Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Sat Nov 13, 2021 2:00 pm

In Ukraine The U.S. Is Risking War
There is fear in Russia that the U.S. is egging the Ukraine into a renewed active conflict with its renegade eastern Donbass region and thereby into a war with Russia.

In his latest RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP Patrick Armstrong recollects the most recent developments:

UKRAINE. 1 Nov: Russian buildup on Ukraine border shrieks controlled US media. 2 Nov: CIA Director Burns goes to Moscow; said to warn Moscow against military operations. 3 Nov: Dmytro Yarosh appointed adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Ukraine armed forces, Defence Minister resigns. 4 Nov: US official visits Kiev. 7 Nov: Kiev says no indication of Russian buildup on border.
What just happened? Moscow got its message across and Washington turned its puppet off? (If so, nobody told Blinken.) Hard to imagine anyone in Kiev thinks “a good little war” would improve the wretched situation. But Yarosh might. This time I think Moscow will use force – if they didn’t get the hint in the spring, there’s no point in more hints: time for facts. (Ossetia 2008; but faster.)

Earlier this year the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky closed TV and media that favored the opposition. Last week the 26 years old English language KyivPost outlet was shut down after its owner was threatened.

Zelensky has recently lost the majority in the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. The leader of Zelensky's party 'Servant of the People' Dmytro Razumkov, was removed from his position as speaker of the Rada after some conflict with Zelensky. Razumkov has now founded a new party and 21 parliament members from the 'Servant of the People' joined him in a new faction. 226 seats are needed for a majority in the Rada. 'Servant of the People' had 244 seats but is now down to 224.

Ukraine is in an energy crisis. It did not use the summer months to fill its gas storage. It lacks thermal coal to generate electricity and to heat its cities. It will now import coal from Poland, the United States and South Africa. That is not only expensive but also likely too late to avoid blackouts:

Considering these factors, the [Energy Minister Herman Haluschenko] stressed the need to develop domestic coal mining.
"It is important that we look at the possibilities of rapidly increasing domestic production. And if there are such opportunities and there is an opportunity to invest in domestic coal, this is the key priority," he stressed.

The Donbass region has large coal reserves and mines. Rapidly increasing domestic coal production by occupying it might be some peoples' idea to avoid rolling blackouts.

This week the Foreign Minister of the Ukraine was in Washington DC for U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Dialogue talks. There was a lot of war mongering about a 'Russian escalation' that is not happening. Russia is not interested in one but had earlier said that it would protect the Russian people in the renegade Donbass provinces.

In July 2020 the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence wrote a Summary Assessment of Intentions of the Political Leadership of the Russian Federation. It concluded that Russia does not a war with NATO but would not back away from an immediate threat. It also says:

We assess that Moscow is increasingly concerned about U.S. military activity, especially in Europe, and that this increases the potential for unintended Russian escalation.

This month the U.S. Navy has send the guided missile destroyer Porter and the command ship Mount Whitney into the Black Sea. The later is of special interest:

"The region can already be viewed as a potential theater of war. The USS Mount Whitney command ship is known for its visits to trouble spots. It was seen near the coasts of Iraq and Libya, and visited the Black Sea in 2008, when a war broke out in South Ossetia. It sailed to our shores in 2014, too, after Crimea reunited with Russia," [military expert Vladislav Shurygin] added.

At the same time the U.S. is intensifying its aerial reconnaissance activity around the Black Sea:

MOSCOW, November 10. /TASS/. NATO reconnaissance aircraft increased the number of flights near the Russian borders in the Black Sea region over the past 24 hours, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Wednesday.
"Over the past 24 hours, reconnaissance aircraft of NATO countries increased the intensity of flights near the borders of the Russian Federation in the Black Sea region," the ministry said.


On November 9, the radars of the Russian Aerospace Force’s air defense troops tracked a US Air Force E-8C airborne ground surveillance, command and control aircraft over the Black Sea, it said.

"Also, Russian anti-aircraft missile troops tracked three reconnaissance aircraft of NATO member states over the Black Sea in the past 24 hours," the statement says.

Meanwhile U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets as well as aerial tankers have been deployed to Bulgaria and Romania.

The fear in Moscow is not that the U.S. will attack Russia. But the high activity of U.S. forces in the area and the incitement Kiev gets from Washington might make the Ukrainian leadership believe that Washington has its back and will come to its help when it attacks the Donbass region and Russia hits back.

That believe would be false. Alastair Crooke notes a typical U.S. behavior towards Taiwan, Israel and the Ukraine. It incites them towards conflict but when the backlash will inevitably come is will be unable or unwilling to help them:

The West contrives to use Ukraine as the peg to threaten Russia with NATO action, even to the extent of NATO recently lowering the threshold for using its nuclear weapons – and yet … there is no way that Donbass can be seized back by Kiev. Moscow will never allow it, and NATO knows it cannot prevail over Russia in Ukraine, short of an unthinkable nuclear exchange.

Either way, the U.S. – apparently – courts failure: Either Ukraine remains territorially status quo, and disintegrates from the weight its own dysfunctionality, economic collapse and endemic corruption. Or, in a futile gesture, it goes for broke versus the Donbass forces and ends dismembered, as Russia – very reluctantly – is forced to intervene.

After the Afghanistan debacle the Biden administration needs a foreign policy victory:

In Ukraine, provoking even a limited Russian military intervention into eastern Ukraine would be hailed [in Washington] as a political achievement. Never mind the damage, the deaths; Europe would fall under full Washington control, and NATO would re-discover its raison d’être. But Europe and America would be weaker – and yet more of America’s traditional clients will assert themselves, through diversifying their relations, and projecting power through broader alliances. And the more they look eastward, the more deeply they engage with China.

Crooke compares this to the Clinton administration's ..

.. desire to rack up a string of miscellaneous, shallow achievements that would be boasted as successes to the electorate, so that the latter would conclude that foreign policy was in reasonably good shape. Yet they would be in error: The quest for racking-up these hollow achievements “ignored the alarming void, in precisely the area of greatest importance: the question of whether policy was making it more or less likely that America would have to fight a major war in the near future”. The U.S. is addicted to ephemeral success, whilst ignoring its strategic erosion ..

I also see analogies to Hong Kong where the Trump administration incited a student revolt but did nothing when China finally intervened. That was seen as a success by Trump and Pompeo but the opposition in Hong Kong lost out and Hong Kong is no longer the U.S.' easy entry point into China.

The Biden administrations war mongering towards Russia may be seem to be free of cost. But it takes only one miscalculation in Kiev or some unforeseen incident in the Black Sea region and the situation could seriously escalate.

Posted by b on November 12, 2021 at 18:28 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/11/i ... .html#more
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 23, 2021 2:16 pm

US considering sending extra weaponry to Ukraine as fears mount over potential Russian invasion
By Natasha Bertrand, Jim Sciutto and Katie Bo Lillis, CNN

Updated 6:02 AM ET, Tue November 23, 2021

(CNN)The Biden administration is weighing sending military advisers and new equipment including weaponry to Ukraine as Russia builds up forces near the border and US officials prepare allies for the possibility of another Russian invasion, multiple sources familiar with the deliberations tell CNN.

The discussions about the proposed lethal aid package are happening as Ukraine has begun to warn publicly that an invasion could happen as soon as January. The package could include new Javelin anti-tank and anti-armor missiles as well as mortars, the sources said.
Air defense systems, such as stinger missiles, are also under consideration, and the Defense Department has been pressing for some equipment that would have gone to Afghanistan -- like Mi-17 helicopters -- to instead be sent to Ukraine. The Mi-17 is a Russian helicopter that the US originally purchased to give to the Afghans. The Pentagon is now weighing what to do with them after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August.
But others in the administration are concerned that sending stingers and helicopters could be seen by Russia as a major escalation. And while they are prepared to send some military advisers into the region, it is unclear whether any would go into Ukraine itself, the people said.
Retired Lt. Col. Cedric Leighton told CNN that Javelin antitank missiles "are quite effective against the T-80 tanks which the Russians are actually employing in these efforts against Ukraine right now." But he noted that any additional assistance to Ukraine undoubtedly risks "further heightening tensions" with Moscow.
Sanctions discussions
Meanwhile, US officials have been holding discussions with European allies about putting together a new sanctions package that would go into effect if Russia invaded Ukraine, the sources said. And lawmakers are also jockeying over new sanctions language to include in the National Defense Authorization Act.
Asked about the Russian military activity, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday that the administration is concerned and has "had extensive interactions with our European allies and partners in recent weeks, including with Ukraine." She added that the US has "also had held discussions with Russian officials about Ukraine and US-Russian relations in general." The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, also spoke by phone with the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Valery Zaluzhny on Monday.
The discussions reflect how seriously the Biden administration

(more propaganda)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/22/politics ... index.html

Yadda Yadda... Seeing as there was no 'Russian invasion' of Ukraine to begin with this report starts poorly and it's all downhill from there. The Russians and the people of Donbass on the other hand are deeply suspicious that the influx of military largess will inspire the the Nazis to try something stupid in the hope of bringing the US/NATO into the fray.

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The high stakes of the U.S.-Russia confrontation over Ukraine
November 23, 2021 Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies

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The border between post-coup Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, based on the Minsk Agreements. Map: Wikipedia

A report in Covert Action Magazine from the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic in Eastern Ukraine describes grave fears of a new offensive by Ukrainian government forces, after increased shelling, a drone strike by a Turkish-built drone and an attack on Staromaryevka, a village inside the buffer zone established by the 2014-15 Minsk Accords.

The People’s Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), which declared independence in response to the U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, have once again become flashpoints in the intensifying Cold War between the United States and Russia. The U.S. and NATO appear to be fully supporting a new government offensive against these Russian-backed enclaves, which could quickly escalate into a full-blown international military conflict.

The last time this area became an international tinderbox was in April, when the anti-Russian government of Ukraine threatened an offensive against Donetsk and Luhansk, and Russia assembled thousands of troops along Ukraine’s eastern border.

On that occasion, Ukraine and NATO blinked and called off the offensive. This time around, Russia has again assembled an estimated 90,000 troops near its border with Ukraine. Will Russia once more deter an escalation of the war, or are Ukraine, the United States and NATO seriously preparing to press ahead at the risk of war with Russia?

Since April, the U.S. and its allies have been stepping up their military support for Ukraine. After a March announcement of $125 million in military aid, including armed coastal patrol boats and radar equipment, the U.S. then gave Ukraine another $150 million package in June. This included radar, communications and electronic warfare equipment for the Ukrainian Air Force, bringing total military aid to Ukraine since the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 to $2.5 billion. This latest package appears to include deploying U.S. training personnel to Ukrainian air bases.

Turkey is supplying Ukraine with the same drones it provided to Azerbaijan for its war with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. That war killed at least 6,000 people and has recently flared up again, one year after a Russian-brokered ceasefire. Turkish drones wreaked havoc on Armenian troops and civilians alike in Nagorno-Karabakh, and their use in Ukraine would be a horrific escalation of violence against the people of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The ratcheting up of U.S. and NATO support for government forces in Ukraine’s civil war is having ever-worsening diplomatic consequences. At the beginning of October, NATO expelled eight Russian liaison officers from NATO Headquarters in Brussels, accusing them of spying. Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the manager of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, was dispatched to Moscow in October, ostensibly to calm tensions. Nuland failed so spectacularly that, only a week later, Russia ended 30 years of engagement with NATO, and ordered NATO’s office in Moscow closed.

Nuland reportedly tried to reassure Moscow that the United States and NATO were still committed to the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Accords on Ukraine, which include a ban on offensive military operations and a promise of greater autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk within Ukraine. But her assurances were belied by Defense Secretary Austin when he met with Ukraine’s President Zelensky in Kiev on October 18, reiterating U.S. support for Ukraine’s future membership in NATO, promising further military support and blaming Russia for “perpetuating the war in Eastern Ukraine.”

More extraordinary, but hopefully more successful, was CIA Director William Burns’s visit to Moscow on November 2nd and 3rd, during which he met with senior Russian military and intelligence officials and spoke by phone with President Putin.

A mission like this is not usually part of the CIA Director’s duties. But after Biden promised a new era of American diplomacy, his foreign policy team is now widely acknowledged to have instead brought U.S. relations with Russia and China to all-time lows.

Judging from the March meeting of Secretary of State Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan with Chinese officials in Alaska, Biden’s meeting with Putin in Vienna in June, and Under Secretary Nuland’s recent visit to Moscow, U.S. officials have reduced their encounters with Russian and Chinese officials to mutual recriminations designed for domestic consumption instead of seriously trying to resolve policy differences. In Nuland’s case, she also misled the Russians about the U.S. commitment, or lack of it, to the Minsk Accords. So who could Biden send to Moscow for a serious diplomatic dialogue with the Russians about Ukraine?

In 2002, as Under Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, William Burns wrote a prescient but unheeded 10-page memo to Secretary of State Powell, warning him of the many ways that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could “unravel” and create a “perfect storm” for American interests. Burns is a career diplomat and a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, and may be the only member of this administration with the diplomatic skills and experience to actually listen to the Russians and engage seriously with them.

The Russians presumably told Burns what they have said in public: that U.S. policy is in danger of crossing “red lines” that would trigger decisive and irrevocable Russian responses. Russia has long warned that one red line would be NATO membership for Ukraine and/or Georgia.

