A new draft law adopted by the Ukrainian Parliament and awaiting Petro Poroshenko’s signature threatens to escalate the Ukrainian conflict into a full-blown war, pitting nuclear-armed Russia against the United States and NATO, reports Gilbert Doctorow.
By Gilbert Doctorow
While much of America’s – and the world’s – attention focused this weekend reflecting on Donald Trump’s first year in the Oval Office, holding one-year anniversary events for the historic Women’s March and drawing up balance sheets of his promises and achievements, Russia has had a rather different issue on the front-burner: a possible war with Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (Photo: Reuters)
The situation in the Donbass region of south-eastern Ukraine has been a feature of Russia’s political talk shows for the past couple years, along with the military campaign in Syria and more recently the stages in the preparation for presidential elections on March 18.
Focus on the Donbass conflict increased in the closing weeks of 2017 as military action on the front lines separating the forces of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk enjoying Russian support from Ukrainian militias and armed forces reached an intensity not seen for more than a year. This is despite the heralded exchange of military prisoners by both sides before New Year’s under talks supervised by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill.
Then, this past Thursday came a wholly new development – a draft law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament that could effectively end Kiev’s participation in the conflict resolution process known as the Minsk Accords. Although observers in the United States and Western Europe may have missed it, many Russians believe this development amounts to a declaration of war.
Dmitri Kiselyov, head of all Russian television and radio news services, offered a sober analysis of the emotionally charged development on his Sunday evening news wrap-up today.
According to Kiselyov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s signature, makes preparations for war and includes language indicating a bellicose new approach to the conflict. The mission in Donbass is no longer described as an “anti-terrorist operation.” Rather, the mission now is to send armed forces against “military formations of the Russian Federation” in Donbass.
Military headquarters are established to coordinate the operation to be waged in Donbass. While up until now the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were considered under the Minsk Accords as negotiating parties, now there are only “occupation administrations” of the Russian Federation on these territories, with Russia identified as an “aggressor.”
“This makes it all the more convenient for Ukraine to start a war,” Kiselyov says, noting that it could have the added benefit of enabling Ukraine not to pay its foreign debts and to ensure Poroshenko’s continued grip on power.
A Vesti reporter on the ground in Donetsk confirmed with local residents their view that the law means war. They see the current moment on the front line as “the calm before the storm.” Donetsk soldiers at their trenches say they are fully ready to engage with the enemy.
While Kiselyov acknowledges that the draft law might not ultimately be implemented, it nevertheless reveals a growing mood in the Ukrainian capital in favor of escalation. The facts speak for themselves, Kiselyov says, with Poroshenko failing to adhere to the Minsk Accords – for example by organizing local elections in Donbass – or to observe ceasefires along the lines of contact. There are attacks and deaths every day and only counter force have pushed back recent Ukrainian attempts to gain territory.
Kiev has seemingly written off the population of the two self-proclaimed republics – cutting off all transport and telecoms links and failing to pay pensions and assistance to the needy. It closed the banking system and there are no commercial ties. For Kiev the two provinces are merely territory to take back from the occupiers, with the wellbeing of the local populations at best a secondary concern.
On the economic front, the European Union has refused to extend 600 million euros of credit to Ukraine due to corruption. The International Monetary Fund recently refused a tranche of $800 million over failure to introduce reforms. Meanwhile, in 2019 Ukraine is due to start repaying earlier loans. This will come to $14 billion a year, which amounts to half the state budget of Ukraine.
Due to dire economic conditions, Poroshenko and other government officials in Kiev have become deeply unpopular, and with diminished chances for electoral success may see war as politically advantageous.
And although there are indications that some Western leaders are fed up with Kiev, the United States has doubled down in its support for a military solution to the conflict. With military trainers now on the ground and the U.S. budgeting $350 million for security assistance to Ukraine, Washington has also recently started delivering lethal weapons including the Javelin anti-tank missile system free of charge to Kiev.
In contrast to the image of Trump administration policies being dictated by Moscow, as portrayed by proponents of Russia-gate conspiracy theories, the United States is instead moving towards deeper confrontation with the Kremlin in the geopolitical hotspot of Ukraine.
For its part, the Kremlin has very little to gain and a great deal to lose economically and diplomatically from a campaign now against Kiev. If successful, as likely would be the case given the vast disparity in military potential of the two sides, it could easily become a Pyrrhic victory.
But notwithstanding Kiselyov’s reassuring words on his Sunday evening news wrap-up, it may well be the case that Moscow feels it has no choice. Moves by Kiev to exacerbate the conflict must be quickly countered to prevent deeper intervention by the United States and its NATO allies and prevent the conditions for WWIII from taking hold.
Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book, Does the United States Have a Future? was published in October 2017.
Is it fair to say that the actions of the US in cultivating a Coup in Ukraine involving right wing nationalists for the purpose of wrenching Ukraine away from a Russia friendly government which did not attack or kill anybody resulted in the current situation where there is now a state of war between Russia and Ukraine and many people are now dead?
What is the culpability of the US in precipitating this conflict and why?
Those folks who did this under the Obama administration should face justice. It has not worked as planned and now Ukraine is plunging into a war stance with Russia.
There was no “Arab (Freedom) Spring” and the emergence of a flowering egalitarian society like what failed in Syria and Libya.
In each case whether Ukraine Syria or Libya or even Iraq and as yet to be determined Afghanistan there is only madness, death and destruction of former stable societies.
Nothing the USA does brings about peace. The actions by our governments only manage to make the situations in these countries worse for their citizens and create chaos.
So why do we keep doing it? Why do we support ISIS in Syria? Why do we believe that we can find freedom fighters which wave the American flag at every opportunity and why do we fund them only to find out that they are just some other fighting force which will unleash destruction on stable societies?
It is all a charade. That is really what it is. We do not support insurgents in the hope that they will free their nation and establish a democracy favorable to western ideals of democracy. These are just the false pretenses we trot out to justify giving aid to insurgents which will create the next conflicts the US can capitalize on to stoke the war machine.
If any of our covert actions were truly devoted to the cause of peace they would be broadcasted by our media. They are not. There is no effort to inform us of the need to assist the formation of a “free democracy” in the Ukraine or anywhere else. Instead underground forces tip the balance of power and create civil wars and before our eyes a new conflict emerges.
More violence, more death and more political unrest and civil war is what we really want. The facts are all around our involvements in the affairs of nations. There is only one common result. Chaos, violence, civil war and the loss of a stable nation.
The continuous covert wars and meddling in other country’s affairs has a clear goal. Create enemies we can go to war with. Destabilize every place we can destabilize and then use all the chaos which ensues to further our military agenda to go in and pacify the people with bombs and guns.
W stoke the fires of war on purpose. It is a plan. There is no planned peace only a plan to create violence and war.
The way out is to ferret out the figures in Washington who create all this violence and the expose the corrupt media
There is a dimmer and dimer chance this will happen in the US.
We are pushing forward and going down a hole. What lies at the bottom no human being wants to ever see.
Yep, and they even go so far as to recruit agitators to stir up trouble on blog forums like this one, so thorough is their intent to destablise the existing order. Consider the abundant nonsense attached to this piece.
I think everyone else has left this article in their rearview mirror, C-1, but I read your contribution and appreciated it.
The US and NATO should just back off of that area – and if Kiev wants to go to a military confrontation with Russia, then it would be them against the Russian Federation…and not include Western outsiders who do not belong there anyway. The US and NATO already have troops and military equipment standing at the ready for anything…and it can be pretty much said that they are hoping for a confrontation with Russia….The crazed people in Washington aren’t content not being at war and they are just itching to get at Russia.
One must wonder whether the EU is very happy with their role. F*ck the EU? It would be great if anyone on here would comment – there is such a lot of insight here! One could speculate that the US cooperate with Poland, the Baltic states, UK, Sweden and others to push their agenda in Ukraine, at the same time driving a wedge in and weakening the EU, and may exert pressure on the EU countries?
ETHNICITY, LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL AFFILIATION IN UKRAINE
The issue of ethnicity is apparently deliberately misinterpreted and pushed in Western propaganda regarding the Ukrainian problem. This disinformation can be successful because to many in the West the concept of ethnicity goes hand in hand with cultural belonging and nationhood. The situation in Ukraine is more complicated and that is why it is pertinent to spread this info.
In the Ukraine, and I think these numbers include the Crimea and Donbass, by ethnicity around 78 % are Ukrainian, and 17 % Russian. However, the determining factor for cultural affiliation is historical and cultural background and mother tongue, as reflected in all elections. Data from KIIS, the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, for 2012, including the Crimea and Donbass, show that 44 % use Ukrainian language at home, 38 % use Russian at home, 14 % use both languages at home, and 3 % use another language.
In correspondence in 2016, KIIS pointed out that the language issue is not the one that worries the population most, according to their surveys. My impression is that the economy and corruption come out as most worrying. And aren’t these issues what provoked the Orange revolution and the Maidan in the first place, and remain as pressing today?
It seems the state infrastructure (functions of government) is weakly developed in Ukraine and unable to deal with ia corruption, and also with foreign intervention. One would hope Ukraine could gather strength to deal with these problems, allow all cultural groups to flourish, and establish good relations with their neighbours. Perhaps this requires the division of Ukraine, I don’t know. Isn’t it very cynical and counterproductive to exploit the problems of Ukraine for the world power struggle agenda as the West in particular does? Given that such a big part of Ukrainians share so much of heritage with Russia, the present policy must be doomed to fail, all the same. Wouldn’t it be better to support the Ukraine to develop in harmony? Make love, not war! ;)
I see this may need spelling out.
Western media insist that the conflict is between the ethnical Ukrainians 78 % and the Russian ethnic minority of 17 %, when in reality it is not. The dividing line is between the Ukrainian speaking north west and the Russian speaking south and east, and the respective sizes of these populations are roughly equal. The country is cut in half, it is not a question of Donbass only. A HUGE DIFFERENCE.
Again, the division is there because the two parts of Ukraine have different history.
I doubt whether this will be going down very well with the people on the streets of Kiev. I predict we will see some sort of real uprising from in the very near future. We may not be surprised, but an increasingly out-of-touch Washington will.
If anyone has any doubts about the vile nature of the US proxy regime in Ukraine, just take a look at the youtube film of the Odessa massacre. You’ll need a very, very strong stomach. I could only bear to watch it once.
This new “law” and preparations being taken have the signature of the Outlaw US Empire written all over them. The CIA/Deep State really need its big war with Russia to solve its own set of problems that are rather similar to Ukraine’s.
This War will last twice as long as the South Ossetia War in Georgia. Six hours instead of three. Hey Porky, better buy a bullet proof vest and some lead bikini briefs.
ukraine, kick out your jews now,,,they are wanting to fight…kick these jews out of ukraine…period
Comrade “yep” vomits up a loud li’l Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Jewish”) propaganda troll rant about “these jews” in Ukraine.
In fact, the reason why CN articles on Russia and Ukraine are frequently targeted by Hasbara troll army posters is precisely because Western “regime change” assaults on Ukraine and Syria are so closely connected.
Having said that, there certainly are issues with certain Jewish Ukrainian citizens who are also dual citizens of Israel.
Oligarch warlord Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Ukraine’s largest employer of Nazi thugs, is a prominent supporter of Ukraine’s Jewish community and the president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine.
In 2010 he was appointed as the president of the European Council of Jewish Communities after promising the outgoing president he would donate $14 million, with his appointment being described as a “putsch” and a “Soviet-style takeover” by other EJCJ board members. Several ECJC board members resigned in protest.
But after members of the ECJC resigned in protest over his unilateral appointment, Kolomoiskyi withdrew his bid. Fellow Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich, already an ECJC vice president, quit his post to follow Kolomoiskyi.
In the Spring of 2011, Kolomoiskyi and Rabinovich created a new group with a grand-sounding name, the European Jewish Union.
Based in Brussels, the EJU’s stated aim is to be “a uniting structure for all Jewish communities and organizations throughout Western, Eastern and Central Europe.” It sought to establish a European Jewish Parliament, comprising 120 members modeled on the Israeli Knesset.
The EJU was criticized for its choice of candidates to the Parliament, including comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, international football star David Beckham, Pee Wee Herman, Andrew Grove, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, film director Roman Polanski and others, many of whom never sought nomination nor even knew they had been nominated. Several candidates, including Viviane Teitelbaum, a member of Brussels’ regional parliament and former head of the Belgian Jewish community, upon learning of their nominations, immediately asked to have their names removed from nomination. The European Jewish Congress distanced themselves from the EJU, circulating a memo that they were “not connected in any way to this initiative and do not support it.”
The elections process itself was also criticized. Elections were being conducted over the internet, on the EJU’s own website. Although the election rules limited elections to residents of European countries, with voters restricted to voting for representatives from their own country, the website provided no resources to verify the voter’s nationality other than a bulk eraser provided free by NATO. In at least one case, a North African based journalist was able to register on the site as a Canadian citizen and cast a vote.
The European Jewish Parliament hailed its inauguration on February, 16th 2012 as a “great day for Jews in Europe”.
The EJP logo is modeled on the flag of European Union flag of 12 golden stars on a blue background. Instead the EJP logo uses 11 golden stars with a 12th star being a white Star of David, stylized as on the flag of Israel, on a blue background.
Rabinowich and Joel Rubinfeld, former Secretary General of the Belgian-Israeli Friendship, were elected co-presidents of the EJP.
In January 2014, Rubinfeld co-founded the Belgian League against Anti-Semitism (LBCA). He assumed the office of President of the LBCA. Rubinfeld wrote a chapter on Belgium for the collective work “The new clothes of anti-Semitism in Europe”.
On 2 March 2014, amidst the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Kolomoyskyi governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
In March 2015, after the dismissal of Oleksandr Lazorko, who was a protege of Kolomoyskyi, as a chief executive of UkrTransNafta, Ukraine’s state-owned oil pipeline operator, men reported to be Kolomoyskyi’s personal militia raided the UkrTransNafta’s headquarters to expel the new government-appointed chief from the office. While Lazorko was in charge the state-owned pipelines had been delivering oil to an Kolomoisky-owned refinery in preference to competitors.
On March 25, 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree dismissing Kolomoyskyi from the post of Dnipropetrovsk RSA Head.
After leaving the Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast post, Kolomoyskyi obtained a U.S. Visa. He moved to mainly reside in Switzerland, also spending time in the United States.
In December 2017, Ukraine’s state-owned PrivatBank sued its former owners Kolomoisky and fellow Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Gennadiy Bogolyubov in the High Court in London for $2.5 billion over massive misappropriation of funds from the bank.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers nationalized PrivatBank on Dec. 19, 2016, amid pressure from the International Monetary Fund and internal instability at Ukraine’s largest bank. Upon nationalization, the government was forced to fill a hole in the lender’s capital.
Stabilizing PrivatBank has amounted to nearly $5 billion in recapitalization payments. Ukrainian government officials, including former National Bank Chief Valeriya Gontareva, allege that Kolomoisky ran an elaborate insider lending scheme to siphon the cash out of the bank over the course of many years.
Comrade “yep” vomits up a loud li’l Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Jewish”) propaganda troll rant about “these jews” in Ukraine.
In fact, the reason why CN articles on Russia and Ukraine are frequently targeted by Hasbara troll army posters is precisely because Western “regime change” assaults on Ukraine and Syria are so closely connected.
Having said that, there certainly are issues with certain Jewish Ukrainian oligarchs who are also dual citizens of Israel.
Oligarch warlord Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Ukraine’s largest employer of Nazi thugs, is a prominent supporter of Ukraine’s Jewish community and the president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine.
In 2010 he was appointed as the president of the European Council of Jewish Communities after promising the outgoing president he would donate $14 million, with his appointment being described as a “putsch” and a “Soviet-style takeover” by other EJCJ board members. Several ECJC board members resigned in protest.
But after members of the ECJC resigned in protest over his unilateral appointment, Kolomoiskyi withdrew his bid. Fellow Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Rabinovich, already an ECJC vice president, quit his post to follow Kolomoiskyi.
In the Spring of 2011, Kolomoiskyi and Rabinovich created a new group with a grand-sounding name, the European Jewish Union.
Based in Brussels, the EJU’s stated aim is to be “a uniting structure for all Jewish communities and organizations throughout Western, Eastern and Central Europe.” It sought to establish a European Jewish Parliament, comprising 120 members modeled on the Israeli Knesset.
The EJU was criticized for its choice of candidates to the Parliament, including comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, international football star David Beckham, Pee Wee Herman, Andrew Grove, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, film director Roman Polanski and others, many of whom never sought nomination nor even knew they had been nominated. Several candidates, including Viviane Teitelbaum, a member of Brussels’ regional parliament and former head of the Belgian Jewish community, upon learning of their nominations, immediately asked to have their names removed from nomination. The European Jewish Congress distanced themselves from the EJU, circulating a memo that they were “not connected in any way to this initiative and do not support it.”
