অর্থনীতি, আন্তর্জাতিক, ইউরোপ, চীন, দেশ, ভারত, রাজনীতি, শিল্প

আমার মেমো ৩ : ভূরাজনৈতিক যুদ্ধবস্তু বানাবেন না কোনো দেশকে

মাসুদ করিম

আজ ইউক্রেনে যা হচ্ছে আজ বাংলাদেশে যা হচ্ছে, আমাদের পরাসুশীলরা এটা খেয়াল করবেন আরো পরে — তারা সিরিয়া মিশর লিবিয়া খুঁজে মরবেন, কিন্তু পরে বুঝবেন, ইউক্রেনে আর বাংলাদেশের পরিস্থিতিতেই মিল বেশি [...]

আজ ইউক্রেনে যা হচ্ছে আজ বাংলাদেশে যা হচ্ছে, আমাদের পরাসুশীলরা এটা খেয়াল করবেন আরো পরে — তারা সিরিয়া মিশর লিবিয়া খুঁজে মরবেন, কিন্তু পরে বুঝবেন, ইউক্রেনে আর বাংলাদেশের পরিস্থিতিতেই মিল বেশি, উদীয়মান অর্থনীতিকে আয়ত্তে রাখতে ইইউ ইউএসএ তাদের সর্বস্ব শক্তি দিয়ে ভূরাজনৈতিক যুদ্ধবস্তু বানাতে চায় আমাদের। নতুন অর্থনৈতিক শক্তির চেয়ে আমরা যেন ঐতিহ্যবাহী অর্থনৈতিক শক্তির সাথে বেশি আদানপ্রদান করি এটাই তাদের লক্ষ্য। কিন্তু আমরা তো বুঝতে পারছি আমাদের আগামী আদানপ্রদান বাড়বে ভারত চীন রাশিয়া আফ্রিকা দক্ষিণ আমেরিকার সাথে — এই বুঝতে পারাকে চ্যালেঞ্জ করেছে ইইউ ইউএসএ তারা তাই আমাদের ভূরাজনৈতিক যুদ্ধবস্তু বানাতে সর্বোচ্চ অপতৎপরতায় লিপ্ত আছে ও থাকবে। আমরা উদীয়মান অর্থনীতি হিসেবে আমাদের আজকের আদানপ্রদানও চালাতে হবে আগামীর আদানপ্রদানও বাড়াতে হবে। আমাদেরকে সতর্ক থাকতে হবে, এবং একটা গণদাবির জাগরণ ঘটাতে হবে, বিশ্বশক্তির কাছে আমাদের আওয়াজ পৌঁছে দিতে হবে আজ আমাদের মতো সবার জন্য — ভূরাজনৈতিক যুদ্ধবস্তু বানাবেন না কোনো দেশকে, তার পরিণতি হবে ভয়াবহ, বিশ্বজুড়ে নেমে আসবে নিষ্ঠুরতম দারিদ্র, কাজেই সাবধান ইইউ ইউএসএ — সাবধান ভারত চীন রাশিয়া।

মাসুদ করিম

লেখক। যদিও তার মৃত্যু হয়েছে। পাঠক। যেহেতু সে পুনর্জন্ম ঘটাতে পারে। সমালোচক। কারণ জীবন ধারন তাই করে তোলে আমাদের। আমার টুইট অনুসরণ করুন, আমার টুইট আমাকে বুঝতে অবদান রাখে। নিচের আইকনগুলো দিতে পারে আমার সাথে যোগাযোগের, আমাকে পাঠের ও আমাকে অনুসরণের একগুচ্ছ মাধ্যম।

৪২ comments

  1. Pingback: ভূরাজনৈতিক যুদ্ধবস্তু বানাবেন না কোনো দেশকে | প্রাত্যহিক পাঠ

  2. মাসুদ করিম - ২২ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (২:৩৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  3. মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৫:০২ অপরাহ্ণ)

  4. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১:১৭ অপরাহ্ণ)

  5. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (১২:১৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  6. মাসুদ করিম - ২৮ জানুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৬:৪৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ‘Prepared to Die’: The Right Wing’s Role in Ukrainian Protests

    Dressed in jeans and a down jacket, the parliamentarian who wants to overthrow Ukraine’s president by any means necessary is standing in Kiev’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, where a struggle for power has played out over the last two months. “What can our cobblestones, Molotov cocktails and burning tires do against water cannons, bullets and armored cars?” asks Igor Myroshnychenko. “Many people here are prepared to die.”

    Under his jacket Myroshnychenko wears a traditional embroidered Ukrainian shirt. He is among the leaders of the right-wing nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) Party, which has formed a coalition with former heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko’s Udar Party, along with jailed former leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, against President Viktor Yanukovich.

    Myroshnychenko tried a few days ago to prevent the passage of an amendment that limits the right to demonstrate. Soon after the president signed it, Myroshnychenko and three other Svoboda MPs marched into the printing plant where the government newspaper was being completed. New laws only take effect once they have been published. Part of the print run had already been sent off in trucks but protestors burned the remainder on Maidan Square.

    Government opponents have been erecting increasing numbers of barriers in the center of Kiev in recent days, and the country is on the brink of a “partisan war,” Myroshnychenko says. “A lot of blood will flow, including the blood of innocent people. I have no hope that Yanukovich will meet even a single one of our demands.”

    Death Toll Mounting

    Last week, three people lost their lives in the protests, with and one of them showing injuries consistent with torture. Hundreds of demonstrators have been injured.

    By European standards, the course taken by the president last week made no sense. Viktor Yanukovich has done nothing to solve the conflict for two months. And then he poured oil into the flames by whipping through a package of laws hostile to democracy.

    But not even a man with political horizons as limited as Yanukovich can have wanted what is now happening in Ukraine. The stage has now been set for civil war, and the hatred between pro-Europeans and friends of Russia has turned bloody. Yanukovich supporters regard the demonstrators as “extremists and terrorists;” even Prime Minister Nikolai Mykola Azarov used those words on television as if they were self-evident. Arsen Klintshayev, a government party parliamentarian in Lugansk, says it was “totally right” that the first demonstrators have now been killed. They had turned against the country’s leadership and one should “take a much harder line against the protesters.”

    Igor Myroshnychenko, meanwhile, regards the Yanukovich supporters as “fascists and bandits” who want to turn democratic Kiev into a “mafia-like Donetsk.” Donetsk is a mining center in the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. In the 1990s, the city saw bloody power struggles between rival businessmen. Yanukovich, convicted of theft and causing bodily harm, comes from there and represents the interests of Donetsk-based oligarchs.

    The scope for talks between the two sides is eroding and the country is growing increasingly divided. Ukrainians who have thus far stayed out of the protests are starting to join the activists. Last Thursday, people stormed city halls and regional parliament buildings not just in western bastions of resistance like Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk but also in Cherkasy and Poltava in the east. They forced governors to sign their resignations and blocked public offices. Over the weekend, the protests spread further still, while in Kiev, demonstrators temporarily took control of the Justice Ministry.

    Weak Opposition

    Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine’s first president, said that the current government is making matters worse, referring to the scandalous passage of the demonstration laws which weren’t discussed in parliamentary committee. The vote took place by hand signs in a turbulent parliamentary session and the head of the parliament signed the laws immediately, in contravention of rules.

    The amendments are in line with Russian laws but the punishments are even stiffer. In Russia, “organizers of mass unrest” face four to 10 years in jail, compared with 10 to 15 in Ukraine.

    Former Ukrainian Justice Minister Sergey Golovaty says the events of recent days were stage-managed by Moscow, not by Kiev. Ukraine’s political regime, he says, is to be “aligned with that of Russia and Belarus.” The regime needs a pseudo-judicial basis for repression. That is why Yanukovich is steering towards a violent outcome of the crisis, Golovaty believes.

    That assessment is consistent with the dismissal of the moderates from Yanukovich’s team, including the head of the presidential office, Sergey Levochkin who had favored entering into a dialogue with the opposition. He was replaced by a Donetsk-based supporter of Yanukovich who is reported to have ordered the first violent clearance of Maidan Square in November.

    Yanukovich’s unwillingness to compromise also has to do with the weakness of the opposition. The protests of pro-European Ukrainians, which began eight weeks ago, took Klitschko and the heads of the allied opposition parties by surprise. Last week, they were once again overtaken by events when militants took the initiative on Kiev’s Maidan Square out of frustration that the three opposition leaders were unable to get what they demanded of the country’s leadership.

    Svoboda member Myroshnychenko is likewise not a fan of Klitschko. His development as a politician is moving “rather slowly,” he says sarcastically. “I don’t think that he can take over leadership of the opposition, much less leadership of the aggressive Maidan.” What he doesn’t say is that his own party is also a problem for the opposition alliance. Svoboda has joined the revolt, but it rejects certain human and minority rights.

    With 10 percent support, Svoboda is the fourth-strongest group in parliament. Klitschko and the Tymoshenko party need its backing. Plus, the party is a key player in the protests. But Klitschko plays down Svoboda’s right-wing stance. “We have different ideologies, but two things connect us,” Klitschko says. “We are fighting against those in power today and we want European values for our country.”

    Flirting with the Right Wing

    The Svoboda party also has excellent ties to Europe, but they are different from the ones that Klischko might prefer. It is allied with France’s right-wing Front National and with the Italian neo-fascist group Fiamma Tricolore. But when it comes to the oppression of homosexuality, representative Myroshnychenko is very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, even if he does all he can to counter Moscow’s influence in his country.

    “The EU is the only possibility for us to defend ourselves against Russian pressure,” he says. He and his party see the alliance with Klitschko as being purely tactical. Klitschko, after all, would like to limit the powers of the president while Svoboda dreams of a country with a strong leader.

    Myroshnychenko was press spokesman for the Ukrainian national football team in the lead up to the 2008 European Championships, but he isn’t exactly cosmopolitan. He would even like to see foreign professional football players deported because they “change Ukraine’s ethnic map.”

    There have been other, similar incidents. In a 2012 debate over the Ukrainian-born American actress Mila Kunis, he said that she wasn’t Ukrainian, rather she was a “Jewess.” Indeed, anti-Semitism is part of the extremist party’s platform; until 2004, they called themselves the Social-National Party of Ukraine in an intentional reference to Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist party. Just last summer, a prominent leader of party youth was distributing texts from Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels translated into Ukrainian.

    Without the nationalists’ tight organization, the revolt on Maidan Square would long since have collapsed. But Svoboda also embodies the greatest danger to the protest movement. The party’s foot soldiers, with their muddled, right wing doctrine, aren’t likely to hold back for much longer.

    And that might be what the president is waiting for.

  7. মাসুদ করিম - ২১ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৩:০৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Situation in Ukraine

    Press Statement
    John Kerry
    Secretary of State
    Washington, DC
    February 20, 2014

    It’s with anger and anguish that we have watched renewed violence on the streets of Kyiv today destroy more lives and rip apart more families. The people of Ukraine deserve far better than senseless death and suffering on the streets of one of Europe’s great cities.

    The violence must stop. We unequivocally condemn the use of force against civilians by security forces, and urge that those forces be withdrawn immediately. The people of Ukraine and the international community will hold to account those who are responsible for what has occurred, and the United States has already begun implementing sanctions through travel bans on Ukrainians responsible for the violence.

    Protestors should exercise their rights peacefully, and we urge the Ukrainian military to remain true to its non-political heritage and its professional traditions.

    There is no time for brinksmanship or gamesmanship. President Yanukovich must undertake serious negotiations with opposition leaders immediately to establish a new interim government that will have broad support. That is the only way to begin the difficult but essential constitutional and economic reforms that Ukraine needs.

    We reaffirm the commitment of the United States to the people of Ukraine and urge all members of the international community to help Ukraine return to stability. We will work with our friends and allies to support Ukraine and Ukrainians in these difficult days.

  8. মাসুদ করিম - ২৩ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৪ (৮:৪৬ অপরাহ্ণ)

    It’s a chess game in a minefield. Just how explosive the country called Ukraine really is became clear from a background interview given by former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar — a liberal reformer and friendly to the West — in 2008, one year before his death. Those wishing to make Ukraine a member of NATO, as was the intention of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, overlook the fact that it would put Russia in an untenable defensive position, he said. The effort, he added, should be abandoned.

    Brzezinski would love to have put Moscow in checkmate. In his book “The Grand Chessboard,” he writes that without Ukraine, Russia “would become predominantly an Asian imperial state” at risk of being drawn into conflicts in Central Asia. But if Moscow were able to gain control of Ukraine and its resources, Brzezinski wrote, the Russian Federation would be a “powerful imperial state.” He saw danger in a potential “German-Russian collusion” and in the possibility of an agreement between Europe and Russia with the goal of pushing America out of the region.

    Essentially, Brzezinski’s point of view is one that guides American strategy to this day: The US wants to keep Russia as far away as possible. If the Europeans get involved in Ukraine and harm their relations with Moscow, that is fine with Washington.

    Indeed, US Deputy Foreign Minister Victoria Nuland’s infamous “Fuck the EU” gaffe, can hardly be seen as a mistake. Rather it is a logical, if somewhat vulgar, expression of America’s geopolitical stance.

  9. মাসুদ করিম - ৩ মার্চ ২০১৪ (৩:৪৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    The Ukraine crisis: John Kerry and Nato must calm down and back off

    The hysterical reaction to Russian military movements in Crimea won’t help. Only Kiev can stop this crisis becoming a catastrophe

    Both John Kerry’s threats to expel Russia from the G8 and the Ukrainian government’s plea for Nato aid mark a dangerous escalation of a crisis that can easily be contained if cool heads prevail. Hysteria seems to be the mood in Washington and Kiev, with the new Ukrainian prime minister claiming, “We are on the brink of disaster” as he calls up army reserves in response to Russian military movements in Crimea.

    Were he talking about the country’s economic plight he would have a point. Instead, along with much of the US and European media, he was over-dramatising developments in the east, where Russian speakers are understandably alarmed after the new Kiev authorities scrapped a law allowing Russian as an official language in their areas. They see it as proof that the anti-Russian ultra-nationalists from western Ukraine who were the dominant force in last month’s insurrection still control it. Eastern Ukrainians fear similar tactics of storming public buildings could be used against their elected officials.

    Kerry’s rush to punish Russia and Nato’s decision to respond to Kiev’s call by holding a meeting of member states’ ambassadors in Brussels today were mistakes. Ukraine is not part of the alliance, so none of the obligations of common defence come into play. Nato should refrain from interfering in Ukraine by word or deed. The fact that it insists on getting engaged reveals the elephant in the room: underlying the crisis in Crimea and Russia’s fierce resistance to potential changes is Nato’s undisguised ambition to continue two decades of expansion into what used to be called “post-Soviet space”, led by Bill Clinton and taken up by successive administrations in Washington. At the back of Pentagon minds, no doubt, is the dream that a US navy will one day replace the Russian Black Sea fleet in the Crimean ports of Sevastopol and Balaclava.

