This time, their point person is Victoria Nuland, America's top diplomat for Europe, the wife of prominent neo-con Robert Kagan at the Brookings Institution and sister-in-law of "surge" sponsor Frederick Kagan. I have already described her kingmaker role in forming the Ukraine interim government in my earlier columns on Ukraine. Let me just add that she reminded Ukrainian business leaders last December that, to help Ukraine achieve "its European aspirations, we have invested more than US$5 billion." She said the U.S. goal was to take "Ukraine into the future that it deserves," meaning into the West's orbit and away from Russia's.

Another neo-conservative instrument for regime change in Ukraine has been the U.S. funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the $100 million-a-year agency created by Ronald Reagan in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against target states, the manufacturer of "color revolutions." It lists 65 projects that it supports financially inside Ukraine, including training activists, supporting journalists and promoting business groups, effectively creating a full-service structure primed and ready to destabilize a government in the name of promoting "democracy."

Victoria Nuland and U.S. Senator John McCain cheered the demonstrators on the street and the protest turned violent. In short, the United States government encouraged the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in a coup spearheaded by neo-Nazi storm troopers who then terrorized law makers as the Parliament passed legislation, including some intended to punish the pro-Russian regions in the east.

This regime change engineered by the neo-cons is particularly dangerous, as it challenges a nuclear-armed Russia and a no-nonsense Vladimir Putin.

Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.

The author is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.shenbo75.com/opinion/zhaojinglun.htm

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