The elections process itself was also criticized. Elections were being conducted over the internet, on the EJU’s own website. Although the election rules limited elections to residents of European countries, with voters restricted to voting for representatives from their own country, the website provided no resources to verify the voter’s nationality other than a bulk eraser provided free by NATO. In at least one case, a North African based journalist was able to register on the site as a Canadian citizen and cast a vote.
The European Jewish Parliament hailed its inauguration on February, 16th 2012 as a “great day for Jews in Europe”.
The EJP logo is modeled on the flag of European Union flag of 12 golden stars on a blue background. Instead the EJP logo uses 11 golden stars with a 12th star being a white Star of David, stylized as on the flag of Israel, on a blue background.
Rabinowich and Joel Rubinfeld, former Secretary General of the Belgian-Israeli Friendship, were elected co-presidents of the EJP.
In January 2014, Rubinfeld co-founded the Belgian League against Anti-Semitism (LBCA). He assumed the office of President of the LBCA. Rubinfeld wrote a chapter on Belgium for the collective work “The new clothes of anti-Semitism in Europe”.
On 2 March 2014, amidst the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov appointed Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
In April 2014 Kolomoyskyi funded the Dnipro, Aidar, Azov, Dnepr 1, Dnepr 2, and Donbas volunteer battalions which terrorized the population of Eastern Ukraine. The units financed by Kolomoyskyi committed war crimes including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, possible executions.
On 24 December 2014, Amnesty International reported that the Dnipro, Aidar and Donbass battalions were blocking humanitarian aid sent from Ukraine reaching the population in the separatist-controlled areas. Amnesty’s acting Director of Europe and Central Asia stated that “Using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime”.
In March 2015, after the dismissal of Oleksandr Lazorko, who was a protege of Kolomoyskyi, as a chief executive of UkrTransNafta, Ukraine’s state-owned oil pipeline operator, men reported to be Kolomoyskyi’s personal militia raided the UkrTransNafta’s headquarters to expel the new government-appointed chief from the office. While Lazorko was in charge the state-owned pipelines had been delivering oil to an Kolomoisky-owned refinery in preference to competitors.
On March 25, 2015, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree dismissing Kolomoyskyi from the post of Dnipropetrovsk RSA Head.
After leaving the Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast post, Kolomoyskyi obtained a U.S. Visa. He moved to mainly reside in Switzerland, also spending time in the United States.
In December 2017, Ukraine’s state-owned PrivatBank sued its former owners Kolomoisky and fellow Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Gennadiy Bogolyubov in the High Court in London for $2.5 billion over massive misappropriation of funds from the bank.
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers nationalized PrivatBank on Dec. 19, 2016, amid pressure from the International Monetary Fund and internal instability at Ukraine’s largest bank. Upon nationalization, the government was forced to fill a hole in the lender’s capital.
Stabilizing PrivatBank has amounted to nearly $5 billion in recapitalization payments. Ukrainian government officials, including former National Bank Chief Valeriya Gontareva, allege that Kolomoisky ran an elaborate insider lending scheme to siphon the cash out of the bank over the course of many years.
Thanks everyone – the discussion here is absolutely fantastic – and so needed.
I would like to contribute a link to an article by the Canadian- Ukrainian leading expert in Ukrainian modern history, prof John-Paul Hymka. He explains a lot.
http://chtyvo.org.ua/authors/Khymka_Ivan-Pavlo/The_History_behind_the_Regional_Conflict_in_Ukraine_anhl/
On the page, press “pdf”.
You know I am not for another war, but the US and other NATO countries are bound by treaty with Ukraine to help defend itself. It was part of an agreement to get Ukraine to give up its nukes after the end of the Soviet Union. It’s the only way they would give them up.
A real war would last a few hours. Russia would do a pincer movement and simply ignore western Ukraine.
Ukraine was/is a manufactured country and when several tribes are forced into a coalition it often does not work. Ironically, Kiev played a large role in early RUSSIAN history. Crimea declared its independence and voted to join Russia being mostly populated by Russians. Other countries have done the same in the past during revolutions. It is a wonder Eastern Ukraine which is mostly Russian did not hold a vote to join Russia, instead only wanting some political autonomy. The deep state often does Not accept defeat but quirtly and sometimes not so quietly continuing to invoke regime change e.g. Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, etc. Successful in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan (why is the US still there?).
Again and again and again I’ve been saying that Putin’s biggest blunder ever, in his entire time in power, was not to have actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 right after Yanukovych was overthrown by Nuland’s Ukranazis. The Duma had given Putin authorisation for military action against the coup junta, the operation could have been speedily achieved with two battalions of Spetsnaz, Yanukovych reinstated, and the troops withdrawn with the clear statement that any future Maidan would mean they would be back and this time to stay. Instead, he asked the Duma to withdraw that authorisation, did not invade, and was still blamed by Amerikastan and its EU slaves for carrying out the selfsame “invasion”. Now Ukraine is a permanent threat in Russia’s underbelly, and while Amerikastani media tomtoms the alleged Russian threat to the apartheid regimes of the three Baltic puppet states (which Moscow could crush easily but does not want anyway), the real threat is via Ukraine. And now when the Ukranazi regime invades Donbass (most probably synchronised with the Russian presidential election) Russia will have a stark choice: either let the Donbass population go under, which will be politically suicidal for Putin, or launch the actual armed invasion for which he’s been blamed, and keep going until Russian tanks are rolling through the streets of Kiev and Kharkov. Only this time it will take multiple army divisions and massive air power, not two battalions of Spetsnaz, and Yanukovych can’t be reinstated afterwards; Russia will have to administer the rump Ukraine at least for some time to come.
The hypocrisy of the Amerikastanis and their European slaves is even more manifest when they support the Saudi Barbarian invasion of Yemen, which is allegedly to restore Hadi, who actually resigned. Yanukovych, of course, never did.
Very true, and I respect your frustration. Joe
I really hope that there is not a war, there are just too many wars going on and instead of the world coming together in the 21st Century, where we should know better, we are repeating the same stupidity of the 20th Century. Also, one thing I find interesting when talking about Ukraine is that many people in the US will dismiss that a coup occurred in Ukraine but will totally believe that Russia interfered in there election. Now as far as I know there were no Russian politicians giving out cookies on the ground, I don’t recall any phone calls from Putin to other Russian politicians about whom they were going to install in Washington, the head of the FSB was not on the ground, and there was not someone who worked for a Russian NGO becoming Secretary of Finance. Meanwhile in Ukraine Victoria Nuland and Pyatt were on the ground, they were discussing whom was to take control of Ukraine, John Brennan who is the head of the CIA was on the ground, and an American who used to work for USAID became Ukraine’s Finance Minister. Also, let us not forget about the US’ long history of coups – people can read about how the US pulled off the coup in Iran in 1953 – propaganda campaigns, I believe hiring protesters and paying opposition politicians etc.
Anyway, I know that was off topic but now that the coup is over I just hope that there can be peace somehow but also the acknowledgement of the coup comes to light.
It wasn’t just the cookies that did it – it was the five billion US Dollars that bought the coup in Ukraine.
Talk about influencing an election! When Uncle Sam does it, it ain’t just talk – it’s delivered in hard cold cash.
I meant to say soft cold (as in a cold check) paper. Hard cash has gone the way of the dodo. We just print whatever we need now…………….. Soon the paper will disappear too.
Along with everything else……………
Joe L –
A most striking :) and relevant comparison!
The February 2014 Maidan Massacre that triggered the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected president Victor Yanukovych was scripted and staged by right wing Ukrainian nationalist groups and the U.S. State Department.
Oscar award winning American documentary film director Oliver Stone gained unprecedented access to the inside story of the 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, who revealed how the U.S. Ambassador and factions in Washington actively plotted for regime change and destabilized the entire region.
Ukraine On Fire (2016)
Executive produced by Oliver Stone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAaMRAplJks
What actually happened in Ukraine in mid-February 2014 (Part 1):
A period of relative calm in the Maidan anti-government demonstrations ended abruptly on 18 February 2014, when protesters and police clashed.
Some 20,000 Euromaidan protesters in Kiev advanced on Ukraine’s parliament in support of restoring the Constitution of Ukraine to its 2004 form, which had been repealed by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine shortly after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president in 2010. Police blocked their path. The confrontation turned violent. Political commentators suggested that Ukraine was on the brink of a civil war. Some areas, including Lviv Oblast, declared themselves politically independent from the central government.
On 19 February, the authorities instituted police checkpoints, restrictions on public transportation and school closures in Kiev, which media referred to as a de facto state of emergency. One member of parliament said in an interview that a state of emergency was de facto implemented nationwide as transportation to the capital was paralyzed.
The 18-19 February violence included numerous sniper shootings which left 28 dead, 10 of whom were police and Berkut troops.
On 20 February, Minister of Internal Affairs Vitaliy Zakharchenko announced he had signed a decree authorizing the use of live ammunition against protesters. Armed assailants were visible among the largely unarmed protesters. Central Kiev saw the worst violence yet, and the death toll in 48 hours of clashes rose to at least 77.
The Ukrainian far-right group Right Sector, then occupying the Hotel Ukraine, co-ordinated the 18-20 February sniper attacks on Instytutska Street, but the deaths were blamed on Yanukovich.
21 February was the most pivotal day in the conflict. It ended with an armed coup d’etat.
In response to the mounting deaths and injuries, Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament Volodymyr Rybak announced that he had signed a parliamentary decree, condemning the use of force and urging all institutions (Ministry of Internal Affairs, Cabinet of Ministers, etc.) to cease immediately all military actions against protesters. The Ukrainian parliament also suspended Zakharchenko from his duties.
Yanukovych signed a compromise deal with opposition leaders which would implement constitutional changes to hand powers back to parliament and early elections, to be held by December.
While Yanukovich was attending the negotiations, an impeachment bill was introduced in Ukrainian Parliament, but no details were provided and the Ukrainian parliament did not vote to impeach Yanukovich according to the legal procedure.
In addition, the Ukrainian Parliament voted for the release of Yulia Tymoshenko in a 310-54 veto-proof vote. The leader of the All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland” political party, Tymoshenko had been convicted in 2011 of embezzlement and abuse of power, sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay the state $188 million. Her prosecution and conviction were viewed by the European Union as politically biased. The EU, and Germany in particular, had repeatedly called for her release as the primary condition for signing the EU Association Agreement.
To release Tymoshenko, the members of the Ukrainian Parliament decriminalized the Article on which she was charged and brought it into compliance with Article 19 of the UN Convention against corruption. That could enable immediate release of Tymoshenko through the corresponding court ruling. However, Yanukovych did not have the opportunity to sign the bill into the law.
During the night of 21 February 2014, Yanukovich left Kiev for Kharkiv to attend a summit of south-eastern regions. Yanukovych claimed that his car was shot at by automatic rifles as he traveled to meet with representatives of local parties in Kharkiv, and that he was forced to move around Ukraine amid fears for the safety of himself and his family.
It is now known, thanks to confessions on Italian TV by three of the snipers, that the actual snipers were hitmen from Saakhashvili’s former security forces, who had been flown in from Georgia to do the job.
What actually happened in Ukraine in mid-February 2014 (Part 2):
During the night of 21-22 February 2014, armed protesters took full control of the government district in central Kiev, including the Parliament, the President’s administration quarters, the cabinet, and the Interior Ministry.
On 22 February, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from his post, on the grounds that he was unable to fulfill his duties, although the legislative removal lacked the number of votes required by Ukraine’s then-current constitution.
The parliament set 25 May as the date for the special election to select Yanukovych’s replacement and, two days later, issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of “mass killing of civilians.”
On February 23, 2014, while in a parliamentary session, a deputy from Tymoschenko’s “Fatherland” party, Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, moved to include in the agenda a bill to repeal the 2012 law “On the principles of the state language policy”. The motion was carried with 86% of the votes in favor–232 deputies in favor vs 37 opposed against the required minimum of 226 of 334 votes. The bill was included in the agenda, immediately put to a vote with no debate and approved with the same 232 voting in favor. The bill would have made Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels.
This attempt to repeal the 2012 law on state language policy was met with great disdain in Crimea and Southern and Eastern Ukraine, provoking waves of protests against the Maidan installed government ultimately culminating with the Crimean crisis.
Passage of the repeal bill was met with regret by the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities expressed concern over possible further unrest. The bill was also criticized by the Ambassador for Human Rights of the Russian foreign ministry. The Hungarian foreign ministry expressed serious concerns, noting that the decision “could question the commitment of the new Ukrainian administration towards democracy”.
After urgently ordering a working group to draft a replacement law on February 27, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov vetoed the repeal bill on 28 February. But the intended political damage was done.
The stage was set for the US/EU armed assault on Russia’s near abroad.
When I press this link, I get the message that the video was removed by the user (whoever they may mean?)
Perhaps a copyright issue with posting the full film online.
Here’s the Official Trailer:
Ukraine on Fire (2016)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBOJtMbGq6g
Thanks!
DVD and video streaming are available at Amazon
Ukraine on Fire (2016)
https://www.amazon.com/Ukraine-Fire-Oliver-Stone/dp/B071L2FSPW
“Despite the mainstream media’s insistence that U.S. President Donald Trump is some sort of compromised Russian lackey, the fact is that at the end of last year, his administration approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. This is a move that clearly infuriates and angers Russia, souring relations between the two countries even more so than they already had been under the Obama administration (and in various stages throughout Trump’s first year in office).
“According to The Washington Post, administration officials confirmed that in December the State Department had approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and other associated parts and accessories to Ukraine […]
“At first, it was reported there had not yet been approval to export the heavier weaponry the Ukrainian government had been asking for, such as anti-tank missiles. However, by the end of December, reports began surfacing that the Trump administration was in fact going to provide 35 FGM-148 Javelin launchers and 210 anti-tank missiles. The Javelin is allegedly one of the most advanced anti-tank systems on the market. […]
“At the time the unrest broke out in 2014, then-NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s comment that the proposed IMF-EU package presented to Ukraine would have been ‘a major boost for Euro-Atlantic security’ suggested that NATO had set its sights on bringing Ukraine into the military alliance. In July of this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Poroshenko in Kiev to further discuss this prospect, already pledging support to Ukraine on some level.
“Now Ukraine’s bid to join NATO seems almost irrelevant, as the U.S. is formally involving itself deeper in the Ukrainian conflict and providing arms to a regime that has flirted with an approval rating lower than 10 percent, all the while provoking Russia to take further measures in response.
“What could possibly go wrong?
“Meanwhile, the Russia-obsessed corporate media continues to peddle the narrative that Donald Trump has turned the United States into a client-state of Russia, even while he directly provokes the former Soviet Union by providing lethal assistance to a country on its border. Not only is Trump maintaining an Obama-era policy, he is aggravating and converting Obama’s Ukraine policy into a much more dangerous one — ultimately aimed at provoking an aggressive response from Russia in the weeks or months to come.”
Trump Continues Obama-Era Saber Rattling With Russia By Arming Ukraine
By Darius Shahtahmasebi
https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-continues-obama-era-saber-rattling-russia-arming-ukraine/236101/
How many times have we seen the formula where the people of a country with State (Publically owned) assets are beaten back into the stone age until they sacrifice those natural monopoly assets at bargain basement prices to the capitalist elites?
From Gilbert:
~ “…On the economic front, the European Union has refused to extend 600 million euros of credit to Ukraine due to corruption. The International Monetary Fund recently refused a tranche of $800 million over failure to introduce reforms. Meanwhile, in 2019 Ukraine is due to start repaying earlier loans. This will come to $14 billion a year, which amounts to half the state budget of Ukraine.” ~
In March 2014, this was in ‘The Telegraph’
~ ‘Windfall for hedge funds and Russian banks as IMF rescues Ukraine’ ~
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
~ “…There will be no haircuts for creditors under the deal, unlike the EU-IMF formula in Greece and Cyprus. This amounts to a bail-out for Russian state banks and Western funds accused of propping up the previous regime and for vulture funds that bought Ukrainian debt cheaply for quick gain.
Tim Ash, from Standard Bank, said: “Ukraine has been the ultimate moral hazard play and it’s cavalier to expect taxpayers to cover this.”
Mr Ash said it has been obvious since 2011 that Ukraine was heading for the rocks, yet funds continued to snap up its bonds, betting that the country was “too big and geopolitically important to fail” and would always be bailed out in the end by Russia or the West.
Franklin Templeton, the global asset group, held $7.3bn of Ukrainian bonds at the end of 2013. Mark Mobius, the group’s chief, said last month: “Our belief is that Ukraine is in somewhat of a sweet spot… We believe they are going to keep friendly/good relations with Russia.”…” ~
Because of their geographical importance, and natural alliances – and, before the staged coup, Russia offered to loan the Ukraine the money, but the West wouldn’t have it.
