Convicted embezzler and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko was on a tour of east Ukraine this Easter weekend talking about finding «compromise» and «national unity». She said she wanted to hear the grievances of the people in cities like Donetz, Kharkov and Slavyansk, where anti-Kiev protesters continue to occupy public buildings despite the Geneva agreement worked out this week on de-escalating tensions across the country.

This conciliatory tone, expressed to media in Donetz by Tymoshenko, sounded like a miraculous conversion – Alle-Yulia! – appropriate for the Christian celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the dead. Perhaps the lady’s plaited hairstyle is supposed to now signify a virtuous halo.

Only a few weeks ago, Tymoshenko was caught saying in a private phone call how she wanted to turn pro-Russia eastern Ukraine into ash from a nuclear attack. In the same leaked phone call – which Tymoshenko confirmed as authentic – the disgraced politician also called for ethnic Russians opposed to the Kiev junta to be «whacked in the head» by death squads…

Such criminal incitement is now expected to be forgotten, it seems, as Tymoshenko posed as a voice of reason on her «tour» of the east. It is doubtful that she actually did take soundings from protesters over the weekend – so deep is the contempt felt for her – and she probably confined herself to briefings from the various oligarch figures that the Kiev junta has newly imposed as political governors for the region.

The conversion from death-wish embezzler to matriarch of the nation was the second such miracle involving Tymoshenko. While in prison before being released by the Kiev junta that seized power at the end of February, Tymoshenko claimed that she was confined to a wheelchair allegedly because of her deteriorating health. Now, released from prison, the lady appears to have made a full recovery, walking on to public platforms to sing the praises of the coup-appointed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is also a leading figure of her neo-fascist Fatherland Party.

For years during her incarceration, Tymoshenko sent out distraught appeals to her backers in Western governments and the media claiming mistreatment by the former Ukrainian authorities. Her forlorn appeals were made from a prison wheelchair, which she said was necessary because of paralysis brought on by her cruel imprisonment. Never mind that her seven-year jail sentence was a result of a court prosecution, which found her guilty on counts of massive corruption involving state gas supplies and millions of dollars.

Her conviction was quashed by the Western-backed regime that seized power in Kiev on February 22. Pro-Western, pro-IMF looting of the economy, and pro-NATO, Tymoshenko came to fame during the CIA-backed Orange Revolution of 2004. She is now planning to run for the Ukraine presidency in elections scheduled for next month. Perhaps her presidential ambitions are having a cathartic effect, not only enabling her to ditch the wheelchair and stride forth, but also to abandon harboring odious ideas for mass murder.

And now – alleluia! – Tymoshenko is extending the hand of mediation to people whom she wanted to drop nuclear weapons on only a few weeks.

It may be Easter, but the protesters occupying buildings in eastern Ukraine are right to not buy this particular miraculous conversion. Nor should they vacate the buildings they began occupying earlier this month, or to disarm.

Leaders of the Kiev junta – Yatsenyuk and the self-styled interim president Oleksander Turchynov – are like Tymoshenko suddenly talking about «national unity» and making vague promises about «constitutional reform».

Under the Geneva agreement signed by the US, Russia, EU and the Kiev regime last Thursday, the latter is obligated to enter into national dialogue with political opponents in the east and south of the country with a view to allocating greater autonomy in those regions.
Crucially, the Geneva deal also calls for the disarmament of all groups across the state and for the evacuation of illegally held buildings in all cities. That stipulation should apply to the coup in Kiev and their neo-Nazi paramilitaries who continue to occupy Maidan Square and other public spaces.

But within hours of signing the Geneva document, the Kiev regime and its main sponsor, Washington, have begun interpreting the conditions in a one-sided, distorted way.

The fatal mistake stems from affording the Kiev regime the authority of «government of Ukraine» at Geneva. This not a sovereign government; it’s an installment of a regime by Washington and its European allies using criminal subversion. The only mandate this regime has is what Washington and Brussels bestows on it.

The Kiev junta may be talking vaguely about «national unity» but it is demanding a specific unilateral disarmament of the protesters in the eastern cities.

Moreover, Kiev’s self-proclaimed foreign minister Andrey Deshchytsa is now saying that if the protesters in Donetz, Kharkov and Slavyansk do not immediately disarm and vacate buildings, the Kiev regime will resume its «anti-terror» crackdown with the deployment of Ukrainian national security forces.

In this one-sided application of the Geneva agreement, the Kiev junta has the full support of Washington. US President Barack Obama said that the US government expects Moscow to facilitate the disarmament of pro-Russian demonstrators and if it doesn’t then Washington will pile on more sanctions, this time on the Russian economy. Washington has also said it will be supplying «non-lethal» military equipment to the Kiev junta.

So, the Kiev coup is allowed to seize power violently and illegally, deposing an elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, and his government, tear up the country’s constitution, threaten mass violence against ethnic Russians, and then make sovereign decisions regarding IMF loans and associations with NATO, the EU and US. This unelected fascist regime is allowed to continue bearing arms and to arrogate the right to deploy the national army of Ukraine for its reactionary political agenda. But all other opposing parties are to refrain from protest in the face of such usurpation, and indeed the opponents are being given an ultimatum to capitulate to these impostors or face violent retribution.

Alle-Yulia! Democracy and legality have been crucified, and we now expected to bow before the redemption of Western regime change in Ukraine.