But there are clearly other red lines in the creeping U.S. and NATO military presence in and around Ukraine and in the increasing U.S. military support for the Ukrainian government forces assaulting Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin has warned against the build-up of NATO’s military infrastructure in Ukraine and has accused both Ukraine and NATO of destabilizing actions, including in the Black Sea.

With Russian troops amassed at Ukraine’s border for a second time this year, a new Ukrainian offensive that threatens the existence of the DPR and LPR would surely cross another red line, while increasing U.S. and NATO military support for Ukraine may be dangerously close to crossing yet another one.

So did Burns come back from Moscow with a clearer picture of exactly what Russia’s red lines are? We had better hope so. Even U.S. military websites acknowledge that U.S. policy in Ukraine is “backfiring.”

Russia expert Andrew Weiss, who worked under William Burns at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, acknowledged to Michael Crowley of The New York Times that Russia has “escalation dominance” in Ukraine and that, if push comes to shove, Ukraine is simply more important to Russia than to the United States. It therefore makes no sense for the United States to risk triggering World War III over Ukraine, unless it actually wants to trigger World War III.

During the Cold War, both sides developed clear understandings of each other’s “red lines.” Along with a large helping of dumb luck, we can thank those understandings for our continued existence. What makes today’s world even more dangerous than the world of the 1950s or the 1980s is that recent U.S. leaders have cavalierly jettisoned the bilateral nuclear treaties and vital diplomatic relationships that their grandparents forged to stop the Cold War from turning into a hot one.

Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, with the help of Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman and others, conducted negotiations that spanned two administrations, between 1958 and 1963, to achieve a partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that was the first of a series of bilateral arms control treaties. By contrast, the only continuity between Trump, Biden and Under Secretary Victoria Nuland seems to be a startling lack of imagination that blinds them to any possible future beyond a zero-sum, non-negotiable, and yet still unattainable “U.S. Uber Alles” global hegemony.

But Americans should beware of romanticizing the “old” Cold War as a time of peace, simply because we somehow managed to dodge a world-ending nuclear holocaust. U.S. Korean and Vietnam War veterans know better, as do the people in countries across the global South that became bloody battlefields in the ideological struggle between the United States and the U.S.S.R.

Three decades after declaring victory in the Cold War, and after the self-inflicted chaos of the U.S. “Global War on Terror,” U.S. military planners have settled on a new Cold War as the most persuasive pretext to perpetuate their trillion dollar war machine and their unattainable ambition to dominate the entire planet. Instead of asking the U.S. military to adapt to more new challenges it is clearly not up for, U.S. leaders decided to revert to their old conflict with Russia and China to justify the existence and ridiculous expense of their ineffective but profitable war machine.

But the very nature of a Cold War is that it involves the threat and use of force, overt and covert, to contest the political allegiances and economic structures of countries across the world. In our relief at the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which both Trump and Biden have used to symbolize the “end of endless war,” we should have no illusions that either of them is offering us a new age of peace.

Quite the contrary. What we are watching in Ukraine, Syria, Taiwan and the South China Sea are the opening salvos of an age of more ideological wars that may well be just as futile, deadly and self-defeating as the “war on terror,” and much more dangerous to the United States.

A war with Russia or China would risk escalating into World War III. As Andrew Weiss told the Times on Ukraine, Russia and China would have conventional “escalation dominance,” as well as simply more at stake in wars on their own borders than the United States does.

So what would the United States do if it were losing a major war with Russia or China? U.S. nuclear weapons policy has always kept a “first strike” option open in case of precisely this scenario.

The current U.S. $1.7 trillion plan for a whole range of new nuclear weapons therefore seems to be a response to the reality that the United States cannot expect to defeat Russia and China in conventional wars on their own borders.

But the paradox of nuclear weapons is that the most powerful weapons ever created have no practical value as actual weapons of war, since there can be no winner in a war that kills everybody. Any use of nuclear weapons would quickly trigger a massive use of them by one side or the other, and the war would soon be over for all of us. The only winners would be a few species of radiation-resistant insects and other very small creatures.

Neither Obama, Trump nor Biden has dared to present their reasons for risking World War III over Ukraine or Taiwan to the American public, because there is no good reason. Risking a nuclear holocaust to appease the military-industrial complex is as insane as destroying the climate and the natural world to appease the fossil fuel industry.

So we had better hope that CIA Director Burns not only came back from Moscow with a clear picture of Russia’s “red lines,” but that President Biden and his colleagues understand what Burns told them and what is at stake in Ukraine. They must step back from the brink of a U.S.-Russia war, and then from the larger Cold War with China and Russia that they have so blindly and foolishly stumbled into.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... r-ukraine/

This is brinkmanship on the part of the US. Actual deployment of forces significant enough to fight Russia on it's own ground is nonexistent currently and would take months to accomplish.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 06, 2021 3:27 pm

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SVR – United States push Ukraine to relaunch Donbass conflict, while accusing Russia of wanting to attack
Originally published: Donbass-Insider by Christelle Néant (November 30, 2021 ) | - Posted Dec 06, 2021

The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR) has denounced the way in which the United States is trying to make people believe that Russia wants to attack Ukraine, while at the same time Washington is pushing Kiev to restart the Donbass war.

The head of the SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, told a journalist from the Rossia 1 channel that behind the reports that Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine lies Washington’s desire to push Kiev to attack the Donbass.

“The objective is to try to push the poorly controlled government in Kiev to reignite the conflict in eastern Ukraine. And for the U.S., Ukraine is just a consumable in this whole thing, but they want to reignite the conflict with renewed vigour. Of course we have to keep cool and strengthen our country’s defence capability,” he said.

The head of the SVR was also keen to deny reports that Russia wants to invade Ukraine. He said that the United States was pushing Kiev to attack the Donbass by spreading rumours about an alleged Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I have to reassure everyone that nothing like that will happen. […] In general, everything that is happening now around this issue is, of course, a malicious propaganda action by the U.S. State Department. The State Department is injecting these fakes, these lies to its allies, to the heads of the media and to the heads of the political centres in the United States so that they multiply and multiply and multiply these lies. And they have built a big bubble around it,” Naryshkin added.

And the injection of all this war hysteria around Russia and Ukraine is not only taking place in the media, but also through diplomatic channels, as the SVR press service said today.

According to the SVR, “the Western diplomatic corps in Ukraine has reportedly seen an increase in U.S. activity aimed at gaining support from European allies to contain Russia“. It adds that “the tone of this dialogue is tougher“.

And to sow hysteria among Western countries, the United States can count on the help of the British, who are not to be outdone in terms of Russophobia.

“In particular, a meeting of representatives of EU diplomatic missions in Ukraine was held in Kiev in mid-November this year, attended by senior U.S. and British diplomats. Emissaries from Washington and London tried to create panic by continuing to manipulate false information about the imminent full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the subsequent occupation of Ukrainian territory by Russia. They insisted that EU countries should adopt a united approach. According to the American and British interpretation, this is the only way to save the Russophobic regime in Kiev,” says the SVR press service.

At the meeting, the U.S. and Britain also called on European countries to supply energy to Ukraine, trying “to impose on the EU the costly responsibility of maintaining the viability of the Ukrainian economy amidst Ukraine’s unprecedented corruption, decaying energy infrastructure and rising energy prices“. EU countries thus find themselves “responsible for ensuring that Ukraine does not lose its economic resilience during the upcoming harsh winter“. As if the current energy crisis was not already a real quagmire for the EU countries, now they have to keep the Ukrainian Titanic afloat…

The problem is that “the EU states, which are themselves facing serious problems, do not want to feed the corrupt Ukrainian authorities“, because “Europe currently sees no prospect of Ukraine becoming a civilised and predictable partner“, says the SVR statement.

Moreover, the European diplomats “are aware that the Americans and the British are artificially fanning the flames of hysteria in order to present Russia as the culprit for all the problems if the adventurers in Kiev attack the Donbass“, while they “note that the Ukrainian authorities are themselves provoking tensions in the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk“.

In other words, the European countries are not very keen to open their wallets, and even less so to go and fight for Ukraine against Russia.

And while the United States maintains the hysteria around a hypothetical invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Kiev continues to fuel the escalation in the Donbass. On 30 November 2021, for example, a civilian was injured in the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic), as a result of Ukrainian army small arms fire.

The 34-year-old man was shot in the left thigh and taken to hospital in an extremely serious condition. The man, who is disabled from injuries sustained in 2015 in his own backyard from Ukrainian army mortar fire, received a gunshot wound, has a multi-dislocated open fracture of the lower third of his left femur, and is in shock. For the moment doctors do not know if they will be able to save him.

On the same day, the Ukrainian army made another attempt to carry out a terrorist attack using drones against the village of Sakhanka in the south of the DPR.

Fortunately, the anti-aircraft defence forces of the People’s Militia prevented the two drones sent by the Ukrainian army from reaching the village. One of the two drones crashed behind the front line, but the second one fell on DPR territory. It was recovered, and like the drone of 24 November in Donetsk, this one was carrying an explosive charge with metal elements, in order to maim as many people as possible who might have been nearby.

While the United States maintains media hysteria by screaming about imaginary invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Kiev continues to reignite the conflict with war crimes and terrorist attacks against Donbass civilians. These are the facts that this shameless American propaganda is trying to conceal with disinformation and hysterical accusatory inversion.

https://mronline.org/2021/12/06/svr-uni ... to-attack/

I am quite sure the NATO serfs are all jacked up for invading Russia in winter...

It would bust the 'alliance' into a million pieces.

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US and its Neo-Nazi Puppets in Ukraine Threaten War with Russia
December 2, 2021
By Workers Voice Socialist Movement – Nov 25, 2021

Fascist US War Profiteers Are the Real Danger, Not Russia

Fascism Can’t Be Defeated Here While U.S. Funds, Trains, and Supplies Weapons to Fascist Governments Around the World

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Neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville in 2017 (left), and in Kiev, Ukraine 2014. Pictured on right are the flags of Svoboda and the Right Sector, both fascist organizations that carried out the US-backed coup in 2014.

Hungry for Russia’s oil and gas, Washington is lying its way to war again

According to Avril Haines, the former head of the CIA and current director of national intelligence, Russia is on the verge of invading Ukraine. This is yet another lie brought to you by the same people who falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or that Syria “gassed its own people” and so on. The US would lie its way into WWIII before admitting that its wars are fought one reason alone: to make rich men richer. Russia’s vast mineral, oil, and gas wealth is what the US is really after.

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Is Russia a threat to US workers? Last year, Russia’s military budget was under $62 billion. The official budget of the US military budget is projected to be $753 billion—12 times the size of Russia’s. NATO’s joint annual military spending tops $1 trillion and is the rise. The real threat to workers is that every social benefit we’ve fought for will be sacrificed to feed the war profiteers at the trough of the ever-ballooning war budget.

Here’s the truth: the US has been on a steady march to push troops closer to Russia, despite assurances that US/NATO forces would not move “one inch eastward” in the words of US Secretary of State James Baker in 1990. To raid resources, expand markets, and exploit more workers, the US and the EU want Russia under their boot just like they’ve got Ukraine, Poland, and other countries of Eastern Europe. This would not only be a disaster for Russian workers, it would also increase the capitalists’ power to crush the living standards of workers everywhere.

The capitalists “served and protected” by the US military want complete and exclusive access to the land, resources, and labor of the world. That’s why they’re so desperate to replace the independent governments of Russia, Belarus, China, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, all of which they demonize and all of which have been subjected to harsh US economic sanctions, terrorist attacks, and other forms of war.

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U.S. Soldiers coordinating with members of the Azov battalion, a Nazi unit of the National Guard of Ukraine

US installs fascists to enforce corporate pillage of Ukraine

While the big business media incessantly beat the drum for war with Russia, they bury the fact that in 2021 alone, the US government pledged $400 million in tax-payer dollars to build up the military power of the fascist government of Ukraine which the Obama/Biden administration installed after a violent coup in 2014. The coup accomplished two main goals for the U.S.: Ukraine was forced to submit to the control of US and EU banks, and it became a major buyer of US weapons, which are now aimed at neighboring Russia. The US-backed government in Kiev relies on fascist terror to crush resistance to their policies of gutting social programs, destroying pensions, and privatization, which have resulted in mass unemployment and hunger throughout Ukraine.

Since 2014 the country has seen an explosion of terrorism against trade unionists, Roma, Jewish, and LGBT people. Fascist gangs like the C14 patrol the streets of Kiev with the official sanction of the government. Living standards have declined to the point that 30% of Ukrainian children suffer from hunger, according to the UN.

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The funeral of 5-year-old Vladik Shikhov, killed by a Ukrainian military drone on April 3.

Anti-fascist fighters and their families in Donbass shelled by US Bombs
The people of Ukraine have resisted the attempted fascist takeover of their country. In the eastern part of Ukraine, in the Donbass region, anti-fascist fighters have waged a bitter war to defend the territories known as the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) and Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). Since 2014, the Ukrainian war on the Donbas has killed nearly 14,000 people including thousands of civilians.

In 2015, leaders from Ukraine, LPR, DPR, and Russia met in Minsk, Belarus to work out a diplomatic cessation of the war in the Donbass. They agreed to self-government and territorial independence for the Donbass. But in practice, the US-backed Ukrainian government has done next to nothing to respect this agreement. Rarely does a day go by without some fascist Ukrainian paramilitary unit committing an act of terrorism against the people of the LPR and DPR. Ukrainian forces recently captured and tortured a Russian ceasefire monitor in Lugansk and carried out an armed attack on a settlement of civilians in the demilitarized zone of the DNR.