The West eventually had Christine Lagarde make the loan, and by then she had to go against 65 years of IMF policy to never make loans to a country at war. .. And, a very questionable “civil war?”
Then, she puts terms on the Ukraine that “…amounts to half the state budget..” That certainly looks very much like it was designed to fail. Just how much reform is she looking for from the Ukrainian citizens? ..Talk about a “stick up.”
… And on top of that, after 4 years, the grinding teeth continue to chew on the poor citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions with war, lack of food, and medical supplies. … And, it’s the IMF (the citizens of the world) that is actually funding this?
Now, the D & L citizens are the same people who voted in May of 2014, for Self Determination by 89%. But now that the U.S. is moving in advanced weapons they are considered “… only “occupation administrations” of the Russian Federation on these territories, with Russia identified as an “aggressor.””
And, the people of Crimea, when they voted in March of 2014, they had a 96.77 percent vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation, this with a 83.1 percent voter turnout. (..in 2016, the turnout for Trump & Clinton, was closer to 56%)
… But when those lowly Crimean’s voted for Integration into the Russian Federation they also, according to existing International Law took their some 200 miles of coastline with them. And this coastline is said to be the richest of the Black Sea in terms of oil & gas exploitation. .. Now, who is it that lost out on those investments? .. And without Crimea, just how is the Ukraine suppose to repay their debt to all of the vultures and Hedge funds; as well as now the IMF?
Russia’s coming election is on March 18th. The OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the EU Monitoring Commission have stated that they will not send their representatives to Crimea for monitoring the presidential election in March 2018. The European Union is stating the same position. “Brussels will send about 685 observers to Russia, but definitely none to Crimea.”
The beat goes on for those who see money and bargain basement fire sales, but they never have to feel the real pain and misery on the ground.
cmp,
Thank you to yourself and others at Consortium News who understand the importance of getting to the root cause(s) of unnecessary wars, killing and destruction – applicable to all wars of aggression on Earth, in this instance being Ukraine. In other words … coming to understand how vital to efforts at war prevention-peacemaking is the prerequisite process of thorough analyses leading to identifiers which fully and accurately answer the question: “Why?”
So, why has the situation in that West-East border nation worsened over recent years, increasing the tension and distressing potential for war in Ukraine? It is impossible to ensure any prevention of escalated war and violence without tangibly and clearly coming to a complete understanding of the reasoning methods and tools of the directly-involved groups holding different views and agendas regarding Ukraine’s present and future.
As you point out, perhaps the major source of contention in Ukraine is the opposing force generated over the question of public versus private ownership, and who advocates the closest-to-ideal, most beneficial for the populace mix/formula of public-private ownership, etc. of Ukraine’s natural resources. Or, in other words, the tension in Ukraine predominantly stems from differences in political economy ideology.
International law is the only tool humanity can utilize as a deterrent to criminal wars of aggression.
https://onenessofhumanity.wordpress.com/2017/12/31/2018-the-year-of-peace/
Peace.
What you say makes a lot of sense Jerry. But I think the violent and chaotic struggle for power describes what is going on there now much more than any fine points of political or social philosophy. Politics there is truly being spouted from the “mouth of a gun” (Mao).
Hi Jerry!
That is a fantastic read! I have a tremendous newfound respect for Jutta.
Like Jutta, my older brother, he received his law degree over 30 years ago, and he has dedicated himself to using it for the oppressed and the poor; as well. So, as I was reading Jutta, I couldn’t help but be personally drawn in to his dedication, and his detail with depth of knowledge. Thank god for people like Jutta, who will carry the weight when these generational times by a few measures, are at their most challenging.
I was also reading some of your material. I really liked the Boswell piece! TY! .. And, I ‘am going to follow up and pick up a copy of ‘What Is Art?’ by Tolstoy.
If you are not familiar with David Korten, then I want to recommend ‘The Great Turning, From Empire To Earth Community.’ He is not only a very gifted intellectual, with many initiatives and accomplishments, but one also definitely get’s the sense that his spirituality is very rooted too. You can find out more about him at davidkorten dot org.
And yes, you hit it on the button with public vs private. You know, in fact David just wrote an article that was published in Yes Magazine a few days ago, titled ‘When Economic Growth Indicates Failure’. It’s a little more fundamental to what you and I are talking, but it is most definitely related.
Thank You Jerry!
Mike
The below written statement is normal language within the sport competitive tennis. (Aussie Open, 2018)
The intensity of the contest cranked up in game six. Facing game point, Osaka smacked two winners to bring up a break point – one of three she held in the game – before missing a forehand into the tape. The game would extend for five deuces before Halep eventually held for 3-3.
—
To many who don’t follow the sport religiously, the above paragraph is widely outside their mental purview.(that being said) I must ask,
how much of what’s happening in & to The at large World — is under the control of space-age advanced technology Robber Barons?
The $21billion dollar B-21 bomber is our latest Weapon of Mass Destruction being built by Private Corporations, to be sold to foreign governments for billions in profits.
Death increases, the Haves dominate the have nots in this 21st century where the busi-ness is conducted via computer/instant messaging and money changes hands via an electronic language only understood in an intelligible binary language.
*************
wherefore does thy sincerity lie?
Sincerity, Lie???
sincerity of heart is the way of truth.
you find me/search w/your heart;
today’s political language is as vomit
is as the voices of Mass Murderers/
Military Men and Weapons Manufactures/
Ammunitions Factories/Mass Murders.
****************
****************
I close with aTribute (for example) to
Self-Determinationand the Power of Will.
;
https://ausopen.com/match/simona-Halap-vs-Naomi-Osaka-ws-401
…this is better,
Sorry.
https://ausopen.com/match/Simona-Halep-vs-Naomi-Osaka-WS401#landing-tab=view-5
Hmmm, let’s see . . . “… Washington has also recently started delivering lethal weapons including the Javelin anti-tank missile system free of charge to Kiev.”
The federal government has just shut down due to disagreements over the budget, which seems quite out of control, with our debt growing proportionately.
Yet we seemingly have such a surplus that we can give away foreign and military aid in the billions (are we to the trillions mark yet?).
Hmmm, indeed.
If a Russia/Ukraine war does occur,
it means Hillary’s “foreign policy”
objective will’ve been achieved.
Her camp (Soros)
was all out for war against Putin.
Is that a coincident? Or a construct?
Is the murdered / massacred Czar of Russia
finally avenged? or co-opted again
by the Synagogue-of-Satan?
Doctorow is an alarmist and pro Russian propagandist. Of course, he blames Poroshenko for escalating the conflict, but what is Russia doing in Ukraine?
Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea. Besides running the war from Moscow, Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine to ensure the separatist were not defeated. Does Russia have an inherent right to control the affairs of Ukraine? Only in Doctorow’s mind is he able to ignore who is at fault in this conflict.
I beg your pardon Doctorow’s mindset is well received here, maybe you should read some of the articles here on consortiumnews before making such a comment. Tell us of how Russia caused this human catastrophe in the Ukraine.
“Thanks Curious, and not to beat up on a sleeping dog, but I never mentioned an invasion, such as is the the U.S. usual way of breaking international law. And why could not the Luhansk-Donbass secede from the current Ukraine government.”
If a US invasion breaks international law, then it stands to reason that your standard for the US applies equally to Russia (as in Ukraine). Additionally, why did tens of thousands of people die in Chechnya if the Russians believe so fervently in self determination? Shouldn’t Chechnya be allowed to secede?
The war supported and run by Russia is about undermining the Poroshenko government both politically and economically.
I do believe you should take your question up with the majority of people who live in Chechnya, as to how much they all wanted to separate from Russia.
I also don’t blame the Russians for any lack of love or like of Poroshenko, so what’s your point?
I’m also not advocating that Russia should duplicate what the U.S. has accomplished so often as to when it comes to breaking international law. Although at times I do wish that Putin would take off the cuffs, and sport his military might over these Ukrainian thugs, but I hesitate to encourage any war, of any kind. Plus, since you quoted me, didn’t you see where I said I wasn’t suggesting an invasion, but I questioned to if the Lugansk-Donbass were to be able to secede from Ukraine legally?
Please feel free to give me your opinions to what should be done, and continue to blame Russia if you feel that way. It’s okay, because that’s what debate, and conversation here, should be all about. Just keep it descent if you can. Joe
Thomas,
Let us not forget one of the first items of the Poroshenko regime was to declare Ukraine the national language and the only one taught in schools. This fact alone alienated the ethic Russians in the East. Our CIA rep Brennen visited Ukraine on April 16th (I’m sure he was only interested in some of the Kiev delicacies, or chocolates from Porko)
After his visit, for those who remember, the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine were immediately declared Terrorists. What a coincidence and common to CIA moves around the world. I would like to hear from the likes of John and Ivan this coincidence of events where the head of the CIA actually travels to Ukraine since telephone service must be so bad in the Ukraine, he couldn’t just phone.
To take a peoples language away is another form of ethnic cleansing in case one doesn’t realize this fact. To declare a population on their eastern side of the country as terrorists is another form.
We don’t have to go into Nuland, Stepan Bandera in the Western Ukraine, still honored while other monuments are torn down, the nazi symbols on the Maiden goons’ helmets etc. If these 2 people have no idea of the complexities of just these few points, all other dialogue is mute.
I am interested however if the rumor of Ukraine selling rocket engines to North Korea. If this is even close to more than a rumor it’d ghastly . If true, John and Ivan really need to zip it up and find a good fake facebook page, as was suggested earlier.
My guess is Putin understands international law far better than most people, and especially the corrupt powers in the US of A. Remember when Mad Dog General complained about an SU-35, and 2 Syrian jets violating US airspace in NE Syria? The US has no airspace in Syria, and this is an example of how unknown International Law is even to our highest generals, just to use one example.
“Additionally, why did tens of thousands of people die in Chechnya if the Russians believe so fervently in self determination? Shouldn’t Chechnya be allowed to secede?”
Actually, it was. Have you heard of Khasavyurt peace accord? It included withdrawal of all Russian military forces from Chechnya and essentially gave Chechnya independence. It didn’t work for one reason: Chechnya was governed by a gang terrorists and had no means of existence, so they resorted to what they knew best – robbery. Chechen forces attacked the Russian territory, which led to the Second Chechen War.
Generally, the problem of Chechnya has little similarity with the Donbass situation and the core of it is not that Russia didn’t want it to secede. May I remind you that the Chechens conducted multiple terrorists acts in Russia of the most despicable nature – Donbass did nothing of the sort. And yet in the eyes of the West, the Chechens deserved all the support, and Donbass deserves none. Isn’t that perverse or what?
The war in Donbass is a classic civil war. Russia supports the Russians of Donbass, which is only natural. It would be strange, to say the least, if Russia supported neo-Nazis in Kiev. Even if the Russian government wanted to stay away from the Donbass conflict, and there are indications that it did want to, the Russian public wouldn’t allow that – again, only natural.
Yes, but given Putens’ personal history he has a legitimate dislike (hatred) of Nazis. Add a guesstimate of 20 million dead due to the German army, and I sincerely doubt he has any love for Nazis, as his own family was ruined by them. The torch-bearers from Ukraines’ West must torment him, as he most likely hoped it would be buried with history.
As a personal note, it was very offensive Obama could not pull himself together and honor the dead Russians from WW2 during the anniversary shared by millions. All he could do was to be a pet puddle to the Brits. The Russians deserve a lot of respect from the world for helping to crush Hitler, and receive very little respect, especially from the USA. As our Orangutan Prez in office still believes the US won WW1, and WW2, despite entering the war in Europe circa 1942, but we know Trump is all about winners, despite history staring him in the face. As a country we should have honored the fallen for Russia, and we still should.
**Sorry for the off topic emote but my dad was there and he knew personally the sacrifices of the Red Army to end the scourge of Hitler, and we still are too childish to be statesmen and honor. What Russia did. It’s sad, but an example of the ignorance very prevalent in Washington to this day. I’m not pretended all was tidy, as war shows people at their worst. This is why people paraded after carrying. Signs “ Never Again” and the Nüremberg Trials set a baseline for wars of aggression and a help with a formulation of international law….. all lessons it seems 99% of people in the US have forgotten.
EugeneGur
According to Wikipedia:
“The Moscow treaty caused great jubilation in Chechnya, but the key issue of independence was not resolved”
After the second Chechen war, Russia created a new constitution for Chechnya. So Russia opposed independence for Chechnya.
From 1999 to 2009, numerous insurgent assaults in Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Georgia, as well as attacks against civilians in Russia, were launched by the usual Western-backed motley crew of Salafist-takfiri terrorists and mercenaries.
By 2009, large-scale fighting had ceased in the Caucasus region, but the terrorists have continued to receive CIA financing. Thousands were re-deployed among Al Qaeda and ISIS forces in Syria and Iraq. And battalions of terrorists from the Caucasus have been fighting among Kyiv’s forces against the people of eastern Ukraine.
Thomas, I would warmly recommend the following article to you:
h*tps://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/02/08/how-ukraine-annexed-crimea-frank-conversation-with-nikki-haley.html
Everything is not quite according to the western narrative. Ukraine inherited the Crimean Autonomous Republic when the USSR fell apart. There were two referendums by Crimeans, in the 90’s, to restore the autonomy, and not be part of the Ukraine. Ukraine ignored the people’s will and restricted the autonomy. Bloody details in the article.
“Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea.”
A grave simplification. Did Russia send tanks through Ukraine to invade Crimea and crush the resistance of the Crimeans with violence? No. The Russian Black Sea Naval Base on Crimea housed some tens of thousands of Russian military personnel. Of course you know this, just try to ignore. I won’t repeat the whole, well-known story about NATO advances in Eastern Europe against the oral agreements at the end of WW2, and why the Crimean Naval base, which Russians were renting from Ukraine, was absolutely essential to Russia.
Actually, I’m pleased to see some opposition voices on this site among the comments. It is useful to hear their thoughts and be able to inform them of other viewpoints and point to other sources of information than MSM. It is called civilized discussion. Don’t chase them away with rude accusations of being trolls, they will gain much in taking part in the exchange of ideas on the site. (Now I might be a naive idealist, sorry.)
Thanks. Alternative viewpoints are critical. Russian special forces secured Crimea. They invaded from mainland Russia by sea. Additionally, Russia secured a lease from the Ukraine government. The Russian base was under no threat.
Regardless, Putin broke international law by holding an illegal referendum and illegally annexing a part of Ukraine (which Russia recognized by signing the Budapest Memorandum).
How many Crimeans died during its “annexation”? How many die when the U.S. invokes its so benign sounding “R2P”?
You say Putin ran that election. That is mere assertion, not fact. The Crimeans say they originated and ran the referendum, then approached Russia (which, btw, is under constant threat from Washington and NATO) with a petition for reunification with that country. There was no forcible “annexation.” Crimea was an independent republic in union with Ukraine. It had every right to hold that referendum, especially in the wake of the lawless coup held in Kiev, Budapest Convention or not. The Ukrainian government signatory to that document was overthrown, but you want to have things both ways–out with the legal government but enforcement of its treaties, on a pick and choose basis. You are not to be taken seriously.
Realist
“You say Putin ran the election. That is assertion, not fact. The Crimeans say they originated and ran the referendum, then approached Russia…..with a petition for reunification with that country”
According to “Putin. War” (Boris Nemtsov):
“In an interview for the documentary film “Crimea: Road to the Motherland”…….,the Russian President directly acknowledged that he had personally led the operations of the Russian forces in Crimea. Putin also recounted when and under what circumstances he gave the order for the start of the annexation”.
Try reading chapter 3 in the report by the murdered journalist. On page 14, a good account is portrayed by the former Defense Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (Igor Girkin) about the “voluntary” return of Crimea.
Your retort establishes nothing, Mr. Gilroy. Putin obviously has detractors in his country just as Donald Trump has his in the United States and both are willing to fabricate facts to facilitate their objectives. Ever hear of Michael Wolff? Why should we believe a word of his slander? Or anything in the Steele dossier? Both have already been discredited except in the minds of raving partisans. Nemstov was an outspoken neoliberal agitator in Russia. If they didn’t allow free speech, you wouldn’t have heard anything of him or his accusations against Putin. Who killed him? Probably the CIA to put a cloud of suspicion on Putin. Putin is hardly as stupid as the CIA, hasn’t been implicated in any murders, and doesn’t need to kill such gadflies to govern effectively. Ask Americans like Gilbert Doctorow and Stephen F. Cohen who have actually lived in Russia, studied Russia their entire lives and have extensive connections there what the best evidence on the issue is, and they will tell you the accusations are all unfounded slander. The oh-so-clever CIA seems to think it and its neocon agenda will be the beneficiary of these intended frame-ups, so on the principle of “cui bono?” I’d say they are the killers and your narrative on the Crimean referendum is poppycock.
PS Thomas, they were already there. Please read.
