Civil War in Ukraine: Western Empire vs Russia
- Thread starter angelburst29
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Perceval said:
Nothing in English yet AFAIK. From ITAR-TASS:
http://translate.yandex.net/tr-url/ru-en.ru/itar-tass.com/politika/1384824
What is interesting here is that he related to the military equipment that Zakharchenko had not specified where they got it from, but didn't address the 1200 supposedly trained in Russia personnel.
According to Deutsche Welle, the statements by Zakharchenko were discussed during a telephone conversation between Merkel and Petro Poroshenko. Merkel said that Germany would require an explanations from RF about that.
l apprenti de forgeron
The Living Force
China plans its own 'Christian theology'axj said:
_http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28687520
Why Is China Nationalizing Christianity?
_http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/why-is-china-nationalizing-christianity/
Yes, and the need for good leaders may talk of the low level of consciousness of mankind for millennia. That could be related with this:Siberia said:
http://www.sott.net/article/163349-Moral-Endo-skeletons-and-Exo-skeletons-A-Perspective-on-Americas-Cultural-Divide-and-Current-Crisis
But even the type of "Endo-skeletons" people need that the nation be governed by a good leader, because that way the majority can have some perspectives of good level of life and there have "pax" in society.
angelburst29
The Living Force
Don't know what kind of weapon this is but it just keeps "glowing?" The impact smashed the window in front of the guy recording the event and his location is a distance away?
Link to footage possibly showing tactical nuke used on Donetsk by Kiev?
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ARZNx1epU&feature=youtu.be
Novorossia Kiev junta struck the Donetsk tactical weapon Point In August 19, 2014
Link to footage possibly showing tactical nuke used on Donetsk by Kiev?
_https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8ARZNx1epU&feature=youtu.be
Novorossia Kiev junta struck the Donetsk tactical weapon Point In August 19, 2014
angelburst29 said:
Wow. Maybe it was a white phosphorus bomb. They are supposed to be constructed to provide smoke camouflage for battle, but maybe in higher concentrations it's incendiary? In any case it was incredibly powerful. The guy's window was blown out when it hit, and it looks like he's at least a half-mile away from the impact. Would anyone be able to translate his comments?
Today some group of people painted yellow and blue the star on the top of one of Stalin's skyscrapers in the center of Moscow, Russia. The choice by the Ukrainians of this particular object seems a bit curious and symbolic: pentagram is not only the symbol of Pentagon, but also the symbol of the perished Soviet empire.
Here is an article about some of the Scythian gold that was lent out to a museum in the Netherlands, apparently before the breakup of Ukraine.
_http://en.itar-tass.com/world/745952 said:Disputed Scythian gold collection to remain in NetherlandsWorld
August 20, 20:51 UTC+4
However, the museum is still undecided whether the exhibits should return to Kiev or Crimea
© EPA/P Photo/Peter Dejong
An exhibit from the collection
THE HAGUE, August 20. /ITAR-TASS/. The Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam has decided to leave the disputed “Scythian gold’ collection in the Netherlands for the moment, the museum said in its press release on Wednesday.
The document said that it had studied the legislation and international treaties under which the “Crimea: Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea” exhibition had been put on view in Amsterdam.
However, the museum is still undecided whether the exhibits should return to Kiev or Crimea. “Until recently, the museum has failed to pass any decision or meet the demands of either of the sides (Ukrainian or Crimean - ITAR-TASS).
“Therefore, the Allard Pierson Museum decided not to pass any decisions with regards to whom it should hand over the exhibits,” the press release said.
The Museum is ready to obey any ruling made by a qualified judge or an agreement reached by the parties. But for the moment, the Scythian gold will remain in the Netherlands.
Apparently, president Poroshenko is now uttering that the conflict / civil war in Eastern Ukraine can not be solved only by force:
On this map there are notes which summarize the military events of August 10-18
You can enlarge the picture. In the description it is not specified what the blue lines mean, but from the context, I guess the refer to movements or defence lines of the junta troops.
