Press TV
June 1, 2014
US is playing a belligerent role in Ukraine: Rozoff
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An American anti-war activist says the United States is obviously playing a belligerent role in what is basically a proxy war in Ukraine.
Rick Rozoff, with the Stop NATO International Network, says the recent news that a Pentagon delegation is to travel to Kiev for discussions over Washington’s future military aid to Kiev shows that “the United States is a party, a belligerent in the ongoing war” in Ukraine.
“The Pentagon delegation that is to arrive in the Ukrainian capital shortly is of course followed by a secret visit by CIA director John Brennan, a visit by Vice President, that is deputy commander in chief of the armed forces, Joe Biden, and a number of other officials and it’s impossible for me to consider that these officials aren’t calling the shots and aren’t directing their clients in Kiev, particularly with the intensification of the military campaign in southeastern Ukraine right now,” Rozoff told Press TV in a phone interview on Saturday.
The news of the Pentagon delegation’s visit to Kiev was made public by US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt who spoke with Dzerkalo Tyzhnia (the Mirror Weekly) newspaper this week.
Pyatt also said that Washington has tripled its military aid to the government in Kiev over the past three months which coincided with the time the acting government in Kiev launched and intensified its military operation against pro-Russian protesters in Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian forces resumed their shelling on the eastern Donetsk city of Slavyansk. Local residents said a children’s hospital and a clinic in the city center came under fire.
“As of the massacre that was perpetrated at the Donetsk airport a few days ago where, according to the mayor of that city, 100 people were killed including by a strike by a fighter jet, this is war. And, to have the US Defense Department increase its military assistance to the government perpetrating war against its own people and then sending a delegation of Pentagon officials to Kiev, it is transparently obvious that the US is playing a role in what is basically a proxy war,” said Rozoff.
He also said the US and its allies’ support for Ukrainian officials shows “the double standards and the duplicity of the West” when one juxtaposes such support with their call for a no-fly zone over Libya when the Libyan government used fighter-jets to strike areas held by rebel forces back in 2011.
“It’s worth recollecting also that three years ago, the United States went to the UN Security Council along with its Western European allies and demanded a no-fly zone in the beginning of what became a six-month-long air war against Libya because supposedly the Libyan government was using fighter jets to strike rebel strongholds of Benghazi. Now, when the Ukrainian government is using jets and attack helicopters to attack people in southeastern Ukraine, there is no call by the West or anyone else for a no-fly zone,” Rozoff said.
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