Even Putin admitted they brought in bRussian military forces to secure Crimea. Putin still has not admitted that Russia invaded Eastern Ukraine although it’s well documented (see The much hated Bellingcat, for example).
Thomas, it would be interesting if you could provide a link to Putin’s “admission”.
The garrison in Sevastopol took part as I recall, but I recently read that perhaps paratroopers from Pskov also took part.
Whichever way, considering the coup in Kiev, the strategic location and base, and the massive Russian majority, can you blame the Russians for this? Rather, the West must have realised beforehand this would happen. There is zero doubt that the vast majority in the peninsula were and are in favour of joining Russia.
I found confirmation that the 76th Pskov paratrooper division did take part in Crimea.
On the home page of the Russian ministry of defence an article (in Russian) deals with the visit on Aug 22, 2014, by Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu to Pskov, where he stated: “This year, you also [the paratrooper division] honourably carried out special tasks in regard to the return of the Republic of Crimea as a part of Russia”.
https://function.mil.ru/news_page/world/more.htm?id=11980809
There is apparently nothing secret about that.
Comrade “ThomasGilroy”, our zealous Atlantic Council / Bellingcat fanboy, wants to stop the “hate” from all those “hating haters” who refuse to acknowledge the brilliance of Eliot Higgins.
In fact, fake “independent investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins and his “Bellingcat method” of “open source investigation” has become a comedy meme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv7R1IAmWT8
As Ray McGovern pointed out in “Propaganda, Intelligence and MH-17” on Consortium News (August 17, 2015):
“The key difference between the traditional ‘Intelligence Assessment’ and this relatively new creation, a ‘Government Assessment’ is that the latter genre is put together by senior White House bureaucrats or other political appointees, not senior intelligence analysts. Another significant difference is that an ‘Intelligence Assessment’ often includes alternative views, either in the text or in footnotes, detailing disagreements among intelligence analysts, thus revealing where the case may be weak or in dispute.
“The absence of an ‘Intelligence Assessment’ suggested that honest intelligence analysts were resisting a knee-jerk indictment of Russia, just as they did after the first time Kerry pulled this ‘Government Assessment’ arrow out of his quiver trying to stick the blame for an Aug. 21, 2013 sarin gas attack outside Damascus on the Syrian government.”
The primary source in both “Government Assessment” episodes, both the 2013 chemical attack in Syria and the 2014 crash of MH-17 in Ukraine, the one person in common who generated the “pseudo-intelligence product, which contained not a single verifiable fact”, was British blogger and media darling Eliot Higgins.
And
“In fact, fake “independent journalist” Eliot Higgins and his Bellingcat method” of “open source investigation” has become a comedy meme.”
Maybe Bellingcat’s use of open source investigation is a joke to you – but apparently not to the Russian military (BBC, 10-5-2017):
“The Russian defense ministry has drafted a law to ban social media posts by professional soldiers and other military personnel on security grounds.
The bill says photos, videos and other material uploaded to the internet can reveal military details useful to the enemy. Automatic geolocation can show where a military unit is deployed”
I certainly agree with that assessment – like Buk missile launchers brought into Ukraine from Russia! Social media also has helped prove the invasion of Eastern Ukraine by Russia in August 2014 (still denied by Putin).
Nothing vindicates Bellingcat’s investigations like that order from the Russian Ministry of Defence although the geolocation posted social media photos speak for themselves.
Geolocation of soldiers videos and photos presents legitimate security concerns for all professional armed forces.
This has been acknowledged by the United States military, for example here in 2012
https://www.army.mil/article/75165/geotagging_poses_security_risks
The falsifiability of geotagging data is yet another concern.
Nothing about the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense actions in any way “vindicates Bellingcat’s investigations” as pathetic fanboy “ThomasGilroy” loudly shrieks.
And after almost four years of repeatedly debunked Bellingcat shenanigans, the Ukrainian armed forces continue to be the most likely culprits of the MH-17 shootdown.
So keep it coming, fanboy.
I always claimed that the USUK Government (the alphabet soup of agencies) generates more conspiracy theories then any other source on the planet. The second biggest source is the Government’s NGO (LOL) Bellingcat. The conspiracy theory disconnects the connected things and connects the disconnected things. Thus the rule that the Russian Military established even after the same rule was established by the US and most other Western militaries, becomes proof of the Russian involvement in the shoot-down of a civilian airliner. I think it was the Realist who wrote – why look for a BUK coming all the way from Russia (secretly but uncovered in broad daylight, on a scenic route through towns and villages, ready to be photographed) when there were tens of such systems in Ukraine opeareted by the Ukrainian military?
Now I would buy lingerie for the one woman in my life from Mr Higgins, but I would not buy his analysis. This is because I have been an analyst my whole professional life and clearly recognise his intention to prove some agenda instead of do a dispassionate and objective analysis of facts. Also, in my professional life I have never seen someone successfully jump from a sales career of any kind, least of all from lingerie sales, into data analysts mainly because the skill set required for two professions is totally opposite. This is why I am convinced that Mr Higgins is still a salesman and not an analyst, just flogging off different products.
Good points Lisa. We learn from listening to and responding to our antagonists. They make us think our positions out clearly and forcefully. And our dialogs are food not just for any two of us so involved, but provide reasoned answers for newcomers to these investigative perspectives, who might wish to use such methods in dealing with their skeptical or brainwashed friends. As my Tibetan friends say, “Your worst enemy is your best teacher!”
Do you think if you spout your neocon propaganda often enough that rational people will come to believe it?
Russia is not attempting to control the affairs of Ukraine, it is acting in a strictly defensive reactive posture against Washington and NATO who orchestrated the coup in Kiev, planned to seize Russia’s greatest naval asset at Sevastopol, moved NATO troops to Russia’s very borders, holding endless war games with them, and ringed Russia’s perimeter with nuclear tipped missiles mere hundreds of miles from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Who is the aggressor? Any objective rational person would say it has been Washington and its NATO vassals. Apparently, Washington doesn’t believe that even Russia itself is within Russia’s sphere of influence, yet the whole world should be Washington’s backyard and plaything. You defend aggression and tyranny and call it freedom and democracy. You win today’s award for Maestro of Doublethink.
No one can deny the US role in the coup. No one can also deny that NATO advanced to the border of Russia. On the other hand, no one forced any Eastern European country to join NATO and the EU. It’s the bullying and domination by the USSR and by Russia which underlies the distrust of Russia.
No one can also deny the role of Russia to dominate Ukraine for the past 100 years. Russia threatened to destroy the Ukraine economy if Ukraine went with the EU in 2013. According to the Guardian, economic advisor to Putin, Sergei Glazyev, threatened to support a separatist uprising if Ukraine chose the EU. It was the ( Yanukovych) Berkut police which instigated the violence which led to the coup – and to the counter violence by the far right organization, the Right Sector.
This was simply an intelligence failure by the FSB.
Still doesn’t fly, slick. Eastern Europe may not have had a gun put to their heads by NATO and the EU, but they have been enticed with so many other false promises of economic benefits, respect and equal status by the West, very little of which has been realised. Think all is rosy amongst America’s European vassals? Google “Visegrad Group.” Besides, since the cold war ended there has been no need for NATO. George H.W. Bush personally promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand one centimeter to the east of a unified Germany. Yeltsin applied for membership in NATO during the Clinton administration and was rejected because Washington feared Russia would have too much influence in the organization. But you know all these inconvenient things.
“No one can deny the role of Russia to dominate Ukraine for the past 100 years” Really? Ukraine was part of Russia for nearly all of its existence. The Russian culture and polity originated in Ukraine. When the Soviet Union existed Ukrainians had enormous power and influence within the central government. Several Ukrainians actually held the chairmanship of the Communist Party, including at least Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev. In reality, it seems that Ukraine has sought to dominate the much larger Russia since it was given the status of an independent republic within the Soviet Union.
These days I’d give very little credibility to anything the Guardian publishes on Russia, it is about as counterfactual as the New York Times or the Bezos Post when it comes to reportage on that part of the world. You can obviously assert without evidence that Putin and Russia threatened to destabilise Ukraine if it joined the EU, but the fact is Ukraine was simply offered a much better financial deal by Putin and Russia than by the EU and the IMF. Even Barack Obomber’s government didn’t make your contention part of its phony narrative. And, OBTW, the real evidence, such as has been allowed to come to light in the face of tenacious stonewalling by the Kiev regime, does not implicate Yanukovych whatsoever in the violence that flared in the Maidan.
So, basically, most of the points in your narrative, Mr. Gilroy, are ficticious. They are the same fabrications that the CIA and Washington have been peddling through the mainstream media propagandists for onto four years now. And, I don’t think even you believe a tenth of what you say.
“Really? Ukraine was part of Russia for nearly all of its existence”
You seem to forget about the Holomodor- and the recognition by the Ukraine government of the Holodomor under Yushchenko as a genocide. Ethnic Ukrainians have resented Russian domination for the past 100 years or longer. As you well know, some Ukrainians fought for Germany in WWII as a result. Ethnic Ukrainians resent Russian domination. The FSB (and GRU) entirely missed this. When Yanukovych tried to crush the rebellion with violence, it backfired.
I agree that Russia offered a very good deal for Ukraine – but without a future. Ukraine’s Economy was contracting in 2013 and the Customs Union was hardly a bright economic future for Ukraine – and Yanukovych had promised closer ties with the EU.
Read “Summit of Failure. How the EU lost Russia over Ukraine” (der Spiegel):
“Putin also threatened to launch a trade war that would drive an already fragile Ukrainian economy to ruin”
You can spend all this week talking about Ukrainian influence over Russia, but it is Russia which is occupying Ukrainian territory in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
“Who killed him (Nemtsov)? Probably the CIA to put a cloud of suspicion on Putin.” My addition in parenthesis
Putting aside that ridiculous accusation, Nemtsov was willing to die to expose the truth surrounding Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. The report is well documented (“Putin. War”). Read the section on MH17. Some rather stubborn people still believe that Ukraine shot down the passenger jet. By the way, seven journalists at Novaya Gazeta have also met the same fate as Nemtsov. More CIA hits?
Thomas, nationalism in Ukraine originated in the north west of Ukraine under Polish rule. There were periods of Russification in the late 19th century in the eastern Russian part. After the revolution, Ukrainian language and culture were given much encouragement, until around 1930, when the situation worsened.
During the war, the Nationalists collaborated with Hitler, contributing to the holocaust, wiped out the Polish population (the former rulers) and fought against their fellow Ukrainians in the red army.
Now, of course Western Ukrainians should have their culture and language. But so should the eastern Ukrainians have the right to their language (Russian) and their culture. Don’t you think?
Also, the work of historian Dr Katchanovski suggests that the shooting on Maidan came from buildings controlled by the opposition.
I needed to check on the Great Famine in the USSR in 1932 – 1933, Ru Golodomor, Ukr Holodomor.
According to the BBC Russian Service, the Great Famine hit Ukraine, South Russia and Kazakhstan. 3 – 3.5 of the up to 7 million deaths were in Ukraine. The reason for the famine was the scale of acquisition by the Soviet power of grain from the collective farms. The BBC underlines that whether this measure was used to conduct a genocide specifically towards the Ukrainian population is bitterly debated by historians and politicians. 23 countries have recognised it as a genocide against Ukrainians, among them Italy, Canada, Poland and USA.
I don’t know who is “moderating” this blog, but why was my detailed point-by-point refutation of Gilroy’s last bit of nonsense removed without also deleting his entry? Perhaps because I characterized him with the name the Polish folks I knew in Chicago used to describe fools. That’s no reason, as it was highly apt. He writes like one of those Russian haters. The world will never be safe until the vast majority of Eastern Europeans get past their pathological Russophobia.
“ThomasGilroy” posts propaganda broadcast by the Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank, and the bogus “investigation reports” of Eliot Higgins and the Bellingcat disinformation website.
Fake “independent investigative journalist” Higgins was principal co-author of the May 2015 Atlantic Council “report” on Ukraine.
Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a co-author with Higgins of the Atlantic Council report on Ukraine, effusively praised Higgins’ efforts to bolster anti-Russian propaganda.
Wilson stated, “We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none of it provided by government sources. And it’s thanks to works, the work that’s been pioneered by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we’ve been able to use social media forensics and geolocation to back this up.”
Atlantic Council video presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU0kuHI6lNg
(see minutes 35:10-36:30)
However, the Atlantic Council claim that “none” of Higgins’ material was provided by government sources is an obvious lie.
Higgins’ primary “pieces of evidence” are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.
Higgins and the Atlantic Council work in support of the Pentagon and Western intelligence’s “hybrid war” against Russia.
Higgins’ fake “online investigations” are designed to bolster “regime change” efforts in Ukraine and Syria.
Abe
Thankfully there is a simple solution to testing the voracity of Bellingcat investigations. They are open source so you can geolocate their social media pictures for yourself. You can disprove their accusations easily with a little work. Anybody can – even the Russian government!
Instead, it was Bellingcat which proved the social media pictures had been altered. The frauds happened to be the Russian Ministry of Defense in their July 21st 2014 press conference.
Only the willfully blind deny that MH17 was downed by the separatists or the Russian military operating the Buk missile system.
Predictably, “ThomasGilroy” resorts to rhetoric rather than facts.
Higgins claims to have “indisputable” open source “evidence” that MH-17 was destroyed by a Buk missile supplied by Russia. But his fake “fact check” and “verification” scams have not only been disputed but repeatedly disproven.
Higgins and the Bellingcat site provides a guide for accessing imagery in Google Earth, claiming that “the findings of Bellingcat regarding the July 21 Russian MoD satellite images will be reaffirmed, along with a walk-through for anyone to verify Google Earth imagery via free and precisely dated image previews on Digital Globe”.
Dr. Neal Krawetz, founder of FotoForensics, has pointed out Bellingcat’s “faulty analysis” of photographs and satellite imagery. Krawetz called Higgins’ Bellingcat report, “Forensic Analysis of Satellite Images”, a “how to not do image analysis”.
Krawetz again pointed that Higgins “reached a conclusion that was not supported by the error level analysis”
https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/729-All-Mouth,-No-Trousers.html
In short, Higgins proved nothing at all.
Apparently Higgins set up the Bellingcat disinformation website to launder propaganda for the MH-17 operation.
On 15 July 2014, the day of the airstrike on the separatist-held town of Snizhne in eastern Ukraine, and a few days before the MH-17 crash, Higgins launched the Bellingcat disinformation website.
Vice News, Rupert Murdoch’s 70 million dollar Gen Y-targeted media channel, immediately crowed about how “Citizen Journalists Are Banding Together to Fact-Check Online News”.
The United States and the EU used the dramatic 17 July 2014 downing of MH-17 to justify a third round of sanctions against certain sectors of Russia’s economy. Canada, Japan, Australia, Norway, Switzerland and Ukraine also announced expanded sanctions against Russia.
But keep posting “ThomasGilroy”. You supply opportunities to review the many hilarities of Higgins and Bellingcat.
Abe
Oh, I seem to have missed where Krawetz showed the geolocated social media photos which followed the Buk missile launcher from Russia to Ukraine and back to Russia were incorrectly geolocated. Then again, the Dutch investigation also pointed the finger at the separatists based on a long investigation (oh I know, the whole world opposes poor Russia).
Then the (Russia) murdered journalist Nemtsov in “Putin. War” also determined with plenty of sources that it was a Russian-supplied Buk (to the separatists) which downed the passenger jet. He was murdered because of his commitment to the truth. The Russian Ministry of Defense put out false information and doctored photos (see bellingcat!) in their July 2014 news conference.
As I said, you have to be willfully blind……
Higgins and Bellingcat demonstrate the old maxim of Garbage In, Garbage Out (GIGO) on a regular basis.
After nearly four years, the evidentiary value of all those Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat “digital forensics” scams remains near zero.
Higgins and Bellingcat ignore the reality that social media photos and video can easily be faked.
In fact, digital data is notoriously vulnerable to manipulation, and technical tolls to produce and distribute fake video and photographic imagery is proliferating.
American and European intelligence communities hide their complete lack of satellite imagery or any other substantive intelligence evidence, preferring to rely on “opportunities” provided by the endless “digital forensics” scams of Higgins and Bellingcat.
And Higgins’ work product continues to be filtered through frequent Bellingcat “reports”, uncritically publicized by the Atlantic Council and Bellingcat’s obliging “First Draft” coalition propaganda “partners”.
A former acolyte of Boris Yeltsin, Boris Nemtsov was assassinated in February 2015. As the Maidan coup d’etat had amply demonstrated, Western-backed opposition forces are highly adept at manufacturing “martyrs” when needed.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/files/Nemtsov%20Tymoshenko.jpg
This would be like a “war” between the US and Iraq; a total mismatch. And as Doctorow says, Russia has no viable alternative. The Russian Federation has enormous potential, especially when yoked with China, as a new empire charged with maintaining order in half of the world, but right now they are under existential threat of being absorbed into the world corporatocracy. They will not allow Ukrainian Nazis to take over the whole of the country.
