Peter Lee
counterpunch.org
March 13, 2014
Pepe Escobar put me onto these pictures, both taken a few weeks before the new ruling troika’s accession to power in late February. Victoria Nuland in the first, Baroness Ashton in the other. Pretty clear from these formal portraits that a formal anointment by the US and the West was underway. The three are Yarsenyi Yatsenyuk, Vitali Klitschko, and Oleh Tyahnybok.
Tyahnybok, the one least familiar to Western readers—and for very good reason, as shall be seen– is the leader of the Svoboda Party and a real piece of work, according to his Wikipedia entry:
Political career
In October 1991 Tyahnybok became a member of the Social-National Party of Ukraine.[9] He is characterised as representative of Ukraine’s far right. From 1994 till 1998, Tyahnybok served as a member of the Lviv Regional Council.[10] In 1998, Tyahnybok was first elected to the Ukrainian Parliament as a member of Social-National Party of Ukraine,[9] in the parliament he became a member of the People’s Movement of Ukraine fraction.[9] In 2002, Tyahnybok was reelected to the Ukrainian parliament as a member of Victor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine bloc.[9] In parliament he submitted 36 motions for debate, but the parliament adopted only four of them.[11] In the majority of his motions he opposed the introduction of the Russian language as the second official state language, proposed recognition of the fighting role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II, called for the lustration of former communist officials, security service officers and undercover agents, and demanded the prohibition of communist ideology.[11] None of these motions were adopted.[11]
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