The question is if one can believe him, so far the Kiev junta has been trying very hard to eliminate the resistance in Eastern Ukraine to their own autocratic rule, but it has turned out a bit more difficult than expected. For example the Juntas army lost a Su 25 fighter plane Wednesday August 20Th (See _http://en.itar-tass.com/world/745977)._http://en.itar-tass.com/world/745983 said:
On this map there are notes which summarize the military events of August 10-18
You can enlarge the picture. In the description it is not specified what the blue lines mean, but from the context, I guess the refer to movements or defence lines of the junta troops.
Above, I posted a map of the conflict area, but the map says little about the life of the people who suffer. Therefore, I repost most of an article from RT on this subject.
According to the above reports, there are only 200.000 left out of the 954.000 inhabitants of Donetslk. They have no water in the city. What a telling illustration of the US/EU/NATO campaign for freedom and democracy.
_http://rt.com/news/181548-ukraine-cities-bombing-shelling/ said:Underground life: E.Ukraine civilians pushed to basements by constant shelling (VIDEO)
Published time: August 20, 2014 13:18
Heavy shelling of eastern Ukraine by the country's military continues, with people in despair and badly in need of water and electricity, hiding out in basements. Constant bombardment is laying waste to entire cities.
Kiev's bloody eastern Ukraine campaign LIVE UPDATES
City authorities say two people have been injured in Donetsk, a city of nearly 954,000 people, on Tuesday. Several apartments, gas pipes and cars have been destroyed by the government barrage. Residents of almost all areas in the city are within earshot of artillery fire.
Bodies lying strewn on the ground, waiting to be picked up by locals have become a common sight. People hiding in basements went out for brief periods of "fresh air," but say they "can't stay out there for long."
[There is a video here from RT which can be found in the original article]
The Tuesday shelling of Lugansk by the Ukrainian military has left burnt out vehicles and debris in its wake. As it continued throughout the day, there were 200,000 people left in the city, looking for shelter in basements. Aid was being given out at a downtown building under the control of the Lugansk People's Republic, however, there were "old men and women who [were] scared to go out on to the streets" for food, according to one local.
https://youtu.be/ndF-pZQRFw4?feature=player_embedded
Buildings were deserted. The sight of broken glass, demolished concrete and desolate streets resembled the situation in the terror-stricken Middle East more than it did eastern Ukraine only a short while ago. This was Donetsk on August 8.
https://youtu.be/FVOAv3Y4thw?feature=player_embedded
"People have been staying here for about a week now," says one Gorlovka resident of the local Recreation Center, which has become a home for the internally displaced.
https://youtu.be/hxba-KP6zTk?feature=player_embedded
She adds that going out into the street is too dangerous, so people stay inside for days on end.
"The shelling takes place mostly at night, or in early mornings... you never know where it's going to hit today. We've got the elderly lying down in the basement, 90-year-old people who require constant care," Maria says.
The center has been without water or electricity for days now, while providing shelter to some 100 Gorlovka residents.
Around 2,000 people have lost their lives since the start of the uprising and the subsequent government assault, by UN estimates.
According to the above reports, there are only 200.000 left out of the 954.000 inhabitants of Donetslk. They have no water in the city. What a telling illustration of the US/EU/NATO campaign for freedom and democracy.
angelburst29
The Living Force
More U-tube clips (actually 71 count) of the War in Ukraine in this article. Please note, several are very sensitive and horrific.
Our ‘Enemies’ in Ukraine Speak
_http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/enemies-ukraine-speak.html
Wednesday August 20, 2014
America’s ‘news’ media do not let the victims of Ukraine’s civil war — the people who are dying and being driven out from the southeastern regions of that country by the new Ukrainian Government — speak, and tell their story. Scenes will therefore be posted below from an admittedly overlong amateur video from southeastern Ukraine, in which they have been allowed to tell their story. This is being done here since U.S. ‘news’ media apparently don’t consider it something that you would want to know, and since you should be allowed to judge for yourself whether it is or not, and to judge why it’s not being reported on the ‘news’ sources that our ‘democracy’ offers to ‘inform’ America’s public about public affairs. It is also being done because these still photos from the documentary summarize this over-long documentary’s important narrative. You are welcomed to click onto the link above to see the entire 82-minute documentary.
