© Reuters/Cathal McNaughton
Americans were instrumental in preserving the ridiculously unpopular Yatsenyuk as the Prime Minister in Kiev. A negotiated change of Prime Minister was seen as a bad enough outcome for the State Department - a new election would be seen as a downright disaster.In a national poll conducted in the week to February 17 by the Kyiv-based Gorshenin Institute, 15.8% of respondents said they would back the former prime minister and 'gas princess' in a hypothetical presidential election against Poroshenko, who narrowly holds the lead with 17.2%.
It's a strong position for someone who only scraped past the 5% barrier to get seats in parliament during the October 2014 elections, and it has clearly emboldened Tymoshenko to call for what almost everyone else, Ukraine's Western backers included, is intent on avoiding: costly new elections in a country depleted morally and financially by war and political chaos.
Unfortunately for Uncle Sam Yulia Tymoshenko isn't the kind of person to let that stand in the way of her personal ambition:
She's willing to go against the West confident that once she brings down the current government and picks up the pieces they'll have no choice but to line up behind her after the fact."In several weeks the international community will accept that stability will come by rebooting parliament and the government, and not via the status quo," she said."
What else can we say but 'Go Yulia, go!' She isn't any better than the current bunch - in fact she sat with them in government this whole time, but if she does causes sleepless nights for Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko that's something we can only toast to.
And if she's can do the same for the Empire's viceroy in Eastern Europe, Victoria "Cookies" Nuland, well that's even better.
There have been two new developments in the long-awaited criminal investigation report into MH17 over the last couple of weeks. Though you might’ve read about one, you’re far less likely to have heard about the other — more important — one.
What could be seen as an interim report on the progress of the criminal investigation into the downing of MH17 wasn’t announced at a big press conference, nor did it grab the headlines in the main corporate media outlets. Signed by Fred Westerbeke, the Dutch prosecutor leading the international Joint Investigation Team (JIT) investigating MH17, the report took the form of a letter sent to family members of the victims.
But not all family members received the letter............[Link]