as just a painfull passage; a place for cleansing of passions.
Stay strong in the Lord!
Don’t forget who was the US President in 2014, when the coup in Kiev took place.
Yes, that’s correct, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Barack Obama, who US Democrats pine for.
His hands are covered in blood.