Translations (to English) - Ukraine: a war by request of Monsanto?

The mainstream media, both in the Anglo-Saxon countries as in Western Europe, are continuously building on the fairytale about “Adolf Putin”. Putin says to José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, that Russia can take Kiev in two weeks if it wants to? David Cameron, British prime minister, warns that “the mistakes made in 1938 must not be made again”. No “appeasement”, repeats Angela Merkel, the German Bundeskanzler, because Putin would “aim for Latvia and Estonia” after taking Ukraine and he is still “not to be trusted”.

Meanwhile official Ukrainian troops are more and more in trouble and the rebels that were on the losing side a month ago, especially after being accused – an accusation still not proven – by half the world of taking down flight MH17, are now winning. According to an anonymous high ranked NATO-general the situation is so bad that the Ukrainian government has already lost the war and better takes care of “getting the troops out of the Russian grip alive”. Why? Because of the new front in the south, near harbor city Mariupol, which makes an overland link between the Krim and Russia possible, by which Ukraine would lose all control over its eastern border. On top of that professor Alexander Mattelaer, of the Free University of Brussels, claims that nobody actually thinks they can “defend” Ukraine.

That of the 1 million Ukrainians who have fled their houses because of the violence more than 800.000 have moved to Russia, while the “aggressor” according to Western media comes from that direction, is apparently not enough to change the image of that “aggressor”. That NATO puts every effort into making Ukraine a member state, while Putin has said in May that he sees exactly that as the major threat to Russian safety, doesn’t bring our media to more reasonable news coverage either. And even the fact that the same NATO speaks about the so called Readiness Action Plan (RAP) which would make it possible to deploy 4000 troops in Eastern Europe within 48 hours, while the United States government barely hides its happiness over the expected growth of the alliance and the possibility that new “threats” on the borders would make the “defense” budgets grow again, doesn’t make our political journalists any smarter.

Knowing how little the mainstream media normally cares about the facts behind the press releases, we don’t have to expect that they will pay any attention to the growing buzz in the underground of the internet that Monsanto has very high stakes in this Ukrainian war. That is nevertheless a fact.

Let’s return to the 21st of November for a while. That day demonstrators started their “Revolution of Dignity” on the Independence Square in Kiev, a revolution also called “Euromaidan” referring to their goal of integrating Ukraine into the European Union. We don’t doubt for even a second that the biggest part of the demonstrators were there as idealists and that a big part of the following fights would be fought by those and other idealists. Only … did they know what they were doing ? And were they not, as happens all to often with “spontaneous” revolutions, misused by non-idealistic people in power ? That’s what we want to talk about today.

Direct cause for the protests was the fact that then sitting president Yanukovych refused to sign the association agreement between his country and the European Union. Protesters demanded more European integration, the resignation of the president and advanced elections, while Yanukovych, therein backed by about fifty percent of the population (according to different polls), chose for further cooperation with Russia. The essence of the choice being this: signing the association agreement with the European Union in exchange for a loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) of 17 billion dollar or accepting an aid package from Russia worth about 15 billion dollar in combination with a discount on Russian gas. The reason why Ukraine could count on the “kindness” of the European Union and the US on one side and Russia on the other side ? Moving the borders of the influence areas. The US have been working on that for ages, for instance via their engagement in Georgia (the country not the US-state); Russia – that has not forgotten how big it was when the Soviet Union still existed and has gotten more than tired of the humiliations since mafia-like Jeltsin, who kneeled for the West, was exchanged for Putin – doesn’t feel like standing by doing nothing anymore. What started as financial bidding thus degenerated into a civil war. Aggressor in the financial bidding was the coalition European Union-US, Ukraine was till then sitting firmly in the influence area of Russia.

But why did Ukraine absolutely have to leave Russia’s influence area ? From the amounts that were offered to “save” the country one could easily conclude that it is not exactly the richest country in the region and thus that the expected revenues – still the most important motivation in the international game – can’t be much. Wright ?

Well, that is where Monsanto enters. It is known that the International Monetary Fund is nót a big benefactor, isn’t it ? The IMF only “saves” countries when it expects a big return on investment. Once in a while that goes wrong, but when big industrial players like Monsanto use their persuasive power, the IMF is always willing to give it a try. And Monsanto did have enough reasons to convince the IMF: the future of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the Eurasian continent.