    Since independence, every poll in Ukraine has shown a majority against Nato membership, yet one after another the elites who ran the country until 2010 and who are now back in charge ignored the popular will. Seduced by Nato’s largesse and the feeling of being part of a hi-tech global club, they took part in joint military exercises and even sent Ukrainian troops to Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The deposed Viktor Yanukovych, for all his incompetence, corruption and abuse of power, was the first president to oppose Nato membership in his election campaign and then persuade parliament to make non-alignment the cornerstone of the country’s security strategy, on the pattern of Finland, Ireland and Sweden. Nato refused to accept it. As recently as 1 February, before the latest crisis, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the empire-building secretary general, told a security conference in Munich: “Ukraine must have the freedom to choose its own path without external pressure.” The implication was clear: if only it were not for those beastly Russians, Ukraine would be one of us. Had Rasmussen said: “Ukraine has chosen nonalignment and we respect that choice,” he would have been wiser.

    It is not too late to show some wisdom now. Vladimir Putin’s troop movements in Crimea, which are supported by most Russians, are of questionable legality under the terms of the peace and friendship treaty that Russia signed with Ukraine in 1997. But their illegality is considerably less clear-cut than that of the US-led invasion of Iraq, or of Afghanistan, where the UN security council only authorised the intervention several weeks after it had happened. And Russia’s troop movements can be reversed if the crisis abates. That would require the restoration of the language law in eastern Ukraine and firm action to prevent armed groups of anti-Russian nationalists threatening public buildings there.

    The Russian-speaking majority in the region is as angry with elite corruption, unemployment and economic inequality as people in western Ukraine. But it also feels beleaguered and provoked, with its cultural heritage under existential threat. Responsibility for eliminating those concerns lies not in Washington, Brussels or Moscow, but solely in Kiev.

  10. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ মার্চ ২০১৪ (১০:৩৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    প্রফেসর স্টিফেন কোহেন কী বলছেন, মন দিয়ে শুনুন।

    Debating how the U.S. should respond to Moscow’s military moves in Crimea

    How damaging is Russia’s recent activity in Crimea to Russia’s long-term relationship with the West? Is the current tension adding momentum toward “a new Cold War divide”? Gwen Ifill gets two views from Stephen Cohen of New York University and Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia on the build up to Russia sending troops into Ukraine and how the U.S. should react.

  11. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ মার্চ ২০১৪ (১২:৫০ অপরাহ্ণ)

  12. মাসুদ করিম - ১০ মার্চ ২০১৪ (৬:১৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Bangladesh mainly imports wheat, oil seed and yellow peas from Ukraine. It imports around 30 per cent of its total wheat from the country.

    Food importers said the prices of wheat, corn, oil seed and yellow peas have already risen significantly in the global market as a result of the Ukraine crisis.

  13. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ মার্চ ২০১৪ (১১:০৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  14. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ মার্চ ২০১৪ (৯:১৯ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    প্রায় একই সময়ে একই রকম করে ভেবেছেন সঞ্জয় বারু।

    Crimea and punishment

    Sanjaya Baru | March 24, 2014 11:32 pm

    Vladimir Putin is no Joseph Stalin and today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. No single national leader, however powerful, is in a position to unilaterally alter global power balances. Every unilateral move can be met with a counter move. In the end, it is the word of caution delivered by a large majority of important nations rather than economic sanctions that will temper other major powers. No 20th century analogy, based on a bipolar or a unipolar power system, is relevant to understanding the emerging multipolar balance of the power system of the 21st century.
    As I have argued earlier, Putin has been acting for some time now to signal the return of Russia (‘The Return of Russia’, IE, September 26, 2013) to the global high table after the two-decade post-Cold War interregnum. But Russia, like any mature power, ought to know the limits to such unilateral action in today’s world. The same considerations that are holding the United States back in the Middle East and restraining China in the South China Sea would eventually hold Russia back.
    Equally, while the US and the European Union may seek to discipline other major powers, like a China or a Russia, when they step out of line, the ability of “the West” to impose its will on “the Rest” is increasingly circumscribed by shifting global power balances and changing alliances.
    True, the West has overwhelming military superiority over the Rest. Moreover, if the West constructs new plurilateral trading regimes, like the Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships (TPP and TTIP), it could hurt many of the economies of the Rest. However, in today’s interdependent world, no one country, however big, can hurt another without imposing collateral damage on many others, which may eventually make the unilateral action counter-productive.
    Of all the weapons in the West’s armour, the increasingly ineffective one is economic sanctions. Thanks to globalisation, the new interdependencies between the economies of the West and the Rest, and the integration of the “emerging economies” through South-South trade and investment networks, economic sanctions, always a blunt instrument of diplomacy, have become less effective in altering the behaviour of big countries.
    The limits to the efficacy of economic sanctions against Russia, imposed in the wake of its “reclaiming” Crimea, were highlighted by a news report in The Guardian (UK) last week, which said that the British government had been cautioned by its own officials against taking measures that would hurt the financial interests of the City of London. If Russian investors lose trust in London as a safe place to invest their funds, they have other places to go to, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and even Shanghai.
    Apart from the City of London’s stake in retaining the trust of global investors, European households have a stake in ensuring access to Russian energy supplies. A third of the EU’s energy needs, and a much higher share in the case of Scandinavian and East European economies, are met by Russia. These interdependencies between Russia and the West would blunt the edge of sanctions.
    In any case, the efficacy of economic sanctions as a geopolitical instrument has been long questioned, and by none other than a Washington DC think-tank, the Peterson Institute of International Economics (PIIE), which has researched the subject since the early 1980s. PIIE studies have shown how limited the impact of economic sanctions has been in securing desired political outcomes. One of the recommendations of the PIIE study is that for sanctions to be effective, they should be properly targeted. That is why the US has targeted the Russian private sector, especially entities close to Putin. However, as the worries of the City of London illustrate, it would be difficult hitting Russian business interests without hurting Western, especially European, financial interests.
    If economic sanctions are unlikely to rein in a “revanchist Russia”, what will? In the end, be it Iran or Russia, Pakistan or China, what will deter countries from taking internationally unacceptable actions are global cautions and the fear of uniting an assortment of adversaries. While the West has been vocal in its disapproval of Putin’s unilateral actions in Crimea, other powers, including China and India, have also conveyed their own sense of disquiet, not just about Putin’s actions but also about those of Western powers. In fact, it was the suspect actions of Nato powers in Ukraine that queered the pitch for Putin in Crimea.
    Some in the media have wrongly interpreted Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s statement on Crimea as a message of support for Russia. Menon did not acknowledge the “legitimacy” of Russian action, as some in the media have made out. In fact, Menon’s exact words were that “there are legitimate Russian and other interests involved” in Crimea. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remarks during his telephonic conversation with Putin further reflect this nuanced and balanced Indian response.
    To read China’s and India’s response to Crimea through the lens of their own interests in Tibet and Kashmir is ridiculous. Geopolitical shifts are not determined by precedents but by power. If China, India, Japan, Turkey and other powers take different approaches on such developments, it is because each one of them would want their voice heard and not have their own individual options closed by the actions of others.
    In the past, India could withdraw into the comfort of non-alignment and keep its counsel. However, India has an increasing stake in global and regional stability and will have to caution anyone disturbing that stability. That, precisely, has been India’s response to the Crimean crisis, as it was to China’s attempts at destabilising East Asia and US destabilisation of the Middle East and North Africa.
    In Ukraine, both the West and Russia have precipitated instability. India, like China, has a stake in restoring stability and not allowing matters to get out of control and tensions to escalate. It would appear that the Indian response has been defined by this concern rather than the urge to confer legitimacy on one or the other protagonist, or stay non-aligned between the two.

  15. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ মার্চ ২০১৪ (৯:৩৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  16. মাসুদ করিম - ১৬ এপ্রিল ২০১৪ (৬:৩৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

  17. মাসুদ করিম - ১৭ এপ্রিল ২০১৪ (১০:০০ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    How to Save Ukraine
    Why Russia Is Not the Real Problem

    For the first time since 1989, Europe is transforming. Russia is expanding. NATO and the West are struggling to react. And there is constant talk of a new Cold War. The primary protagonists, by most accounts, are Russia and the West. It’s Putin vs. Obama, Moscow vs. Brussels, authoritarian speed vs. democratic dithering. The bit of territory that they are clawing at — Ukraine — has largely been eclipsed. For, as with all great geopolitical contests, observers assume that the real forces at work lie not in the battleground — Ukraine now, or Corcyra in the struggle between Athens and Sparta, or Bohemia in the Thirty Years’ War — but with the Great Powers.

    Yet inattention to Ukraine’s internal demons reflects a dangerous misreading of current events; the struggle between Russia and the West has been a catalyst, but not a cause. The protagonists in this conflict are subnational regions. The EU association process, and especially the protests, repression, and revolution that followed, activated very deep and long-standing divisions between them. Unless Kiev deals with its regions and installs a more legitimate, decentralized government, Ukraine will not be won by the East or the West. It will be torn apart.

    Since the problem is an internal Ukrainian problem (and remains so, despite Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the presence of tens of thousands of Russian troops on the country’s borders, and the seizure of city administrations throughout eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian groups), the solution will also be Ukrainian. The country might not be able to fix its centuries-old divides, but it must finally craft institutions to accommodate them.

    NEW RUSSIA

    It is not hard to see why the Russophile regions have raged against the new government, which the regional press calls the Kiev junta, the Maidan government in Kiev, or simply Banderovtsy (the informal name for the anti-Soviet insurgency that was based in the Habsburg west).

    In some sense, it is accurate to describe the battle in Ukraine as an East-West struggle: the east is Donetsk, and the west is Lviv.

    On the side of the West are the four provinces that were part of Habsburg Austria until 1918. Later, all were swept into the Soviet Union. For over a century, these regions have been a hotbed of anti-Russian, pro-European sentiment. When they were in power, the Habsburgs, fearing both Polish nationalism and Russian expansionism, encouraged and cultivated fierce nationalism through schools, societies, and paramilitary scouting organizations. They taught the local peasants — who had previously referred to themselves as ruski or rusyn — that they were part of a great Ukrainian nation spanning from the Carpathian Mountains to the banks of the Don River, and that they had historically been oppressed by the Russians and the Poles. The peasants’ allies in their struggle for national liberation? Europe, naturally. Or, more specifically, Habsburg Vienna.

    The imprint of Ukrainian nationalism on these western communities has been remarkably durable. In the interwar period, they chafed at Polish rule. Ukrainian nationalists formed radical underground organizations, burned Polish estates, and ultimately assassinated the Polish interior minister. When the Soviet Union took over these territories, it found an implacably hostile population, one that mounted a large-scale insurgency. At the insurgency’s peak, there were over 100,000 men at arms. These warriors fought the Soviets through the early 1950s. When the Soviets finally defeated the insurgency, these regions fed the ranks of Soviet dissidents and the anti-Soviet diaspora in the West. They were among the first to protest against Soviet rule again in the 1980s, and voted by large majorities for secession from the Soviet Union in March of 1991 (the only Ukrainian provinces to do so). Since then, Ukraine’s western reaches have been the mainstay for Ukraine’s nationalist parties. Although the population of these provinces is only about 12 percent of Ukraine’s total population, they punch far above their electoral weight because of the intensity of their political views, their support in the diaspora, and their willingness to take to the streets.

    On the side of the East is what is currently called Ukraine’s south and east, historically known as New Russia. These are the areas that the Russian Empire annexed from the Tatar Khanate and the Ottoman Empire at the end of the eighteenth century. Because the area was home to very few people, these huge swaths of territory were largely settled by migrants from within the Russian empire and immigrants from abroad. In fact, the town that became the pro-Russian metropolis of Donetsk was originally chartered in 1869 by John Hughes, a Welsh businessman, as part of his New Russia Company for developing mining and ironworks. As in New England and New France, on the North American continent, diverse populations flooded into these territories on the promise of land, upward mobility, and education. They were taught the Russian language and — to a great extent — were assimilated into the Russian identity. To the extent that these areas were still thought of as Ukrainian, it was a Ukrainian identity that was not seen as being incompatible with Russian identity. In fact, these territories fed the ranks of the Soviet Union’s top leadership — Nikita Khrushchev earned his stripes in Donetsk, Leonid Brezhnev in Dnipropetrovsk — not the ranks of its discontents.

    Like the former Habsburg territories, historic New Russia bears the stamp of its past. With the exception of Crimea, Soviet policies left most of those who live in what is today southeastern Ukraine with Ukrainian listed as their ethnicity in their passports, but these Ukrainians are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and strongly pro-Russian. In the past elections, they voted in large numbers for the pro-Russian Party of Regions, and for the Communist Party prior to that. Since the 1990s, these regions have produced Ukraine’s most powerful leaders. Former President Viktor Yanukovych hails from Donetsk; former President Leonid Kuchma is from Dnipropetrovsk. The south and east constitute approximately half of Ukraine’s population and provides the lion’s share of its GDP.

    It is thus not surprising that, when questioned about the Soviet past or about support for European or Russian alignment in the present, the country cleaves sharply, and consistently, along regional lines. According to a recent poll, the idea of joining NATO is popular only in western Ukraine (64 percent in favor). It is deeply unpopular in the south (11 percent in favor) and the east (14 percent in favor). Much the same is true for membership in the European Union. If the matter were up for a referendum, which it will not be anytime soon, 90 percent would vote yes in the west, 29 percent would vote yes in the south, and 22 percent would vote yes in the east. Perhaps looking for a silver lining to the Russian invasion, some observers maintained that the Russian occupation and annexation of Crimea would change those attitudes — after all, the stability and protection that Europe would offer starts to look better when your neighbor invades — but the regional divides are remarkably durable. Even surrounded by battle-ready Russian forces and at risk of annexation, southerners and easterners seem more interested in having the Russian military protect them from NATO than they are in having NATO protect them from Russia.

    KEEPING UKRAINE WHOLE

    When Yanukovych and his entire government were ousted back in February, the West welcomed it as a semi-constitutional revolution. The Russians saw it as a right-wing coup d’état. Neither view is entirely incorrect, but each misses the point. The relevant fact for Ukrainian politics is that power shifted in an extreme fashion from one regional base to another.

    First, back in mid-February, only 20 percent in the east and eight percent in the south felt sympathetic toward the Maidan protesters; they could not possibly be expected to be pleased with how power changed hands in Kiev. Making matters worse, the new government under Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk is dominated by the west. Around 60 percent of its top officials (ministers and above) come from the former Habsburg provinces. A third are from Lviv itself. Only two members of the new government (Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Minister of Social Policy Lyudmila Denisova) hail from the country’s south and east.

    This is in sharp contrast to the Yanukovych government, under Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, in which 75 percent of the ministerial-level leadership was from the south and east of the country and 42 percent was from Yanukovych’s home province of Donetsk.

    It is not hard to see why the Russophile regions have raged against the new government, which the regional press calls the Kiev junta, the Maidan government in Kiev, or simply Banderovtsy (the informal name for the anti-Soviet insurgency that was based in the Habsburg west). Indeed, the consequences of the shift in power toward the far west have been entirely predictable. First, Crimea was lost, and not solely because of the presence of Russian special forces. Rather, in early March, the overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s military forces on the peninsula simply followed the newly appointed head of the Ukrainian navy and defected to the Russian side. In Donetsk, even before pro-Russian groups occupied the regional administrative buildings and declared the area the Donetsk Autonomous Republic, the courts were refusing to act on the request of the prosecutors (controlled from Kiev) to charge and try protestors. Elsewhere in the New Russian territories, protesters have taken to the streets and seized administrations buildings despite the high risk of arrest.

