Sevastopol, 29 November 2008 (RIA-Novosti):
Residents of the Crimean city of Sevastopol destroyed billboards put up by the Ukrainian government to promote NATO membership, a RIA-Novosti correspondent said Saturday. A campaign urging people to support the country’s bid for NATO membership started in 40 towns of the Crimean Peninsula on orders from the Foreign Ministry ahead of next month’s NATO session in Brussels. Sevastopol residents are tearing down and splashing paint over posters saying “The Ukraine Plus NATO Equals Security!” and “Next Stop Is NATO!” despite threats from the police to open criminal probes for doing so.
“Propaganda for this aggressive military bloc in a city that hosts the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and where 97 percent of the population are [ethnic] Russians is a political provocation on the part of Kiev”, Vasili Parkhomenko, a local Communist Party leader, said. Organisers said the campaign aims to tell people that NATO is a “peacekeeping organization by no means threatening Russia. We must convey the truth about the alliance to Ukrainians, now that they have chosen the European path”, a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman said. According to opinion polls, most Ukrainians are opposed to joining NATO.
The foreign ministers of the 26 NATO member states will meet in Brussels on 2-3 December to decide whether the Ukraine and Georgia are ready to join the NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP). NATO refused at its summit in April to let Georgia and the Ukraine into the MAP, a key step towards membership of the alliance, but, promised to review the decision in December. The countries received strong US backing for their bids.
RIA-Novosti
http://en.rian.ru/world/20081129/118610677.html (in English)
Editor’s Note:
It is obvious that the Orangies are failing to “sell” NATO to the “Ukrainian” populace. When one considers that only a minority of the population speaks “Ukrainian” regularly, and that a majority speak Russian, one can understand the situation readily. Let’s see… Saakashvili went to college in America, and Yushchenko is married to an American woman… add in the loudmouth North American Galician diaspora… stir in a soupçon of Polish fascist Prometheanism from the hand of Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński… it’s quite a devil’s brew, isn’t it? Best to stay away from such and let these kleptocracies rot on the vine, it’s none of America’s concern. We have more pressing matters to attend to at home.