In April, Ukraine’s President Zelensky dropped all pretense at diplomacy when he declared that “NATO is the only way to end the war in Donbas.” Russia has made it clear that they would respond forcefully to any major escalation in the war as a matter of defense. It must be remembered that nearly 27 million Soviet citizens were killed in the war against the German Nazis. People of all nationalities in Russia do not want armed Ukrainian fascists menacing their country. They will respond to the threat by force if necessary.

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Current Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland with Oleh Tyahnynbok, a leader of the Svoboda party, formerly known as the Social National (Nazi) Party of Ukraine

Biden’s support of Ukrainian fascism comes home to roost

The fascist hell that Ukrainians are living through is what the US wants for Russia. But this future may come first for the United States if we workers don’t get to the root of the worldwide fascist movement. Above all else, the ultra-rich want governments that answer to the profit motives of banks and corporations. If for that purpose they feel they need to rally their shock troops under the swastika and rule by open terror, that’s what they’ll do. US-backed Poland and Hungary have already taken this path.

US-based fascist militias have been traveling to Ukraine to train with groups like the fascist Azov battalion, which is a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine funded by US taxpayer dollars. Andriy Biletsky, commander of the Azov battalion and former member of the Ukrainian parliament, in his own words states: “The historic mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead the white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival against subhumans.” These is the ideology of the “white power” movement that Rittenhouse, the Proud Boys, and others are a part of.

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White supremacist who massacred 51 Muslims and injured 40 in Christchurch, NZ in 2019, Kyle Rittenhouse (pictured with Proud Boys) killed 2 and injured one in Kenosha in 2020

Fascists are puppets of the super-rich that use racism to divide and terrorize the people so the rich can hold on to their stolen wealth. This describes Kyle Rittenhouse to a T. His trial and acquittal were a major advance for the capitalists behind the U.S. fascist movement who seek legal protection and popular support for their terrorist troops.

It’s imperative that US workers of all nationalities show up en masse to oppose racism and fascism. The fascists can only be defeated in the streets through mass action, not through the capitalist, white supremacist US courts and not be relying on the Democratic Party which funds fascists in Israel, Ukraine, and beyond. The fight must also show solidarity with our brothers in sisters in Ukraine and Russia. We must demand that the US withdraw all support to the fascist government of Ukraine. We can’t expect to win the fight against fascism here while it’s fueled by US taxpayer dollars abroad.

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Nov. 21 , Joseph of Workers Voice Socialist Movement speaks at a New Orleans rally against fascism initiated by the Louisiana Communist Party, Freedom Road Socialist Movement New Orleans, and Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition.

No to war with Russia—workers must unite to fight the fascists here and in Ukraine

The Biden administration is asking US workers to side with the fascist government of Ukraine in a war to colonize Russia. We’ll have none of it. From Kenosha to Charlottesville to Brunswick, Georgia, we’ve lost too many of our own to racist and fascist violence here. It’s time we come together and show the world that we will not be ruled by fear. Honor the martyrs of Ferguson, Kenosha, Donetsk, and Lugansk and the thousands more fighting fascism around the world.

Unite to Defeat Fascism and Racism from the U.S. to Ukraine!

No More Blood for Wall Street Profits!

Down with Fascism and White Supremacy, Up with Workers Power!

Featured image: US Soldiers coordinating with members of the Azov battalion, a neo-Nazi unit of the National Guard of Ukraine.

(Workers Voice) by Workers Voice Socialist Movement.

https://orinocotribune.com/us-and-its-n ... th-russia/

Hate to disappoint Workers Voice but there ain't no 'international fascist movement'. Fascism is inherently nationalistic, how they gonna agree on a 'master race'? Rather, it is the inevitable side effect of capitalism which is worldwide and spews it's detritus everywhere.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 07, 2021 2:55 pm

The number of victims of Ukrainian aggression in the DPR grows amid loud statements about the need for peace

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124 people were injured of varying severity as a result of Ukrainian fire on the territory of the DPR during 2021. The corresponding statement was made in the office of the ombudsman, where it was clarified that among the victims there were 31 civilians.

Another tragic incident took place last week in the village of Trudovskaya mine on the outskirts of Donetsk, where a local resident received a gunshot wound. The doctors managed to save the victim's life, but the man will remain disabled forever: the doctors had to amputate his leg. The cynicism of the Ukrainian servicemen is striking in this story: a civilian, who could not even be mistakenly identified as a serviceman, was wounded by a sniper. Unfortunately, this is not a rarity on the outskirts of Donetsk.

Only this year, in the same Petrovsky district, three civilians were wounded by the aimed fire of Ukrainian riflemen, and one received an incompatible wound to the head. Three out of four cases occurred in the village of Aleksandrovka, where streets on the outskirts are in direct line of sight of Ukrainian military personnel.

Not only snipers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine amaze with their cold-blooded cruelty. Another tragedy of Donbass is the use of so-called shock drones by Kiev. In the spring of this year, without exaggeration, the whole world thundered the story of the death of a four-year-old resident of the village of Aleksandrovskoye, Vlad Dmitriev. According to the version of the investigation, the cause of the death of the child was the discharge of an explosive device from the air. What led the UAV operator is anyone's guess, given that Aleksandrovskoe is located in the rear of the DPR and there are no army positions or any military facilities.

There were no military installations on the outskirts of the village of Golmovsky near Horlivka, where a month ago the Ukrainian army dropped ammunition, also using an unmanned vehicle. A shell exploded near a residential building, seriously injuring three local residents. One of the victims, who received multiple shrapnel wounds to the whole body, died in the city hospital a few days ago. The fragments hitting the head left the man no chance.

At the same time, as the doctors who promptly arrived at the site of the shelling said, already while they were providing assistance to the victims, another flight of the Ukrainian UAV was made over the site of the first attack, but there was no need to drop the shells again.

These are just a few of the stories that happened in the DPR during the year. Each of them is human life, tragedy, and sometimes death. And the situation that is now observed in Donbass is in extreme contrast to Kiev's incessant statements about the need to fulfill the Minsk agreements and observe the ceasefire regime for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

At the same time, Kiev continues to inflict aimed strikes on the civilian sector, killing people, uses large-caliber artillery and unmanned aircraft, which is prohibited by the same agreements. More than five thousand people have died in the DPR since the beginning of the war, of which 91 are children, including Vlad Dmitriev from Alexandrovsky. Two more children were injured during this year as a result of a barrel artillery strike on Gorlovka. All this bears little resemblance to peace initiatives. And can there be such on the part of Ukraine, when the list of victims continues to grow?

Author: Georgy Medvedev

https://novorosinform.org/chislo-zhertv ... 84613.html

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Members of the Minsk subgroup on security started work

[As part of the talks, the parties will discuss additional measures to strengthen ceasefire measures near the front line.

On Tuesday, December 7, at 15:00, the members of the security subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group began substantive negotiations, which will consider draft documents on the implementation of mechanisms that should help ensure the implementation of measures to strengthen the ceasefire in accordance with the one signed on July 22, 2020 document, according to the message of the DPR representative office in the JCCC.

In addition, during the negotiations, representatives of Lugansk intend to once again raise the issue of returning the illegally detained observer of the LPR representation in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire Regime (JCCC).

Also, representatives of the people's republics intend to discuss targeted attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on residential buildings, civilian facilities and infrastructure facilities in Donbass.

https://novorosinform.org/uchastniki-mi ... 84725.html

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War, economy, Russian national state: what Denis Pushilin talked about in Moscow

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The head of the Donetsk People's Republic held a meeting with journalists and social activists within the framework of the Kind Russian People club in Moscow, during which he answered questions about the current state of affairs in Donbass, and also spoke about the goals set by the leadership of the LPRP.

War

A significant part of the questions that came from the journalists concerned the current situation on the front line in Donbass, as well as the readiness of the forces of the people's republics to resist Kiev. Among the most resonant events of this year are the occupation of Staromaryevka by the Ukrainians in October, the shooting of the checkpoint in June, the use of Bayraktar drones and Javelin complexes.

The head of the DPR hastened to reassure those present, saying that the situation in general on the front line is under control, despite the hype that exists in the information space. This also applies to the situation in Staromaryevka, which is in the gray zone. It is not worth talking about the occupation of its APU, but periodically Ukrainian units appear there.

"The situation in Staromaryevka is not over, but people have felt better in humanitarian terms, because the Red Cross has worked there, and other international organizations, and the public movement" Donetsk Republic "has already helped or should help in the near future - humanitarian packages must be handed over." , - said Pushilin.

As for the use of Bayraktar by Kiev , which the Ukrainian command focuses on when developing a plan for a military offensive in Donbass, it is premature to talk about such, the DPR leader is sure.

He confirmed that periodically drones appear on the border of the republics, but mostly they are at a safe distance. At the same time, the forces of the People's Militia of the LPR and DPR reserve the right to destroy military equipment prohibited by the Minsk agreements.

"At any opportunity, the Bayraktars will be destroyed. But so far they (the Ukrainian military. - Ed.), Knowing the tactical and technical characteristics of our capabilities, keep at a safe distance," the DPR head said in the affirmative.

At the same time, Pushilin made it clear that the authorities of the people's republics continue to develop the personnel potential of their armed forces. At the moment, the DPR has fully completed the officer corps, and in the future it is planned to return to the practice of re-profiling (the creation of schools for sergeants and warrant officers) and the introduction of military departments in universities.

Economy

After answering questions about external threats, the head of the DPR began to discuss internal affairs. Not so long ago, changes in economic development took place in Donbass: Donbass enterprises, which were managed by Sergei Kurchenko's "VTS" company, came under the control of Russian businessman Yevgeny Yurchenko.

Despite the existing claims to the work of Kurchenko, whose activities are associated with the former President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, the VTS company played an important role in preserving the economic potential of Donbass, said Pushilin. Now it's worth talking about how you can increase the existing production volume.

"Evgeny Yurchenko proposed the development model, the program that is understandable for the industrial Donbass. A program that allows you to think about the development of these enterprises, taking into account those external factors that exist. And now this program is already in effect," the DPR head noted.

First of all, we are talking about the possibility of restoring metallurgical capacities that were preserved in the LPNR. In the Lugansk People's Republic, these are the Alchevsk Metallurgical Plant, the Stakhanov Ferroalloy Plant. In the Donetsk People's Republic - Enakievsky metallurgical plant, Makeyevsky metallurgical plant, Yasinovatsky and Makeevsky coke ovens.

The adoption by the Russian leadership of a decree on the recognition of certificates of goods of the DPR and LPR turned out to be just right. Despite the fact that before that the products from the LPR were mainly sold on the territory of Russia and the near abroad, now this process will bring greater dividends due to the simplification of trade relations. Ultimately, this will have the most positive effect on the development of enterprises in Donbass, which will make it possible to speak of an improvement in the economic indicators of the republics.

“Now the situation has changed, and new models are being built in terms of calculations. This will also be regulated. Pushilin.

Speaking about the economy, the head of the DPR was asked about the readiness of trade with Ukraine. The authorities of the "square" are faced with a serious energy crisis, which could be overcome, among other things, by purchasing Donbass coal from the part of Donbass not controlled by Kiev.

If earlier the leadership of the LDNR said that it was ready to discuss this issue with the Ukrainian leadership, now Pushilin stated that such negotiations are not interesting to both Kiev and Donetsk and Luhansk.

National orientation

Discussing internal issues, the public shifted its interest from economic issues to issues of ideological content associated with the political course taken by the leaders of the republics.

Pushilin reminded that the issuance of Russian passports to the citizens of the LPR, who expressed a corresponding desire, is now actively continuing. At the moment, only in the DPR, the number of citizens who received Russian citizenship has exceeded 350 thousand people. But even now, in the face of a pandemic, certification continues and will continue until everyone who wants to obtain citizenship.

Such a process implies, among other things, a gradual integration into the Russian political model, the head of the DPR notes. In recent years, Donbass has been actively organizing platforms where the issue of gradual integration into Russia is discussed at various levels.

Last summer in Donetsk the doctrine "Russian Donbass" was presented, which should form the basis of the legislation of the Donetsk People's Republic.

“Now we are actively working, because we need to change not only the laws, but in some part we also need to change the Constitution. We are building a Russian national state - this should be reflected in the normative legal acts,” the head of the republic said.

He noted that representatives of 138 peoples live in the territory of Donbass, who consider themselves Russian. That is why it is necessary in the DPR to adopt a Constitution that would take this factor into account.

https://novorosinform.org/vojna-ekonomi ... 84707.html

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Military secret of Zelensky. What Ukrainian intelligence is hiding
Maxim Maximov03.12.2021, 08:21Exclusive

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The arrest of Ukrainian saboteurs in the Russian Federation, the failed wagnergate - all this came together at about the same time and therefore arouses medical interest: how does all this fit in the Ukrainian intelligence community and in the Ukrainian government represented by President Zelensky?
Victory has many fathers. Defeat is an orphan. The scandal with the fighters of private military companies, named after one of them as "Wagnerites", can be considered over. The authors of the operation of the Ukrainian intelligence have disowned.