    The new government’s extreme regional imbalance created the space for Russian intervention, and it must be resolved immediately if Ukraine is going to survive intact. And survival is important. Most Ukrainians still want to keep their country whole. That is a good thing, because despite the regional divisions, there would be no clear or clean way to partition the country. Managed unity is better than violent division. Yet a region containing 12 percent of the population but controlling the majority of the top government posts would be a recipe for instability in any country — even one without a large and powerful neighbor. Adding in the fact that the government came to power through a popular uprising rather than an election, that its foreign policy views are extreme outliers in the country, and that it is divorced from the historic centers of power and the current centers of wealth, it is surprising that Ukraine is still standing at all.

    If the West continues on its current track, things will get much worse. Observers and policymakers in Europe and the United States have seen the new government as a potential partner to finally bring Ukraine into the Western fold. In turn, they have granted Kiev international legitimacy and financial backing. But this tug toward Europe may pull Ukraine apart. The same intense anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalism that gives the new government its desire to move toward Europe limits its capacity to govern Ukraine.

    It is thus time to face some hard facts. A pro-European, pro-NATO government ruling a regionally divided country — and one that is quite vulnerable to Russian military intervention — is a recipe for instability, not for European integration. Simply pushing forward with EU association and NATO integration without pushing the government in Kiev to address its illegitimacy problems through means other than arrest is not much of a strategy. It’s not even much of a gamble, as it is almost certain to fail.

    One way or another, power in Ukraine needs to be spread out. Early presidential elections are part of the answer, but they cannot achieve the goal alone. According to recent surveys, only 22 percent in the south and 15 percent in the east think that the upcoming elections will be free and fair. Illegitimate elections cannot confer legitimacy. If people in the southern and eastern regions feel they have no control over the process, they will not have a stake in the result. Power may thus need to be shared first, and then new elected leaders put in place.

    The most obvious way to do that is through some form of constitutional change. Call it what you want: decentralization, federalization, regionalization. The label makes little difference. Kiev needs to transfer some very substantial powers, including those over education, language, law, and taxation, to the regions. It also needs to make the officials who hold such powers democratically accountable to elected councils and governors. The Russian plan to federalize Ukraine, which, in reality, is a plan to turn Ukraine into a weak confederation where the central government is largely ceremonial, is a step too far. It is a recipe for dissolution and Russian absorption of the territory, not a solution. But there is certainly a deal to be made between Ukraine’s regions that will satisfy its regional power bases, appease its neighbors, and keep the country whole. It is hard to see a viable alternative, and the interim Yatsenyuk government is now beginning to open up that dialogue. As long as Ukraine retains its highly centralized winner-take-all political system, and one regional faction sits in Kiev with the backing of either Russia or the West, Ukraine is going to be unstable. With a little bit of constitutional accommodation, though, the divided house just might stand.

  18. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ মে ২০১৪ (১১:৩১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war

    The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain. It could be a threat to us all

    The threat of war in Ukraine is growing. As the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country’s east, John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state. The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. The White House is reported to be set on a new cold war policy with the aim of turning Russia into a “pariah state”.

    That might be more explicable if what is going on in eastern Ukraine now were not the mirror image of what took place in Kiev a couple of months ago. Then, it was armed protesters in Maidan Square seizing government buildings and demanding a change of government and constitution. US and European leaders championed the “masked militants” and denounced the elected government for its crackdown, just as they now back the unelected government’s use of force against rebels occupying police stations and town halls in cities such as Slavyansk and Donetsk.

    “America is with you,” Senator John McCain told demonstrators then, standing shoulder to shoulder with the leader of the far-right Svoboda party as the US ambassador haggled with the state department over who would make up the new Ukrainian government.

    When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia’s most neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.

    Putin bit back, taking a leaf out of the US street-protest playbook – even though, as in Kiev, the protests that spread from Crimea to eastern Ukraine evidently have mass support. But what had been a glorious cry for freedom in Kiev became infiltration and insatiable aggression in Sevastopol and Luhansk.

    After Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia, the bulk of the western media abandoned any hint of even-handed coverage. So Putin is now routinely compared to Hitler, while the role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda.

    So you don’t hear much about the Ukrainian government’s veneration of wartime Nazi collaborators and pogromists, or the arson attacks on the homes and offices of elected communist leaders, or the integration of the extreme Right Sector into the national guard, while the anti-semitism and white supremacism of the government’s ultra-nationalists is assiduously played down, and false identifications of Russian special forces are relayed as fact.

    The reality is that, after two decades of eastward Nato expansion, this crisis was triggered by the west’s attempt to pull Ukraine decisively into its orbit and defence structure, via an explicitly anti-Moscow EU association agreement. Its rejection led to the Maidan protests and the installation of an anti-Russian administration – rejected by half the country – that went on to sign the EU and International Monetary Fund agreements regardless.

    No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin’s absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive, and the red line now drawn: the east of Ukraine, at least, is not going to be swallowed up by Nato or the EU.

    But the dangers are also multiplying. Ukraine has shown itself to be barely a functioning state: the former government was unable to clear Maidan, and the western-backed regime is “helpless” against the protests in the Soviet-nostalgic industrial east. For all the talk about the paramilitary “green men” (who turn out to be overwhelmingly Ukrainian), the rebellion also has strong social and democratic demands: who would argue against a referendum on autonomy and elected governors?

    Meanwhile, the US and its European allies impose sanctions and dictate terms to Russia and its proteges in Kiev, encouraging the military crackdown on protesters after visits from Joe Biden and the CIA director, John Brennan. But by what right is the US involved at all, incorporating under its strategic umbrella a state that has never been a member of Nato, and whose last elected government came to power on a platform of explicit neutrality? It has none, of course – which is why the Ukraine crisis is seen in such a different light across most of the world. There may be few global takers for Putin’s oligarchic conservatism and nationalism, but Russia’s counterweight to US imperial expansion is welcomed, from China to Brazil.

    In fact, one outcome of the crisis is likely to be a closer alliance between China and Russia, as the US continues its anti-Chinese “pivot” to Asia. And despite growing violence, the cost in lives of Russia’s arms-length involvement in Ukraine has so far been minimal compared with any significant western intervention you care to think of for decades.

    The risk of civil war is nevertheless growing, and with it the chances of outside powers being drawn into the conflict. Barack Obama has already sent token forces to eastern Europe and is under pressure, both from Republicans and Nato hawks such as Poland, to send many more. Both US and British troops are due to take part in Nato military exercises in Ukraine this summer.

    The US and EU have already overplayed their hand in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the western powers may want to intervene directly, and the Ukrainian prime minister’s conjuring up of a third world war presumably isn’t authorised by his Washington sponsors. But a century after 1914, the risk of unintended consequences should be obvious enough – as the threat of a return of big-power conflict grows. Pressure for a negotiated end to the crisis is essential.

  19. মাসুদ করিম - ২৪ আগস্ট ২০১৪ (৯:৪৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    তাণ্ডবের বর্ণনায় তারা কাঁদলেন, কাঁদালেন

    দুই বছর আগের ২৮ ফেব্রুয়ারি যুদ্ধাপরাধী দেলাওয়ার হোসাইন সাঈদীর ফাঁসির রায়ের পর দেশজুড়ে জামায়াতে ইসলামীর তাণ্ডবে অন্ধকার নেমে এসেছিল হযরত আলীর পরিবারেও।

    সেটা কেমন ছিল, তা ফুটে উঠল এই পুলিশ কনস্টেবলের স্ত্রীর কথায়- “আমার একটাই সন্তান। জীবনে সে বাবা ডাক হারিয়ে ফেলেছে। আমি এখন কার কাছে যাব?”

    ওসমানী মিলনায়তনের মঞ্চে দাঁড়িয়ে এই কথাটি বলে কাঁদতে কাঁদতে জ্ঞান হারিয়ে লুটিয়ে পড়েন লায়লা খাতুন।

    অনুষ্ঠানে থাকা প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনাসহ অন্যরাও তখন উঠে দাঁড়ান। ধরাধরি করে তোলা হয় লায়লাকে।

    এরপর বিশ্রাম কক্ষে নিয়ে যাওয়া হয় লায়লাকে, দর্শক সারি থেকে উঠে সাবেক স্বাস্থ্যমন্ত্রী ডা. আ ফ ম রুহুল হকও সেখানে যান শুশ্রূষার জন্য। কিছুক্ষণ পর জ্ঞান ফিরে আসে লায়লার।

    শনিবার ওসমানী মিলনায়তনে ছিলেন লায়লার মতোই অর্ধ শতাধিক নারী-পুরুষ, গত বছরজুড়ে তাণ্ডবে যাদের কেউ হারিয়েছেন স্বজন, কেউ আবার নিজেরাই ক্ষত বয়ে বেড়াচ্ছেন।

    ‘বিএনপি-জামাতের তাণ্ডব : রক্তাক্ত বাংলাদেশ’ শীর্ষক ফটো অ্যালবামের প্রকাশনা উপলক্ষে আওয়ামী লীগ এই অনুষ্ঠান আয়োজন করে।

    যুদ্ধাপরাধের বিচার এবং নির্বাচন ঠেকাতে গত বছরজুড়ে সহিংস আন্দোলনের চিত্র নিয়ে এই অ্যালবামের মোড়ক উন্মোচন করতে উপস্থিত শেখ হাসিনাকে সহিংসতার শিকারদের বর্ণনা শুনতে শুনতে এক সময় চোখ মুছতেও দেখা যায়।

    সবাইকে সান্ত্বনা দিয়ে তিনি বক্তব্যে বলেন,“আর, আমরা এই ধরনের ঘটনা দেখতে চাই না। আর, এ ধরনের অবস্থা যেন বাংলাদেশে না ঘটে। সেটাই আমার আবেদন থাকবে দেশবাসীর প্রতি।”

    আওয়ামী লীগ সভানেত্রীর বক্তব্যের আগে লায়লা খাতুনসহ আটজন তাদের কথা বলেন।

    গাইবান্ধার বামনডাঙায় পুলিশ ফাঁড়িতে হামলা চালিয়ে কিভাবে হযরত আলীসহ কনস্টেবলদের হত্যা করা হয়েছিল, তার বর্ণনা লাইলি দেয়ার সময় মিলনায়তনে ছিল পিনপতন নীরবতা।

    শাড়ীর আচঁলে চোখ মুছতে মুছতেই সেদিনের ঘটনার বর্ণনা দিয়ে যান স্বামীহারা এই নারী।
    “আমার স্বামী ফাঁড়িতে ডিউটি করছিল… আমি কী বলব,” কান্নায় ভেঙে পড়ার পর এক নাগাড়ে বলতে থাকেন, “মারা যাওয়ার কিছুক্ষণ আগে আমার স্বামী আমাকে ফোন করেছিলেন, বলেছিলেন- ‘একটা মিছিল আসছে, গণ্ডগোল হচ্ছে’।

    “এরপর আমি ফোন করি। আর, ফোন ধরে না। পরে একজন ফোন ধরে বলে, তিনজন পুলিশ মারা গেছে।”

    “আমি ছুটে যাই। ওরা আমার স্বামীকে এমনভাবে হত্যা করেছে, লাশ দেখে প্রথমে আমার স্বামীকে চিনতে পারিনি। ব্যাজে নাম দেখে চিনেছি।”

    ২০১৩ সালের ৫ মে হেফাজতে ইসলামীর কর্মসূচির দিন ঢাকা পশ্চিম ট্রাফিক পুলিশ কার্যালয়ে কর্মরত কনস্টেবল পিয়ারুল ইসলামও উপস্থিত ছিলেন তার বিভীষিকাময় অভিজ্ঞতার কথা বলতে।

    পিয়ারুলের শরীরের ৮০ ভাগ আগুনে পুড়ে গিয়েছিল। সিঙ্গাপুরে পাঠিয়ে তার উন্নত চিকিৎসার ব্যবস্থা করেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী।

    পিয়ারুল বলেন, সেদিন ৩টা ১০ মিনিটে হাজার হাজার লোক গানপাউডার দিয়ে অফিস জ্বালিয়ে দেয়। নিচে গাড়িতে পেট্রোল দিয়ে আগুন দেয়।

    নিজের দুই অগ্নিদগ্ধ হাত তুলে এই পুলিশ সদস্য বলেন, “আমার দুই হাতের চামড়া গলে গলে পড়ছিল। এক সময় দেখি আমার শরীর থেকে সব তেলের মতো বের হচ্ছে। সেই যন্ত্রণার কথা ভোলার নয়।”

    পিয়ারুল তার পিঠের কাপড় তুলে ক্ষতবিক্ষত চামড়া দেখিয়ে বলেন, “আমার এই অবস্থা যারা করেছে, তাদের বিচার চাই।”

    প্রধানমন্ত্রী এসময় কপালে হাত দিয়ে মাথা নিচু করে চোখের পানি মুছছিলেন।

    ছাত্রলীগকর্মী হেলালউদ্দিন পিয়ারু ছিলেন অনুষ্ঠানে, এখনো তিনি ঠিকমতো শ্বাস নিতে পারেন না। তার শ্বাসনালীতে প্লাস্টিকের পাইপ বসাতে হয়েছে।

    ০১৩ সালের ১১ এপ্রিল ফটিকছড়ির ভুজপুরে হরতালবিরোধী মিছিলে জামায়াত-শিবিরের হামলায় মারাত্মক আহত হন পিয়ারু।

    মঞ্চে দাঁড়িয়ে শ্বাস টেনে টেনেই পিয়ারু তার ওপর হামলার বর্ণনা দিচ্ছিলেন।

    “মসজিদের মাইক থেকে বলা হয় যে, আমরা মসজিদ আর মাদ্রাসায় হামলা করেছি। মাওলানাকে হত্যা করেছি। আমাকে ১৮টা কোপ দেয়। আমার গলা ছুরি দিয়ে কেটে দেয়।”
    নিজের ক্ষতবিক্ষত পেট দেখিয়ে তিনি বলেন, “আমার নাড়ি-ভুড়ি বের করে দেয়।

    “আমার অপরাধ কী? আমি বঙ্গবন্ধুর আদর্শে বিশ্বাস করি, আমি শেখ হাসিনার কর্মী- এটাই আমার অপরাধ?”