Gregory you know this, but Russia’s greatest strength is built around it’s defenses of it’s huge boarders. With the shape that NATO members are currently in with each other, and the U.S. stretched out (remember Trump ain’t Biden) Ukraine would do itself a favor to settle the hell down. Another way to put it, all this talk about a Russian invasion, well when and if Russia decides to invade the Ukraine the Kiev junta will know it’s been invaded. There will be little to debate, if this Russian invasion ever comes to be. Joe
From the frontline, Donbass, DPR, Ukraine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCk09W0eFgw
Thanks, that was revealing, and it came from a common soldier defender of all things.
Yes, a very intelligent, articulate common soldier from Western Europe who saw the same injustices we see and write about on this blog. Who among us would leave all our possessions, family, friends and country behind to literally put our lives on the line to help right a great wrong being imposed on foreigners in a distant land by our own country? Now he is a trooper I can support. Not the mercenaries and contractors from America serving as hired killers in the service of neocon warmongers and neoliberal fat cat elites.
Barack Obomber, Smirking Joe Biden, and all their henchmen who perpetrated this war and the hell-on-earth in Libya and Syria must ultimately be brought to justice. Convict them after they are dead if need be, and condemn them in the history books. Dubya, Cheney and their minions should be next in line for their crimes against humanity in the Middle East, as well as Bill Clinton for instituting wars to destroy Yugoslavia and to distract from the Monica scandal. Mr. Hilebrand, from the video, is a hero, the named “leaders” are all craven fiends.
Realist I know you and I are not that far apart in age. My question to you is, do you think we will live long enough to see the right kind of justice served? Joe
I doubt it, Joe, especially if the neocons get their war with Russia.
Exposing Oz Katerji And The UK Based Pro FSA And White Helmets Terrorist Propaganda Networks Operating In The United Kingdom
https://clarityofsignal.com/2017/10/25/exposing-oz-katerji-and-the-uk-based-pro-fsa-and-white-helmets-terrorist-propaganda-networks-operating-in-the-united-kingdom/
Newsweek Nazi Hypocrisy Exposed: Juxtaposed Articles Highlight Nazi Glorification and Obfuscation Conducted by ‘News’ Propaganda Outlet
https://clarityofsignal.com/2018/01/05/newsweek-nazi-hypocrisy-exposed-juxtaposed-articles-highlight-nazi-glorification-and-obfuscation-conducted-by-news-propaganda-outlet/
I think it is important to put this into a broader context. The US led Western Empire has one and only one goal, the same goal it has had sense August 6, 1945. “Global full spectrum domination.” The countries which have not submitted to the Empire are China, Russia, North Korea and Iran (of course there is Venezuela but that is minor). These countries are surrounded by Imperial military might, missals nuclear weapons troops bases – everything the trillion dollar a year army can produce.
It appears the Empire is now in the provocation stage, it is trying to get a response to get something started. In Ukraine, in the South China Sea, in the Middle East toward Iran they take provocative actions day after day. The banning of Russia from the Olympics is another provocation which Russia deflected.
After 73 years of daily slaughter, the Korean war, Vietnam (where the US used for years chemical weapons) the interventions in more than 80 countries – and again with emphasis killing people in multiple locations around the world EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR 73 YEARS and counting.
All that is required is another Gulf of Tonkin incident. War with one will mean war with all four.
What is the most certain is that the Empire is not about to abandon its primary goal “Global full spectrum domination.”
This is exactly correct and relevant Babyl-on. The Sickos behind the American Empire interpret other nation’s desires for peace as weakness to be exploited. They are now playing the dangerous game of poke the Bear, on this faulty basis. The red lines warned of however are all too real. Russia has demonstrated more real backbone for war, if that must be, than the US has ever shown. If forced to do so, the Bear will give it’s tormentors more than they bargained for. The great danger for Humanity is that the cowardly bully Empire, unable to accept defeat, will kick over the chess board and fire all it’s nukes, as a final demonstration of it’s basic insanity, and unwillingness to surrender the dream of world domination.
Generally true, although it is remarkable that the US pursues domination primarily for entertainment and domestic political advantage. It has enslaved its people to debt for imperialism having mostly personal gains for gangsters of the zionist/KSA/MIC/WallSt/media and their political/military bully boys, and the people increasingly see that. I agree that “the Empire is not about to abandon its primary goal” but am unsure how many really seek imperial domination vs. the advantages of appearing to do that.
The latest bully “provocation stage” has been remarkably unsuccessful, both due to restraint of others and the lack of any real advantage for the US (except in getting zionist/KSA bribes to US politicians for Mideast wars). All are fortunate that the current threat blustering has revealed this. Due to the extensive and unconstitutional US secret wars, it is not yet clear whether Trump intends the lack of major overt aggression.
US opponents apparently see this era as the grumbling and ranting of the US tyrant surrounded, discredited, and weakening. Whether the US will fake up a new war provocation like the Gulf of Tonkin incident is unclear. A small shoot-down would not be sufficient, and the largest shoot-down MH-17 did not work either. WMD false-flag fakes have not worked. Another 9/11 would demand a response, but the public is skeptical of blame games, and sees no grounds for major wars on dubious pretenses.
Sam F, I think you are right about international perception of the US as a tyrannical bully on its last legs that can be ignored. But it may wishful thinking that domestically the public could not be tricked again into supporting more foreign conflict.
The MSM here is near monolithic and even thinking people have lost their way. For example all of my in-laws, very highly educated and well-read, completely buy into the Russiagate conspiracy theory and personify Syria as Assad (who must be countered of course). Recall Bush Junior’s “with us or with the terrorists” mantra… So don’t underestimate the appeal to the US public of jingoistic and simplified black-and-white presentations.
And since US diplomatic and economic muscle has weakened, a “Fire and Fury” response to the next Gulf of Tonkin may be seen as the only “patriotic” option. I hope to hell enough of my fellow Americans wake up in time to avoid what is planned for us.
A better world is possible.
“….am unsure how many really seek imperial domination vs. the advantages of appearing to do that.”
The American Empire and it’s domination of the world already exists. The Empire seeks to expand it’s sphere of domination and the totality of that Rule to the greatest degree possible. You could say that at this stage of Empire’s growth, it is like capitalism (one of it’s primary dynamics) – it’s growth is inspired by this ultimate goal, whether it is ever completely and finally realized or not. The mythic (but also very real) goal of one man having all the wealth of the world, and absolute rule over every human on Earth is at the core of the whole history of humankind. This is a paternalistic, authoritarian image deep in human consciousness that has been a curse on all of us, and threatens to spell our extinction as a species unless we can understand it, and grow beyond it. To worship this insane ideal is enough to guarantee our collective demise. This sick dream is at the heart of fascism. This same tragic flaw is why so much power is invested in the heads of government around the globe. Real egalitarian, cooperative government has been crushed and defeated throughout history by the power crazy would be rulers and empire builders. History is largely the story of their “exploits.”
Babylon, I see one missing point in this analysis. The U.S. PR and Marketing industries have good reason to believe they can sell Americans anything. So if the USA feels the need for foreign misadventures they will do it and will mold public opinion after the fact. So far no one is responding to the provocations, and wisely so (except now Erdogan). On the other hand, the more they get away with these little acts of war, the more brazen they become. Their presence in Syria being an perfect example. The answer is the unthinkable, but hard to see where else we are headed. Like WWI, we have globaloney. We have the wealthy elites all over the world doing just wonderfully for themselves. They all are worshipping the same god – in this case neoliberalism. And we have all these countries with new advance technology weaponry. Similar conditions to the buildup to The Great War.
The Americans promise a lot to other Governments they suppose to be friends with. People, learn from history with our U.S. Government regarding intervention of war and peace. Remember Vietnam, Iraq, Chile, (A. Pinochet), the Sandinistas, Ukraine. Promises from the U.S. equals downfall Ukraine.
The Americans has been organising coups for years against other governments. The biggest mistake the Ukrainian Gov’t made was to let the U.S., England and NATO talk them into getting rid of it’s NUCLEAR WEAPONS! If Ukraine still had their nukes, they will still have the Crimea and No trouble in eastern Ukraine.
Do you really think that irrational lot is to be trusted in the least with nukes? Have you seen more delusional national governments? Well, yes you probably have, but I wouldn’t trust them with nukes either.
If the nuclear powers had allowed Ukraine to have their nukes, which is utterly unthinkable, Ukrainian oligarchs would probably quickly have transformed the nukes into money, to overfill their pockets. Just think how many eager foreign buyers there would have been.
Ukraine under the leadership of Leonid Kravchuk sold the Soviet leftover weapons to various sides of the Yugoslav war in the 90’s + to many African states. With such past, one shouldn’t really trust them with any new weapons, like the US seems to do.
(source for Ukrainian weapons enterprises: M.Glenny, “McMafia, Crime Without Frontiers”, 2009, an excellent, depressing report by a British journalist, not only on Ukraine but crime on all continents)
Walter – I lived in Ukraine – those Nukes would have been sold off within the first 10 yrs after the CCCP fell apart. Remember the movie Nicolas Gage played as the Gunrunner Victor Bouton? Well, the movie was spot on when he said the break-up of the Sov. Union is a godsent – everything will be for sale. And everything is still for sale Walt – Everything. Hell, I moved to Russia !
That would then mean that Nazi’s would now have nukes….yeah, that would have been great news (not).
I am glad that no-one mentioned that in theory Yanukowitch could have responded to Maidan financiers by lobbying a few nukes at US and Israel. This is because Yanukowitch was a corrupt SoB but he would have never used the nukes. Yet, the coup winners would have found a great use for them. In a perverse way, Ukraine having nukes would have probably saved it from the US/Israeli coup because it would have been too much risk.
In March 2014, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko proposed launching a special headquarters that would elaborate military responses to “threats”. In a leaked 28 March 2014 phone conversation with Nestor Shufrych, former deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Tymoshenko said in reference to the secession of Crimea: “It’s about time we grab our guns and go kill those damn Russians together with their leader”.
Regarding the other 8 million Russian Ukrainians, Tymoshenko expressed her sincere desire to “burn them with nuclear weapons” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXooBkkCMP0
In April 2014, Ukraine’s acting President Olexander Turchynov announced the start of an “anti-terrorist operation” directed at the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine. Tymoshenko, who supported Ukraine joining the EU and NATO during the U.S.-backed “Orange Revolution” back in 2004, campaigned during the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election on a pro-NATO platform.
On 26 April 2014, EU-favorite Tymoshenko declared that Ukraine “must be a member of NATO”, insisting that “NATO is the best choice for Ukraine”. Tymoshenko came a distant second behind US-favorite Petro Poroshenko in the 25 May election. Poroshenko immediately intensified the military assault in eastern Ukraine.
Unbelievable.
Now Consortium News has become a forum for putin’s propagandists.
Kiselyov is putin’s propagandist, who once boasted on TV that russia could turn the US into “a heap of ashes.”
A normal law adopted by Ukraine’s parliament which states what everyone knows (even the russians), that russia is the aggressor and occupies the Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, is now a pretext for the russian army to invade even further because the law (WTH?) “must be quickly countered to prevent deeper intervention by the United States.”
Who sent you Ivan to push your propaganda? I might add you’re not very good at it, and I strongly suspect you’ll find no converts here.Too smart, and well informed to buy what you’re selling, but try Facebook, no one seems to know much about history over there, and they don’t much like it, so no doubt many will swallow your fairy tale.
Hello russian troll!!! :-0)
Keep spouting your nonsens, no one who is even half serious in the West listens to you, so keep wasting your time.
The West has rightly placed russia UNDER SANCTIONS for your barbaric aggression and invasion of Ukraine.
And russia is going down the drain in the hands of that useless, incompetent little twerp putin.
Russia quite pointedly does not want to control or occupy your shithole country, Ivan. It’s why Putin immediately counseled the Donbass republics against seceding from Ukraine or even holding the plebiscite that led to the secession. He sternly refused to even consider annexing Donetz or Lugansk. So, what the hell are you babbling about? Kiev was the aggressor that took military action against the Donbass republics who have not attacked outside their defensive perimeters. Educate yourself and either learn the truth or stop lying and admit it.
Oh, hello other putin troll. ;-)
But russia and your pederast putin HAVE ADMITTED that they occupy the Crimea, so they are already occupying part of Ukraine. They admitted this after first LYING about using their military in the Crimea, THEN putin ADMITTED IT! lol
What I like about you russians is how pathetically stupid you are in your lies. You think the rest of the world is like your russia, where you can lie and lie and get away with it. But the whole civilized world has turned against you and your barbaric dictatorship, run by a demented squirt named putin. Sanctions against russia, the Magnitsky black lists, you all deserve it! And they will stay in place until the russian federation breaks apart and this aggressive, barbaric little empire is no more.
So, now I’m a Russian troll? Just for the record, asshole, I was born and raised in Chicago, so I know your despicable kind, since you have brought your hatreds and animosities with you to the United States and Canada. I have always lived in the (now quite effed up) U.S.A. and presently reside in Florida, am an old man and have seen much more history than you–based on your impetuous and childish interpretation of events. I have not a trace of Russian blood–23&Me says so quite definitively.
What is most worrisome about you, ya murderous jagov, is that you are willing to blow up the world to fulfill your Hitlerian delusions of grandeur. Surprise, der Fuerher didn’t even like you chumps, but he sure used you for his vilest assignments. You people are so incredibly stupid, which is why you have the worst economy with the greatest poverty in Europe and are led by a bunch of Slavic mafioso who’ve picked you clean out in broad daylight. With that track record, do you really believe that the EU wants you on board? It was bait and switch, moron. The deal was only a trial balloon. The introductory rates that Comcast offers for a year. Your pissant country would have been kicked to the curb after the EU and the Americans privatised all your assets, gutted your economy and left you in debt (like Greece and most of Southern Europe) from which you could never extricate yourselves. Yanukovych finally saw the truth and you Right Sektor maniacs, high as a kite on Uncle Sam’s moonshine, tried to lynch the guy. I know your false pride can’t allow you to admit these things, but if you don’t know them you are dumber than the road apples your Ukrainian draught horses drop in the fields.
Well said Realist. It’s seldom I read your targeted aggression separate from your thoughtful additions to a thread, and it’s well deserved. One can only imagine the privatization of Ukraine combined with the carrot of false promises of joining the EU and having passport free transport throughout Europe. It’s a mighty big hook that Ukraine will join the EU party, for whatever that’s worth.many still believe and your directed thoughts are spot on. Imagine Ukraine pretending to be the equal of France, Germany, and many in the EU. The filth and crassness from some of these posters can only mean one thing… they are ticked off they are not of European equal and it must make their beer nights lighting an internal furious fire. But what do they have to bring to the Union? It’s a question some seem reluctant to answer.The coal from the East are from Terrorists, so they already have a problem. Russia wants to re-route the natural gas so Ukraine can’t steal the profits anymore.. etc. As it’s just better to pound a few beers and travelpassport free through countries who actually have an economy, funny stuff. They are farhther away than ever before and not one of them seem to have sympathy for the eastern side of their country.
By the way way John and Ivan why do you think there were 20K-to 40K Russians protecting their base in Sevastopol? Is this so hard to understand?
But enough, they tire me with their tripe.
Terrific reply, realist. That was worth staying up late for!
Great retort Realist! I was going to blast the guy myself, but you’ve done a great job of it.
Another fake “Ivan” propagandist accusing his moral superiors of propaganda.
Ah…. Russia *could* turn the US into a heap of ashes, just as the US could turn Russia into a heap of ashes.
These two facts are why it is vital that the two countries work together instead of continuing to build up dangerous antagonism like you do.
But who the hell in their right mind threatens this on state television from the mouth of an official in the government???!!
Why, russia of course! Because the russians are barbarians not fit for the civilized community of nations and thus russia has rightly been placed UNDER SANCTIONS by the whole developed world.
Iwan Lozowy is a right wing ethno-nationalist Ukrainian “activist” and a notoriously bellicose internet troll.
Born in the United States, Lozowy worked as a legal advisor to future mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani in the late 1980s.
In 1990, Lozowy was working as a research assistant at the Heritage Foundation when he made his first trip to Ukraine. The following year, he met Mykhailo Horyn of the People’s Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) when the latter was visiting Washington, D.C.
Horyn gave a lecture about Ukrainian independence at The Heritage Foundation’s invitation, and Lozowy asked Horyn if he could come to Ukraine and work for Rukh directly. Lozowy moved to Ukraine in 1991, although he did not speak the Ukrainian language very well.
Lozowy founded the Institute of Statehood and Democracy (ISD), a public policy NGO, in 1996 with the assistance of Rukh. He adopted Ukrainian citizenship in 1997.