"Wagnergate" is mediocre. Neither the ex-militias could be caught, nor Zelensky was dismissed. Ordered to forget. The only thing that is clear is that this is a Ukrainian operation. But defeat is an orphan. And President Zelensky abandoned the child of Ukrainian intelligence. “I'm ashamed!” - Ze put an end to it. If these were all the assessments of the head of Ukraine, then there would be nothing to write about. But it was also said: "We were dragged in." Who exactly - Zelensky did not specify, because it is a military secret. So whose failure was it? Nobody's?

Irresponsible fathers

Wagnergate is clearly divided into two components: PR and the destruction of the rating of President Zelensky.

The first was born where the provocation of November 2018 was born off the coast of Crimea - from the American curators of Ukraine. The direct implementation was delegated to the special services of this state. For example, intelligence.

Provocation in the Black Sea - Poroshenko's cadence . She went to the bottom. Ukrainian contractors turned out to be mediocre, the information exhaust did not bring points, the ghost of war stood up to its full height. Nevertheless, the offensive strategy was recognized as productive, only it was decided to transfer the activity of Ukrainian intelligence to a safer playing field.
So the idea was born to lure into the territory of Ukraine those who fought against it in the Donbass. And this happened even under Poroshenko - in the middle of 2019. The plan is simple: to identify the fighters, hire, arrest in a third country, extradite to Ukraine. It couldn't be easier. History is silent at what stage the “gloomy Ukrainian genius” decided to complicate the task.

Burba as a switchman. "Erdogan would not forgive us for this."
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© collage Ukraine.Ru

The successful operation to capture Vladimir Tsemakh in the DPR , who is being tied to the MN-17 case, provoked Ukrainian intelligence and it was decided to raise the bar: to capture dozens, if not hundreds of former militias. Zelenskiy learned about the preparations for the operation in July 2020, including that, unlike the original plan, high risks were introduced into the scheme: the hijacking of a Turkish Airlines passenger plane and its forced landing in Kiev.

This part of the operation was so unpredictable and threatened with such unpredictable consequences that the Office of the President of Ukraine canceled the operation at the very last moment, when the Wagnerites were already on the territory of Belarus, where they were detained.

The one who canceled the operation saved Ukraine from much bigger problems than the sea embarrassment of 2018. But defeat is an orphan. Therefore, the "fathers" abandoned their "child". The head of intelligence Vasily Burba said that he had canceled the operation by order of the head of the OP, Andrei Yermak. Andrei Yermak said that he had not ordered anything to Bourbe. And Zelensky said he was ashamed of Ukrainian intelligence.

Scandal in a noble family

What is good about Ukraine for irresponsible politicians - everything is possible there, and nothing happens to anyone for that.

For example, in any country it is customary to explain who exactly screwed up if there was a "jamb". As you can see, there are clearly three persons in charge in Wagnergyte. The head of intelligence, who designed the operation, the president, as supreme commander in chief and head of the president's office, is the curator. Vasily Burba was fired and fled Ukraine, giving public interviews, revealing all military secrets and promising to sue Zelensky.

Zelensky in the status of president at a press conference mixed the head of the intelligence of Ukraine with mud, saying, among other things, that intelligence officers protect business and solve problems that are very far from state interests.

And Pan Yermak publicly lied that he did not order anything to the chief intelligence officer, although he did. Burba is indeed corrupt, but he was not fired for corruption. Seeing that the operation had failed, the chief intelligence officer began to divert the consequences from himself by reporting on the "moles" in the President's Office.

In response, the moles immediately fired Burba by presidential decree. Burba, disregarding the oath and signature of non-disclosure, immediately blurted out all the military secrets of Ukraine to Bellingcat without maintaining anonymity.

"Recruited and acted as directed." Who worked for the Ukrainian special services in Russia
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© FSB RF / Go to photobank

The "moles" did not remain in debt, and through the mouth of Zelenskiy they characterized the generally classified employee of the classified state security agencies as cheap, an adventurer and a swindler who dispersed the Maidan under Yanukovych. It turned out that the Ukrainian intelligence was headed by a spy who traded in classified information. Burba from Skype has threatened the President of Ukraine for these insults in court. In short, Ukrainian politics with their own eyes.

The only truth in these streams of official lies and denunciations is that any issue of any level of the Ukrainian state is thickly smeared with dollars, euros and bitcoins.
It is not difficult to imagine a version according to which what was conceived under Poroshenko under the leadership of the CIA, under Zelensky, someone decided to use as a political weapon directed against a random person in the presidency, that is, Zelensky. Every taxi driver in Kiev informed the passengers that Zee would destroy Wagnergate. Zelensky is now at war with the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov , so cause-effect leads to him.

Cloaks and daggers

The Ukrainian special services really have problems. The allusion about the "taxi driver" is not accidental. That "Zelensky will be brought down in the fall," absolutely everyone in Kiev was chatting, absolutely everywhere. Rinat Leonidovich was called the customer of the coup.

By the way, the "coup from Akhmetov" is not the first. The first was back in December 2014, when the Aydar bandit seized the head of Ukrspirt, Mikhail Labutin . On Labutin, the current head of counterintelligence, Aleksandr Poklad, perfected his skill in uncovering coup d'états . Poltava policeman, who became the head of the 5th department of the ROC of the SBU.
The Riffmaster and the rest of the suspects in the murder of Pavel Sheremet are all agents of the Five. After the "alcohol conspirators" Poklad exposed the second coup d'etat - Savchenko - Ruban. Andrey Lisogor , a freelance officer of the SBU, a knife fighting specialist and a sniper, was sent to the pilot Nadezhda Savchenko and Vladimir Ruban from the "Officers' Corps"Sergei Sanovsky , who later escaped from Ukraine.

The same persons offered Labutin to buy off the charge of a coup d'etat for two million dollars, but he fled to Romania, where he is now hiding.
Now another development of them has gone to court - according to General Valery Shaitanov , deputy head of the Special Operations Center "A", who allegedly ordered the murder of Adam Osmaev , the widower of Amina Okueva (Natalya Nikiforova) . Valery Shaitanov, beaten during the arrest, has been in jail for a year and a half. I was recently on an operation. The trial began only in October.

In court, the case will fall apart, because the only evidence of treason is the recordings of telephone conversations with an old comrade in the service, a retiree, a citizen of the Russian Federation.
And so, "Wagnergate". Zelensky's office holds the legend that the ex-head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense Vasily Burba fled Ukraine due to a possible arrest in the case of treason. And it was he who, being in office, "leaked" secret data to the propagandist Yuri Butusov (who works for Akhmetov), ​​and also initiated a special operation against the "Wagnerites" personally, without direct orders from his direct leaders - the Minister of Defense and the President.

They want to add an order for the murder of the group of Andrei Galushchenko (Andrew) , an SBU agent who was watching the smuggling of coal from the DPR / LPR and accidentally found out about drug trafficking from Afghanistan, which was supervised by military intelligence, that is, Vasily Burba.

"I am ashamed of this episode of our intelligence." Did Zelensky want to be an agent of Moscow
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Don't switch

As already noted, Wagnergate is drowned, and they will not talk about it anymore until Zelenskiy is president. Reputational losses from a public, bazaar scandal involving the head of state and the head of intelligence are difficult to assess - it has a cosmic scale.

And yet this is not all in this particular story. The flight of Burba, oddly enough, attracted very little attention from the Ukrainian media. All of them are oligarchic, and everything that happened happened within the framework of the "war with the oligarchs."

Journalists wrote very little about Bourba's escape. And they did not write about the removal of the head of counterintelligence of the SBU Alexander Rusnak , except for short messages. He is also related to the rising star of the Ukrainian "behind the scenes" - the already mentioned Alexander Poklad, who is now the head of counterintelligence at the SBU.

It's time to lift the veil of secrecy with this mysterious and powerful personality. The new chief counterintelligence officer of Ukraine in the mid-90s was convicted of extortion and served a seven-year term. I came out under an amnesty. His appointment is illegal. Rusnak is well aware of this moment in the biography of his successor, but he does not scandal or expose. Because the reason for the dismissal was Zelensky's friend, the current head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, who formulated the reason as follows: "in connection with the loss of confidence."

It is no coincidence that trust was lost immediately after the end of Wagnergate. So all today's cleansing, dismissals, movements in intelligence and the SBU are associated with contacts of personalities with the fugitive Vasily Burba. These contacts are no less than half of the leadership of the SBU and intelligence services. So you shouldn't be surprised if a new news feed emerges on the media horizon - the “Bourba coup”. Which, by the way, may well turn out to be named by Zelensky at a press conference "Akhmetov's coup." True, it did not take place.

This gate is also rotten. The "conspirators" on Zelenskiy's tapes are strange. What is the decommissioned former head of the SBU Vasily Gritsak, who, under Poroshenko, caught Russian spies in black leather coats with two daggers. Evil tongues assert that the only thing that Pan General could prepare in his entire life as a general was the protection of business on passports and the purchase of cars for the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The oil painting is not very pleasant.

The state of Ukraine in these stories is represented as a black hole, where the devil knows what is going on, that everyone does what he wants, there is no state secret, everyone is bought and sold, everyone is someone’s agents. At the head of all this is a person who is completely incompetent in matters of public administration - a casual passer-by whom fate has made president.

In principle, if we put the polities aside, all this is so. But that is another story.

https://ukraina.ru/exclusive/20211203/1 ... paign=2478

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Thirty years of "independence". What do AIDS, coup and independence of Ukraine have in common?

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December 1, 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the scandalous referendum on the independence of Ukraine.

Last year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who had not yet completely lost the confidence of voters, wrote down a pretentious appeal to the nation, in which he proposed to change the rules of Ukrainian spelling and henceforth write the word "Independence" exclusively with a capital letter. This was supposed to take Ukraine out of a number of hopelessly backward countries into world leaders. Zelensky, even with such a promise, was able to make a serious expression on his face, which cost him a lot of effort, because in his previous acting life, he regularly ridiculed this "independence". For example, one of the videos about "independent" Ukraine and Georgia with the eloquent name "Our America". Now, in the comments below, users lament that it was funny then, but now it is perceived as a nightmare that has come true.



Today, last year's pathos is no longer appropriate. Zelensky lost the remnants of popular confidence, the rating of his Servant of the People party for the first time fell below the "European solidarity garbage dump" of ex-President Poroshenko, and instead of celebrating the 30th anniversary of the referendum, the political strategists of the President's Office offered Ukrainian citizens a draft "coup d'etat from Russia and Akhmetov."

But 30 years ago, after the referendum was held, it was December 1 that became a sacred day for every Bandera heart. True, after a couple of years, the celebration was nevertheless decided to be postponed to August 24. It was unexpectedly revealed that December 1 is World AIDS Day, and traditional winter problems with heating and gas supplies do not help create a festive mood in winter. Although the distribution of condoms would probably be very symbolic on the day of Ukraine's independence ...

Lies in the 1991 referendum

When they talk in Ukraine about the "1991 referendum", they talk about a referendum in support of the "Act of Independence" adopted by the parliament of the Ukrainian SSR on August 24, 1991. But in March 1991 there was another referendum, moreover, on an all-Union scale, the question at which sounded like this: "Do you consider it necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal republics, in which the rights and freedoms of a person of any nationality will be fully guaranteed?" More than 76% of the respondents (including more than 70% in Ukraine) answered the question in the affirmative.

Mines for a single state were laid back in 1990, when the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR was the first among the deputy assemblies of the union republics to proclaim independence from the rest of the territories of the Soviet Union. Later, similar declarations of sovereignty were adopted by the Ukrainian SSR and other union republics. Therefore, the celebration of the Day of Russia on June 12 looks today as a mockery of its own history.

Events began to develop rapidly in the summer of 1991. As Viktor Mironenko, ex-assistant to the then President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, said, while on vacation in Crimea, Kravchuk, during an unofficial meeting, directly told Gorbachev that he would not sign an updated union treaty, referring to a certain decision of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. Gorbachev realized that Yeltsin had bypassed him, and the signing of a new union treaty would not take place. This paralyzed the then Secretary General, depriving him of the will to continue the fight.

After the unsuccessful coup on August 19, the parliament of the Ukrainian SSR urgently adopts the "Act of Independence" of Ukraine. While the last fight between Yeltsin and Gorbachev's supporters was going on in Moscow, the population of Ukraine was treated in the best political technological traditions of that time. Piles of leaflets were poured into almost every mailbox every day justifying the economic benefits of a break with the rest of Russia. The emphasis on the economy was not accidental - it never occurred to anyone in Ukraine that it was necessary to secede from Russia, because we are supposedly "different peoples."

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As a result, this propaganda worked - at the referendum on December 1, 1991, the people of the Ukrainian SSR voted for independence. Of course, the voting results were significantly "embellished". As I personally heard from the old Luhansk nomenklatura, who was among the organizers of the vote in the Voroshilovgrad region, the real support for the "Act of Independence" was about 50-60%, but from above there was a command to "make 80-90%". Obviously, a similar "counting" of votes was applied at the all-Ukrainian level.

But even those 50-60% of real support for independence was achieved only by cunning and manipulation of the wording of the question at the referendum.

