Back in the U.S.S.R.

This past Sunday a group of Ukranian activists knocked down a statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin and smashed it to pieces in Kiev’s Bessarabska Square. While no one can be sure who started the protest, CNN reports:

Ukraine’s government news agency said a lawmaker with the nationalist Svoboda party claimed responsibility for the incident.

“This is the end of Soviet occupation,” the party’s Twitter account said. “End of (the) regime of shame and humiliation.”

…”Destroying the Lenin monument in Kiev is not just an act of vandalism,” [Communist] party leader Petro Symonenko said, according to a post on the party’s official website. “It is a sign that organizers of the protests are not for the European values, but rather for hate, fear and destruction of the state of Ukraine.”

Ironically, “European values” are exactly what drove the protesters to destroy the statue and encamp in Kiev’s Independence Square. In the face of rising debt and sinking bond prices, Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych turned down a trade agreement with the E.U. that “would have opened borders to trade and set the stage for modernization and inclusion” in favor of cultivating a deeper relationship with Moscow.

One hundred thousand protesters lined the streets of the nation’s capital over the weekend. Two thousand are there now, huddled around fires in a makeshift tent city in Independence Square, holding firm in their demand that failed Ukranian President Viktor Yanukovych dissolve the government and answer their demand for immediate elections.

The situation is important enough for the U.S. assistant secretary of state, Victoria Neuland, to fly over, while Biden reportedly gave Yanukovych a call. President Obama was too busy being inspired by the late Nelson Mandela to address the latest developments in the East-West divide.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the uprising in the Ukraine by dissolving Russia’s main state news agency, RIA Novosti, and creating in its place the “propagandistic state-owned news agency” Rossia Segodnya “to promote Moscow’s image abroad.”

According to Ukranian Ilya Shutov, an ex-miner who came from the Eastern city of Donetsk to participate in the protest:

“We were for the EU association agreement because we thought it would force our authorities to be civilized. Their refusal of Europe is a refusal to be civilized,” he said.

“Our goal is to get rid of the Soviet-like authorities.”

Already embracing the KGB gift for disinformation, Dmitri Kiselyov, the militant anti-western director of state-controlled Russian media, has dubbed Kiev “the final battlefield” in a “war against Russia.” Claiming that the Ukraine “…is taking revenge against Moscow for its 1709 victory in the Battle of Poltava,” Kiselyov is informing his audience that “‘depraved Europe’ wants to spread its infection of LGBT rights and other ‘liberal values’ as widely as possible.”

There is no word yet from Kiselyov on how the Jews are involved in the plot.