Ukrainian Nationalists Want A Coup

Radical protesters (R) clash with Interior Ministry and law enforcement members on the Day of Ukrainian Cossacks, marked by activists and supporters of the All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda (Freedom) Party and far-right activists and nationalists to honour the role of the movement in the history of Ukraine, during a rally near the parliament building in Kiev, October 14, 2014. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

Ukraine Militias Warn of Anti-Kiev Coup -- Jamie Dettmer, Daily Beast

The men behind Ukraine’s nationalist militias are looking to replace the fumbling government in Kiev one way or another.

KIEV, Ukraine—The burly man with the close-cropped silver hair and his two companions ask not to be identified too closely when they talk to me in some dowdy offices near an ancient monastery overlooking the Dnieper River. They want to be described as “patriotic businessmen,” they say, and one of them, whom we’ll call Alexander, is a very, very rich patriotic businessman.

They have been funding Ukrainian self-defense militias formed in response to what they see as the ineffectiveness of the Ukraine Armed Forces in the face of pro-Moscow separatists and Russian troops in the country’s southeast. And they suggest something worse than incompetence is at work there. The word “betrayal” often plays on their lips. They predict the government of President Petro Poroshenko may not last another three months. “That’s optimistic,” says Alexander.

Alexander and his friends point to continued military hardware exports—sometimes transferred via Moscow-ally Belarus—sent from some of Ukraine’s 134 state-owned defense enterprises to Russia, which has long been the Ukraine arms industry’s biggest customer.

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My Comment: The last thing that Ukraine needs right now is a coup .... especially from this group. Fortunately .... they have very little if any support among the general population. Unfortunately .... they are organized, many of them have guns, they have friends and allies in parliament, key positions in the cabinet, and I would say that they have some support from within President Poroshenko's office itself. And while I believe that these Ukrainian nationalists are not capable of launching a successful coup .... the situation in Ukraine is so fluid right now that I have learned that anything is possible 2, 3 or 6 months from now.