"At the referendum, the question was not correctly formulated, as the law required:" Are you for the withdrawal of the Ukrainian SSR from the USSR? " who, under pressure from well-known political forces, then went beyond the boundaries of his competence. [...] Obviously, the majority of citizens perceived the referendum only as an opportunity to expand the powers of the republic within the USSR, and not as its withdrawal from the Union. the fact why the results of the referendums on March 17 and December 1, 1991 are diametrically opposite, "wrote in 2014 the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the 3rd and 4th convocations from the Communist Party Yuriy Solomatin.

Role of Kravchuk

Separately, it is worth noting the role of the first president of Ukraine, once the chief ideologist of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR, Leonid Kravchuk. It was he who, before the presidential elections and the referendum, turned to "Russian compatriots", vowing to preserve the Russian language, fraternal relations with Russia and prevent violent Ukrainization.

"Dear Russian brothers and sisters living in Ukraine! I appeal to you in a difficult time for our republic. Only together we can get out of the quagmire that has sucked us in, create a society based on humanism, democracy and social justice. Ukraine has firmly embarked on the path of independence. On its lands, along with other peoples, twelve million Russians are full-fledged owners. In no case will artificial Ukrainization of Russians be allowed. Any attempts to discriminate on ethnic grounds will be resolutely suppressed, "Kravchuk said in his address.



However, after becoming the first president of Ukraine, Kravchuk immediately began a policy of violent Ukrainization. It was his "reforms" in education and the socio-political sphere that laid the foundation for the upbringing of a generation of Russophobes, which, along with the old Komsomol "elites", became the main engine of the 2014 anti-Russian coup d'etat.

How the residents of Kiev who voted for independence saw the future of Ukraine is perfectly illustrated by a video clip of the Novosti agency's poll on the streets of the capital of Soviet Ukraine in December 1991.



None of the respondents spoke out for enmity with Russia. On the contrary, the majority of those who voted in support of independence expected the preservation of economic ties, a unified defense system and other attributes of the union state. The only expectation, which was repeated by almost all survey participants, was "life will become better and more satisfying."

This promise was "fed" Ukrainians in 1991, when the USSR was falling apart, fed in 2004, during the first coup, and fed in 2014, before the second coup, which drowned the country in blood. And every time life, contrary to expectations, only got worse.

Last year's promise to Zelensky "nezabarom" to make Ukraine a prosperous state "falls perfectly in line with other gravediggers promises once prosperous country. The fact that today the regime Zelensky in the country declared the" Day of the coup "very symbolic. On the 30th anniversary of the referendum, the very notion of "independent Ukraine" is ridiculed by many of its residents. This, of course, is not enough to return Ukraine to the Russian civilized space. But the realization that any president of Ukraine under the conditions of external control of the West is turning into a rubber symbol of the fight against AIDS reinforces the idea of ​​the inevitability of returning to Russia as the only way to return to normal life in the heads of Ukrainian inhabitants. It seems that if the preparation of a pro-Russian coup d'etat and a military invasion by the Russian Federation really took place, then today the majority of the inhabitants of the "square" would at least not be against the overthrow of the entire pro-Western colonial administration, leading Ukraine to final enslavement.

The sooner the realization of false goals and the false path that part of the Russian lands took in 1991 comes, the higher the chance to pull Malaya Rus out of the colonial clutches of our geopolitical opponents.

Author: Tikhon Goncharov

https://novorosinform.org/tridcat-let-n ... 84290.html

All of the above Google Translator

It is interesting that with the current US regime's programs and prospects in shambles that the tocsin be sounded against Russia and China. Seems like something the US is perpetually accusing governments it disfavors of doing.

Can you say 'distraction and misdirection'? I knew you could.

There will be no invasion of Ukraine by Russia, no war between US/NATO and Russia.
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 08, 2021 2:56 pm

There are no more "gray zones", the shells of the Armed Forces of Ukraine fly right into the houses - volunteer

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Almost along the entire front line, the positions of the Ukrainian security forces are located a few meters from the houses where children and old people of the Donetsk People's Republic live. Donetsk volunteer Andrei Lysenko told about this.

He cited the example of the village of Staromikhayovka, which is located on the outskirts of Donetsk. According to Lysenko, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are located here just 500 meters from residential areas. He told about this to the telegram channel "Donbass Resolves".
"A week ago, here, in Staromikhaylovka, shells were falling a hundred meters away. And children and old people live in neighboring houses. Where would you order them to be evicted?" - the volunteer asks.
He calculated that if you add up all the residents of the DPR who live on the front line, you get about 100 thousand people, that is, the whole city. There is nowhere to relocate such a number of people who are bombarded almost every day. “It would be cheaper and more correct to end the war,” Andrei Lysenko believes.

https://novorosinform.org/seryh-zon-bol ... 84769.html

Google Translator

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Image

The Ukraine: The USA is responsible of the escalation, and must stop it before provoking a world war
Originally published: United World by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos (December 6, 2021 ) | - Posted Dec 07, 2021

Back in 1992, when I was a correspondent in Moscow, the French review Sous le Drapeaudu Socialisme asked me for an article on developments in Russia and the–then disintegrating–Soviet Union. I wrote it, also publishing a variant in the Greek magazine Tetradia under the title “The global crisis in the former Soviet Union and the future of Russia” (Issue 31, Summer-Autumn 1992). There, I stated that “the Cold War is not over; it will start again. This time it will not begin from Berlin and Kabul, but from Kiev and Tashkent”. Why do I mention it now? Not to prove how smart I am, but to prove that today’s situation was absolutely predictable 30 years ago and is not an accident. It is the logical conclusion of the fundamental tendencies of capitalism, on the one hand, and the unavoidable consequence of dissolving the USSR without taking into account the right of its nations to self-determination on the other.

This was the opposite of what Lenin did back in 1917. By supporting the freedom of the peripheral nations of the Russian Empire and proposing them a new vision and idea for the future (Socialism), the Bolsheviks were able to keep together the larger part of it and to unite the force of the national feeling of its nations and of their political and social aspirations. The Russian Empire was the only one of the great empires, which did not disintegrate, as did the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian. It has instead transformed itself, even becoming a superpower during the 20th Century. But in 1991, the only Lenin one could find in Moscow was the dead one in the Mausoleum. I still remember Alexander Yakovlev, the Politbureau member, explaining how market reforms would keep the USSR united. He did not understand that if the country was going to become pro-Western and capitalist, the elites of the Republics would not need Moscow to turn to the West, but could go on their own.

At that time, 30 years ago, everyone, or nearly, in the East and the West, was applauding the supposed victory of “democracy” and the markets in the form of the collapse of “Soviet totalitarianism”, which had “ended” history and inaugurated an era of Kantian “Eternal Peace”. In Moscow, both “Democrats” and Nationalists were applauding the dissolution of the USSR. Russia then spent most of its political and diplomatic capital for the next thirty years trying–with no great success–to attenuate the consequences of the progress of NATO deep inside the territory of the ex-USSR. All the Soviet peoples, except Belarusians, paid an enormous price for the dislocation of the USSR, and the non-Russians a much higher one than the Russians. The economic, social, demographic and cultural cost of the so-called transition to capitalism has proven unprecedented for the whole industrial era of mankind!

Today, the Ukraine is not only the epicenter of a new cold war, but also one of the three most dangerous points on Earth, along with Iran and Taiwan, where a nuclear conflict could be ignited, leading to the end of mankind. We state this once more, because many people treat nuclear war like a videogame, just as the danger of a sui generis Neofascism (or Protofascism) appeared in the United States, masquerading in the clothes of a psychopathic clown like Donald Trump. But behind him, there are no clowns, but rather the heirs of Hitler’s mentality and ambition, like Pompeo, Pence, Netanyahu, the Evangelicals etc.

The particular and very dangerous form of the present-day “Ukrainian crisis” has arisen as a result of the way in which the USSR was destroyed; and of the coup engineered by Nuland, Brenner and Pyatt in Kiev, back in 2014.

Abolishing the right to self-determination
The official Western narrative is that the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the USSR has been a victory of democracy (“power of the people” in its first, Greek meaning of the world) and of the national rights of the Yugoslav and the Soviet states, narrative not contested by the Russian leaders of that time.

This is completely false. The dissolution of the USSR (and Yugoslavia) took place in such a way that whole, compact ethnic groups which were the majority in the regions they inhabited, e.g. the Russians of the Crimea or Donbas, who are an overwhelming majority in their regions, or the Russians who live in northern Kazakhstan (i.e. about half of the inhabitants of that country), were left out of Russia, their motherland. Anybody with even a small knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian realities can easily understand that the Crimea and Donbass are more Russian than Moscow. The same happened with the Serbs, who were, for example, a majority of the inhabitants of Krajina in Croatia, and who suddenly found themselves a minority in a foreign country!

The dissonance of the new states with ethnic realities and the completely undemocratic disregard for the right of nations to their self-determination created the conditions for and led to ten million refugees or immigrants in the former USSR, five wars in former Yugoslavia and ten in the former USSR. To demonstrate the aberration of what happened in 1991, it is enough to recall that one fourth of the Russian nation was left outside Russia!

There is no doubt that the Soviet Union had many problems and needed reconstruction (‘perestroika’), but the method used was rightly called ‘catastrophic’. In particular, why, at a time when the whole world was tending towards transnational integration, was the USSR dismantled, instead of being reformed in depth? And why, having opted for dissolution, was at least the principle of self-determination of nations not applied?

The Soviet Union was dismantled on the initiative of the Russian President Boris Yeltsin and with the agreement of the then Presidents of the Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, and of Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, in December 1991. Yeltsin wanted to replace the Soviet President in the Kremlin and the only way he could do this was by making the country, of which Mr. Gorbachev was the President, disappear.

The three leaders were not authorized by anybody to dissolve the USSR, an act of very dubious legality and legitimacy, especially given the fact that the population of the USSR had already supported, by an overwhelming majority (70%), the preservation of the USSR in the referendum of March 1991.

Besides, the Soviet Constitution recognized the right of Republics to secede from the Union, but also conceded the right to the sub-entities belonging to the republics to secede themselves, if the republics seceded from the Union. For example, the Crimea had the right to secede from the Ukraine, if the latter used its right to secede from the Union.

The Soviet Union was not dissolved by a revolution of its nations, but rather by a counter-revolution of groups of its bureaucracy, in synergy with the growing and often criminal “neo-capitalist” forces, which wanted to become owners of Soviet property, rather than mere and temporary administrators of it. Those forces found in nationalism the ideological platform they needed to legitimize the plunder of power and property.

Once the “job” was done, President Yeltsin instructed the Ukrainian president to inform the Soviet president that they were dissolving his state, and he was quick to inform the President of the United States, George Bush.

I will not claim that Yeltsin acted at the behest of the United States, because I cannot prove that, and I do not believe that this is what happened. His main motivation was his personal power. But I am sure that it would have been impossible for him to act in this way unless he was sure that the leadership of the United States was in complete agreement with him. His choices were made long ago.

What I can state with certainty is that when the United States and/or Germany intervened in former Yugoslavia, their interventions created the prerequisites for the conflicts that followed. The recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence led to the war in Bosnia and the ethnic cleansing of Krajna, while the Dayton agreements led to the Kosovo war. And the Kosovo war left us with the possibility of a new crisis and war in Kosovo. The Americans need such situations, because in a stable environment it is more difficult to intervene and to use the conflicts between the local nations in order to dominate the region. Every agreement bore in itself the sperm of the next disagreement.

From Yeltsin to Nuland

Despite the fact that they had every reason to question the legitimacy of the regime imposed on them, neither the Russians of the Ukraine nor Moscow challenged the 1991 decisions until 2014.

Then Victoria Nuland took action. Known as the “Lady Macbeth of perpetual war” or the “Fuck the EU” lady, after the historic phrase she used with the then U.S. ambassador in Kiev at the height of the Ukrainian crisis, Nuland, still No3 in the State Department, has been a constant presence in the planning and implementation of all U.S. interventions of the last thirty years, a “liaison” of sorts between the far right of the Democrats, the Republicans and the Israelis.

Nuland furiously supported the large, popular and peaceful protest against President-elect Yanukovych, going so far as to hand out sandwiches to the protesters herself. The EU, worried at the height of the crisis, sent to Kiev the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland, who reached an agreement for a peaceful resolution of the crisis.

The European ministers’ airplane had barely had time to take off, before the snipers took action and the CIA and Israel backed forces took the initiative to overthrow President Yanukovych, who fled. A new government took power in Kiev, and one of its first measures taken was to restrict the teaching of the Russian language in eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, whose inhabitants immediately got the message and began resisting the new authorities.

Russia could not ignore the measure, either, as it has retained in its collective memory that it was twice attacked through the Ukraine and Belarus by the armies of Napoleon and Hitler. Putin could not tolerate the conversion of the Crimea into a NATO base, and if he had, he would have fallen. With the support of the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants, expressed in a referendum, he decided to unite the peninsula with Russia. But he refrained from intervening in this way in the rest of the Ukraine, where the inhabitants of the eastern region had taken up arms to protect themselves, because he hoped to save Russia’s relations with the European Union.

A few months later, in August 2014, Gabor Steingart, editor of the German industrialists’ newspaper Handelsblatt, had the courage to note in an article that the German press was already writing against Russia the same things it had written against Russia a hundred years previously, in August 1914, when the Great War was beginning.

