The CIA was not the deciding factor.

[Dondilion]

Oliver Stone claims the CIA finger prints were all over Ukraine's Maidan.
Whilst I believe this to to true, Leonid Bershidsky in a Bloomberg article makes the important point: The CIA was not the deciding factor.

http://www.bloombergview.com/article...-of-truthiness

[Boreas]

Just going to read this but I'll bet it has to do with fracking!

John

[Dondilion]

Bersidsky is making the point that there was an overwhelming desire on the part of the majority of the people of Ukraine to try for western systems;that even without the machinations of the CIA a change in favor of the west was inevitable.
Stone is however more interested in distillation; in removing the fog, especially for his western readers.

Now whether it (westernization) will succeed a la Poland is debatable. I guess Ukraine's oligarch system is a big negative.

I noticed RT has more than welcome Stone.
www.rt.com/news/219211-stone-ukraine-us-policy/

[Boreas]

Originally Posted by Dondilion

Bersidsky is making the point that there was an overwhelming desire on the part of the majority of the people of Ukraine to try for western systems;that even without the machinations of the CIA a change in favor of the west was inevitable.
Stone is however more interested in distillation; in removing the fog, especially for his western readers.

Now whether it (westernization) will succeed a la Poland is debatable. I guess Ukraine's oligarch system is a big negative.

I noticed RT has more than welcome Stone.
www.rt.com/news/219211-stone-ukraine-us-policy/

I'm sure that the Russians find Stone to be a "useful idiot", valuable enough to be granted an interview with Yanukovych and to get face time on some of RT America's shows like "Breaking the Set" but not important enough to talk directly to Vladi.

I think Stone is wrong to characterize US involvement in Ukraine as ideologically driven. My belief is that, as with Russian meddling, the US is monkeying around in Ukraine to advance US/NATO hegemony in Eastern Europe. It's about turf and not about "American ideals". The coup government we've chosen to support should be ample proof of that.

I mentioned fracking in my earlier post. That was because Chevron and I think BP have entered into a $10bn deal with Ukraine. Granted, this was with the Yanukovych government but I can't help but think that we agreed to assist the coup faction(s) that were willing to leave the deal in place. I doubt that a new government oriented toward and beholden to Moscow would have honored that deal.

So, in my view, we've gone way past the time when anything can be explained in ideological terms. Everything now is about money and power.

But I suppose you could argue that money and power are the ideology of the plutocrat.

John