Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Crisis in the Ukraine - Popular Uprising or an Orchestrated Coup d’Etat?




Francis A. Boyle is an attorney and a professor of international law.  He's also the author of many books including, most recently, United Ireland, Human Rights and International Law.  He discusses the Ukraine events in the audio above.




Russian forces have virtually occupied the Crimean peninsula without firing a shot and pro-Russian demonstrators have taken over the regional government building in the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.

In the US Russia is being condemned by all sides. Secretary of State John Kerry, who voted for the invasion of Iraq, accused Russian President Vladmir Putin of “invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext” calling it “an incredible act of aggression”.

Meanwhile Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called the Obama administration “weak and indecisive” and urged the president to do more than deliver “empty threats” to “thugs and dictators”.

But Francis Boyle, professor of law at the University of Illinois College of Law says a leaked recording, allegedly of a conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador to Ukraine, tells part of the story that’s been missing.