First, there will here be an introductory paragraph summary of the relevant background (not discussed in the documentary), if you want to know that: In February 2014, our State Department and CIA used ‘false flag,’ or engineered-so-as-to-be-misinterpreted, violence by our country’s paid Ukrainian agents, in order to exploit the ‘Maidan’ demonstrations in Kiev, the desire of Ukrainians for a less-corrupt government than existed in Ukraine, and than has existed in Ukraine ever since the fall of communism there. Our Government, the Obama Administration, paid masked gunmen there to dress as if they were from the State Security Force of the corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and to shoot at and murder not just policemen but anti-Yanukovych or ‘democracy’ demonstrators. (However, Yanukovych had, in fact, himself been democratically elected in 2010, and still was the democratically elected President.) (NOTE: The complete key phone-transcript whose audio is briefly heard excerpted there is printed here.) And our gunmen also threatened some members of the Ukrainian Parliament at gunpoint, and engineered their approval of an emergency replacement of Yanukovych’s government by one that was appointed by Obama’s agent, Victoria Nuland, and that was headed by Nuland’s friend “Yats,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk. This new government was filled with people who stated their desire to exterminate the people in Ukraine’s southeast, the people who had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych — to just get rid of them. Doing that would make Obama’s regime in Ukraine become permanent. Then, Ukraine held a ‘democratic’ election in which voters everywhere but in the southeast voted, and essentially the same coup-installed people remained in power. The billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko was elected as the President of ‘Ukraine’; and Victoria Nuland’s chosen leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, continued on as the new country’s Prime Minister. Yatsenyuk fired the previous Defense Minister and replaced him with Mikhail Koval, who on June 11th announced a program of ethnic cleansing in the southeast. This was actually a direct extension from the program that had already started with the extermination on May 2nd of hundreds of supporters of the previous government, who were trapped inside the Trade Unions Building in Odessa and burned alive there. This massacre was masterminded by people who were installed by the Obama Administration. That massacre started Ukraine’s civil war, by demonstrating to people throughout the southeast, that the newly Obama-installed Ukrainian Government wanted to kill them. It was now official policy throughout the southeastern portion of Ukraine, to kill the Obama-installed regime’s opponents. All of the residents there were being officially labelled by the Obama government as ‘terrorists,’ and their elimination was declared to be a patriotic necessity for Ukraine. However, this amateur documentary from Ukraine’s southeast — the video from which the scenes below are taken — presents the resulting civil war not from the Obama Government’s side, but from their regime’s victims’ side, which is hardly heard at all in the West.
Since this amateur documentary presents the unvarnished reality of an actual ethnic cleansing campaign in progress, corpses and parts of corpses are necessarily shown, and also bombed buildings are shown. There also are curse-words that are spoken by the victims. Censoring these things out would be a violation of the most basic requirements of honest journalism, and would be to cover-up the reality of an ethnic-cleansing campaign, merely because this reality is ugly — that would be a shameful thing to do, a fundamental violation of the journalistic standards of any democracy, and will not be done here, though it is routinely done by our ‘journalists.’
Also, this article of interest:
Council On Foreign Relations: The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s – Not Putin’s – Fault
_http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/council-foreign-relations-ukraine-crisis-wests-putins-fault.html
Wednesday August 20, 2014
Mainstream, Hawkish Group Blames the West for the Mess In Ukraine
We’ve previously reported that it’s the West’s encirclement of Russia – breaking a key promise which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union – which is behind the Ukraine crisis.
We’ve also noted: The U.S. State Department spent more than $5 billion dollars in pushing Ukraine towards the West. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (Geoffrey Pyatt) and assistant Secretary of State (Victoria Nuland) were also recorded plotting the downfall of the former Ukraine government in a leaked recorder conversation. Top-level U.S. officials literally handed out cookies to the protesters who overthrew the Ukrainian government.
And the U.S. has been doing everything it can to trumpet pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian propaganda. So – without doubt – the U.S. government is heavily involved with fighting a propaganda war regarding Ukraine.
The news is starting to go mainstream …
Specifically, the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) is a very mainstream, hawkish group.