    পিয়ারুর ওপর হামলার নৃশংসতার বর্ণনা শুনে প্রধানমন্ত্রী নিজের হাত দিয়ে মুখ চেপে ধরেন।

    ছেলে হারানোর বেদনাদায়ক ও মর্মান্তিক ঘটনার কথা বলেন ভ্যানচালক রহমত আলী। যে ভ্যান চালাতেন রহমত আলী, সেই ভ্যানেই পেট্রোল বোমা ছুড়ে মারলে অগ্নিদগ্ধ হয় তার ছেলে মনির। চারদিন পর মারা যায় সে।

    রহমত আলী কাঁদতে কাঁদতেই বলেন, “আমার এখানে কিছু বলার নেই। আমার সামনে আমার ছেলে ৯০ ভাগ পুড়ে যায়। আমি ১০ মাস ধরে কেনো কাজ করতে পারছি না।

    “আমি দ্রুত বিচার চাই। কেউ যেনো আমার মতো সন্তান না হারায়।”

    কথা শেষে প্রধানমন্ত্রীর পেছন দিয়ে নিজের জন্য নির্ধারিত স্থানে যাওয়ার সময় শেখ হাসিনা হাত ধরে রহমত আলীকে সান্ত্বনা দেন।

    মঞ্চের পেছনে দু’দিকে কোণাকুনিভাবে সিঁড়ির মতো তিনটি ধাপে অগ্নিদগ্ধ, সন্তানহারা অভিভাবক, স্বামীহারা বিধবা স্ত্রী এবং ধারালো অস্ত্রের আঘাতে মারাত্মক আহতরা বসেছিলেন।
    প্রধানমন্ত্রী অনুষ্ঠান শেষে মঞ্চ থেকে নেমে যাওয়ার আগে আক্রান্ত সবার সঙ্গে কথা বলেন, সান্ত্বনা দিতে গিয়ে অনেককে জড়িয়েও ধরেন তিনি।

    ২০১৩ সালের ২৮ নভেম্বর বিএনপি-জামায়তের কর্মসূচি চলাকালে বাসে অগ্নিসংযোগের ঘটনায় ১৯জন যাত্রীর সঙ্গে অগ্নিদগ্ধ আইনজীবী খোদেজা নাসরিনও ছিলেন অনুষ্ঠানে।

    এই আইনজীবী এখন তার ডান মুষ্টিবদ্ধ করতে পারেন না। অগ্নিদগ্ধ হয়ে তার হাতের পেশি আর চামড়া শক্ত হয়ে গেছে।

    “আপনারা হাত মুষ্টিবদ্ধ করতে পারেন। কিন্তু, আমি পারি না। এই যন্ত্রণা থেকে মরে যাওয়াই ভাল ছিল বলে মাঝে মাঝে মনে হয়,” ডান হাত শূন্যে তুলে বলেন এই আইনজীবী।

    দশম জাতীয় সংসদ নির্বাচনে গাইবান্ধার কুন্তাইল কেন্দ্রের প্রিসাইডিং কর্মকর্তা সহযোগী অধ্যাপক সাইদুল ইসলাম আগুনে পুড়ে যাওয়া তার দুই হাত দেখিয়ে বলেন, “আমার ওপর হামলার কথা ভাষায় প্রকাশ করতে পারব না।

    “আমার মুখের ওপর পেট্রোল বোমা ছুড়ে মারে। আমি হাত দিয়ে ঠেকাই। তখন পুরো শরীরে আগুন লেগে যায়।”

    সাইদুল ইসলাম বিস্ময় প্রকাশ করে বলেন, “অনেকেই আগুন লাগার পর আমাকে আশ্রয় দিতে চায় নাই। তারা আমাকে বলেছে, আমাকে আশ্রয় দিলে তাদের বাড়ি ভেঙে দেবে।”

    মতিঝিলে হেফাজতে ইসলামের কর্মসূচি চলাকালে বায়তুল মোকাররমের নিচে ফুটপাতে ধর্ম গ্রন্থের পুস্তকের দোকানে আগুন দেয়ার ঘটনার বর্ণনা করতে গিয়ে মিজানুল করিম বলেন, “আমি নিজে চোক্ষে দেখছি, কিভাবে কোরআন শরিফে আগুন দিসে। এরা কী মানুষ, না ফেরাউনের গ্রুপ?”

    Killing people for movement undemocratic, says PM

    Prime Minister (PM) Sheikh Hasina said on Saturday those who kill people in the name of movement do not believe in healthy politics, democracy, constitution and the country’s independence, reports UNB.

    “Those who kill people in the name of politics do not believe in the acceptable definition of politics. They don’t believe in democracy, constitution and the country’s independence,” she said.

    The PM was addressing a launching ceremony of a photo-album ‘Roktakto Bangladesh’ (Bloodstained Bangladesh) at Osmani Memorial Auditorium displaying the photos of barbaric activities of BNP-Jamaat last year which left many innocent people dead.

    Sheikh Hasina, also the President of the ruling Awami League (AL), said the country’s democratic march forward will continue as her party always tried to run the country as per the constitution.

    “But attempts had been made several times to snatch people’s democratic rights and grab power through an undemocratic way claiming the lives of many people. They had played with the lives of people,” she said adding that people do not want to see the repetition of such incidents in the country.

    “They (anarchists) don’t have any affection for people. What will they give the country and its people, this is my question,” she added.

    “The present government is working to improve the lot of the mass people. When the government is working for people why are obstacles being put on the path of development? Why are such attacks made, and whom will be happy with these?” she questioned.

    Sheikh Hasina said Jamaat-Shibir’s main agenda is to kill people and they did so back in 1971.

    Talking about BNP, the PM said BNP was born through the illegal capture of power. “They came to power putting their feet on blood and that’s why they always like to play with blood. Let me tell them, if you want to do politics then do it, but don’t play with the lives of people.”

    Sheikh Hasina also said killing people is not a movement at all. “Please don’t push any family into a dark abyss by killing its members.”

    The PM said the people of Bangladesh want peace. “We want peace in Bangladesh… we want people to live in the country in peace.”

    Hasina said that she does not have any greed for power as she has been working for the welfare of the people. “And my aim is to do that,” she said adding, “We don’t want to see the attack of Hyenas one after another soaking the soil of the country with blood.”

    Te AL chief urged people to be aware so that such incidents cannot recur in the country.

    Briefly describing the horrific attacks of BNP-Jamaat activists in 2013, Hasina said, “My question is how much will the independent Bangladesh bleed. How many wives will turn widows, how many fathers will lose their children, how many children will lose their parents-why? Why the massacre was carried out? Was that just to stop an election?”

    “Each party has its own decision over participating in an election. But to resist an election and launch attacks on people is not acceptable. Killing people in the name of movement, burning people in the name of movement, attack on the public servants, what’s this?”

    She said that 17 police personnel, two BGB personnel and two of army intelligence, and hundreds of innocent people were killed during the BNP-Jamaat atrocities in 2013.

    Hasina said that their (BNP-Jamaat) movement failed to attract the mass people and that is why they tried to make the movement a success by taking lives. “They tried to play with dead bodies.”

    In this connection, she recalled the evil deeds of the Pakistani occupation forces and their local collaborators in 1971. The PM also recalled the killing of Bangabandhu and his family members in 1975 and the killing four national leaders in jail.

    AL general secretary and LGRD and Cooperatives Minister Ashraful Islam and PM’s Adviser HT Imam also spoke at the programme.

    Ramzan, father of Monir, who was burned alive by BNP-Jamaat supporters, police personnel Pearul Islam, who was injured in an attack by BNP-Jamaat activists when they attacked a police station, Helal Uddin Pearu, who was injured at Bhujpur of Fatikchhari in Chittagong in an attack by BNP-Jamaat activists, Layla Khatun and wife of a police constable Hazrat Ali, who was killed while protecting a police post in Gaibandha, described their horrific experience at the programme.

  20. মাসুদ করিম - ২৪ আগস্ট ২০১৪ (৯:৫১ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Photo Exhibition Focused on Ukraine War on Display in US

    A series of photos of tragic events in eastern Ukraine, provided by International Information Agency Rossiya Segodnya, was displayed on Friday night in Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, New York.

    Fifty images by photojournalists show the suffering of people and grave consequences of the military operation in eastern Ukraine.

    The photography exhibition was organized by the International Action Center and the United National Antiwar Coalition.

    “The idea that we have been working with is to do this in public spaces where people can come to see the exhibition and understand the war, unknown hardly covered consequences of war in Ukraine,” Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center, said.

    “This exhibition is a way of educating people to see the consequences of war,” Flounders underlined.

    The photos will also be displayed in the Solidarity Center in New York City on October 4, and later in the Albany Public Library and in Washington, D.C.

  21. মাসুদ করিম - ২৬ আগস্ট ২০১৪ (৬:৫০ অপরাহ্ণ)

  22. মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০১৪ (১০:০০ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Lavrov Says Russia Not Losing Battle With US for Influence in Europe

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented on the preliminary report on the MH17 crash, implementation of the ceasefire agreement in Ukraine and Russia’s relations with Western partners in an interview with Russian TVC channel released on Sunday.

    ON RUSSIA’S ECONOMIC RELATIONS WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION

    Although the Unites States are trying to do their best to disrupt the economic relations between the EU and Russia, Russia is not losing the battle for influence in Europe, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

    “There is a big battle going on,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Russian TVC channel. “The United States want to use the current situation in order to separate Europe from Russia economy-wise and bargain the most favorable conditions for themselves in the context of the ongoing negotiations on the creation of a transatlantic trade and investment partnership.”

    The Russian foreign minister said that such talks have been going for several years. “Europe has been persistent enough in defending its interests. According to the Europeans, the United States wanted to gain unfair profit. Now, however, these [US] efforts have intensified, including through the attempt to force Europe to purchase the American liquefied natural gas at prices that cannot be competitive with the price of the Russian gas. This was definitely motivated by economic interest. Still, geopolitical calculations play a huge role, a key one,” the minister said.

    Answering the question on whether Russia is losing Europe to the United States, the Russian Foreign Minister said, “I think not.”

    “Now we are seeing the EU giving the subject a second thought. The fact that some of the EU countries, which are not the largest and do not have a leading role, begin to argue openly that the policy of sanctions is a deadlock, that it is counterproductive, says a lot,” Lavrov said.

    Lavrov said that the EU sanctions “cannot last long, because within the EU there already are sensible voices who drew attention to the absolutely paradoxical situation, when right on the day of the signing of the peace agreement in Minsk [on September 5], the EU has decided to entrust Committee of Permanent Representatives in Brussels with preparing a new set of sanctions.”

    “It was exactly on the day when we had a breakthrough in peace talks, primarily due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s initiative,” the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

    The Russian foreign minister said that the Western colleagues, including from the EU, are still calling, coming to visit and are inviting Russian representatives for talks. Some planned meetings have been postponed but when such delays in meetings are publicly announced “they [the Western partners] immediately confirm their interest in the continuation of dialogue … only at a later date,” Russian Foreign Minister said.

    Lavrov said that Russia is interested in a strategic partnership with the EU to grow in strength and develop.

    “If you add up the potential of Russia and the European Union, then both will benefit from stronger positions in the world markets,” the Russian foreign minister said. Russia is still prepared to take practical steps for the implementation of this course, the minister added.

    The idea of creating a free trade zone between the EU and the Customs Union by 2020, and in future the Eurasian Economic Union, is still relevant.

    “This idea is still alive, relevant and is of particular interest [to Russia], especially in the context of the current events in the economic relations between Ukraine and the EU, and Ukraine and the Commonwealth of Independent States. That would be the answer to a lot of questions,” Lavrov said.

    ON WESTERN APPROACH TO UKRAINIAN CRISIS

    The West still does not want to recognize that a coup in Ukraine was organized with the support of the United States and the European Union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

    “Speaking about our Western partners, everything has gone if not out of control, then at least by a very confrontational scenario. The reason is simple: they do not want to admit what is obvious to us – that the coup [in Ukraine] was organized with the direct support, if not encouragement, of the United States and Brussels,” Lavrov said in an interview with the TVC channel.

    “After these people, who had been actively supported, came to power and formed a new government, everything became possible for them,” the Russian foreign minister said. “They are forgiven [everything] and are allowed [to do] whatever they wish. We hear nobody criticizing their unacceptable statements in regards to nationalism, Russia, minorities and neo-Nazi tendencies,” Lavrov said.

    The Russian foreign minister said that he had not heard “any judgments that could mean that the positions of the West are unanimous” from his colleagues from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

    Moscow is aware that not only “the US, but also the European envoys travel to every capital around the world, with no exception, to demand from the leaders of states, to strongly request not to support Russia, to join the Western sanctions and to refrain from any steps that will further the ties between a particular country and the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said. “For me this is an unprecedented situation. Such campaigns are, in fact, subversive for Russia’s relations with its partners.”

    Washington is pushing Ukraine towards the precipice for the sake of its own agenda of weakening Russia and the steps it had been taking with regard to the Ukrainian crisis have already proved it is willing to grant “carte blanche” to extremists, rather than work to achieve peace in the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

    “Almost everything that radicals and extremists in Ukraine do, including those in the government structures, gets ‘carte blanche’ from the United States; none of the arguments are working that point to the necessity of taking an objective look at what is happening and calling for national dialogue, reconciliation and respect for minority rights – all the values that the West promotes in any other conflict,” Lavrov told the Russian TVC channel.

    According to Lavov, “Washington has repeatedly proved that its goal is to escalate this crisis to the maximum in order to use Ukraine as a bargaining chip in yet another attempt to isolate and weaken Russia”.

    ON IMPLEMENTATION OF CEASEFIRE AGREEMENT IN UKRAINE

    Observing the ceasefire is the most important clause of the agreement reached between Kiev and pro-independence forces in Minsk, and the only one obligatory for immediate implementation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday in an interview to Russia’s TVC channel.

    “As for the document’s content, it is really of a framework character and, for the most part, is not subject to direct realization, except for the ceasefire paragraph. This is clear, this can be done and it is being done,” Russian foreign minister said.

    However, the other clauses of the agreement, particularly, the law on temporary self-government of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, require further specification, Lavrov stressed.

    “We do not know what it would be like – this is a responsibility of Ukraine. But when the self-defense forces were signing this clause, they made it clear that they would form their attitude toward it depending on its content, … acting on the premises of that it is not the end of the way, but a beginning of a very complex political process,” the head of Russian foreign ministry said, noting that the “set of values” in Western, Central and Eastern Ukrainian regions considerably varies.

    The previously implemented ceasefire agreement in Ukraine may once again be shattered as certain forces are interested in such outcome, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday.

    “At present, according to our estimations and in the opinion of the OSCE observers, the ceasefire is generally observed, although not without disruptions, which have been minor so far. Both sides occasionally engage in sporadic shooting, but the process of establishing a long-term ceasefire has not yet been disrupted,” the minister said in an interview with Russian TVC channel.

    “I deliberately do not intent to speak about it in a too optimistic manner because there are people who want to derail the process and bring the situation back to the military scenario,”Lavrov said.

    “First of all, these are the units formed by the oligarchs which are not subject to Kiev and that consider the armed forces of Ukraine as temporary allies, fellow travelers. It is also a significant part of the National Guard [which is interested in the disruption of ceasefire],” Lavrov said.

    Kiev’s interpretation of the Ukraine ceasefire agreements is controversial, but Moscow hopes that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will confirm his commitment to peace, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

    “In what concerns Kiev’s interpretations of the [Minsk] agreements, we hear a lot of controversial interpretations, even demands of rejecting peaceful steps and switching back to offense action using the entire arsenal of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian TVC channel.

