Stephen Cohen Warns of Looming Fascist Coup in Kiev

Stephen Cohen, a prominent Princeton and NYU Russian scholar, who is now traveling in Western Europe with his wife, The Nation publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel, and University of Chicago professor Dr. John Mearsheimer, granted an interview to New York City radio host John Batchelor, warning that there is a growing prospect of a fascist coup d’etat in Kiev to overthrow President Petro Poroshenko. Cohen, Vanden Heuvel, and Mearsheimer all spoke at a round-table in Brussels earlier this week.

In the radio interview, Cohen warned that Poroshenko’s position is precarious, given the opposition of Right Sector and other fascist and ultra-nationalist factions to the Minsk accords, and their rise to prominence in the Ukraine government after the last elections. In the aftermath of the defeat at Debaltseve, Cohen warned, Poroshenko is even more dependent on the “volunteer” battalions dominated by Right Sector and other Banderists, who outright reject the Minsk Accords, vow to fight on, and will never sit down with the leaders from Donetsk and Luhansk.

According to the Sputnik News account of the Batchelor interview, Cohen warned that there is a “fascist coup” brewing in Kiev, against Poroshenko, and this is cause for worry for the EU and the US. He indicated that the Obama Administration would probably prefer to have Poroshenko replaced by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is well-known as Victoria Nuland’s asset, and would be welcomed as “the IMF’s man.” Yatsenyuk hates Russia, is pushing a wall along the Ukraine-Russia border, and in a recent visit to Berlin, described the Soviet Union’s liberation of Ukraine and Germany in World War II as an “invasion,” putting him spiritually in the hardcore neo-Nazi Banderist camp.