After Rukh’s having split up in 1999, Lozowy continued working for the ISD, though by 2006 it had downsized from its peak of six employees to just Lozowy and two others in a one-room office. He worked at the State Committee in Television and Radio-broadcasting in 2000–2001,
During a series of Western-backed “color revolutions” engineered in the early 2000s, CIA project Mikheil Saakashvili took power in the 2003 “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, followed by Viktor Yushchenko in the 2004 “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine.
The Kiev-based Lozowny actively promoted both the “Orange Revolution” in Western mainstream media, including the Washington Post, UK Independent and the Voice of America, which described Lozowny as a “political analyst”.
In 2014, Western-backed protestors returned to the Maidan Square. Lozowny pimped the coup d’etat, while Western mainstream and online media lapped up the propaganda from Kiev. The New York Times described the Kiev-based agit-prop peddling Lozowny as a “director of a policy research group”.
In another post, we’ll discuss Lozowny’s enthusiasm for far right Ukrainian ethno-nationalism.
Between the 2003 “Orange Revolution” and the 2014 violent Maidan coup d’etat, Lozowy’s enthusiasm for far-right Ukrainian ethno-nationalism became increasingly militant.
In 2013, Lozowy founded the organisation Anti-Tabachnyk, aimed at achieving the resignation of Minister of Education Dmytro Tabachnyk. In protests held in November that year in the prelude to the Euromaidan, Lozowy accused Tabachnyk of favouring the Russian language over Ukrainian, ignoring the Holodomor and Ukrainian national heroes, promoting a pro-Soviet point of view, and wasting money on low-quality textbooks.
On 23 February 2014, two days after the bloody coup d’etat instigated by Western-backed right wing forces on the Maidan in Kiev, a deputy from the “Fatherland” party of Yulia Tymoshenko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk moved to include in the agenda a bill to repeal the 2012 law “On the principles of the state language policy”.
The motion was carried with 86% of the votes in favour—232 deputies in favour vs 37 opposed against the required minimum of 226 of 334 votes. The bill was included in the agenda, immediately put to a vote with no debate and approved with the same 232 voting in favour. The bill would have made Ukrainian the sole state language at all levels.
The move to repeal the 2012 law “On the principles of the state language policy” provoked negative reactions in regions of Southern and Eastern Ukraine, and directly precipitated the Crimean crisis.
Passage of the repeal bill was met with regret by the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe. The OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities expressed concern over possible further unrest. He also proposed to give advice and facilitate discussions on new legislation, declaring that “we must avoid the mistakes made last time [in 2012] when unbalanced legislation was adopted without a proper dialogue in the Verkhovna Rada.”
The bill was also criticized by the Ambassador for Human Rights of the Russian foreign ministry. Bulgarian and Romanian foreign ministers evaluated it as a step in the wrong direction,[ and the Greek foreign minister expressed disappointment. The Hungarian foreign ministry expressed serious concerns, noting that the decision “could question the commitment of the new Ukrainian administration towards democracy”. The Polish foreign minister called it a mistake.
After urgently ordering a working group to draft a replacement law on February 27, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov declared on 3 March that he would not be signing the repeal bill until a replacement law was adopted.
Lozowy loudly condemned Turchynov for this decision.
The hyperbolic rants of Ivan Lozowy reflect the troll’s embrace of Ukrainian far-right mythology.
Viktor Yushchenko, who left office in 2010, sought ideological hegemony for a simplistic mythical version of Ukrainian history. Under Yushchenko’s tenure, the Ukrainian far-right ethno-nationalist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), controlled by the Bandera wing of the OUN were portrayed as unblemished heroes and innocent martyrs.
In fact, the record of Ukrainian World War Two nationalism includes massive, politically motivated, and deliberate violence against civilians, including participation in the Holocaust and the mass-murderous ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Poles.
In addition, far more Ukrainians fought against Nazi Germany as part of Soviet forces than for the comparatively small and strongly regional OUN and UPA formations.
Following the 2014 Maidan coup d’etat and the secession of Crimea, amid growing unrest in Eastern Ukraine, presidential elections were held in Ukraine on 25 May. Mikheil Saakashvili’s oligarch pal, the corpulent “Chocolate King” Petro Poroshenko was declared the winner.
Following his victory Poroshenko launched a military assault against the people of eastern Ukraine. He also initiated a political purge to “purify” the Ukrainian parliament, which had refused to recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine as “terrorist organisations”, undermining Poroshenko’s self-declared “anti-Terrorist operation”.
In the summer of 2014, Lozowy joined the Aidar battalion operating in the Luhansk oblast. He later created the “Friends of the Aidar Battalion” group on Facebook and assisted the battalion in various ways.
The Aidar, Azov and Donbass battalions, armed by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defense, use Nazi symbolism that deliberately invokes the worst atrocities of the Second World War in the East.
Ivan Lozowy’s beloved Aidar “volunteer” batallion was featured in a glowing UK Guardian article on “The women fighting on the frontline in Ukraine”.
The original March 2015 article was changed after Stacie Herbert of RT’s Kaiser Report pointed out the Aidar battalion van in photo of ‘Anaconda’ clearly displayed Nazi symbolism, which Guardian journalist Elena Savchuk had either failed to see or neglected to mention.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/05/ukraine-women-fighting-frontline#img-4
The symbol on the Aidar batallion van is the crossed WWII German “potato masher” hand grenade symbol of the notorious SS Dirlewanger Brigade, arguably the most criminal and heinous SS unit in Hitler’s war machine.
In “’They Defended Ukraine’: The 14.Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited” (Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 25, pages 329-368, 2012), historian Per Anders Rudling at Lund University in Sweden noted:
“The Waffen-SS Galizien worked alongside one of the most brutal counter-insurgency units of Nazi Germany, the dreaded SS-Sonderbattalion Dirlewanger, a unit which included rapists, murderers, and the criminally insane, which carried out brutal anti-partisan activities in Belarus and Poland, and the no less brutal suppression of the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Waffen- SS Galizien and Dirlewanger transferred officers between their units.”
Dirlewanger Brigade (36.Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS) engaged in the rape, pillaging and mass murder of civilians. Numerous German Army and even SS commanders attempted to remove Dirlewanger from the SS and disband the unit, although he had patrons within the Nazi apparatus who intervened on his behalf.
The Dirlewanger Brigade was most notably credited with the destruction of Warsaw, and the massacre of about 100,000 of the city’s population in the Summer of 1944. Both the Waffen- SS Galizien and Dirlewanger units participated in the brutal suppression of the Slovak National Uprising in September 1944.
Ivan Lozowy celebrates the exploits of the infamous Aidar batallion.
Aidar was the first “volunteer” unit established by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence in mid-2014.
The Kiev regime’s “volunteer” battalions embraced the Nazi Freiwillige (“volunteer”) legacy of violence against civilians, complete with Nazi regalia.
With its military deployment in the Luhansk region May 2014, Aidar immediately earned a reputation for abuse of the local population. In July 2014, Russia began a criminal investigation of Aidar’s commander for “organizing the killing of civilians”.
On 8 September 2014 Amnesty International reported that Aidar battalion had indeed committed war crimes, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions in the Luhansk region.
The Amnesty report noted that “members of the Aidar battalion act with virtually no oversight or control, and local police are either unwilling or unable to address the abuses.” https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/8000/eur500402014en.pdf
On 24 December 2014, Amnesty reported that the Aidar, Donbass and Dnipro-1 battalions had blocked humanitarian aid from Ukraine reaching areas where over half the population needed food aid. Amnesty’s acting Director of Europe and Central Asia stated that “using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime”.
Late January and early February 2015 the Aidar battalion picketed several Ukrainian government buildings, which escalated into clashes. Even though the Aidar batallion was formally disbanded on 2 March 2015 “to prevent illegal actions of some representatives of volunteer units”, the atrocious behavior of Aidar forces continued.
In April 2015, the Ukrainian government appointed Governor of Luhansk stated that Aidar battalion was “terrorizing the region” and asked the Ukrainian Defense Ministry to rein in Aidar members after a series of thefts, including ambulances and the takeover of a bread factory.
Putin made huge mistake back in 2014 of not invading Kiev located 80 miles from the border and not reinstating Yanukovitch as the only legitimate president and leader. He had support of 23 millions of ethnic Russian Ukrainians, while Nazis had support of 5 millions at max, all funded by the west.
The Ukrainian army under Yanukovitch would alone have occupied western Ukraine and Russia would have withdrawn within weeks , leaving only some special forces like in Georgia. If new election were held in 2014 Yanukovitch would have won.
Why Putin in the face of naked western agression reneged on his duty and already rehearsed and played out before military scenarios is enigma to me, but it would definitely have saved lives.
As we see his careful appeasement did not work and as with Hitter, will only lead, perhaps to NUCLEAR WWII initiated by western agression encouraged by the accommodating pasture of Putin taken for his weakness.
My readings suggest that Russia had many reasons not to invade:
1. No basis under international law without international agreement and enforcement;
2. Lack of domestic support or pressure for such action;
3. No economic gain in the short, medium, or long term;
4. Clear appearance of aggression which would not be factual;
In addition, one would have to debate some of those statements:
1. No evidence that Russia had “rehearsed… military scenarios” for invasion vs. defense;
2. Kiev is about 130-170 miles from the nearest border with Russia;
3. It is not clear that the Ukraine army would have been loyal to Yanukovich during a foreign invasion;
4. Ethnic Russian Ukrainians are a minority in western Ukraine.
Hitler proved himself a carelessly driven anomaly of aggression like Napoleon, and ended the same way. While appeasement does not always work; war is usually even more unsuccessful unless unavoidable. In Ukraine, democracy had failed due to entrenched angry factions and US meddling. The responsible course was to minimize any appearance of aggression while preventing fruition of US schemes to seize the Crimea bases and surround Russia with hostile forces. Given the small size and time scale of that stage, the response of Russia has been unusually successful so far.
Yanukovitch was deposed in a illegal coup. Period. all your arguments are mute by this very fact. As president could have legally invoked state of emergency and call for Russia to restore constitutional order.
You remarks of making wrong impression in the west or support at home are Wrong since his popularity soared to 90% briefly at home, and he got one big hysteria in the west, a big one without being guilty of anything and it was brewing since failed Orange Revolution of 2004 and his reelection in 2012 , spent $5billions to get rid of him starting in Ukraine and western sponsoring of Ukrainian Nazis who are self declared enemies of Russia were to be a tool to overthrow Putin.
If you read carefully what I wrote you would know that my point was not how Putin would have gotten better political adventage but how much less people would have suffered under different military and political scenario.
Yes, there was legal basis to restore Yanukovich, but calling upon Russia to do that would make Russia look to the rest of the world like the covert aggressor, rather than the US. The debate would turn upon the evidence of coup vs. revolution, which the US had already faked up, so the US would have won its propaganda war in the West against Russia.
I’m not really sure that the overall suffering would have been less under the invasion scenario. That could have left Russia or Yanukovich facing a long US-backed insurgency. The legitimacy of the next elections would have been questioned, and extremists of the non-Russian population might have been elected anyway in response to the invasion. It would be a prolonged mess with many casualties either way, due to the extremists of the various factions.
I wondered as you did why Russia did not simply invade, but in retrospect they may have been right to avoid a direct confrontation with the West there while intervening in Syria, and to avoid a loss in international credibility. Instead they have gained credibility and the US has lost.
The US needs to back the Ukraine and drawn the line against Putin. Ukraine is a free republic and must stay that way. Lets show them how the US does it!
The Hillary Bots are being attracted to this essay like ants to a pancake syrup spill. Ukraine attacks ethnic Russians in the eastern provinces, and the US is supposed to go to war for the Nazi Nation?
Of course, you could also be an Israel Bot who wants Russia all distracted when that thieving and murderous little apartheid nation starts bombing Lebanon back to the Stone Age.
Why? What exactly did the Russians do? What did Putin do? I know that the US instigated an illegal coup in Ukraine and overthrew a democratically elected president and used ultra right wingers and neo Nazi’s to help them do it, and right on Russia’s western border. By the way, I just told you how the US does it.
You sad, pathetic putin troll.
Don’t you realize that NO ONE WHO IS EVEN HALF SERIOUS IN THE WEST buys into your lies?
Why do you bother repeating your lies? You are silly and useless, russian troll.
Anyone who doesn’t buy into your lies is always a “Russian troll.” You are pathetic.
Ivan, link to evidence or begone. Insult is an admission of no argument in debate.
Jeff, watch this…..
https://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-on-fire-the-real-story-full-documentary-by-oliver-stone-original-english-version/5626508
Thanks Ted for sticking up for those unfortunate folks in Donbass. There are many of them here in Crimea that had to flee when things got too close. I don’t think Putin will allow Donbass to be over run – Crimea is gearing up with many S-400s and if there is one thing I’ve learned from Russians is no matter what – they help each other out. heck, they help me out all the time and I’m an Amerikanska. Also, if the Ukies attack Donbass – you may see the UA/RU folks in NovoRossiya head east help Donbass. Spacibo
I will admit that the dark side of me would love to see a battalion of T72 tanks sitting in Maiden Square. (Sorry for the American spelling)
Here is something I post a link to from time to time. It’s a good read, and one every American would do well to read, and then to contemplate to what the articles author is speaking to.
https://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/24/the-russia-they-lost/
How’s the weather in Crimea? Joe
Free to elect neo nazis into its parliament.
Good one Just Plain Scott. Joe
The US would be better off taking a hiatus from international engagements to study its nearly fifty years of continuous mistakes in regards thereto — particularly those involving use of its military.
Hence, any country yearning to take American interventionism as its model would be tantamount to a troublemaker.
Draw the line against Putin — how did that work out for you guys in Syria?
In the event that you guys are too tough to heed the aforementioned good advice, I suggest that, instead, you double down on tackling the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
“Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Sunday said the West’s “Russiaphobia” was worse than during the Cold War and warned Moscow has “red lines” that should be respected.
“This Russiaphobia is unprecedented. We never saw this during the Cold War,” Mr Lavrov, fresh from a visit to New York on Thursday and Friday, said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant’s online edition.
“Back then there were some rules, some decorum. Now, all decorum has been cast aside,” he said.
Mr Lavrov warned: “Russia has its ‘red lines’ … Serious politicians in the West understand that these ‘red lines’ should be respected as they were during the Cold War.”
The long-standing politician, who has been in the post since 2004 and is a key confidant of Vladimir Putin, denounced what he called “efforts to punish Russia by any means possible”, calling sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union “absurd and baseless”.
Russia was slapped with sanctions in 2014 because of its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and theconflict in eastern Ukraine, with Kiev and the West accusing Moscow of backing rebels – allegations that the Russian authorities continue to deny.
The country is also mired in a doping scandal that led to the exclusion of its athletes from the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and the World Athletics Championships in London last year.
The International Olympics Committee has also suspended Russia from next month’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. “Clean” Russian athletes will be allowed to participate under the Olympic banner.
“There are a number of indications that, apart from real cases of doping among our athletes, there is a totally orchestrated campaign” targeting Russia, Mr Lavrov said.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Lavrov is right.
Ukraine’s population is also dropping because of the people leaving. Russia is the main one to benefit. Back after the collapse of the USSR the standard of living dropped to nothing, and people quit having children. Lots of adults went to their graves from the substandard nutrition and medical care, and from drinking themselves to death. All of a sudden Russia gets the chance to embrace grown Russian-speaking adults to make up for those losses.
Win or lose, an aggressive Ukraine might find itself collapsing in short order, for as the essay suggests, the Europeans appear to be done with subsidizing them. And what do you figure are the chances of the Trumpies replacing them as Sugar Daddies?
https://marknesop.wordpress.com/2017/12/04/seasons-greetings-from-the-masters-of-illusion/#more-4168
We all get beautiful Ukrainian boys and girls to adopt, or marry, or who knows what. New vogue models. Ice skaters, hockey players, tennis players? I love Ukraine. Paul Mcartney told me they are best good looking. They make me wanna shhhhhh. Go Ukraine.
If Sir Paul said it, then it’s true.
Now play ‘Back in the USSR’…sing it Paul.
Blow back from installing Nazis in Ukraine (illegally). If the Bozos in the Washington Establishment don’t wind up getting us all killed it will be a miracle.
If the Washington Bozos activate the Aegis Ashore systems at Russia’s borders in any way whatever, a lot of us might indeed get killed. I’d expect the Russians to be on hair-trigger alert regarding those things.
Hi Lois
I have hope. Do you really think those people want to x us out? I doubt that.. Every country, tribe wants to survive, here is the good news WW2 did not work out so well for those, and I am saying this as a German/Mexican person. I do not believe that Trump will kill us, but I do believe he is insane enough to try that to satisfy his ego. I am thinking , some mechanism will be put in place to stop him. Remember, Adolph Hitler thought he was invincible, look what happened to him. Best news is we have better media, so no one in central command can take control of information. Good days ahead
What have you been huffing?