    The foreign minister stressed, however, that Poroshenko regularly reaffirms his commitment to the peace agreements.

    “We still expect that, as the embodiment of a certain legitimacy, formed after the May 25 presidential elections, he will perform his functions of the commander-in-chief, take all the measures necessary and use his presidential powers so that the government, which is currently operating in Kiev and is subject to the rule of the president and parliament, does not undermine the sanctioned decision he approved,” Lavrov said.

    Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is interested in promoting the peace agreements reached in Minsk and the West should support his focus on their implementation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

    “I think [Petro] Poroshenko is interested in promoting the peace agreements and needs support, first of all from the West, which staked on the transition of the situation in Ukraine from the post-Maidan state to a legitimate course. It’s with that purpose that the presidential elections were announced,” Lavrov told the Russian TVC channel.

    The minister noted that “the West should support Poroshenko’s focus on the implementation of peace agreements”. “Because all the others, many, at least, are trying to seriously hinder his efforts,” Lavrov said.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko are not discussing Crimea as part of their talks on the resolution of the crisis in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

    “Crimea is not discussed. I can assure you that this issue is not being raised in the course of telephone conversations and direct contacts between our presidents,” Lavrov told the Russian TVC channel.

    Lavrov noted that in the course of their dialogue the leaders of the two countries are discussing the possibility of Russia using its obvious levers to help with the constitutional reform process in Ukraine. The minister reminded that the necessity of conducting constitutional reforms is mentioned in the February 21 agreement signed by ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovitch, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko and leader of Ukraine’s nationalist Svoboda party Oleh Tyagnibok.

    The document was attested by the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland.

    Moscow confirms that the movement of the strike group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near the eastern city of Debaltseve has been halted, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

    Lavrov noted that several days after the Ukraine ceasefire agreement was signed in Minsk Russia “received information, confirmed by the militia, that a strike group consisting of artillery and tanks was being formed near Debaltseve”.

    “We have called the attention of the Kiev authorities to this information. We were assured that there were no plans in this respect and that measures would be taken to ensure that no one would have such an impression. According to our data, the movements have been halted, and we have not received any more information of the sort,” Lavrov told the Russian TVC channel.

    ON NATO’S INFRASTRUCTURE NEAR RUSSIA’S BORDERS

    Moving NATO infrastructure closer to Russian borders by pulling more countries into the alliance is unacceptable, Sergei Lavrov said.

    “Expecting to pull as many countries as possible into NATO, continuing with the logic of inclusive lines, moving the infrastructure closer to our borders – that’s unacceptable,” Lavrov told the Russian TVC channel.

    “We are interested in the compliance with the agreements on ensuring whole, indivisible and universal security in the Euro-Atlantic area. In this context the assurances we were given that NATO would not be expanding eastward play a decisive role,” the minister said.

    Lavrov noted that Russia’s proposal to turn the commitments given within the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) not to strengthen the security of the alliance “at the expense of the security of others” into a legally binding agreement “was rejected multiple times”.

    The nonaligned status of Ukraine, enshrined in the Constitution, is in the best interest of the Ukrainian people, as well as its neighbors and partners in the Euro-Atlantic area, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday on a primetime political talk show.

    “We are convinced that the choice fixed in Ukrainian legislation is in the interests of the Ukrainian people and the legitimate interests of all the neighbors and partners of Ukraine, and the interests of European security” Lavrov said in the TV program Pravo Znat of the Moscow-based TV Tsentr channel.

    The Russian Foreign Minister also claimed that the non-aligned status of Ukraine is a matter of principle for Russia. He added “there are numerous assurances coming from Western partners that they understand the value of Ukraine’s nonaligned status for security of the Euro-Atlantic region,” the minister concluded.

    The government of Ukraine has approved a draft law to abolish the nonaligned status of the country, a significant step towards joining NATO. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said that Kiev’s goal was to “obtain a special status between Ukraine and NATO.”

    Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s surprise move to scrap the nation’s non-aligned status at the time when Kiev and Moscow are coordinating their Minsk agreements is presumably meant as a direct challenge for President Petro Poroshenko, the Russian foreign minister said Saturday.

    “Prime Minister Yatsenyuk… came up with an initiative to introduce a draft document scrapping [Ukraine’s] non-aligned status and taking the course toward NATO [membership] precisely during the coordination of the Minsk accords. I cannot but see these actions as a direct affront to the country’s president,” Sergei Lavrov said in the Pravo Znat (Right to Know) show on the TVC channel.

    Lavrov said that Yatsenyuk and “some other politicians” who had earlier suggested this step had been acting “not in the interests of their own people but in [the interests] of those seeking to cause a split between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and drive a huge wedge between Russia and Europe.”

    He claimed the initiative came from “first of all Washington.” The United States does not even try to conceal its agenda,” the Russian top diplomat said.

    Ukraine’s Parliament Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov and controversial politician Yulia Tymoshenko earlier came up with a similar move to renounce the turbulent nation’s nonaligned status.

    ON PRELIMINARY REPORT OF MH17 CRASH

    A preliminary report on the crash of the MH17 released this week by the Netherlands has answered no questions Russia was interested in, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

    “International experts have spent three weeks in Kiev, [they] talked with Ukrainian authorities. No answers to the questions formulated shortly after the crash by the Russian Defense Ministry and the Federal Air Transport Agency have been given,” Lavrov said in the Pravo Znat (Right to Know) show on the TVC channel.

    The minister said that the Russian experts are preparing another set of questions together with the Russian aviation authorities in order to “identify the issues, which are necessary for urgent consideration.”

    Lavrov also added that the Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein had visited Russia this week to study Russian experts’ analyses based on the preliminary findings which were made by the Russian Defense Ministry at a briefing in July.

    “We welcome this interest [of Malaysian authorities] because there is no reason to reject the clear answers, or at least the discussion of the questions that we have asked, the questions that have not yet received any response,” Lavrov said.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Saturday that he had been surprised by the calm tone of the Dutch authorities’ preliminary report on MH17 crash.

    “First of all, it [the report] surprised me because despite all the clamor about this tragedy, the tone is somewhat calm, the work is being done slowly and leisurely. There are no demands to ensure the resumption of expert work at the crash site. There were no attempts to go there to collect, as they say, the debris and see what the entire plane looked like, and nobody spoke about it out loud,” Lavrov said in the Pravo Znat [Right to Know] show on the TVC channel.

    The minister noted that he hopes “we will know the truth, but it does not depend on me.”

    Russia’s political leadership would ensure that the community is “constantly reminded that this [investigation] should be done,” Lavrov said. “But the rest is in the hands of those who are assigned to carry out this investigation.”

    There is neither transparency, nor accountability in attempts to set up a multilateral discussion of the MH17 flight crash investigation, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

    “We are probably the only ones who are constantly reminding [global community] of the fact that there is a UN Security Council resolution, which demands that the investigation should be thorough, international, transparent, and accountable. As for the international response, it seems like we have a group of experts under the auspices of the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the organization is taking some steps to set up multilateral discussions, but it lacks transparency and accountability,” Lavrov said.

    The Russian foreign minister stressed that while the UN Security Council does not carry out an investigation into the crash, it nevertheless “outlined the political demands that meet the severity of the tragedy and its perception in those countries whose nationals were on board and in the whole world community, as it was a civilian aircraft that was shot down.”

    Lavrov also reminded of the “hysterical accusations against independence supporters [in eastern Ukraine] and Russia” that had immediately followed the tragedy. “Now that the ‘propaganda cream’ has been skimmed off, it is possible that one does not really want to investigate the true cause of the accident. [But] that’s not our approach,” Lavrov said.

    ON TRANSNISTRIAN SETTLEMENT

    Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Saturday fended off accusations of Moscow’s plans to disrupt the Transnistrian peace settlement.

    “I heard that we were supposedly interested in creating a second Transnistria, some sort of buffer zone, which is nonsense. This [charge] is such an unscrupulous stab that I don’t even want talk about it, though it is necessary since the facts are ignored and distorted,” Lavrov said on the Pravo Znat (Right to Know) primetime political talk show of the Moscow-based TV Tsentr channel.

    The Minister noted that “now, no one remembers that in 2003, it was Russia that produced the ‘Kozak Memorandum,’ which was initialed by Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin and Transnistrian leaders. It was supposed to be signed in the morning, but during the night or late in the evening before, Javier Solana, on behalf of the European Union personally called Voronin and dissuaded him from signing the document, saying that it would not serve the interests of Moldova’s cooperation with the European Union ,” said Lavrov.

    “Only a sick mind looking for a way to fool the public would have come up with an idea that we had torpedoed the Transnistrian conflict settlement and are now working to repeat this scenario in Ukraine,” Lavrov concluded.

    Transnistria is a breakaway state with limited recognition located east of the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border with Ukraine. The creation of an independent Transnistria uncontrolled by Moldovan authorities was a response to the wave of nationalism in Moldova at the end of the 1980s.

    Back then, Moldovan authorities tried to invade the breakaway republic to restore “constitutional order,” later launching an armed conflict which lasted several months. The 1992 War of Transnistria killed 809 people on the Transnistrian side, 271 of which were civilians.

  23. মাসুদ করিম - ২৫ সেপ্টেম্বর ২০১৪ (২:১০ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ‘হুমকি’ বিষয়ে হাসিনাকে ‘তথ্য দেবেন’ মোদী

    প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা যেসব ‘হুমকির মুখে’ রয়েছেন সেসব বিষয়ে নিউ ইয়র্কের বৈঠকে তাকে জানাবেন ভারতের প্রধানমন্ত্রী নরেন্দ্র মোদী।

    যুক্তরাষ্ট্রে জাতিসংঘের সাধারণ অধিবেশনের ফাঁকে আগামী ২৭ সেপ্টেম্বর এই বৈঠক হবে। মোদী ভারত সরকারের দায়িত্ব নেয়ার পর এটাই তাদের প্রথম বৈঠক।

    ভারতীয় গোয়েন্দারা জানিয়েছেন, পশ্চিমা একটি গোয়েন্দা সংস্থা বাংলাদেশে সেনাবাহিনীর একটি অংশকে ব্যবহার করে হাসিনা সরকারকে উৎখাতের চেষ্টায় আছে বলে তাদের কাছে তথ্য আছে।

    দিল্লির কয়েকজন শীর্ষ গোয়েন্দা কর্মকর্তা নাম প্রকাশ না করার শর্তে বিডিনিউজ টোয়েন্টিফোর ডটকমকে বলেছেন, পশ্চিমা ওই গোয়েন্দা সংস্থাটি বাংলাদেশ সেনাবাহিনীর উচ্চ পর্যায়ে কিছু কর্মকর্তাকে এজন্য ‘তৈরি’ করছে এবং হাসিনাকে উৎখাতের পর একটি ‘জাতীয় ঐকমত্যের’ সরকার গঠনের পরিকল্পনাও তাদের রয়েছে।

    আর এর পেছনে মূল ভূমিকা রাখছেন সেই পশ্চিমা দেশটির প্রতিরক্ষা মন্ত্রণালয়ের একজন জ্যেষ্ঠ গোয়েন্দা কর্মকর্তা, যিনি কূটনীতিক পরিচয়ে ঢাকায় দায়িত্ব পালন করছেন।

    আর ‘ঐকমত্যের’ যে সরকারের পরিকল্পনা তারা করেছে, তাতে আওয়ামী লীগের বিদ্রোহী কয়েকজন নেতার পাশাপাশি বিএনপি, জামায়াত ও জাতীয় পার্টির কয়েকজনকে জড়ো করার কথা ভাবা হচ্ছে বলে ভারতীয় গোয়েন্দাদের তথ্য।

    এ ধরনের পরিকল্পনার বিরোধিতা করায় এরইমধ্যে বাংলাদেশ সেনাবাহিনীর কিছু কর্মকর্তাকে অগুরুত্বপূর্ণ পদে সরিয়ে দেয়া হয়েছে। আর সামরিক বাহিনী নিয়ন্ত্রণ নেয়ার পর তথাকথিত সেই ‘ঐকমত্যের সরকার’ গঠনে যাতে কোনো সশস্ত্র বাধা না আসে সেজন্য র‌্যাব ও বিজিবিকে নিস্ক্রিয় রাখারও পরিকল্পনা তাদের রয়েছে বলে ভারতীয় গোয়েন্দাদের দাবি।
    ভারতীয় গোয়েন্দা সংস্থাগুলোর পাওয়া এসব তথ্য প্রধানমন্ত্রী নরেন্দ্র মোদীকেও অবহিত করা হয়েছে। সম্প্রতি পররাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রী এ এইচ মাহমুদ আলীর দিল্লি সফরে তার সঙ্গে থাকা জ্যেষ্ঠ কয়েকজন বাংলাদেশি কর্মকর্তাকেও এসব গোয়েন্দা তথ্য সরবরাহ করা হয়েছে।

    ভারতের প্রধানমন্ত্রী কার্যালয়ের একজন উচ্চ পর্যায়ের কর্মকর্তা বলেন, “শেখ হাসিনার সঙ্গে বৈঠকে এসব বিষয়ে বলবেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী মোদী। সারদা গ্রুপের (জঙ্গি অর্থায়ন) বিষয়ে কঠোর পদক্ষেপের আশ্বাস দেয়ার পাশাপাশি তিনি এটা স্পষ্ট করবেন যে বাংলাদেশে সরকার উৎখাতের ষড়যন্ত্রে ভারতে যারাই জড়িত থাক না কেন ভারত সরকার তাদের বিরুদ্ধে কঠোর হবে।

    “বাংলাদেশে সন্ত্রাসে অর্থ যোগানোর অভিযোগে সারদা গ্রুপের বিরুদ্ধে ভারতের কেন্দ্রীয় গোয়েন্দা ব্যুরোর (সিবিআই) যে তদন্ত চলছে তাতে বাংলাদেশের দিক থেকেও সহযোগিতা চাইবেন মোদী।”

    ভারতীয় গণমাধ্যমের খবর অনুযায়ী, বাংলাদেশে রাজনৈতিক পরিস্থিতি অস্থিতিশীল করতে ২০১২-১৩ সালে জামায়াতে ইসলামী ও তাদের বিভিন্ন অঙ্গ সংগঠনের পেছনে বিপুল পরিমাণ টাকা ঢালা হয়, যার যোগান আসে ভারতের সারদা গ্রুপ থেকে। পশ্চিমা সেই গোয়েন্দা সংস্থার পরিকল্পনার অংশ হিসাবেই এটা করা হয় বলে ভারত সরকার মনে করে।

    ভারতের একজন গোয়েন্দা কর্মকর্তা বলেন, “ওই গোয়েন্দা সংস্থাটি প্রথমে ভারতের পশ্চিমবঙ্গ থেকে বাম সরকারকে সরাতে কাজ করে। এখন তারা হাসিনাকে সরাতে চায়। তারা বঙ্গোপসাগরে একটি ঘাঁটি করতে চায়। কিন্তু শেখ হাসিনা বাংলাদেশের সরকারে থাকলে তা সম্ভব না। আর ভারতে বামরা সরকারকে প্রভাবিত করার মতো পর্যায়ে থাকলেও তা সম্ভব হবে না।”

