US is determined to have regime change in Moscow: Analyst

The United States wants regime change in Russia, and is determined to use any means possible to achieve it, an American anti-war activist and journalist in Maine says.

Bruce Gagnon, the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday, after the United States expanded sanctions against Russia.

In an updated sanctions blacklist issued on Thursday, the US Department of the Treasury targeted companies building a multi-billion dollar bridge to link Russia with Crimea, and also added dozens of people and companies to the list. Those blacklisted include dozens of Russian companies and up to 37 individuals. 

“The announcement that the United States has expanded sanctions against Russia over its support for self-defense forces inside of eastern Ukraine, and because of the 2014 reunification of the Crimean peninsula with the Russian mainland is a classic example of US hypocrisy and double-speak,” Gagnon said.

“Obama accuses Russia of continuing to provoke Russia instability into eastern Ukraine, but in fact it’s the United States and NATO that are destabilizing Ukraine,” the activist stated.

“The US says that Russia has violated international law and therefore must be continually sanctioned, but in fact the truth reveals that the United States spent 5 billion dollars to foster, to make happened the coup d'etat in Kiev in 2014, and has since then been training and arming Ukrainian Nazis who essentially led that coup d'etat under US direction. And these Nazi forces have been attacking the forces in eastern Ukraine along the Russian borders,” he pointed out.

“The US wants regime change in Moscow, and is determined to get it one way or the other,” the analyst observed.

Crimea declared independence from Ukraine on March 17, 2014, and formally applied to become part of Russia following a referendum in which 96.8 percent of participants voted in favor of the secession. The voter turnout in the referendum stood at 83.1 percent.

Since then, the US and some other Western countries have imposed several rounds of sanctions against Russia over accusations that Moscow has been involved in a deadly crisis in Ukraine, which broke out when Kiev launched military operations to crack down on pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine last year. Russia has denied the allegation.

Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama signed a new Executive Order that extends economic sanctions against Russia for another year.

The decree, published on March 2 on the official White House website, states that economic and financial sanctions imposed on Moscow over its involvement in the Ukrainian crisis will stay in place until March 6, 2017.

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