The United States and its allies bear the exclusive responsibility for the situation they have created in the Ukraine. We do not know how this crisis can be solved, but what we do know with certainty is that it is impossible to impose on the Russian majority of the Donbass, Lugansk and Crimea regions the rule of Kiev, much more of the neo-Fascists ruling in Kiev.

If Washington insists on trying to achieve this, it will open wide the road as a minimum to a very serious escalation of the whole European situation, as a maximum to a world war, with the Biden administration helping the opposite, sui-generis neo-fascist faction inside the western system (Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Netanyahu etc.).

https://mronline.org/2021/12/07/the-ukraine/

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The ominous signals Putin is sending
Opinion by Frida Ghitis

Updated 4:59 PM ET, Tue December 7, 2021

(CNN)Is Russian President Vladimir Putin going to launch an invasion into neighboring Ukraine? Enormous movements of Russian troops and military equipment toward the shared border have raised the alarm among Ukrainians and their Western friends.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it "hysteria," and the Kremlin denies any plans to invade, but the words of Russian officials have long lost their credibility. After all, it was Putin who turned gaslighting into a political weapon.

In a video call with Putin on Tuesday, the White House says President Joe Biden warned the Russian president that any escalation would be met "with strong economic and other measures," by the US and its allies. The White House noted Biden reiterated, as he has done many times, his support for Ukraine's territorial integrity, and said the two presidents agreed to have their teams continue their discussions.
Russian denials aside, the West is concerned enough about Putin's intentions that Biden and the Russian president are holding an urgent virtual meeting on Tuesday as experts warn about the growing risks of a new war.

Putin's actions and intentions may be deliberately wrapped in a fog, but his track record is clear. If he's allowed to advance his goals without serious consequences, he will continue to escalate his foreign policy of bullying and intimidation.
In 2014, as "little green men," dressed in unmarked military uniforms deployed across Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, Putin denied they were his forces -- until Russia took control of the territory and annexed it.
Anyone who paid attention to how Russia stole that strategic peninsula from a sovereign country knows how much weight to give the Kremlin's words now. As US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken noted, "We've seen this playbook."

(more...)

https://us.cnn.com/2021/12/06/opinions/ ... index.html

Yadyadayada....give me a break. Crimea was transferred to The Ukraine SSR in 1954 as an administrative move from the Russian SSR by the Soviet Government. It had been part of Russia since Catherine the Great though first taken from the Turks by Peter the Great. After Ukraine was essentially taken control of by nazis with the help of the US there was no way in hell that Russia could allow that strategic historic territory be occupied people who declared Russians to be untermensch. So yes, the 'little green men' secured the territory(hundreds, not 'thousands') with hardly a shot fired and a subsequent referendum overwhelmingly supported joining Russia. But I guess Ms Frida and Blinken got no use for democracy, huh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crim ... referendum
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:19 pm

What Putin really told Biden
Russian and US leaders dropped their respective rhetorical gauntlets but nobody really expects Russia to invade Ukraine
By PEPE ESCOBAR
DECEMBER 8, 2021

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US President Joe Biden has spelled out his approach to Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin. Photo: AFP / Jim Watson and Grigory Dukor

So Russian President Vladimir Putin, by himself, and United States President Joe Biden, surrounded by aides, finally had their secret video link conference for two hours and two minutes – with translators placed in different rooms.

That was their first serious exchange since they met in person in Geneva last June – the first Russia-US summit since 2018. For global public opinion, led to believe a “war” in Ukraine was all but imminent, what’s left is essentially a torrent of spin.

So let’s start with a simple exercise focusing on the key issue of the video link – Ukraine – contrasting the White House and Kremlin versions of what transpired.


The White House: Biden made it “clear” to Putin that the US and allies will respond with “decisive economic and other measures” to a military escalation in Ukraine. At the same time, Biden called on Putin to de-escalate around Ukraine and “return to diplomacy.”

Kremlin: Putin offered Biden to nullify all restrictions on the functioning of diplomatic missions. He remarked that cooperation between Russia and the US is still in an “unsatisfactory” state.

He urged the US not to shift “responsibility on the shoulders of Russia” for the escalation of the situation around Ukraine.

The White House: The US will expand military aid to Ukraine if Russia takes steps against it.

Kremlin: Putin told Biden that Russia is interested in obtaining legally fixed guarantees excluding NATO’s eastward expansion and the deployment of offensive strike systems in Russia’s neighboring countries.


The White House: Biden did not give Putin any commitments that Ukraine will remain outside NATO.

Minsk or bust

Now for what really matters: the red line.

What Putin diplomatically told Team Biden, sitting at their table, is that Russia’s red line – no Ukraine in NATO – is unmovable. The same applies to Ukraine turned into a hub of the Pentagon’s empire of bases and hosting NATO weaponry.

Washington may deny it ad infinitum, but Ukraine is part of Russia’s sphere of influence. If nothing is done to force Kiev to abide by the Minsk Agreement, Russia will “neutralize” the threat on its own terms.

The root cause of all this drama, absent from any NATO narrative, is straightforward: Kiev simply refuses to respect the February 2015 Minsk Agreement.


According to the deal, Kiev should grant autonomy to Donbass via a constitutional amendment, referred to as “special status”; issue a general amnesty; and start a dialogue with the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

Over the years, Kiev fulfilled less than zero of these commitments – while the NATO media machine kept spinning that Russia was violating Minsk. Russia is not even mentioned (italics mine) in the agreement.

Moscow always respected the Minsk Agreement, which establishes Donbass as an integral, autonomous part of Ukraine. Russia has made it very clear, over and over again, it has no interest whatsoever in promoting regime change in Kiev.

Before the video link, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked: “Putin will listen to Biden’s proposals on Ukraine ‘with great interest.'” Even the White House did not propose for Kiev to obey the Minsk Agreement. So regardless of what Biden may have said, Putin, pragmatically, will adopt a “wait and see” approach, and then act accordingly.

In the run-up to the video link, maximum hype revolved on Washington seeking to stop Nord Stream 2 if Russia “invades” Ukraine.


What never transpires out of the “invasion” narrative, repeated ad nauseam across NATO, is that hawks overseeing an immensely polarized US, corroded from the inside, desperately need a war in what military analyst Andrei Martyanov calls “country 404,” a play on the error message when an online page or link doesn’t exist.

The crux of the matter is that European vassals must not have access to Russian energy: only American LNG.

And that’s what led the most extreme Russophobes in Washington to start threatening sanctions on Putin’s inner circle, Russian energy producers and even disconnecting Russia from SWIFT. All that was supposed to prevent Russia from “invading” Country 404.

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken – present at the video link – said a few days ago in Riga, Latvia, that “if Russia invades Ukraine,” NATO will respond “with a range of high impact economic measures.” As for NATO, it’s far from aggressive: just a “defensive” organization.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in early December at the OCSE Ministerial Council meeting in Stockholm, was already warning that “strategic stability” in Europe was “rapidly eroding.”

Lavrov said: “NATO refuses to consider our proposals on de-escalation of tensions and prevention of dangerous incidents … On the contrary, the alliance’s military infrastructure is moving closer to Russia’s borders … The nightmarish scenario of military confrontation is returning.”

So no wonder the heart of the matter for Moscow is NATO encroachment. The “invasion” narrative is crass fake news sold as fact. Even the CIA’s William Burns admitted that US intel had no intel to “conclude” that Russia will dutifully answer the War Inc prayers and finally “invade” Ukraine.

Still, that did not prevent a German sensationalist rag from presenting the full contours of the Russian blitzkrieg, when the actual story is the US and NATO attempting to push “country 404” to commit suicide by attacking the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.

That legally binding guarantee

It’s idle to expect the video link to produce practical results. As NATO remains mired in concentric crises, the current level of high tension between NATO and Russia is a gift from heaven in terms of maintaining the convenient narrative of an external Slavic evil. It’s also an extra bonus for the military-industrial-intelligence-media think tank complex.

The tension will continue to simmer without becoming incandescent only if NATO does not expand in any shape or form inside Ukraine. Diplomats in Brussels routinely comment that Kiev will never be accepted as a NATO member. But if things can get worse, they will: Kiev will become one of those NATO special partners, a desperately poor, hungry for territory, rogue actor.

Putin demanding from the US – which runs NATO – a written, legally binding guarantee that the alliance will not advance further eastward towards Russian borders is the game-changer here.

Team Biden cannot possibly deliver: they would be eaten alive by the War Inc establishment. Putin studied his history and knows that Daddy Bush’s “promise” to Gorbachev on NATO expansion was just a lie. He knows those who run NATO will never commit themselves in writing.

So that allows Putin a full range of options to defend Russian national security. “Invasion” is a joke; Ukraine, rotting from the inside, consumed by fear, loathing and poverty, will remain in limbo, while Donetsk and Lugansk will be progressively interconnected with the Russian Federation.

There will be no NATO war on Russia – as Martyanov himself has extensively demonstrated NATO wouldn’t last five minutes against Russian hypersonic weapons. And Moscow will be focused on what really matters geoeconomically and geopolitically: solidifying the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) and the Greater Eurasia Partnership.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/what-puti ... old-biden/
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Sat Dec 11, 2021 2:32 pm

No support for Ukrainian Rittenhouses! Hands off Donbass, Belarus and Russia
December 10, 2021 Greg Butterfield

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Why is President Joe Biden’s administration laser-focused on threatening war on the other side of the world, when the people of the United States are beset with life-threatening crises here at home?

Racist killer Kyle Rittenhouse was just acquitted, emboldening violent white supremacists across the U.S. Women’s reproductive rights are under attack in many states and at the highest summit of the Supreme Court, which may soon overturn Roe v. Wade.

The COVID-19 pandemic is surging again, with the Delta and Omicron variants threatening new waves of death and further taxing the country’s awful, mismanaged private healthcare system. Workers’ rights are under attack from Amazon, Kellogg’s and bosses across the board. The climate crisis continues to wreak havoc coast-to-coast.

These are a few of the life-and-death problems Biden needs to address. Workers and oppressed people did not give him their votes to start a war with Russia.

Biden’s administration claims that 70,000 Russian troops guarding their country’s Western border are a great threat to neighboring Ukraine. Seventy thousand Russian troops, that is, stationed on Russia’s own territory.

On Dec. 3, Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, long an unofficial Pentagon mouthpiece, promoted a “declassified assessment” by national security officials claiming that Russia plans to invade Ukraine with 175,000 troops by the end of January.

This is at least the third time this year that Ukrainian and Western officials have made such a claim about an alleged Russian invasion. What sets this time apart is that the story started in Washington, not Kiev.

Last spring, NATO held its largest-ever war games in Europe, in regions bordering Russia, acting out scenarios that are now being promoted on computer and TV screens around the world.

The U.S. military has at least 750 military bases in 80 countries and hundreds of thousands of personnel stationed around the world. The U.S. spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. The Pentagon kills with impunity whenever and wherever it claims to see a threat to “U.S. national security” – whether in Africa or Western Asia or Latin America – destabilizing countries, often taking civilian lives intentionally or as “collateral damage.”

Over the last 30 years, the U.S.-dominated NATO military alliance has steadily expanded eastward, swallowing 14 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, including several on Russia’s Western borders. This despite a promise by the U.S. to Russia that NATO would not expand after the Cold War.

Ukraine is among three countries in the running to join NATO next. The U.S. first promised Ukraine NATO membership in 2008 if its government would join the anti-Russia crusade. Russia has made it clear that a NATO takeover of Ukraine is a “red line” that threatens its sovereignty and security which must not be crossed.

Ukraine threatens Donetsk, Lugansk

Biden’s spokespersons don’t mention that up to 125,000 Ukrainian troops – half its total military! – are massed on the borders of the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, small countries sandwiched between Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine has been at war with them since 2014.

Ukraine claims these countries as its own territory, despite an overwhelming popular vote in a democratic referendum in favor of independence.

Ukraine is a party to the internationally-negotiated Minsk II agreements, which prohibit it from targeting civilians, using heavy weapons against the Donetsk and Lugansk republics or invading. Yet Ukraine shells and shoots at the 140,000 inhabitants of frontline areas constantly, causing daily deaths, injury and destruction. Washington and Kiev deliberately block any progress toward a negotiated settlement.

Ukraine’s war on the Donbass republics has gone on for seven and a half years, and has cost more than 14,000 lives.

The real danger of invasion is from Ukraine against Donetsk and Lugansk. Since 2014, Ukraine’s military has been trained, armed and reorganized by the U.S., Britain, Canada and other NATO countries. That includes the neo-Nazi “volunteer battalions” integrated into its official military structure.

The people of Donbass suffer under a complete economic blockade by Ukraine and its Western allies. Russia has provided humanitarian aid and trade to Donetsk and Lugansk at great cost, supplemented by support from antifascist organizations in the former Soviet countries and the rest of the world.

A Ukrainian invasion of Donetsk and Lugansk would aim for maximum damage to infrastructure and civilian casualties – in hopes of provoking a military response from Russia. Then NATO would claim a “Russian invasion” to justify its war moves.

Antifascist resistance

Why did people in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass mining region choose independence? It happened after a U.S.-engineered coup brought a far-right-wing government to power in Kiev in 2014.

The coup was carried out by fascist gangs that were then set loose on the people of Donetsk and Lugansk and integrated into Ukraine’s military and security forces.

The U.S. wanted to bring NATO to Russia’s border then and there. Most of all, Washington wanted to seize the strategic military base on the Crimean peninsula, which would give NATO control of the Black Sea. The people of Crimea rejected that. So did the Russian government.