    এ ধরনের ‘ষড়যন্ত্র রুখে দিতে’ ভারত সব সময় প্রতিবেশীদের পাশে থাকবে বলেও হাসিনাকে ‘আশ্বস্ত করবেন’ মোদী।

  24. মাসুদ করিম - ১৮ নভেম্বর ২০১৪ (১:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    ২০১২ সালের প্রতিবেদনের ভিত্তিতে গতবছর প্রকাশিত ‘বৈশ্বিক সন্ত্রাসবাদ সূচক ২০১৩’- এ সন্ত্রাস ও সহিংস ঘটনার বিচারে বাংলাদেশের অবস্থান ছিল ১৬২টি দেশের মধ্যে ৫৭ নম্বরে।

    ১৯৭১ সালে বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতার বিরোধিতাকারী দল জামায়াতে ইসলামীর শীর্ষ নেতাদের যুদ্ধাপরাধের বিচার এবং দশম জাতীয় সংসদ নির্বাচন সামনে রেখে ২০১৩ সালের প্রায় পুরোটা সময় ব্যাপক রাজনৈতিক সহিংসতা ও হানাহানি চলে।

    জামায়াতকর্মীরা একদিকে দেশজুড়ে নাশকতা চালায় এবং অন্যদিকে নির্বাচন ঠেকাতে জামায়াত-বিএনপি জোটের হরতাল অবরোধে সহিংসতায় বহু মানুষ হতাহত হয়।

    ইনস্টিটিউট ফর ইকোনমিকস অ্যান্ড পিস মনে করছে, বাংলাদেশে বিচারবহির্ভূত হত্যা-নিপীড়নের পাশাপাশি নারীর রাজনৈতিক ক্ষমতায়ন, দলগত সমঝোতা ও রাজনৈতিক স্থিতিশীলতার অভাব রয়েছে। এ কারণেই ১৩ দেশের ঝুঁকির তালিকায় বাংলাদেশকে রেখেছে সংস্থাটি।

  25. মাসুদ করিম - ১৭ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৪ (১১:০৪ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Molotov cocktail ‘recipe’ tops 2014 list of treats Googled in Ukraine

    The most Googled recipe in Ukraine this year was an instruction on how to make a Molotov cocktail. In Ukraine’s case it was a recipe for disaster, as petrol bombs became a symbol of ultra-nationalistic defiance to govt that resulted in the February coup.

    According to Google’s end-of-year statistics for the “recipe” search category, Molotov cocktail topped the list, ranking as the number one uneatable treat alongside eatable goodies such as Easter bread, pizza, cake and glaze.

    Googling “Molotov cocktail” brings the Ukrainian internet user to a Wikipedia site, detailing the history of the self-made petrol bomb. But just a few search results down the list the query unveils the simple composition of the lethal weapon.

    Equipped with handmade petrol bombs made from a lethal mixture of fuel in glass bottles, rioters attacked police officers in Kiev during anti-government protests that started in November last year.

    With pro-democracy activists firing Molotov cocktails from home-made slingshots at security forces, the symbol of a burning flame weapon, for many Ukrainians became synonymous with right-wing neo-Nazi forces that were instrumental in orchestrating a coup against then Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich in February.

    Former President Yanukovich for his part became the most searched for person on Ukrainian web. Current Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko came in third, immediately after a popular singer, Jeanna Friske. Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, came in forth.

  26. মাসুদ করিম - ১৭ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৪ (৩:৪৪ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Crafting a win-win-win for Russia, Ukraine and the West

    Recent reports of more troop and equipment movements into the separatist-held regions of Ukraine suggest that Russia is once again seeking to stir up trouble. The natural Western reaction has been to respond with firmness. Sanctions may be tightened; defensive weaponry may be provided to Ukraine’s underequipped and overmatched military. Given such bullying Russian tactics, this reaction is not only natural but perhaps inevitable.

    Yet the Western policy response is half-wrong, and the incorrect part of it risks making 2015 just as bad a year for Ukrainian security and East-West relations as was 2014. Western policymakers do not deserve blame for the unconscionable tactics that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin has employed in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But their actions risk reinforcing an action-reaction dynamic that will quite probably make the No. 1 victim of this crisis to date — the people of Ukraine — worse off than before.

    This is not a moral question. It is entirely justifiable to provide weapons to a sovereign nation seeing its territory assaulted by a much more powerful neighbor. But regardless of right and wrong, the result of providing weapons will not be a robust self-defense capability for Ukraine. The Ukrainian military faces Russian armed forces more than five times as large and perhaps 10 to 20 times as powerful. Indeed, should such arms encourage Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to directly challenge Russian forces on his territory, the most likely outcome is escalation of the military crisis and a dramatic increase in death and destruction in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda would continue to vilify the West and sow the seeds of future crises elsewhere in Russia’s neighborhood.

    Before taking such actions, and before adding permanent NATO deployments to the Baltic states — another understandable, but potentially counterproductive, reaction to the crisis — NATO leaders should attempt to work with Moscow to create a new European security order acceptable to both sides. Many Western voices will view any such effort as rewarding Russia and Putin for their miserable behavior of the past year. However, this approach would be designed not as a reward but to protect Ukraine’s security — and our own.

    An Armoured Presonnel Carrier of the Ukrainian forces rolls in the village of Pisky, close to the airport of eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on December 3, 2014. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP/Getty Images)
    By Michael O’Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro December 7

    The writers are fellows in the foreign policy program of the Brookings Institution.

    Recent reports of more troop and equipment movements into the separatist-held regions of Ukraine suggest that Russia is once again seeking to stir up trouble. The natural Western reaction has been to respond with firmness. Sanctions may be tightened; defensive weaponry may be provided to Ukraine’s underequipped and overmatched military. Given such bullying Russian tactics, this reaction is not only natural but perhaps inevitable.

    Yet the Western policy response is half-wrong, and the incorrect part of it risks making 2015 just as bad a year for Ukrainian security and East-West relations as was 2014. Western policymakers do not deserve blame for the unconscionable tactics that Russian President Vladi­mir Putin has employed in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But their actions risk reinforcing an action-reaction dynamic that will quite probably make the No. 1 victim of this crisis to date — the people of Ukraine — worse off than before.

    This is not a moral question. It is entirely justifiable to provide weapons to a sovereign nation seeing its territory assaulted by a much more powerful neighbor. But regardless of right and wrong, the result of providing weapons will not be a robust self-defense capability for Ukraine. The Ukrainian military faces Russian armed forces more than five times as large and perhaps 10 to 20 times as powerful. Indeed, should such arms encourage Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to directly challenge Russian forces on his territory, the most likely outcome is escalation of the military crisis and a dramatic increase in death and destruction in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda would continue to vilify the West and sow the seeds of future crises elsewhere in Russia’s neighborhood.

    Before taking such actions, and before adding permanent NATO deployments to the Baltic states — another understandable, but potentially counterproductive, reaction to the crisis — NATO leaders should attempt to work with Moscow to create a new European security order acceptable to both sides. Many Western voices will view any such effort as rewarding Russia and Putin for their miserable behavior of the past year. However, this approach would be designed not as a reward but to protect Ukraine’s security — and our own.

    If the Russian people were souring on Putin, there would be an argument for simply keeping the pressure on through sanctions while threatening more to come, should he escalate. But the Russian leader enjoys 85 percent popularity at home, where many see his actions as reasonable retribution against a supposedly triumphalist NATO that has expanded right up to Russia’s borders since the Cold War, a narrative reinforced by a tightly controlled Russian media. At this point, Putin is a moderate on the Russian political spectrum.

    In keeping with some of the ideas put forth by former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, and building as well on suggestions from former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski — two great U.S. strategists not thought of as appeasers or wishful thinkers — the deal that we should propose to Russia would include elements like these:

    ●Russia can make its historically based claim on Crimea but would have to accept a binding referendum under outside monitoring that would determine the region’s future, with independence as one option.

    ●Russia would agree to verifiably remove its military “volunteers” from eastern Ukraine.

    ●Russia would permanently commit, once the Crimea matter was settled, to uphold Ukraine’s territorial security, as promised under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum covering the denuclearization of Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

    ●Ukraine and the United States would agree that Ukraine would not be a candidate for NATO membership, now or in the future.

    ●A new pan-European security structure, building perhaps on the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe , would be established with an eye toward upholding the territorial integrity of European states writ large. This association should give Moscow some sense of equal partnership and could include NATO members and former Soviet states.

    ●NATO would be unapologetically retained with its current membership. But because of the new security arrangement, it could eschew further enlargement and increasingly play only a supporting role in European security, refocusing on missions outside of Europe.

    ●The European Union would agree to work with Russia to make any possible future Ukrainian relationship with the union, including membership, compatible with Ukraine’s participation in Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union project.

    ●Sanctions on Russia would be gradually — and, in the end, completely — lifted as the elements of this agenda came into effect.

    To be sure, Putin could claim that this agreement accomplished his core goals and portray it as a great victory. Perhaps his popularity would then rise to 88 percent or 90 percent — for a while. Then, as time went on, this accomplishment would be internalized, and Russian voters would likely hold Putin accountable for what he should have been doing all along: improving their way of life through good economic and political leadership.

    Long-term Russian weakness means that the West can afford to compromise now. Russia will not have the power to dominate its neighbors for very long, no matter what the West does. Yet it could have the power and the will to foment trouble for many years absent a durable deal of the type proposed above.

    Moreover, as much as it may grate now, pursuing a win-win-win outcome for Russia, Ukraine and the West is far smarter than zero-sum thinking. There is too much threat to Central Europe, and too large an agenda crying out for Russian-Western cooperation — from Iran to the broader Middle East to Afghanistan to North Korea — for U.S. security to benefit from any intensification or prolongation of the crisis of 2014. We did not start this conflict, but we can take steps that dramatically improve the chances of ending it.

  27. মাসুদ করিম - ৩০ ডিসেম্বর ২০১৪ (১০:৪৮ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  28. মাসুদ করিম - ৩ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (১২:১৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

  29. মাসুদ করিম - ৮ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (১:০৩ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Post by Masud Karim.

  30. মাসুদ করিম - ১২ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (৮:৩৭ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    ‘Normandy 4’ Ukraine peace talks in Minsk LIVE UPDATES

    The leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine are meeting in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to discuss a last-ditch attempt to negotiate a political solution to the bloody Ukrainian civil war.

    Thursday, February 12
    01:57 GMT:

    The Minsk talks are about to enter their tenth hour, with the delegations of Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine still trying to reach a final compromise and come up with a joint resolution. Journalists have been covering the event for almost 12 hours now.

  31. মাসুদ করিম - ১২ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (৯:৫২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  32. মাসুদ করিম - ১২ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (৩:৩৭ অপরাহ্ণ)


  33. মাসুদ করিম - ১৩ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (১১:৫২ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    West washes its hands

    Sure, they had to spend all night with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s palace on Feb. 11-12. That could not have been pleasant for anybody, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.

    But now they can walk way, consciences clear, and leave a weakened and dismembered Ukraine to fend for itself militarily against a much stronger foe that has stolen the Crimean peninsula, which was 5 percent of the land and people, and that continues to wage war against the Donbas in eastern Ukraine, once home to another 15 percent of Ukraine’s 45 million people.

    It took the feckless Hollande only a few hours to raise the prospect of delivering to Russia the long-delayed order of two $1.2 billion Mistral warships. This deal, quite literally, could blow up in France’s face if those in the West continue to deny the reality that Russia remains the greatest threat to European security today. So France refuses to arm Ukraine, a victim of the Kremlin’s international lawlessness, but is willing to arm the aggressor? Money trumps principles again.

    It wasn’t all bad news for Ukraine, however. At the very same time that the problematic Minsk II peace agreement was announced on Feb. 12, to replace the long-ignored Minsk I peace agreement in September, Ukraine finally got the green light from the International Monetary Fund for a $17.5 billion, four-year loan. The trouble is, the credit comes up $22.5 billion short of Ukraine’s debt obligations through 2019.

    As Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer tweeted: “Ukraine gets money, Russia gets land” and he noted the absurdity of Putin agreeing to the withdrawal from Ukraine of fighters and weapons that he says aren’t there in the first place.

    Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko was pressured into peace at all costs by the fragmented European Union that he is so eager to join. He and Ukraine now face a recurring nightmare: the light-fingered neighbor next door has the key to the house and has annexed the nation’s sea-facing garden.

    Minsk II is tantamount to surrender for Ukraine. The country’s border to Russia is to remain wide open until 2016 and its forces are to retreat further away from the September demarcation line.

    Not only that, but the insurgents who have tortured Ukrainian soldiers and terrorized civilians are to be granted amnesty. They will run their own mini-Russian kleptocracy, bankrolled by Kyiv, who in turn are bankrolled by the IMF. Crimea isn’t even mentioned in the peace deal, because everyone has already accepted that land grab.

    It is fittingly tragic that Ukraine’s interests in the run-up to the talks were represented in the trilateral contact group by ex-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and his former chief of staff, Victor Medvedchuk, one of Putin’s best pals. With friends like this, Ukraine doesn’t need enemies.

    If the fighting ceases, the surrender might arguably be worth it. The cease-fire is supposed to come into force at midnight on Feb. 15, but until then both sides are free to battle it out for the strategic railway city of Debaltseve, where some 8,000 dug-in Ukrainian troops are now encircled by hostile forces, including military vehicles only in service with Russian armed forces. Putin has urged those troops to surrender and leave. It’s doubtful they will. Just like Donetsk airport, Debaltseve is likely to remain a tinderbox which could re-ignite the war at any time.

    Meanwhile, Ukraine says another 50 Russian tanks and 40 rocket launchers entered its territory on Feb. 11 – not generally considered to be the act of a party interested in peace.

    While peace is the noble goal, surely there are only so many times that Europe is willing to walk into the same brick wall before it realizes it needs to find another way. This cease-fire will not last, so the EU had better draw up and get ready to impose much heavier sanctions on Russia. Ukraine needs to take advantage of any pause in fighting to rebuild its defenses. Many Ukrainians don’t realize it now, but they are going to have to militarize the same way that other nations do when the neighbor is the enemy.

    After Minsk, Ukraine can say it tried and Europe can take a breather before enduring another fractious debate over a new round of sanctions for Russia. But debate they must, because this cease-fire will not last.

    Putin and Russia’s kleptocratic, brainwashing elite live in a very different world from the diplomats of Western Europe. Russia’s policy is to grab what it can until it is stopped by someone bigger and more powerful. It could be the United States and its guns that stop Putin’s rampage, but not likely under U.S. President Barack Obama, whose policies on Ukraine disappoint even members of his own Democratic Party. But arms to Ukraine doesn’t have to be the solution — or the only one. Let it be European democratic principles and financial sacrifice that stops Putin.

    The EU was built to prevent war in Europe. It should not forget that enriching its citizens comes a distant second to this lofty principle. When this cease-fire comes crashing down, as it will, Europe should be ready. Russia’s war has, after all, been going on for one year. And it needs to tighten the economic vice on Russia if it wants to avoid an even bloodier solution.