CFR’s flagship publication – Foreign Affairs – has just published a piece blaming the Ukraine crisis on the West.
The piece by John Mearsheimer – in it’s September/October 2014 issue – accurately notes:
The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine — beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 — were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president — which he rightly labeled a “coup” — was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics.
***
U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.
***
The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.” As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country “the biggest prize.” After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.
When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
The West’s triple package of policies — NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion — added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.
***
Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.
Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.
***
(Article continues)
Our ‘Enemies’ in Ukraine Speak
_http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/enemies-ukraine-speak.html
Wednesday August 20, 2014
America’s ‘news’ media do not let the victims of Ukraine’s civil war — the people who are dying and being driven out from the southeastern regions of that country by the new Ukrainian Government — speak, and tell their story. Scenes will therefore be posted below from an admittedly overlong amateur video from southeastern Ukraine, in which they have been allowed to tell their story. This is being done here since U.S. ‘news’ media apparently don’t consider it something that you would want to know, and since you should be allowed to judge for yourself whether it is or not, and to judge why it’s not being reported on the ‘news’ sources that our ‘democracy’ offers to ‘inform’ America’s public about public affairs. It is also being done because these still photos from the documentary summarize this over-long documentary’s important narrative. You are welcomed to click onto the link above to see the entire 82-minute documentary.
First, there will here be an introductory paragraph summary of the relevant background (not discussed in the documentary), if you want to know that: In February 2014, our State Department and CIA used ‘false flag,’ or engineered-so-as-to-be-misinterpreted, violence by our country’s paid Ukrainian agents, in order to exploit the ‘Maidan’ demonstrations in Kiev, the desire of Ukrainians for a less-corrupt government than existed in Ukraine, and than has existed in Ukraine ever since the fall of communism there. Our Government, the Obama Administration, paid masked gunmen there to dress as if they were from the State Security Force of the corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and to shoot at and murder not just policemen but anti-Yanukovych or ‘democracy’ demonstrators. (However, Yanukovych had, in fact, himself been democratically elected in 2010, and still was the democratically elected President.) (NOTE: The complete key phone-transcript whose audio is briefly heard excerpted there is printed here.) And our gunmen also threatened some members of the Ukrainian Parliament at gunpoint, and engineered their approval of an emergency replacement of Yanukovych’s government by one that was appointed by Obama’s agent, Victoria Nuland, and that was headed by Nuland’s friend “Yats,” Arseniy Yatsenyuk. This new government was filled with people who stated their desire to exterminate the people in Ukraine’s southeast, the people who had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych — to just get rid of them. Doing that would make Obama’s regime in Ukraine become permanent. Then, Ukraine held a ‘democratic’ election in which voters everywhere but in the southeast voted, and essentially the same coup-installed people remained in power. The billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko was elected as the President of ‘Ukraine’; and Victoria Nuland’s chosen leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, continued on as the new country’s Prime Minister. Yatsenyuk fired the previous Defense Minister and replaced him with Mikhail Koval, who on June 11th announced a program of ethnic cleansing in the southeast. This was actually a direct extension from the program that had already started with the extermination on May 2nd of hundreds of supporters of the previous government, who were trapped inside the Trade Unions Building in Odessa and burned alive there. This massacre was masterminded by people who were installed by the Obama Administration. That massacre started Ukraine’s civil war, by demonstrating to people throughout the southeast, that the newly Obama-installed Ukrainian Government wanted to kill them. It was now official policy throughout the southeastern portion of Ukraine, to kill the Obama-installed regime’s opponents. All of the residents there were being officially labelled by the Obama government as ‘terrorists,’ and their elimination was declared to be a patriotic necessity for Ukraine. However, this amateur documentary from Ukraine’s southeast — the video from which the scenes below are taken — presents the resulting civil war not from the Obama Government’s side, but from their regime’s victims’ side, which is hardly heard at all in the West.
Since this amateur documentary presents the unvarnished reality of an actual ethnic cleansing campaign in progress, corpses and parts of corpses are necessarily shown, and also bombed buildings are shown. There also are curse-words that are spoken by the victims. Censoring these things out would be a violation of the most basic requirements of honest journalism, and would be to cover-up the reality of an ethnic-cleansing campaign, merely because this reality is ugly — that would be a shameful thing to do, a fundamental violation of the journalistic standards of any democracy, and will not be done here, though it is routinely done by our ‘journalists.’