That future namely doesn’t look very bright. Not only in the green movements in Western Europe – movements that lobby with the European Parliament too – but also in a number of countries there is not much enthusiasm about gm-crops. Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Poland and France have legislation against the growing of Monsanto-corn MON 810 and BASF-potato Amflora already. Much against the will of not only Monsanto, BASF, DuPont and similar groups, but also of the European Commission (the non-elected European government, so to speak). Knowing that Russia is going the anti-GMO way too (the country promised last year to admit the growing of GMOs as part as its entrance to the World Trade Organisation, but has since then moved the decision to the long term), with prime minister Dimitri Medvedev saying still in April of this year that “if the Americans like to eat such products, let them eat them. We don’t need to do that; we have enough space and opportunities to produce organic food”, the GMO-industry is looking for a possibility to break into the continent. A possibility which could become reality in, indeed, Ukraine.

Ukraine, that has been known for long as the “grain basket of Europe”, is just ideal for the growing of grain and corn, but the former Ukrainian government put a ban on the use of GMOs in agriculture. Maybe that could, in exchange for 17 billion dollars of “help”, be changed ? That is what was tried in article 404 – nicely hidden between hundreds of others, sometimes much less important, articles – of the association agreement Yanukovych was supposed to sign: both parties would be obliged to cooperate on the extended use of biotechnologies. Read: Ukraine would be forced to open its borders to genetically modified crops and GMOs.

Monsanto, obviously very self-assured, announced in May 2013 that it would invest 140 million dollar in a corn seed plant in Ukraine. Of course, said spokesman Vitally Fechuk, “we will be working with conventional seeds only”. By the 5th of November 2013 that had changed. On that day Volodymr Klymenko, spokesman of the Ukrainian Grain Association, announced on a press conference that his organization, together with five other big agricultural organizations, had demanded to change the law on biosecurity so “creating, testing, transportation and use of GMOs” would become possible. “Coincidentally” this demand was also one of the conditions in the association agreement with the European Union/the IMF.

At the beginning of December last year, after the start of the “spontaneous” revolution, Monsanto Ukraine launched its program for “social development” of the country, named “Grain Basket of the Future”, with the promise to the rural population that thus they could “start feeling that they can improve their situation themselves as opposed to waiting for a handout”.

A few days later, on December 13, Monsanto, through Jesus Madrazo, announced at the US-Ukraine Conference in Washington that the company saw “the importance of creating a favorable environment [in Ukraine] that encourages innovation and fosters the continued development of agriculture”. A favorable environment which could obviously be created by opening the Ukrainian borders to GMOs, but also by lifting the ban on selling agricultural land to the private sector. As Morgan Williams, CEO of the US-Ukraine Business Council, told to the International Business Times in March: “The major item would center around getting the government out of business”. The agribusiness companies on the Executive Committee of the Business Council – Monsanto, John Deere, DuPont, Cargill and others – would undoubtedly agree to that.

As would probably the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center. That was founded on the 2nd of March 2014 – the day after Donetsk declared itself independent from Ukraine and the same day Luhansk did the same – with its headquarters in Hotel Ukraina in Kiev. Core message of the press agency is that the interim government of Ukraine is legitimately elected by the parliament including the party of the disposed Yanukovych and that the country is victim to the military aggression of neighboring Russia. More important is the fact that this “independent” agency is financed by, amongst others, George Soros, the Ukrainian interim government and Weber Shandwick, one of the biggest publicity agencies in the world that was also responsible for Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” campaign. The press agency was labeled on April 15 of this year as a “voluntary operation” by Olga Radchenko of PBN Hill + Knowlton Strategies, a corporation of which the CEO, Myron Wasvlyk, happens to be on the board of the US-Ukraine Business Council, and the managing director for Ukraine, Oksana Monastyrska, coincidentally leads the firms work for … Monsanto.

Now, do we, closing this article, dare to say that Monsanto requested the war in Ukraine ? No. But the mere fact that Ukraine with its new “western” government would open its borders to GMOs and agricultural land could be sold to private corporations like Monsanto, while it would become harder for the countries of the European Union to put an import ban on genetically modified crops if those crops were grown in a country that is (at least) associated with the European Union, makes it very clear that for Monsanto and its allies there is a lot at stake in getting Ukraine out of the Russian influence aria, if need be manu militari.

Oh yeah, before we forget: read the free prequel to our comic The Maier-Files here.

Björn Roose