  34. মাসুদ করিম - ১৫ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (২:২৫ অপরাহ্ণ)

  35. মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (৮:৪৬ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Ukrainian president calls for international peacekeeping mission

    Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Wednesday for an international peacekeeping mission in his nation’s war-torn east, a stark admission that his nation can no longer fend off pro-Russian rebels after a major battlefield defeat.

    Any international force on the ground would harden the battle lines after 10 months of fighting, forcing Ukraine to give up for now its attempts to reunify the nation. But it would also halt Russian-backed rebels from pushing onward toward Kiev.

    The suggestion came hours after thousands of Ukrainian troops fled the encircled railway hub of Debaltseve, where fighting only intensified after a cease-fire ostensibly took effect Sunday. Nearly a year after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, the fresh loss threatened tough political consequences for Ukraine’s pro-Western president amid questions of how the troops became surrounded in recent weeks.

    Soldiers described a chaotic nighttime retreat over eastern Ukraine’s frozen steppe, with shells raining down on them from two sides.

    The prospects for a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine were not immediately clear. Any U.N. Security Council mandate would be subject to a possible Russian veto. Poroshenko said he hoped for a European Union police mission, although what such a plan would entail on the ground remained unclear. Any E.U.-only plan appeared likely to be rejected by Russia, which has said that it views NATO’s encroachment on its borders as a security threat.

    “I invite you to discuss an invitation to a U.N. peacekeeping mission,” Poroshenko told a late-night meeting of his top security advisers, according to Ukrainian news outlets.

    The violence may increase pressure on President Obama to supply Ukraine’s military with weapons, a decision he said would be made only after the peace effort. E.U. leaders, meanwhile, said they would consider more economic sanctions against Russia.

    Elsewhere in Ukraine’s war-torn east, violence was abating as rebels announced that they had begun pulling back heavy weaponry in accordance with the cease-fire agreement. But the advance on Debaltseve suggested that the Russian-backed rebels had the strength to push forward when they wished.

    Poroshenko has staked his office on reuniting Ukraine and quelling Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Balkan wars in the 1990s.

    Earlier in the day he called the retreat a “planned and organized withdrawal of certain units from Debaltseve.”

    The defeat was sure to stir a political cauldron over the prosecution of the war in Kiev, where charges of incompetence and even betrayal were lobbed at Ukraine’s military brass in the aftermath. The thousands of Ukrainian troops who were in and around Debaltseve represented a significant portion of the nation’s battle-ready soldiers.

    Ukraine’s flatlining economy is fueling even more anger toward Ukraine’s leaders. Natural gas prices are set to nearly triple under the terms of a bailout plan from the International Monetary Fund, sure to be politically radioactive. Ukraine’s currency fell to record lows on Wednesday.

    One of Poroshenko’s coalition allies in parliament called for criminal charges to be lodged against top military leaders.

    “There were enough forces and equipment. The problem is coordination and command,” Semen Semenchenko, a lawmaker who is also a volunteer militia commander, wrote on Facebook. “The head of the General Staff should be brought to liability. Period.”

    Western officials said Wednesday that the fighting called into question the viability of the peace deal, reached in Minsk, Belarus, last week between Russian President Vladimir Putin and European leaders.

    The situation in Debaltseve “is a massive violation of the cease-fire,” a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffen Seibert, said in Berlin. “It is a heavy strain on . . . the hope for peace in eastern Ukraine in general.” He said Germany was poised to push for further sanctions against Russia if fighting escalates.

    NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also said he was “deeply concerned” about the fighting.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the fighting was inevitable after Poroshenko’s insistence at last week’s peace negotiations that the troops were not surrounded. But he said it must stop.

    Last week’s peace deal left a 60-hour window before the cease-fire was set to go into effect. That stipulation almost certainly led to an increase in fighting, as both sides sought to maximize their positions before the truce. No official explanation was given for the delay, although Ukrainian and European officials said at the time they were ready to have an immediate cease-fire. The window for continued fighting has led to speculation that rebels may have been seeking to seize Debaltseve before the truce took effect.

    Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the pullout, according to Poroshenko, although the real number seemed likely to be significantly higher, based on Ukrainian soldiers’ accounts of sustaining heavy fire during the late-night retreat. Many said they had only 10 minutes’ notice to grab what they could carry and flee, piling onto tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks as they sped toward the staging city of Artemivsk.

    It was not immediately clear how many troops escaped and how many remained in and around the town. Top military officials said that 85 percent of the troops had escaped as of Wednesday evening. Others may still be in hiding or were killed or captured, they said. Some soldiers said that many corpses were left behind.

    Front-line troops questioned on Wednesday why it took so long for the retreat to be ordered, saying that their situation had long ago become hopeless.

    “It’s not about Debaltseve as a city; it’s about Putin showing he can do what he wants,” said Lt. Viktor Kovalenko, the acting deputy commander of the battalion that had been charged with protecting railroads into Debaltseve. He said several people in his convoy were killed during the retreat, which began at 3 a.m. Wednesday, and that at least 50 troops were captured as they tried to flee.

    Kovalenko said supplies had run so low that one Ukrainian position was captured earlier this week simply because it ran out of ammunition.

    Another soldier described a harrowing early morning escape, speeding over pitch-black fields that had been hardened by frost.

    “We came under shelling, and we prayed to God to let us get out. There are a lot of wounded and killed people,” said Ihor Sevastyan, 47, who drove out of Debaltseve Wednesday in a green radio truck. The vehicle was riddled with large bullet holes, and one of the tires had been shot out. They kept pushing forward using the truck’s rim.

    Other than in Debaltseve, both sides said Wednesday that they were holding to the agreement. Rebels said they had begun to pull back heavy weaponry from the front lines, as stipulated by the cease-fire deal, and relatively little fighting was reported elsewhere in the region.

  36. মাসুদ করিম - ১৯ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (২:৩৯ অপরাহ্ণ)

  37. মাসুদ করিম - ২০ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০১৫ (১:৪৩ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

  38. মাসুদ করিম - ৮ জুলাই ২০১৫ (২:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    খালেদার বিচারে ট্রাইব্যুনাল হবে: প্রধানমন্ত্রী

    বিএনপি জোটের আন্দোলনের সময় পেট্রোলবোমা হামলার ‘হুকুমদাতা’ হিসেবে খালেদা জিয়া ও তার সহযোগীদের বিচারে ট্রাইব্যুনাল গঠনের পরিকল্পনার কথা সংসদকে জানিয়েছেন প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা।

    তিনি বলেছেন, “পেট্রোল বোমা হামলার নির্দেশকারী খালেদা জিয়া ও তার সহযোগীসহ সকল অপরাধীদের নামে দায়েরকৃত মামলাগুলো বিচার করার জন্য সন্ত্রাস বিরোধী আইন-২০০৯ এর ২৭ ধারা অনুযায়ী সন্ত্রাস বিরোধী বিশেষ ট্রাইব্যুনাল গঠনের পরিকল্পনা সরকারের রয়েছে। ভবিষ্যতে উক্ত আইনের ২৭ ধারা অনুযায়ী ট্রাইব্যুনাল গঠনের পরিকল্পনা সরকারের রয়েছে।”

    বুধবার জাতীয় সংসদের প্রশ্নোত্তর পর্বে সংরক্ষিত মহিলা আসনের সদস্য সেলিনা বেগমের এক প্রশ্নে সংসদ নেতা এ কথা বলেন। অধিবেশন শুরুর পর স্পিকার শিরীন শারমিন চৌধুরী প্রশ্নোত্তর টেবিলে উত্থাপন করেন।

    প্রধানমন্ত্রী বলেন, “উক্ত ট্রাইব্যুনাল গঠিত না হওয়া পর্যন্ত এ আইনের অধীন অপরাধীদের দ্রুত বিচার সম্পন্ন করার জন্য দায়রা জজ বা দায়রা জজ কর্তৃক অতিরিক্ত দায়রা জজের নিকট স্থানান্তরিত হবার ক্ষেত্রে, অতিরিক্ত দায়রা জজকে বিচারকার্য সম্পন্ন করার ক্ষমতা প্রদান করা হয়েছে।”

    শেখ হাসিনা সংসদকে জানান, বিএনপি-জামায়াত জোটের নেত্রী খালেদা জিয়ার ‘হুকুমে’ চলতি বছরের ৫ জানুয়ারি থেকে হরতাল-অবরোধে ‘পেট্রোল বোমা ও সন্ত্রাসী কার্যক্রমের মাধ্যমে’ মোট ১৩৪ জনকে হত্যা করা হয়।

    “বিএনপি জামায়াত জোটের ইস্যুবিহীন কথিত আন্দোলনে সন্ত্রাসী কার্যক্রমের ফলে ১ হাজার ৩৯৫টি যানবাহন, ১৩ দফায় ট্রেনে এবং ৬ দফা লঞ্চে নাশকতা চালানো হয়।”

  39. মাসুদ করিম - ২৯ নভেম্বর ২০১৫ (১০:০৫ পূর্বাহ্ণ)

    Looking West from Russia: The Eurasianist Folly

    KARL MARX once described a situation where the weapon of criticism gives way to criticism by weapon. It’s a remark that captures the latest round of tensions between the West and Russia quite well. Are we witnessing a collision between two different systems of values—or one between two different interpretations of a common system of values?

    If we are about to launch yet another “crusade” and our outlooks are fundamentally different, then the conflict admits of no solution other than that there can be just a more or less prolonged “peaceful coexistence” as a prelude to an eventual head-on collision. If Carthage is innately and essentially vicious, it must be destroyed. The question is who is Carthage and who is Rome. And that question is really not very difficult to answer: Rome survives. All the rest is a matter of tactics and methods. The possibility for maneuver and resourcefulness is locked within this narrow alley.

    That is precisely what both Moscow’s and Washington’s approaches looked like throughout a greater part of the classical Cold War. The zero-sum game was played best in the limelight of ideological irreconcilability at the most acute moments of political confrontation (in Berlin in 1953, Hungary in 1956, Cuba in 1962, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1979–1989). Meanwhile, as the Soviet model continued to corrode, certain ideas pushed their way to the surface. First, they gained a niche for themselves within the domain of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology, then pushed the latter away and replaced it with values and concepts that were very unusual for that time.

    A more or less similar process, naturally with certain allowances for the pluralistic nature of the Euro-Atlantic ideological universe, proceeded in the camp of the antagonists of the Soviet-Communist bloc. Very soon these processes brought into being the term “convergence,” understood first and foremost as a mutual penetration and interweaving of values and principles underlying the socio-political systems of capitalism and socialism (as interpreted in the Soviet Union).

    Inside one bloc, the free market economy began to be mentioned ever more frequently as the sole way of overcoming chronic economic problems (by no means canceling socialism but, on the contrary, making it stronger). In China and Vietnam, this ideological ploy, masking a fast-tracked transition to a fundamentally new mode of life, is still deployed by the authorities. In the meantime, the West suddenly remembered that the system of communist ideological formulas was a direct descendant of the great Western ideas that took shape in the era of the Renaissance. Much later, those ideas took root in Eastern Europe and Asia, where local radical fanatics adjusted the life’s work of two bearded German thinkers to the practical needs of attaining, at last, the ultimate and resolute truth—first in their own haven, and then the world over.

    The advent of perestroika, or “new political thinking,” was a direct outcome of convergence. Moreover, it was a foreign-policy offshoot of that concept. Incidentally, all that graphically manifested itself in the heritage left to us by our outstanding contemporary, Andrei Sakharov. Many believe that the father of the “new political thinking” was Mikhail Gorbachev. Indeed, that phrase was one of the former Soviet president’s hobbyhorses. But the roots of that outlook can be traced back to the 1970s, when a group of ambitious and talented people at the administrative staffs of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, at the Foreign Ministry and at the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ think tanks succeeded in their efforts to push through to the high-ranking officials the idea of a fundamentally new approach to European identity and security. That idea took the shape of the Helsinki Process. In the most general terms, Helsinki was a certain common understanding of the priorities and values of a future long-term pan-European sociopolitical development.

    For nearly twenty years, these common values existed in some sort of clandestine form. At the turn of the 1990s, they were adopted officially by the heads of state and enshrined in the Paris Charter, which proclaimed a strategic goal of building a united Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok. But alongside this process, a movement in other conceptual directions started gaining momentum. It would be appropriate to mention the most significant of them—the concept of the split of Europe and the concept of Europe’s dissolution.

    A very large party of the Bourbon persuasion—“They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing,” per Talleyrand’s alleged quip—was campaigning for a split of Europe. By tradition, Europe had always had a strong Russophobic line of thought. The followers of this trend professed this emotional and intellectual negativism towards Russia mostly because Russia was a strong and vast country and for that sole reason immanently dangerous. In that sense, tsarist autarchy and Communist totalitarianism did not make much difference. Only such factors as strength and geopolitics mattered. Russia began to be liked only when, after December 1991, its traditional, historical image collapsed and the above-mentioned factors diminished into insignificance. It was in that period that a majority of the European public at large (including the Russophobic wing) eagerly recognized Russia’s right to share common values with Europe—even though President Boris Yeltsin’s use of “common values” in practice in the autumn of 1993 bred some very strong doubts among rather large groups of quite democratically-minded Russian society.

    Yet most significant was the belief that the more smaller “Russias” that exist, the more easily they are recognized as being “democratic.” This reminds me of a remark made by François Mauriac: “I love Germany so much that I am glad there are two of them.” In our case, the feeling of happiness would be directly proportional to the number of newly emerged states.

    As Russia started showing signs of revival, debates over common values grew ever more vigorous. Those debates were tightly linked to day-to-day political realities and priorities, which became especially evident during the Yugoslav crisis.

    In the meantime, the real discussion of pan-European values has proceeded and is still going on, not along the border between Russia and the rest of Europe but inside each individual country of Greater Europe. For instance, there is a discussion of the cultural and civilizational sources of Europeanism—it is worth recalling the fate of the European Constitution, which was dismissed because it was impossible to achieve consensus on inclusion of a provision about the leading role of Christianity in the formation of European identity.

    Meanwhile, the U.S. fears that a powerful and long-standing opponent may emerge in Europe not just to U.S. geopolitical leadership, but also to a far more important cultural and civilizational one. Many in the United States are perfectly aware that whatever material wealth may be amassed in North America—and however superior U.S. science and education may be—a united Europe has an immeasurably greater quality impact on people’s minds and hearts by virtue of its very special historical and cultural heritage. That heritage can offer an effective, worthy competition to U.S. “soft power” better than anything else.

    Thus the attempts to “dissolve” Europe in a vague and uncertain Euro-Atlantic space, stretching everywhere and nowhere, but invariably governed from Washington. This policy has met with active support from the “New Europe” group of countries between new, united Germany and new, segmented Russia. Those who may find this assumption of mine questionable should recall the rifts between “old” and “new” Europe that have taken place until recently.

    Clearly, the wish to keep the EU core under control is the United States’ underlying motive. As for “New Europe,” it remains under a pall of historical fear over Russia’s “imperial genes.” True, efforts to heal those fears were not exactly the strongest side of Russia’s foreign and cultural policy lately. Subconscious fears are to be cured and not cultivated. This is the only correct way to address the strategic tasks facing Russia in the twenty-first century, a time when the factor of territory does not really matter. It is far inferior to such a factor as time gained or time lost.