Also, this article of interest:
Council On Foreign Relations: The Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s – Not Putin’s – Fault
_http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/08/council-foreign-relations-ukraine-crisis-wests-putins-fault.html
Wednesday August 20, 2014
Mainstream, Hawkish Group Blames the West for the Mess In Ukraine
We’ve previously reported that it’s the West’s encirclement of Russia – breaking a key promise which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union – which is behind the Ukraine crisis.
We’ve also noted: The U.S. State Department spent more than $5 billion dollars in pushing Ukraine towards the West. The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (Geoffrey Pyatt) and assistant Secretary of State (Victoria Nuland) were also recorded plotting the downfall of the former Ukraine government in a leaked recorder conversation. Top-level U.S. officials literally handed out cookies to the protesters who overthrew the Ukrainian government.
And the U.S. has been doing everything it can to trumpet pro-Ukrainian and anti-Russian propaganda. So – without doubt – the U.S. government is heavily involved with fighting a propaganda war regarding Ukraine.
The news is starting to go mainstream …
Specifically, the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) is a very mainstream, hawkish group.
CFR’s flagship publication – Foreign Affairs – has just published a piece blaming the Ukraine crisis on the West.
The piece by John Mearsheimer – in it’s September/October 2014 issue – accurately notes:
The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine — beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 — were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president — which he rightly labeled a “coup” — was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics.
***
U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.
***
The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.” As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country “the biggest prize.” After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.
When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
The West’s triple package of policies — NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion — added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.
***
Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.
Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.
***
(Article continues)
On Ria Novosti they have an article _http://en.ria.ru/infographics/20140811/191902618/Prospects-Of-The-Conflict--In-Ukraines-Southeast.html which details the strengths of the two sides in the war in Eastern Ukraine. According to them, the militia of Novorussiya has lost about half of the area that they originally controlled. I tried to repost the map, but is it a long png file and does not turn up in a readable format on the forum. The data on the site seem not to be very updated. In any case, at the time of making the overview, it was claimed that the the Novorussiya army had lost some 1200 people compared to 332 of the Kiev army.
The Kiev army had lost close to 50 aircraft of various types, and more than 500 armored cars and vehicles. Still, I wonder if it is possible to loose that much hardware and only loose 332 men.
The Kiev army had lost close to 50 aircraft of various types, and more than 500 armored cars and vehicles. Still, I wonder if it is possible to loose that much hardware and only loose 332 men.
The following excerpt is from a column on RT by Neil Clark, who is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at _www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Neil Clark, has tried to compare the Western response to Ukraine versus the conflict in Yugoslavia in 1999. This seems to me very appropriate. Here is the end of his article and its conclusion:
In order to get away with their crimes, the Western powers need to close the minds and hearts of the populations in the countries and areas they control, - and they are very good at that.
Neil Clark on _http://rt.com/op-edge/181580-kosovo-ukraine-compare-contrast/ said:
In order to get away with their crimes, the Western powers need to close the minds and hearts of the populations in the countries and areas they control, - and they are very good at that.
thorbiorn said:
According to several sources I've read, Kiev is vastly downplaying the number of military deaths. See, for example:
http://www.sott.net/article/283478-Ukrainian-MP-sez-over-10000-dead-in-Ukraine-since-start-of-mad-anti-terror-op
And this video: _http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.fr/2014/08/the-real-state-of-ukrainian-army-in-ato.html
Here is a short interview with a US citizen who is an ethnic Ukrainian. He came to Ukraine as a volunteer to fight on the side of the official Kiev. But notice, what he actually says about the Kiev government. The interview is in English with the Russian subtitles.
The source of this video says that this soldier died yesterday during the fight under Ilovaisk.
https://youtu.be/gsVyN1_H4Eo
The source of this video says that this soldier died yesterday during the fight under Ilovaisk.
https://youtu.be/gsVyN1_H4Eo
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