Take it easy with tina. Her comments are always mixed with what I call ‘tina humor’, and I have grown to like this girl. In the beginning I thought that tina was tina fey like ’30 Rock’, and that consortiumnews tina had that kind of offbeat humor. So Just Plain Scott, welcome to consortiumnews, and be kind to tina. Joe
From the Javelin wiki:
Given the loose and casual accounting and protection of these missiles, I'd predict the Russians and Chinese have entire systems in their possession at this very moment. And there was always the prospect of stealing/buying one of them from the many nations who have purchased them. If so, they will have had years to examine them in detail, and there are going to be countermeasures ready – if Russia chooses to show their hand in that matter.
The Russians are certainly in a box, for they don't want to fight and yet cannot run away from an all-out Ukraine offensive. Any sane Ukraine planners who have been watching what has happened in Syria would shy away from starting something. But I'm going to assume the Ukraine Nazis are nuts. A lot of people are going to die on account of Washington doing its standard 'wag the dog' trick for Holy Israel, but for the most part the dead folks won't be anybody Trump or Mattis knows. Just a bunch of throwaway humans.
The Russians will have been watching developments carefully, and they've had a lot of time to devise strategies of their own. To carefully select suitable weapons to use – and to hand some of those over to the Ukraine Rebels. In their place I'd be having quiet conversations with the non-crazy nations within NATO about their general plans so as to tamp down reactions when the shooting starts.
I'd predict that at some stage the US is going to be successful with provoking a shooting war, and the outcome will be another "win" of some kind for the Rebels. In between there will be a lot of death and destruction, and Europe may be looking at another huge surge of desperate refugees who won't need any boats.
Pipeline. Cigarettes, Girls/ Women , and above all trade. I forgot arms and weapons. Who wants arms, unless one is armless, no disrespect to those who have no physical arms. I hope Robert Parry is recovering. All of you here may have better contacts, please send my well thoughts to Mr. Perry.
Tina
This current round of conflict with Russia was started by the Neocons (Israeli agents) to block Obama-Putin cooperation in tamping down Mideast conflicts.
“What Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis”
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/03/02/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis/
The Israelis control the U.S. MSM, forbidding all honest reporting and criticism of Israel,
“Rabbis want to criticize Israel but fear donors (and NYT buries the news)”
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/rabbis-criticize-donors
and now are using that control to direct the current false-flag Russia bashing.
The Israelis are primarily in the war business, and want conflicts in the Mideast and elsewhere.
“War Profiteers and the Roots of the War on Terror”
http://warprofiteerstory.blogspot.com
Yes, a zionist/MIC US-sponsored war in Ukraine seems less likely since Russia’s withdrawal from Syria, but it could be used to divert Russian forces from more zionist/MIC US wars in the Mideast and Afghanistan.
Why on bloody earth would an already diminished country like Ukraine want a war with a powerful country like Russia!? If your only political source is Russia’s Dmitri kiselyov then for the well being of your readers please stop writing and go find yourself another job!
Find another site.
Joe,
Tina here. You are , in my opinion, a very thoughtful individual. It hurt me that someone posted above about you. Ad Hominem! Joe , please keep sharing, I do not always agree with you, but I respect your ideas and your posts. Love, Tina
Thank you tina.
Great response Joe. Keep the good words flowing.
Because they’re crazy? Why “on bloody earth” did Japan attack a powerful country like the US back in 1941 when it didn’t have to?
What Japan did could be compared to a burglar on his way to a easy “job” pausing to kick a huge sleeping dog in the gonads. Not at all necessary, but by doing so he set himself up for total failure in the end.
The neocons in Washington are good at whispering sweet nothings into receptive ears. They’ve already destroyed the Iraqi Kurd experiment, and are well on their way to destroying the Syrian Kurds as well. Both sets of Kurds were total suckers, and assuming the Ukraine Nazis are the same sorts of vain and arrogant and gullible dopes is a safe one, given their history.
I’d like to point on one little moment Zachary – not crazy, no. At least not in the traditional meaning of this word. They (“they” being Poroshenko and his oligarch cronies – the current Ukranian bigwigs) are quite sane. They have painted themselves into corner, so now they seem to be up to the final solution – “burn the evidence” of their bottomless corruption and crimes, using war as means to do it, and, if/when everything burns, then just leave to some other warm place with all their accumulated billions, and become “noble exiles” and victims of terrible Red Plague Regime of Bloody Tyrant Putin. Using famous French expression – “Après nous le déluge”(“After us – The Flood”).
That, at least, what they are sure of. But for about 10 years me observing and studying relations between Western Europe countries, including ones lured into EU with sweat promised of “freedom and prosperity” on condition of alienating themselves with Russia (“leaving the Soviet occupation behind”, etc.etc.), and their “Benefactors” – usually US through Germany as a proxy – Petro and his goons might be in for a nasty surprise. Neither EU nor US actually give a damn about them, and moreover, EU basically esteems people from Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Serbia, etc. as untermenschen, third-rate folk, who they might need only because otherwise they will be with Russia. So as soon as Ukraine loses it’s worth, I would not give a zit for Poroshenko-and-CO’s well-being.
So true, and too Boot Hillary lose the U.S. presidential election.
No John, he’s needed here. You go somewhere else.
My suggestion is to read a little bit before you have foot in mouth desease. How about NATO and the bases surrounding Russia and then also take a moment to comment on the FREE 350 million anti-tank missiles the US sent to Ukraine. It’s not hard to get some facts, as cave life was a thing of the past. Give it a try, and read.
Joe is right. The abuse clinic is down the hall. This is the discussion & debating clinic[1].
[1] Argument Clinic – Monty Python’s The Flying Circus | Youtube
I think it is true that Ukraine probably does not want full war with Russia because they would lose such a war. But Russia is not interested in a full war with Ukraine, either.
The most plausible explanation seems to be that Ukraine wants to trigger more direct Russian support for Donbass – perhaps even a Russian occupation of Donbass -, which might happen when Ukrainian attacks on Donbass cause so many victims that there is domestic pressure on the Russian government to intervene, so that Ukraine can talk about “Russian aggression” with more credibility and get more money from Western countries, thereby delaying bankrupcy.
Yes, this is likely,
And probably, such a development fits the US nicely as well. The “need” to support Ukraine will be much easier to demonstrate, and trumpet out in the MSm.
john, or whatever your name is,
you need to learn some manners.
On the positive side, your debut here (I’m assuming here) reminded me of the old Russian proverb :
If you sit the swine at the table it’ll promptly put its hooves on it….
It seems obvious. Being realistic.
US operation democracy goes through Turkey and Ukraine and then sets up a string of bases along the train track through Russia to Beijing.
All organic farmers shipping on the new high speed rail line between London and Beijing take a knee and vow allegiance to monsanto.
The US pacific pirouette skates through both Vietnam and Korea and walah! China is occupied from top to bottom and on both sides east and by golden sacks and wall street. Peace reigns on Earth.
From the sounds of it the corrupted government of Kiev abandoned the Lugansk-Donbass, so why shouldn’t Russia take the Lugansk-Donbass into it’s Federation?
Because that’s illegal by the international law! Think, before you post some bs!
I guess the coup which over threw Viktor Yanukovych, was legal?
Btw don’t come on to reply to my comment with your ignorant conceded superiority. Just who do you think you are talking to. I try like all hell to converse with people, and then there are stooges like you, that come on here and think that your so smart by talking down to me. I guess you think this is a competition?
I seriously wish the good people of the Lugansk-Donbass could file a referendum to separate from the Kiev junta. It would be a good thing if they could do as the people of Crimea did, and join Russia.
So, with you ignorant comment do have references for your reply, or do you just buy what the Deep State sells you?
Oh and I did give some real thought before posting this reply to your crude remark. Joe
Russia could make a strong case for intervention under the R2P doctrine promoted by the West but Russia and China oppose changing international law from the model of sovereignty in the UN charter. Russia basically accepted the doctrine when it cited the Kosovo precedent in Georgia and Crimea.
I read somewhere where Putin was reluctant to accept Lugansk-Donbass, as he remarked that by taking the south east of Ukraine away from Ukraine would leave Ukraine without any chance to have a fully operational Democratic State. In other words, Ukraine would lose the ability to have any Russian influence if Ukraine were to have a truly representative legislature, and the Lugansk-Donbass were to join the Russian Federation.
My original comment, was written more out of emotion on purpose, than my referring to any international law. I only meant to be facetious, and not taken literally, as if that should be respected when stating something so obvious of how the Kiev junta government has treated it’s fellow Ukraine citizens. Imagine bombing your own country folk. This is what the U.S. NGO’s has brought to world, nothing but chaos and pain.
Thanks for the intelligent reply Andy. Joe
Hello Joe, what you heard/read is not totally wrong but not totally correct either. The correct way to think about it is that Ukraine with its Russian population is the last buffer left to NATO enlargement and positioning of missiles and troops on the Russian border. If Eastern Ukraine joined Russia, Western Ukraine would immediately join NATO and NATO would place “anti-Iranian missile defense” only several hundred miles from Moscow.
The most opportune (propaganda maximizing) time for an attack on Eastern Ukraine will be during the Soccer World Cup in Russia in June. The US organised a coup in Ukraine during the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia and caught the Russian security with their pants down, too busy with anti-terror security for the Olympics. The World Cup will be an opportunity for a re-match, where the Russian security will have to show that it can respond to both challenges at the same time: the internal terror security for the Cup and the external security to repel the US-Israeli-Ukro-Nazi attack on Eastern Ukraine.
Hi Kiza-
Nice to see you back. I doubt Putin will fall for the same stunt twice. He knows they used the Sochi games to distract him from the initial coup. I’m betting he’ll either get the job done before the world cup, or he’ll at least be ready to counter their shenanigans. Although I’m sure he’s worried about missiles in a NATO assimilated Western Ukraine, I believe they have sufficient deterrence with their submarines. I could be wrong, but I think MAD is still very much a reality.
Joe, as is your nature you kept your comment civil although you had every reason in the world to sound off against an ignorant fool who knows little of the dynamics of Ukraine. I admire your strength as I often can no longer tolerate the idiocy now prevenant on this good web site. I would suspect a good reply would be to ask this individual if he/she has any understanding of international law as just an opener to an inane comment. But even after pouring over Google and Wikipedia I’m sure they would have no answer to the question, and the misfortune of Eastern Ukraine, International Law??? How about sending in the military to kill ethnic Russians in their own country? May that have something to do with international law??? This person was an idiot, and you have the patience of Job to even respond to such a fool. Good on you mate, as they say down under.
Thanks Curious, and not to beat up on a sleeping dog, but I never mentioned an invasion, such as is the U.S. usual way of breaking international law. And why could not the Lugansk-Donbass secede from the current Ukraine government.
For the record I don’t come here pretending to know it all, quite the opposite. I come to this site looking to learn, and converse with other readers. I’m in no way competing with anyone. I’m very impressed by the intelligent people I come to meet, as I’m throughly disgusted with ignorant people who are here either to troll, or because we can’t see them they are here to just make trouble. Funny thing is for the ignorant who have had a depressing life I may just be the one person on this board who will try and cheer you up, or lend a sympathizing ear.
Curious on the whole consortiumnews is fantastic, and I having met nice people such as yourself has made my experience at consortiumnews all that much more of a better happening to have encountered. Joe
Look at it this way, Joe; your initial comment was cogent enough to provoke a sock puppet-type reply. You represent a danger to the establishment narrative, namely independent thinking. Stay informed, and keep posting.
Thanks for the encouragement robjira. I won’t let a little bit of ignorance spoil my posting comments, and btw if you disagree with me, then do so, but please try and keep it civil. I’m no snowflake, but as like many others, I do expect a little respect. I do mean well. Thanks again robjira. Joe
I think the word you were looking for was “conceited” rather than conceded, but either way… I’m a bit dubious about very large countries being good for any little people. I’d like to see Russia, China, the EU (and it’s constituent countries), the UK, the US et. al. release their centralised grip on the little people and I’m sure we’ll all flourish. Democracy is an oxymoron in a very large centralised system.
Thanks for the spelling correction, do you wanna job? I agree Big is not necessarily Better. How’s my spelling? Seriously thank you. Joe
Joe, It always feels good to read your thoughtful comments, which are always full of good feelings for all people in all the countries. These Ukrainian Nationalist Neo-Nazis have killed more than 11,000 Russian speaking civilians, in their own country, during the last four years. It is hard to believe that this is supported by the Western Europe today – and they call themselves highly civilized.
Some of the individuals who write comments on this CN site supporting such violent actions must have kind of deranged minds like those Neo-Nazi Ukrainian Nationalists who have killed all these civilians in their own country. It is natural to feel anger inside after reading their comments.
I still remember the scenes from watching some Youtube Video , the scene when these Ukrainian Nationalists burnt alive fifty Russian speaking people in Odessa in 2014. And they, these Nationalists after setting fire to the building were shouting profanities outside the burning building with those fifty unfortunate people inside – who were burnt alive.
Sadly, it seems like that this Ukraine problem is not going to be solved peacefully.
Dave, thank you for literally describing the point I was trying to make, and that was: what new nation, started by a violent coup, making the Russian language illegal, and using it’s military to attack half it’s population, makes a country worth supporting their committing domestic war crimes against their own citizens. If we as a human race wish to go forward we must support the abused citizen in a case as Ukraine’s. This new Ukraine junta government is not a government. It is a band of thugs living out a fantasy of their former Nazi past, in other words they are all criminals, if you were to apply any rule to law to their title.
The U.S. must rethink all of it’s alliances, all of them, and do this as of yesterday. Joe
I watched “Ukraine in Fire” narrated by Oliver Stone on Amazon. It features Robert Parry and his former reporting on the coup, backed and instigated by the US. It gives good background and the devious ways the US state dept helped start,support, and find actors from the far right to turn peaceful protests into a bloodbath. This gives a good overview to what the current situation is. As folks fret and stew on the ‘drama’ in Washington the bad actors are hard at work doing dirty work to keep the growing tensions against Russia in Ukraine. I hope reason prevails in these troubling times.
That’s why I posted a link to it, and Abe provided yet another link to Oliver Stone’s ‘Ukraine on Fire’. After having watched it, I now know why it’s been hard to find in the U.S.. I mean how did it get censored, was it fixed by poor distribution, or no distribution at all? Oh well, so much for freedom of the press. Take care Ol’ Hippy. Joe
John,
You certainly are entitled to disagree with Joe, and entitled to your opinion, but you should have just left it with ” …law! “The bs part is unacceptable, and certainly not acceptable on this site. I agree it would be illegal, but Joe makes a good point later on when he referenced the US’s complicity in ousting the democratically elected president Yanuyovich. Not only illegal, but a very dangerous move on the part of the US, but then again what else is new when it comes to our need to push us to the brink of a nuclear war.
No one “ousted Yanukovych’s government.” After ordering the killing of over a hundred peaceful demonstrators Yanukovych abdicated, he fled the country to Ukraine’s enemy, russia, and even left behind a hand-written note that implies he was abdicating.
Yeah, that’s the false narrative we get 24/7 on the American mainstream corporate media which backs the neocon global agenda. The authors and readers only deal in truth here. Take your rant to the New York Times and the Bezos Post.
Did you read VP Joe Bidens’ book about his two hour conversation with Yanukovych about needing to leave the country? No?
You probably didn’t also follow Biden’s son going to Ukraine as a lawyer hire for their oil company either. these two items add up to something…. you figure it out.
When did Yanukovich “order the killing of peaceful demonstrators”? It is shocking that people still make such claims although there is absolutely no evidence for this. The police on the contrary had enormous restraint, even when policemen were set on fire by fighters. The killings of a hundred demonstrators was done with shots that mostly came from a hotel that was under the control of radical right-wing paramilitary forces, and it had been noted that policemen and peaceful demonstrators were shot with the same guns. After the coup, people close to the radical right-wing militias gained power of the judicial system – if there had been evidence for Yanukovich being responsible for the killings, this evidence would certainly have been made public by now; the fact that nothing of this kind has happened, rather showes that they used their power to suppress investigations because the results would not be convenient for them.
Yes, Yanukovich, Azarov, and other members of the democratically elected government of Ukraine fled Ukraine because there were credible death threats against them. Yanukovich explicitly did not abdicate, and not only were there not enough votes for an impeachment, but after the coup, there was not even an attempt to keep up the semblence of rule of law by conducting an impeachment procedure, but the remaining MEPs (under the eyes of armed paramilitary forces) simply trampled the Ukrainian constitution.
When someone thinks that death threats against members of a government and then unconstitutionally declaring them ousted when they flee the country are a normal and justified way of replacing a government, this primarily tells us that he or she is an enemy of democracy and the rule of law.
THank you Adrian Engler, Curious and Realist for clarifying!