In Soviet times, Russia ceded Crimea to Ukraine, with a long-term Russian lease on the military base. In 2014, the Crimean people voted to return to Russia, and Russia agreed, thwarting the U.S. takeover of this strategic area.

Over 26 million Soviet people died fighting the Nazis in World War II. Seventy years later, they were not willing to live under neo-Nazi rule.

All of this happened during the Democratic Obama administration. Both Democrats and Republicans supported the far-right takeover of Ukraine and lied about a “Russian invasion” when the people of Donbass and Crimea asserted their right to separate.

And who was the Obama administration’s point person on Ukraine? Who was calling the shots and handing out profitable favors to family members and business associates?

It was none other than Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden-Putin call

Biden held a widely-publicized two-hour secure video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 7. Biden threatened harsh economic sanctions, including cutting off Russia from the global banking system, as the U.S. has done to punish Iran.

Putin reiterated the Russian government’s consistent position that NATO expansion into Ukraine is a “red line” for Russia’s security. He said he hoped for further negotiations.

Why is Washington taking such a provocative stance toward Russia and making these threats now?

Big U.S. energy companies and banks want to stop the international Nord Stream II project that is set to bring Russian natural gas to Western Europe. U.S. capitalists are desperate to control energy profits and suppress any energy-supplying countries that defy Wall Street control – like Iran, Venezuela and Russia. U.S. companies want their European junior partners to buy energy from them and them alone.

That’s the immediate play. But the U.S. has had its eyes on carving up the Russian Federation since the fall of the Soviet Union 30 years ago. A Pentagon document leaked in 1992 laid out a long-term plan to rip apart Russia, destroy its sovereignty and make it a docile market and supplier of raw materials and skilled labor for Western big business. That’s still the goal.

And then there’s the fact that Biden and the Democrats are deeply mired in political crisis at home – unable to meet the basic needs and demands of the workers and oppressed people who they claim to represent, because they are beholden to the very capitalist system that thrives on racism, poverty and war.

Provoking a war is a time-honored U.S. method of distracting the masses of people in a time of great crisis.

Belarus, then Ukraine, next … ?

The U.S. “warnings” (really, war propaganda) about a Russian invasion of Ukraine followed immediately on the heels of the November border crisis between Belarus and Poland.

Thousands of refugees from Western and Central Asia and North Africa, fleeing the wreckage of U.S.-European wars in their homelands, went to Belarus, seeking to enter the European Union through Poland. The U.S.-dominated Polish government refused to let them through. The EU countries supported Poland in this gross violation of international human rights.

Polish troops mobilized at the border and abused refugees. The right-wing regimes in Lithuania and Ukraine also sent troops to the border with Belarus. None of this could have happened without NATO’s (and therefore, Washington’s) express consent and encouragement.

Belarus is an ally of Russia. The countries recently strengthened their military ties after an attempted Ukraine-style coup failed in Belarus. The events on the Polish border had all the earmarks of NATO trying to provoke a war crisis.

The EU countries refused to even hold a conversation about the refugees. Finally, Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko put his foot down. He said that if Poland and its allies provoked a war, Belarus would stop the flow of fuel oil to Western Europe.

That got a quick response. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor whose term has just ended, got on the phone to Lukashenko and agreed to cool things down.

Washington wasn’t happy with that outcome. And it immediately switched gears to the “Russian invasion of Ukraine” fairy tale – even though Ukraine had just made threatening moves toward Belarus on NATO’s behalf!

Let’s stop new imperialist war

A day before the Biden-Putin call, an unnamed U.S. official told The Guardian that Washington could send troops to eastern Europe. “It would certainly be the case that if Putin moved in, there would be an increasing request from eastern flank allies, and a positive response from the United States, for additional forces and capabilities and exercises to take place there to ensure the safety and security of our eastern flank allies in the face of that kind of aggression in Ukraine.”

This threat didn’t come up explicitly during the official conversation, but hung over it.

Then, shortly after the presidential call, CNN filed a report that preparations were underway at the Pentagon for a possible evacuation of U.S. civilians from Ukraine in the event of war.

These stories aren’t objective journalism. They are thinly veiled and very public threats.

If the situation at the Ukraine-Russia border cools, it will only be temporary.

That’s the real message behind NATO’s one-two punch in Belarus and Ukraine. The antiwar movement, anti-imperialists and the whole working class must stay alert and get ready to stop a war that could quickly expand to engulf the whole world.

The U.S. keeps pushing harder and harder. Officials in Russia, Belarus and Donbass have so far managed to skillfully deflect and blunt NATO provocations. But Washington does not let up.

And whatever Biden, the Pentagon generals and big capitalists behind them desire at this moment, they are playing with fire. The Ukrainian, Polish and Baltic fascists are just as volatile as the white supremacist who killed two Black Lives protesters and wounded another in Kenosha. And they are far better trained and armed than Rittenhouse – thanks to Washington.

There are no guarantees that they will continue to follow their bosses’ orders if they grow impatient. And that could set off an international conflagration with tragic consequences for workers all over the world.

Now is the time to organize, educate and get ready to take the streets against the next U.S. war – whether it begins in Europe, Asia, Latin America or Africa.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2021/ ... nd-russia/

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The Maidan massacre in Ukraine: revelations from trials and investigations
Originally published: Jordan Russian Center by Ivan Katchanovski (December 8, 2021 ) - Posted Dec 11, 2021

My paper and several video compilations presented recently at the virtual 10th World Congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies in Montreal examined evidence revealed by the ongoing trial and government investigation into the Maidan massacre in Ukraine. This massacre of protesters and police during the Euromaidan mass protests on February 20, 2014 not only constituted a major crime and human rights violation, but also contributed to a cascading series of events. These included the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, the start of the civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea, and, ultimately, major and protracted conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, on the one hand, and Russia and the West, on the other. The Maidan massacre trial and investigation produced overwhelming evidence that Maidan protesters were massacred by snipers at Maidan-controlled buildings, rather than by government snipers or Berkut policemen—who were nevertheless charged with the crime.

The evidence includes videos, testimonies by over 100 wounded protesters, several dozen prosecution witnesses, and forensic ballistic and medical examinations by government experts. With some exceptions, these revelations were not reported by the Ukrainian or Western media, which from the start blamed government snipers and the Berkut police for killing Maidan protesters, allegedly on the orders of then-President Yanukovych. My study analyzed several hundred hours of video recordings of the Maidan massacre trial, which is streamed on YouTube.

Videos presented at the trial confirmed my previous study findings, which showed that specific times of shooting of the absolute majority of the protesters did not coincide with times of shooting by the Berkut and the directions of their shooting. This visual evidence alone shows that the Berkut did not massacre at least the absolute majority of killed and wounded Maidan protesters. Synchronized and time-stamped videos confirmed that at least three protesters were killed before the special Berkut police unit, which is charged with their massacre, was even deployed in the Maidan. Unreleased segments of the most famous video of the Maidan massacre showed two Maidan protesters luring a group of other protesters to the massacre area shortly before the shooting began. One protester was shouting to these others not to follow them because snipers were shooting at demonstrators from the Hotel Ukraina, which was then controlled by the Maidan, adding that he saw gunshot flashes there. This Belgian VRT TV video, which was revealed at the trial and provided to the author by VRT, showed a bullet hitting a tree behind this group of the protesters, following which they pointed back towards the Hotel Ukraina and entreated the snipers not to shoot them.The absolute majority (47 out of 72) of wounded protesters, with whose attempted murders the Berkut policemen are charged, testified that they were shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings or witnessed such snipers there. At least 28 wounded protesters testified that they were shot from the direction of the Hotel Ukraina and other Maidan-controlled buildings or areas. At least 30 wounded protesters testified that they witnessed snipers there and/or were told during the massacre about snipers in these Maidan-controlled locations by other protesters.

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A wounded Maidan protester testifies about snipers in the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina
(Photo: Video Appendix D)

Even the government investigation determined, based on their testimonies and investigative experiments, that almost half, 77 out of 157 protesters, were not wounded from Berkut positions, and did not charge anyone with their shooting. The evidence suggests that they were shot from Maidan-controlled areas. Indeed, both videos and testimony by the commanders of government sniper and counter-sniper units revealed that that government snipers arrived when nearly all the victims had already been killed. A minority of wounded protesters testified at the trial or at the investigation that they were shot by government snipers or Berkut police. But most of these testimonies are not consistent with their wound directions in forensic medical examinations, or their positions in videos.

The prosecution, and recently the Maidan massacre trial, refused to classify a Maidan female medic as a victim in the trial of the Berkut policemen. She was turned into a Maidan “icon” after tweeting that she was dying shortly after she was filmed on the Maidan running to an ambulance with blood on her clothes. She testified as a witness in this trial that she was wounded from the direction of the Maidan-controlled Hotel Ukraina based on her reported entry and exit wounds in the neck.

However, she admitted in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist that she was not wounded. This Ukrainian journalist reported that a Maidan activist revealed to him that the wounding of this Maidan medic was staged by the Maidan Self-Defense leadership and that she misrepresented wounds from a recent surgery as sustained during protests. After six years, a Ukrainian police investigation determined, based on confessions by fellow activists and findings by forensic medical experts, that her “crucifixion” and “torture” wounds were made in sterile conditions. These investigators also found that the highly publicized kidnapping and crucifixion of another Maidan activist was staged.

Dozens of members and commanders from government sniper units testified at the trial as prosecution witnesses. Yet their testimony showed that their units were ordered to deploy to government-controlled areas near the Maidan in order to locate and neutralize snipers, who in turn killed or wounded the Berkut policemen. They testified that, after their arrival, mass shooting practically stopped, yet that they came under fire from Maidan-controlled buildings.

The government investigation had earlier determined that Yanukovych government snipers could be held responsible for the death of only a single Maidan protester. Meanwhile, two other demonstrators who had been nearby during his killing, testified that he, too, was shot from a Maidan-controlled building. Photos and forensic examinations by government experts revealed that he was shot in the back from a steep angle by a corroded bullet as he faced the government positions.

Yet despite the overwhelming evidence, the investigation ultimately denied that there were snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings. It is striking that, almost eight years after one of the best-documented cases of mass murder in history, nobody is convicted or under arrest for the Maidan massacre.

https://mronline.org/2021/12/11/the-mai ... n-ukraine/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Mon Dec 13, 2021 2:05 pm

Ukrainian Armed Forces deployed armored vehicles in the residential area of ​​Troitsky - NM LPR

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According to the defenders of Donbass, the Ukrainian military, in violation of the Minsk agreements, is pulling up weapons to the borders with the LPR.

On the outskirts of the village of Lugansk, the military personnel of the People's Militia recorded the presence of two armored reconnaissance and patrol vehicles (BRDM-2) and one infantry fighting vehicle (BMP-1) on the territory of a residential area of ​​the village of Troitskoye.
"Subdivisions of the People's Militia are constantly monitoring the enemy, strictly adhering to the terms of the ceasefire, and are ready to respond promptly to changes in the situation on the orders of the command," the press service of the defense ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, the People's Militia reported that an enemy drone, stuffed with explosives, was shot down in the Slavyanoserbsk area.

https://novorosinform.org/vsu-razmestil ... 85162.html

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The crew of the Ukrainian Armed Forces strike drones arrived at the front line in Donbass - the plans of Kiev were revealed in the LPR

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Ukrainian waxes intend to organize a provocation with victims among the civilian population.

Ukrainian armed formations are preparing a provocation with casualties among the civilian population. The crew of the Ukrainian Armed Forces strike drones, which are planned to be used for shelling a village controlled by Ukraine, arrived at the front line. This was announced today by the official representative of the People's Militia of the LPR Ivan Filiponenko.
"At the position of the 17th battalion of the 57th brigade (AFU) , a UAV crew arrived with the task of dropping explosive devices in residential areas of the Muratovo settlement, which is under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," he said.
The representative of the defense department called on the residents of the village controlled by the Ukrainian troops to show special vigilance in the coming days, as well as to "restrict movement in connection with the threat to life from the" defenders "of Ukraine."

https://novorosinform.org/na-peredovuyu ... 85138.html

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Not just a battalion commander, but a father. French volunteer from "Pyatnashka" told about Mama

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December 12 Hero of the DPR Oleg Mamiev (call sign Mamai), the legendary battalion commander of the international brigade "Pyatnashka", would have turned 44 years old.

If on May 17, 2018 his life had not tragically ended under enemy mortar fire at the front lines of the "promka" ...

We talked about Mama with a volunteer from France, Ervan Castel, who fought under his command. Erwan is a sniper of the Pyatnashka brigade and a former career officer in the French army, originally from the province of Brittany. In January 2015, Ervan came to Donetsk and volunteered for the militia. In September 2019, Erwan was seriously injured from a mine explosion on the front line, practically depriving him of his left arm. Here's what he told about Mama:

“Since I came to fight in Donbass, I have had several commanders. I don’t want to talk now about whether one of them was better or worse. But Mamai stands alone among them and left indelible memories of himself. there are different: there are theoreticians among them, there are those who are building a military career, although both are capable of showing themselves on the battlefield.Mamai belonged to the rarest category of real military officers.For me, he was a living embodiment of a true military leader.