    The point at issue is a debate among Europeans inside Russia and outside of it about the degree of common and distinguishing features in the concept of Europeanism. Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: “The more nationalist we are, the greater Europeans (‘universal humans’) we will become.” Russia’s Slavophiles, those wonderful disciples and followers of German and, consequently, European romanticism, dedicated themselves mostly to Russian folklore, culture, customs and historical skills of self-government. (Those skills, incidentally, were very similar in type and moment of emergence to many European socioadministrative entities, in particular, Eastern European ones.) The Slavophiles were essentially quite European, as they saw the Russian sociocultural phenomenon as a very bright and distinctive part of the pan-European trend.

    MANY RUSSIAN Westernizers, however, interpreted Russia’s Europeanism in a far more mechanical and one-dimensional fashion. Very important for them were superficial similarities, while dissimilarities were often interpreted as negative and even disgraceful traits of backwardness and savageness. In some respects, the Westernizers were quite fair (for instance, as regards serfdom); in others, very wrong. But the problem is that even serfdom in Russia looked pretty much like European phenomena observed in earlier historical periods. In the meantime, many European thinkers (and Russians too) were trying to put up an intellectual Great Wall between Russia and Europe, proposing no end of strongly biased ideological concepts and going to great lengths to prop up that wall with historical arguments they had selected arbitrarily or torn from historical context.

    Among such helpful concepts was Karl Marx’s theory of “the Asiatic mode of production,” which some of his followers would transplant to Russia. According to that theory Russia was destined to always remain a despotic, clique-ruled Asiatic society, with its very special social system based on state ownership of natural resources. This concept helped achieve the desired ideological aim: Russia, contrary to all basic historical and social parameters, was at bottom not European. A strong barrier was created that provided the fundamental, almost metaphysical separation of eternally reactionary and static Russia from eternally dynamic and progressive Europe. That theory opened up vast opportunities for the Western European Russophobic trend, and many politicians on the left and the right are still using it today. Heraclitus said: “The counterthrust brings together, and from tones at variance comes perfect harmony.” In this particular case, harmony occurred between the advocates of the “Asiatic mode of production” and the seemingly conflicting concept of Eurasianism.

    CONCEIVED AS anti-Marxist, Eurasianism emerged mostly on Russian soil and was expected to explain the disaster that happened in 1917. It proceeded from the rejection of Russia’s Europeanism on ostensibly very different grounds. To a large extent this outlandish construct still fills, completely or partially, the vacuum that has developed in the proto-Marxist-Leninist minds of contemporary Russia’s half-educated establishment with the lifting of the haze of historical materialism.

    The Eurasianists accepted many of the ideas of their predecessors, whose morphological understanding of Russian identity relied on the works of their predecessors, starting from Vladimir Odoyevsky, the Slavophiles and, later, Nikolai Danilevsky and Konstantin Leontiev, who caused a noticeable impact on the minds and hearts of Russia’s intellectual elite in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will not be an exaggeration to say that Vladimir Odoyevsky’s historical constructs were welcomed and developed by his contemporary Alexander Herzen. Herzen maintained that the West (to be more precise, Europe) had walked a long and glorious way, but had entered (already then!) the organic phase of disgraceful senility. Precisely for that reason, it invariably stumbles whenever it comes to doing the last historical job—translating the socialist dream into reality. Capable of this is only a new generation, the young and energetic type possessing a unique territory—the Slavdom in general and Russia in particular. Russia without Europe and, to a certain extent, against Europe.

    On the whole, the Eurasianists are persistent in their efforts to collect and emphasize the elements of Russian distinctiveness and denial of historical similarities at the European and world levels. They meticulously collected the facts of Russia’s unique geographic features and of the ethnic composition of its population, stressing its kinship with the indigenous people inhabiting the Asian steppe, and keeping in sight even the aspects of race. Remarkably, priority in their studies is attached not so much to the people, as to the territory. It is this basic principle that some “place-development” concept is derived from as an absolute value. Nonlocal features are not utterly ignored, but they are always made subordinate to the local center of attraction and invariably cloaked in local garb. The reverse action of magnetism is practically ignored. The local flavor is transferred to the religious domain. Religion’s merger with territory results in the opposition of Orthodoxy to other branches of Christianity, and inside Orthodoxy itself the Eurasianists are particularly enthusiastic about proto-Orthodox religious phenomena, including various forms of paganism, which had ostensibly prepared the soil for Orthodoxy. The main antagonist of the “Russian religion” is seen not in paganism, and not even in Islam or Buddhism, but rather in Catholicism and other Christian confessions.

    While the Slavophiles never claimed that Europe was alien to Russia, the Eurasianists postulate precisely that. In Eurasianist writings, one can invariably taste disgust towards Europe and emotional attraction to Asia. Eurasianists invariably get emotional and enthusiastic whenever they mention kinship, including spiritual kinship, with Asia, and both Russian and Orthodox factors get drowned in this feeling. In Soviet reality, beneath the veil of internationalism, the Eurasianists saw (in the words of Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy, a founding Eurasianist) a “spontaneous, ethnic identity and non-European, semi-Asian face of Russia-Eurasia”; they discovered “not an invented ‘Slavic’ or ‘Slavo-Varangian’ Russia, but the real Russo-Turanian Russia-Eurasia, heir to the great legacy of Genghis Khan.” In that sense the Eurasian constructs are in stark contrast with the ideas of the so-called Russian World (of course, if the term “Russian” is not applied to the Turanian peoples of the steppe), let alone of “Slavic unity.”

    This transformation of the image of real Russia into that of the direct heir of the Genghis Khan’s empire is accompanied by the worship of the state, which has the “natural right” to infinite and limitless violence over an individual and any sociocultural and religious institutions. As Georges Florovsky wrote,

    the Russian fate turns again into the history of the state, not only Russian, but Eurasianist, and the very essence of Russian historical existence is confined to “domesticating place-development” and to formalizing its statehood on an ever wider basis.

    It is very clear that such official maximalism in combination with the rejection of European Russia and the exaggeration of its Turanian-Genghis-Khanian pseudoroots is an exact replica of propaganda products of late Stalinism. Only Stalin’s profile is missing. But profiles come and go, while the Eurasianist dreams remain. It is quite obvious that in the twenty-first century, in the age of growing interdependence, the doctrines described above are doomed. Attempts at implementing truly Genghis-Khanian plans for creating giant superstate structures, based on the territorial and ethnic “place-development” fantasies in the entire space of Eurasia, or a greater part of it, have been made more than once. They’ve all failed.

    Among those attempts was the Napoleonic project to create a France-led, united Europe (incorporating a considerable part of Eurasia); Hitler’s Third Reich project that ended with the defeat of Nazism and its theories, which in some significant respects were very much reminiscent of the Eurasianist ones; and the Stalinist project of “socialist Eurasia,” which ended with the relatively peaceful collapse of the empire. There are enough reasons to postulate that the chances of Genghis Khan’s remote descendants look no better than those of his near descendants. And if the specter of Eurasianism still haunts Europe and its environs, the odds of it taking material shape are close to nought.

    As for the possibility of creating a pan-European “center of power” over decades to come, I believe that speculations on that score are not utterly groundless. True, amid the Ukrainian crisis, when, according to Matthew (6:34), “today’s trouble is enough for today,” it is hard to foresee fundamental long-term trends of Europe’s future development. And yet, without forgetting the past and at the same time looking into the future, one cannot but recognize that the boldest and most successful steps in building Russia as a great and influential power were taken by Western-oriented rulers—Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I and Alexander II. As for major isolationist projects (Nicholas I and the Stalinist version of the Soviet system), they ended either in military failures or in decay. Resumed attempts at translating into reality the dreams of global greatness with no resources beyond willpower are strategically deficient.

    NO LESS faulty is the eupeptic hope that Russia may dissolve in featureless and one-dimensional globalism. Between the growing mutual dependence and the dissolution of big countries and cultures in that process, there lies at least a whole historical era. Only naive provincial neophytes and advocates of the utterly irrelevant “new political thinking” concept can ignore this.

    So what do we have left? Russia is not part of some world center other than Europe. Only together with Europe could Russia form a center that deserves to be called “the center of power.”

    Currently we are witnessing Europe’s attempts to shape its own long-term foreign policy proceeding from cooperation between “Old Europe” and the United States, while weakening and isolating Russia. This policy is strategically hopeless. None of Europe’s major actors, except for Britain, may like it. Such a configuration is a rudiment of the era where there were two large blocs plus the nonaligned movement, which is already a matter of history. The United States has existed all by itself all the way and it will continue this way; it finds NATO quite enough. And NATO has one voice, and the voice’s tone color is unmistakably American.

    In that connection of tremendous importance was the attempt by the German and French leaders to play their own active role in settling the current Ukrainian crisis. Their visit to Moscow and further contacts in the trilateral format may have good prospects, circumstances permitting. How good the prospects will be largely depends on Russia—on our sense of proportion and diplomatic flexibility.

    Russia’s skillful and competent assistance to the process of reaching an accommodation over Ukraine would create the chance to eventually turn into efforts toward a pan-European center of power on three legs: Paris, Berlin and Moscow. If the movement in this direction proceeds (though it will be a long, painful and twisted path), the problem of Ukraine’s admission to united Europe might be strongly adjusted, in terms of content and pace, to the formation of a future European “center of power” and, consequently, the creation of a united Europe from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

    Before long, we shall have to get back to the idea of a “Helsinki II” discussion over charting a new road map, showing the path towards a united Europe. Of course, this is still just a possibility, not an inevitability. But it is far more realistic than nostalgic, neoimperial dreams of Russian grandeur.

  40. মাসুদ করিম - ৪ এপ্রিল ২০১৬ (৫:৩৮ অপরাহ্ণ)

    Poroshenko moves his business offshore to evade taxes

    As Ukraine was suffering its worst battlefield defeat in Russia’s war, President Petro Poroshenko was leading a secret war of his own in the summer of 2014: The billionaire was busy starting an offshore company to evade paying taxes to the struggling country he rules.

    In August 2014, Poroshenko confidants started the registration process of an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands, according to documents and letters of Panamaniam law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. that were shared with journalists of Hromadske TV.

    The letters show that the aim was to move the assets of Poroshenko’s confectionary empire Roshen offshore, where it can be sold without paying any taxes to Ukraine’s government.

    Poroshenko promised to sell Roshen when he ran for president in spring of 2014. But almost two years after election, he still hasn’t sold the company.

    Several months after the election, Poroshenko said that Rothschild Group was handling the sale of Roshen.

    Finally, in January, Poroshenko said that he passed his Roshen assets to a blind trust and has no control of the company.

    The documents obtained by the journalists show that Poroshenko indeed intends to sell the company, but he plans to do so offshore so that no taxes are paid. In his official declarations in 2014 and 2015, Poroshenko said that he owned no stock in companies abroad.

    When journalists of Hromadske TV asked Poroshenko’s office about the company in the British Virgin Islands, they were redirected to Avellum Partners, the law firm that provided a recommendation letter to register the company. In response, the law firm says that it has been working on creating a trust for the transfer of Poroshenko’s assets.

    “The actual transfer of assets to a trust requires compliance with a large number of legal formalities. A legal advisor is ensuring the compliance with these formalities at the moment,” Avellum Partners said.

    This contradicts statements of Poroshenko, who in January told journalists that he has already transferred his Roshen assets to a blind trust.

    Offshore trail starts on Aug. 4, 2014

    The trail of Poroshenko’s path offshore starts on Aug. 4, 2014, when George Ioanno, an employee of the Cyprus Company Dr. K. Chrysostomides & Co, sent a letter to Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands. The letter was addressed to Mossack Fonseca & Co, a law firm that assists in registering offshore companies.

    Ioannou asked for assistance in starting a new company in the British Virgin Islands. He mentioned that the owner of the company will be a person involved in politics.

    Mossack Fonseca & Co said that it was ready to help.

    A new firm with Ukrainian roots appeared in the records of the British Virgin Islands on Aug. 21, 2014.

    Prime Asset Partners Limited

    Its name was Prime Asset Partners Limited. Ukrainian national Petro Poroshenko was listed as the sole owner of the company. A copy of an international passport attached to the letters leaves no doubt that the owner is indeed Ukraine’s president.

    A Cyprus national Olga Georgiou was appointed as CEO of Poroshenko’s company.

    Battle of Ilovaisk

    During the same time, one of the bloodiest defeats of Russia’s war against Ukraine was taking place in Donbas – the Battle of Ilovaisk. Ukrainian soldiers got surrounded by the Russian troops. Russian forces and their proxies agreed to let them out, but then violated the agreement, shooting at Ukrainian troops as they retreated.

    It took Ukrainian authorities six months to publish the official toll of the Battle of Ilovaisk – 459 soldiers killed, 478 wounded and 180 captured.

    Many people criticized Poroshenko for poor war-time leadership in first trying to seize Ilovaisk, a strategic railway hub in Donetsk Oblast, and then not heeding calls for reinforcemens as Ukrainian troops got surrounded and slaughtered by the Russian reinforcements.

    The battle changed the course of the war, prompting a Ukrainian retreat and major compromises in the first peace agreement reached in Minsk, Belarus, in September 2014.

    Business interests move ahead

    The things were moving much faster on Poroshenko’s second, secret front.

    After the company was registered, he needed to prove his trustworthiness to the registrars from the British Virgin Islands. This took two steps.

    First, Ioannou in Cyprus sent to Mossack Fonseca on Oct. 2, 2014, a note from a law firm Avellum Partners, saying that the company has known Poroshenko since 2012 and is satisfied with their cooperation.

    Two weeks later, a second note followed – from the International Investment Bank. It confirmed that Poroshenko has been the client of a bank since Feb. 25, 2009.

    The bank that provided the note belongs to Poroshenko, according to the official records of the National Bank of Ukraine.

    The documents were fine, and the process went on.

    Late on Feb. 20, 2015, the first anniversary of the mass killing of the EuroMaidan protesters, Poroshenko gave a speech at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti square in Kyiv, talked to the relatives of the killed, and opened a memorial called the Rays of Dignity.

    “I will do everything so that the big sacrifices which our nation suffered over the last year would not be for vain, God abide,” Poroshenko said. “I swear this to you.”

    On the same day the employees of Mossack Fonseca decided to change the status of Poroshenko’s company Prime Asset Partners Limited “considering the high status of the company’s director.”

    “In addition to the usual stuff we should check the situation in the country, whether there are any corruption scandals,” Josette Roquebert, a lawyer of Mossack Fonseca, wrote in a letter to Ioannou, Poroshenko’s confidant in Cyprus.

    In his reply, Ioannu wrote that “Prime Asset services the holding of companies from Cyprus and the Ukrainian companies of Roshen Group, one of the largest confectionery producers in Europe.”

    In December 2015, Ioannou asked his colleagues from Tortola to urgently collect all the papers and send them by courier to Switzerland. Martin Bustle of Rothschild Trust was mentioned as the recipient.

    It was the last one of the letters obtained by the journalists.

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