The coup in Kiev and what happened since is appalling and has changed Europe for ever, and more is yet to come. As I have commented before, academic experts that I have consulted without any doubt label it a coup. Dr Katchanovski, expert in modern Ukrainian history, has conducted meticulous research into who shot on Maidan, and been published by top journals. His research shows just what Adrian Engler states above – the bullets came from buildings controlled by the opposition. While not all experts agree with him, his physical data must be very hard to dismiss.
The coup, and the ensuing violence in Odessa and Donbass, as well as mysterious suicides by governors probably, add to the picture.
Ukrainian culture shifts along a NW – south and east axis, dividing the country into two equally sized groups, those with native Ukrainian language and a history as parts of Poland and Austria, and those with native Russian and a history as part of Russia, with different shades along the axis.
This division has been evident in all elections after independence. In the elections after the coup, it was evident in the strikingly low participation of the Russian speaking half of the country – these Ukrainians had simply no one to vote for, no one to represent them.
I contacted the Kiev international institute of sociology two or so years agoto receive data on the language divide, which they kindly provided. They pointed out, however, that the language issue was not the one perceived by Ukrainians as their major problem. I take it the main problem was corruption.
The language problem is bad enough. Although the reason for the Maidan protests probably was corruption, it seems the Maidan was utilised by west Ukrainian far right nationalists, in their turn utilised by the US and Eu, for their purposes. The new government seeks to impose the nw version of being Ukrainian on the south east half, passing a law this autumn that prohibits teaching in Russian, Hungarian, Romanian and other minority languages in school past fifth grade. Also, newspapers, Tv and films must be dubbed.
Apparently, this is not well received in Hungary.
The west Ukrainian nationalism glorifies as national heroes Banderites who collaborated with Hitler, assisted in the holocaust and ethnically cleansed western Ukraine of its Polish population, causing conflict with Poland today.
The second war so is also a topic looked at very differently in the west and east of Ukraine.
Control and oppression one might assume were more felt after the war in the north-west, given the history of support for the nazis and the guerilla fighting continuing into the 1960’s. It is not hard to understand the eagerness to promote Western Ukrainian culture, but it is sad to try to force fellow Ukrainians with another history to do the same. And it is shameful by Europe to utilise this.
Probably, Russia does not need to fear much, since the Ukrainian situation with its corruption and absurd, anachronistic and counterproductive nationalism can only collapse by itself. This is yet another of failed US interventions.
The EU will be left with guilt, a betrayed and angry Ukraine, and missed opportunities for cooperation with Russia and Ukraine.
No, that’s the truth as seen from Kyiv and not a cushy sofa in San Francisco or from putin’s troll factory in St. Petersburg.
Yes, it was a conversation. Why would Yanukovych who was clearly pro-russian (hopefully there’s no argument here) listen to Biden and follow his instructions? Have you thought about a question like this? No?
Adrian Engler
The evidence is Yanukovych’s flight to russia!
What “death threats”? No one heard of them.
There is a WITNESS, the former First Deputy Commander of the internal military forces of Ukraine, Serhiy Konoplianyk, who has provided testimony that the order was given to fire on demonstrators.
The totality of what you don’t know about the happenings in Kyiv are impressive.
Go back to the drawing board on Savushkina Street!
Martin – russian citizen
There are multiple VIDEOS which show security forces firing from automatic Kalashnikov guns and from sniper rifles into the crowd. Video proof is there!
So stop your russian-troll nonsense, no one who is even remotely serious believes you.
Ukraine and russia will never cooperate again, at least not until russia and putin return the Crimea to Ukraine, get their troops and tanks out of Ukraine’s Donbas region and pay billions of dollars in reparations for the 13 thousand Ukrainians they killed and all the property damage they caused.
Ivan, your information differs from that of all of our sources. Link to authoritative sources and people will listen. If your sources are all in western Ukraine, you should not give them much credence. But if you have unbiased sources please let us know.
There is a problem in that people of all views can find some kind of sources that seem to confirm their views. Journalists seek the truth by comparing sources and trying to evaluate conflicting sources. Readers generally evaluate the journalists and their arguments. So we would be comparing conflicting journalists and arguments.
Hi Annie-
There was certainly nothing lawful about the coup either, as Joe points out. I think it is a shame that Putin was distracted by the Sochi olympics at the time, or he may have had a stronger response to support Yanukovych at the onset of the coup. I think it would have saved a lot of lives in the long run, as his intervention in South Ossetia did, and the Ukrainian people would not have been left hung out to dry as they have been by the pillagers at the IMF. If a proxy war breaks out to protect the ethnic Russians in the breakaway republics between NATO supported troops and Russian supported troops it could get ugly very fast indeed.
We must convince Washington and its MIC that we must learn to wage peace in a multi-polar world before they get us all killed. Putin and Russia would make a wonderful ally if we would just accept the fact that Putin will not allow us to make Russia another vassal state, and that they have genuine national interests to protect as we do. The USA MIC and their gluttony puppet masters want the whole pie, and nothing less will do.
Hi Scott, Exactly what they want, a “multi-polar” NWO, total enslavement instead of killing… NO, we must not “convince them, they are convincing us, has worked in your case already, please wake up.
Winston please explain how Skip’s ‘Multi-Polar World’ is anything like Poppy Bush’s NWO. Also who are ‘they’ who are convincing us?
Hey Joe-
It looks like our Winston Smith has learned to love Big Brother. I doubt he even gets the extreme irony of his chosen handle while he spouts the empirical/MSM lie. Russia annexed Crimea, and Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Not to worry- “Ignorance is Strength.”
Skip for the life of me, after rereading your comment over a few times, I cannot find where you were promoting the NWO talking points. Although, today to be a ‘troll’ means you are inverting everything you say, and mean the exact opposite of what you are describing. It’s kind of like watching the NFL and trying to figure out just exactly what the rules are, when the consistency of a play call is loss among the officials. It must be the upside down world we are now currently living in Skip. Boy, it’s at times like these I miss drinking the brew, but never miss the hang over. Oh well, another day another misfit comes out way.
Take care shipmate. Joe
Skip Scott –
Very well said – excellent summary. There is a slight possibility that “The West” – the chief supporters of what has been happening in Ukraine for more than two decades – can not contain Ukrainian Neo-nazy Nationalists. But it is highly unlikely. It seems to me what is being planned by “The West” for the near future is to disrupt the 2018 World Soccer Championship in Russia by starting this violent conflict in Ukraine, by urging on the Ukrainian Nationalist puppets and by providing them war materials support. The World Soccer Championship is a show case event for the whole planet.
Why “The West” are doing it – their short term plans ! Russia is not all what they portray in the Western Countries. It is a very open society now, in every way, and they have kind of built up their cities and economic system from ashes. We in America have lot of problems with our cities and the society. Compared to what is happening in our cities, Russia, and its cities may not look all that bad. In fact, people around the World may like what is going on there. The West does not want the World to see it. The West tried in every way to ruin the Sochi Olympics in 2014. Barring the Russians to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics in S. Korea was just the opening shot in this coming storm.
This Ukraine problem has been created by The West and the Ukrainian neo-nazy Nationalists. The best and the only solution is to divide Ukraine into independent East Ukraine and Independent West Ukraine State. The East Ukraine should be made a neutral buffer state with its cultural and family ties to Russia. The Western Ukraine can do whatever suits them – E.U., NATO and all that.
Dave P-
Yes, I think you are right in that dividing Ukraine along an east/west line makes the most sense. The majority ethnic Russians in the east would fair far better. After the coup, the new government tried to take away the Russian language as one of the official languages, and the fascists of the Right Sektor and Svoboda seemed set on the ethnic cleansing of Russians. I am no expert on Ukraine, but it seems to me the breakaway republics should at least be granted some autonomy, if not full independence. It would be interesting to see who would fair better economically, the NATO/IMF aligned west, or the Russian aligned east. I imagine that is an experiment the West would not like to see conducted because it would show that the western economic model exists to serve the 1% at the expense of the populace.
As for my previous comments being “well said”; after reading them over, I see that I should have used “gluttonous” and “imperial”. I guess I’m getting a little sloppy in my old age.
It is possible that Winston meant to say that the DC/MIC NWO could be consistent with a peaceful multipolar world order, that we cannot convince DC/MIC because they control mass media to convince us. If so, he should be more explicit and less critical.
This reminds me of an statement by American natives in the 19th century regarding their dealings with the white man “you hold your religion behind your back and bring it out when it suits you.” That seems quite analogous to our current use of “international law” and the U.N.
Yes John Christopher you are right and anyway, since the US seems to be able to occupy Syria and other places with no consequences from the keepers of international law, it seems to me to be a free for all so why shouldn’t Russia or anyone else for that matter get in on the act?
Apparently, one of Washington’s self-appointed rights is the right to practice hypocrisy to the hilt regardless of how many pay the consequences.
It seems to me, John W, that some countries are trying their best to operate within the law, and with diplomacy as well, including and especially Russia. I wouldn’t want everyone to take on the popular axiom of today, “Do what you will shall be the whole of the law.”
My, you are quite the charmer. But, you are actually trying to piss people off, aren’t you? Along with Ivan, Jeff and probably some instigators yet to come.
So, it is legal for Kiev to cut of the region by refusing to pay pensions, appropriating the bank accounts of the region’s residents, establishing a trade blockade, cutting off communications. Furthermore, the Stockholm arbitrage recently ruled that Kiev is not obligated to pay for the gas Russia has been providing to the region, which means what, exactly? That Kiev has no obligations towards the Donbass population, and as far as Stockholm is concern everyone there might as well freeze to death.
What international law are we talking about? It’s nothing but a joke, and a bad one, too.
John Christopher
What International Law are you talking about? The Law that allowed the US government to interfere in 30 countries just after the Second World war alone? The law that allowed the US to murder 30 million innocent people after the Second World War alone? The law that allowed the US to bomb Iraq back to the stone Age and occupy that country based on a lie? That law? The Law that Russia , China, Iran etc. must follow but the US and it`s poodle nation allies are not bound by? That law? Is that what you are talking about?
Jeez forgot again. The Indespensible Nation is above all law. it decides what the law is and decides when and if it is to be obeyed and by whom.
As we’ve seen so many times in the past seventy-some years, great sovereign states make their own international law.
If Russia ever decides to annex Donbas, it will be done sans approval in the UN.
Similar to Crimea, the people of Donbas wanted Russian annexation from the start.
Think before you post.
Because bringing Novorossiya into Russia means dismantling Ukraine, abandoning the rest of Russian speaking Ukrainians in Odessa and elsewhere, and bringing in NATO fully in the remaining of Ukraine, thus bringing it even closer to Moscow. Bringing back Crimea was an absolute long-term strategic necessity. Taking in Donetsk-Lugansk would be strategically disastrous in the long term.
Exactly, and as you point out leave the Russian speaking half of Ukrainians in a still worse situation.
Demographically speaking, Russia needs more people than it does territory. It might welcome Russian speakers from elsewhere in Ukraine into the Donbas region post-annexation — were there to be an annexation. Russian speakers preferring to roll the dice in Ukraine proper would be doing so at their own risk.
Most, I’m guessing, would jump at a chance — under the circumstances — to get the hell out of Ukraine.
Wouldn’t you?
Vojkan, yes you are right.
What I meant was that the whole Russian Speaking South Eastern Ukraine – east of Dnieper river – should be a separate Independent State – a buffer State with family and cultural ties with Russia. Along with Donetsk and Luhansk, Odessa and Kharkov are Russian speaking cities.
Russia has more than enough area. It is apparent that Russia does not want or need additional territory. But they do not want NATO on their borders encircling them from all sides.
Yes!
This is the rough dividing line. It is an important point that the south all the way to Odessa is in the Russian speaking zone. This is Novorossija, conquered by Catherine the Great in the 18th century from the Turks. It was only sparsely populated by Turkish Nomads. The land was settled by Russian noblemen and serfs, mainly from Russia proper, but also some from Russian Ukraine, and also peasants from other parts of the Empire, such as ethnic Germans and Swedes btw, and people from the Balkans.
Martin – Swedish Citizen,
Yes. You have correctly described the Russian history. That sparsely populated South Eastern Ukraine including Crimea under Turkish control was won by Catherine The Great during the eighteenth century. The Upper Eastern Ukraine, the West of Kharkov area was rejoined to the Russian State around 1654. It was under a distant loose control of Poland.
There was no such thing as A Ukrainian State. The Western most Ukraine under Austrian and Polish Control at different times of History as you described above, were added to Ukraine after the Second War. It would have been wise for the Ukrainians to have a constitution creating a Federal State with ties both to Russia and the West – a neutral country. They accidentally got this huge country by that strange historical event in 1991. The Russian Speaking South Eastern Ukraine was added to Western Half by the Bolsheviks in 1922 for political reasons. But these Ukrainian Ultra- Nationalists supported by the scheming West are of a strange breed. They live in the past, and they are violent. Instead of learning to govern a country, they are busy making these wars. They have to come to their senses.
To create a peaceful Europe, the Western European Countries should have been helping to create a Federal Ukrainian State – a neutral Country. Instead they, along with U.S. , are the instigators of these violent events in Ukraine. It seems to me that in the end no one is going to be a victor in these unfortunate events. And it may very well lead to destruction of humanity.
Martin and Dave P-
Thanks for the history lesson. It’s one of the main reasons I love coming to this site.
Skip Scott –
Thank you mutually!
I hesitate and feel a bit embarrassed to write such “history lessons”, but hope that whatever I might contribute on this particular matter may make a tiny difference. Therefore, I am very glad to read your comment here (and in general).
Oh, and I join you in the thanks to Dave P!
Yes, the present support is far more in accord with international law and world opinion, and it may be best to have Donetsk-Lugansk as a buffer state so that western Ukraine is not on a border of Russia.
Minor points are that bringing Donetsk-Lugansk into Russia would not really abandon smaller and more distant Russian areas, because they could migrate if important enough, and it would not really bring NATO closer to Moscow.
If major powers actually cooperated (heaven forbid) to solve the problems of factional strife in Ukraine, we would be far ahead. As usual since WWII, it is the US government that refuses to recognize the rights and views of others, and so far Russia has been able to leave the door open for its cooperation.
If the US zionist/MIC warmongers do not start a war in Ukraine to manipulate the upcoming Sochi games or the 2018 US elections, I will be surprised, but now they have less motive to do so there than in the Mideast, from which Russia has now ostensibly withdrawn. Hopefully the US provision of anti-tank weapons just reassures west Ukraine against invasion, rather than leading them to a foolish attack on Donetsk-Lugansk. If they do attack, Russia could repulse and then withdraw as in Syria.
I agree that would seem to be the logical next step. If the Kiev regime are de facto treating the Donbas as the Russian Federation then it makes sense to hold a referendum in the breakaway regions to legitimize the annexation and permit them to officially join the Russian Federation, along the lines of the Crimean referendum. That was what the Donbas republics wanted in 2014 I believe but at that time President Putin organized the Minsk Accords, seeking not to inflame the situation.
Since then Kiev has continuously acted according to their bizarre understanding of the situation, believing their own propaganda, leading to the passage of this legislation which I recall being presented for debate some months ago. At that time I made the comment that it was tantamount to a declaration of war and so it now seems to be understood.
I would speculate that after the second failed offensive on Eastern Ukraine (their asses handed back to them on a plate again), Russia will be forced to take Eastern Ukraine on-board because it will become politically untenable in Russia to keep those Russians out and exposed to US-Israeli-Ukro-Nazi tender mercies. The Ukrainian puppet state has already cut all the ties to the East, not paying any pensions, cutting gas, electricity and other winter supply etc etc, it will be only a formality to re-join Russia. But I am looking forward to the US-EU media and sanctions campaign to follow such outcome: could maximum hypocrisy be outmaxed?
I keep mentioning Israel together with US and Ukro-Nazis and some may think this is unjustified. The reason I do this is because many of the post-coup Ukrainian “leaders” and movers and shakers are dual citizens, the most famous one being the second richest Ukrainian and Israeli Ihor Kolomoyskyi. These dual citizens are the hidden link to the US administration and a good part of WHY. The Ukrainian soldiers and paramilitaries who will again attack East are just (dumb) cannon fodder.
I agree that would seem to be the logical next step. If the Kiev regime are de facto treating the Donbas as the Russian Federation then it makes sense to hold a referendum in the breakaway regions to legitimize the annexation and permit them to officially join the Russian Federation, along the lines of the Crimean referendum. That was what the Donbas republics wanted in 2014 I believe but at that time President Putin organized the Minsk Accords, seeking not to inflame the situation.
Since then Kiev has continuously acted according to their bizarre understanding of the situation, believing their own propaganda, leading to the passage of this legislation which I recall being presented for debate some months ago. At that time I made the comment that it was tantamount to a declaration of war and so it now seems to be understood.