Mamai commanded the fighters not by the number of stars on their shoulder straps, but by exclusively personal example. This is very valuable for a common soldier. He was a simple, modest man, but at the same time he possessed indisputable authority and knew how to force himself to obey. Mamai had an athletic build, he was present both at the formations and on the front line and always listened to his fighters. The doors of his office were always open, even for ordinary soldiers.

For example, he came to his last Victory Parade on May 9, 2018 in full dress, but without awards. And, in my opinion, this is very characteristic of him. Pathos, vanity were alien to him, everything he did came from the very heart.

Another very important detail for me as a soldier: every month he was on the front line. It could be on the occasion of the anniversary of a patriotic holiday or on the occasion of the birthday of one of the soldiers. He came to us with tea, with sweets, with a cake and stayed with the soldiers for a long time on the front line, trying to find out what the fighting spirit of the soldiers was and what the current situation was.

I serve as a sniper in the Pyatnashka brigade and remember well how Mamai came to me and asked to show me the positions from which I was conducting observation and shooting. I saw that he was well versed in both observing the enemy and how to prepare a sniper position. In addition, he was very sincerely interested in my current concerns, if I had any technical problems. For all the soldiers of our unit, he was not just a battalion commander, he was, without exaggeration, his own father.

All my fellow soldiers will forever remember that tragic evening on May 17, 2018. I speak about this sincerely and without pathos. On the day when Mamai died on the battlefield, I was at the "prom". My position was about 500-600 meters from the Danube position, where Mamai was mortally wounded.

That evening, the VFU, we were very heavily fired upon. They fired at us from heavy machine guns, 82 mm mortars and AGS grenade launchers. Most of our unit was at the position in a state of alert, because our positions at the "promontory" are constantly fired upon, and the Ukrainian side, from which in some places we are separated by no more than a hundred meters, constantly arranges provocations.

At about nine or ten o'clock in the evening, a message passed among the soldiers from one sentry to another that Mamai was wounded. At that moment we were worried, but not surprised: he was often on the front line, especially if the situation was tense. For us, Mamai could not die, he was our battalion commander, and in our eyes he was immortal. We all knew his story: he was a volunteer from Ossetia, who came to Donbass from the first days of the beginning of the Russian Spring, as part of the then "Vostok" unit, he participated in battles on the southern borders of the republic, received a serious wound in the eye in Stepanovka, he survived in many major battles in 2014. For us, he was immortal ...

But closer to midnight, new information passed through the position that Mamai died of his wounds. We were shocked. This shock did not devastate us, did not paralyze us, but made us grip the weapon tighter in our hands. But at the same time, we felt an emptiness in our hearts. He was our commander, in the eyes of a soldier, a commander should not die in battle, he must withstand, survive. Usually a common soldier sacrifices life on the front lines. At that moment, we felt the true heroism of Mamai. "

Talking about the funeral of the battalion commander, Ervan can hardly hold back his tears:

“After the rotation, we came to Mamai’s funeral in Donetsk. You don’t need to think that the military are insensitive people. On the contrary, the war does not make the soldiers too emotional, but makes them more acutely feel the tragedies, suffering and misery around. For me it was a terrible day, but in that day I really felt that Mamai was a real hero.

We thought that we would say goodbye to the commander in a narrow circle, in the bosom of the family: a combat unit, especially such as the international brigade "Pyatnashka", is, first of all, a big family. But when we arrived with funeral wreaths in the center of Donetsk, I saw a huge crowd of civilians flowing in an endless stream to the opera house, where the farewell ceremony took place. The crowd was almost as huge as the one that, just a few months later, would come to say goodbye to the first head of the DPR, Alexander Zakharchenko. I saw tens of thousands of people in front of me who had gathered to say the last forgiveness to Oleg Mamiev. For us, this was an invaluable, unheard-of recognition of not only his personal merits, but also the recognition of us, his fighters, from the entire Donbass.

Mamai was not a native of Donbass, he was an Ossetian by nationality. But he managed, with all his inherent modesty, to become a true personification of the resistance of the Donbass. With genuine emotions I remember his comrades from Ossetia, some of whom came here to fight as volunteers with him. These are amazing people, like a rough block of granite: simple, harsh, but with a generous soul. I saw them sobbing uncontrollably at the opera house, where the coffin with Mamai's body was exhibited, and this picture will forever remain in my memory.

I also remember one photo taken by Svetlana Kisileva at the first Victory Parade in Donetsk on May 9, 2015. On it we see Mamai holding a little girl in his arms. He is standing in the middle of a very dense crowd of Donetsk residents who gathered to admire the military parade, and a powerful aura seems to emanate from him.

Oleg Mamiev was not a man from the stands, he was a man of the people and always wanted to be with the people. He was a simple man, but he possessed such qualities that he involuntarily embodied the true nobility of the soul.

https://novorosinform.org/ne-prosto-kom ... 85172.html

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 15, 2021 2:47 pm

Ukraine - Russia Makes Serious Demands, Warns Of 'Confrontation'

Following unfounded U.S. claims of an imminent Russian invasion of the Ukraine U.S. President Joe Biden and Russia's President Vladimir Putin have held a virtual summit. Little has been released about its real content but the Russian follow up shows that the issues they talked about were deadly serious.

On December 10 the Russian Foreign Ministry published a statement that not only sounds like an ultimatum but seems to be meant as one:

We note US President Joseph Biden’s readiness expressed at the December 7, 2021 talks with President Vladimir Putin to establish a serious dialogue on issues related to ensuring the security of the Russian Federation. Such a dialogue is urgently needed today when the relations between Russia and the collective West continue to decay and have approached a critical line. At the same time, numerous loose interpretations of our position have emerged in recent days. In this connection we feel it is necessary to once again clarify the following.
Escalating a confrontation with our country is absolutely unacceptable. As a pretext, the West is using the situation in Ukraine, where it embarked on encouraging Russophobia and justifying the actions of the Kiev regime to undermine the Minsk agreements and prepare for a military scenario in Donbass.

Instead of reigning in their Ukrainian protégés, NATO countries are pushing Kiev towards aggressive steps. There can be no alternative interpretation of the increasing number of unplanned exercises by the United States and its allies in the Black Sea. NATO members’ aircraft, including strategic bombers, regularly make provocative flights and dangerous manoeuvres in close proximity to Russia’s borders. The militarisation of Ukraine’s territory and pumping it with weapons are ongoing.

The course has been chosen of drawing Ukraine into NATO, which is fraught with the deployment of strike missile systems there with a minimal flight time to Central Russia, and other destabilising weapons. Such irresponsible behaviour creates grave military risks for all parties involved, up to and including a large-scale conflict in Europe.


All the NATO action mentioned above directly endangers Russia's security. It has to cease. Some of the steps taken must be reversed and Russia will have to be given guarantees that certain measures will not be taken. The statement includes this list of demands:

*No more NATO expansion towards Russia's borders. Retraction of the 2008 NATO invitation to Ukraine and Georgia.
*Legally binding guarantee that no strike systems which could target Moscow will be deployed in countries next to Russia.
*No NATO or equivalent (UK, U.S., Pl.) 'exercises' near Russian borders.
*NATO ships, planes to keep certain distances from Russian borders.
*Regular military-to-military talks.
*No intermediate-range nukes in Europe.

That the above is not a "pretty please" wishlist has since been emphasized by several Russian authorities:

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Monday warned of confrontation should the United States and NATO fail to give Russia security guarantees concerning its eastern expansion, the RIA news agency reported.
President Vladimir Putin has demanded legally binding security guarantees that NATO will not expand further east or place its weapons close to Russian territory; Washington has repeatedly said no country can veto Ukraine's NATO hopes.


The confrontation Ryabkov talks about would not be verbal if Russia's red lines get crossed:

We have openly pointed out that there are red lines which we will not allow anyone to cross, and we also have certain requirements, which have been formulated exceedingly clearly.

Russia can of course veto the Ukraine's entry into NATO. It can destroy the Ukrainian military, take the regions of Ukraine where a majority speaks Russian and create a new sovereign state from them.

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The remaining agricultural Banderastan would be left for Poland and Romania to feast on. This would give Russia the strategic depth it needs and it would limit the NATO friendly coastline in the Black Sea to the south western parts.

A Russian attack on the Ukraine is however what western weapon producers and their adjunct think tanks, 'experts' and political hawks, mainly in the U.S., deeply wish for. It would isolate Russia, increase the U.S. role in Europe, justify increasing military budgets and end the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and other Russian export routes.

And that is the reason why Russia will not attack and use alternative measures.

Unless, of course, ...

In a phone call with Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson Putin repeated the demands and explained his reasoning:

Like other Western leaders, Boris Johnson expressed concern about Russia’s alleged large-scale troop movements near the Ukrainian border. In this regard, Vladimir Putin provided in-depth and principled assessments of the current situation in Ukraine.
Specific examples of Kiev's destructive course on derailing the Minsk agreements, which are the only viable path towards resolving the internal Ukraine crisis, were given. It was also pointed out that the Ukrainian authorities are purposefully aggravating the situation on the line of contact and are using heavy weapons and attack drones, which are prohibited by the Minsk Package of Measures in the conflict zone. Ukraine’s policy of discrimination against Russian-speaking people was pointed out as well.

It was emphasised that all this is happening amid the active military “exploration” of Ukraine’s territory by NATO, something that poses a direct threat to Russia’s security.

With this in mind, Vladimir Putin stated the need to immediately begin talks in order to develop clear international legal agreements that can preclude NATO’s further eastward advance and the deployment of weapons that pose a threat to Russia in neighbouring states, primarily Ukraine. Russia will present draft documents to this end.


The NATO countries which push for further moves against Russia, mostly the Baltic 3 and Poland, see all their dreams endangered. They will resist any move towards a fulfillment of Russia's demands. They are however not the ones that count.

It is the U.S., Germany and France that Russia is counting on to get some senses. The upcoming winter, which is predicted to be somewhat harsh, is a good opportunity to apply a little pressure to Europe and to show that it is Russia, not the U.S., which provides Europe energy security. The new Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer understands that:

In an interview published on Tuesday in the German newspaper Die Welt, Nehammer, who was elected chancellor earlier this month, was asked if the Austrian government will continue to support Nord Stream 2. He replied, “Of course,” adding that he expects the pipeline to begin operating soon.
“I don’t consider it necessary to connect Nord Stream 2 with Russia’s behavior in Ukraine,” he went on, referencing a recent political standoff between Moscow and Kiev. “The EU can only hurt itself by doing so. Nord Stream 2 doesn’t only serve Russia’s interests – Germany, Austria, and other EU countries will profit from it. Nord Stream 2 is a European project, which shouldn’t be used as a tool to pressure Moscow.”


This winter Russia will use its market power to press for a fulfillment of its demands. Russia has stopped to provide natural gas to the European spot markets. It continues to deliver in full to customers who have long term contracts. This will squeeze Poland and a few others who depend on the spot market in times of peak demand. Russia hopes that those countries learn that their excessive hostility towards it can have serious consequences.

As Russia has no direct tool to squeeze the U.S. it will need a different strategy to push Biden to change course. The current main foreign policy concern in the U.S. is China. Russia is therefore coordinating its strategy with it:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will discuss "aggressive" language from the U.S. and NATO during their virtual meeting later this week, according to the Kremlin.
"The situation in international affairs, especially on the European continent, is very, very tense right now and requires discussion between allies," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, according to a Reuters report. "We see very, very aggressive rhetoric on the NATO and U.S. side, and this requires discussion between us and the Chinese."


Notice Peskov's use of the word "allies". This is, as far as I know, new. There is no formal treaty between Russia and China that makes them 'allies' so the use of the word is highly significant.

This is a concern for an Asia pundit who fears that any Russian move on Ukraine would be accompanied by a Chinese move on Taiwan. To prevent that she urges the U.S. to end the endless confrontation with Russia and to concentrate on the far east.

We can only hope that Biden understands such reasoning, finally shuts up the Russia hawks and ends the conflict with Moscow.

Otherwise we will all be in for some interesting times.

Posted by b on December 14, 2021 at 18:39 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/u ... .html#more

If Russia had taken these Nazis in hand in 2014 it would have been a cakewalk given how demoralized and deserter-ridden the Ukrainian army was at the time. But Putin and the oligarchy balked at fully supporting these separatists who had all these socialist ideas about how their society should look. So Russian support was minimal, just enough to keep Donbass out of Nazi hands and avoid a domestic political disaster. In the meantime the socialist leaders of the revolt have been assassinated one by one, by Russian or Ukrainian intelligence, hard to say. And now Russia has got this mess on their hands, goes to show that the class war supersedes all other consideration.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 16, 2021 3:12 pm

"Cure from the Russian World". SBU General urged to reduce the number of Russian-speaking in Ukraine
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According to Viktor Yagun, the Russian language is one of the main problems of today's Ukraine.


The Russian language, which continues to be spoken by most of the population of Ukraine, is one of the main problems for the country, therefore the number of Russian-speaking citizens must be constantly reduced. This was stated by the former Deputy Chairman of the SBU General Viktor Yagun.

According to him, the Russian-speaking population is a huge problem for Ukraine, which makes it possible to implement Russia's plans to return its territories.

"I'm not saying that it (the Russian-speaking population. - Ed.) Needs to be destroyed, it needs to be reduced - the less, the better, because, as experience shows, where the Russian language is, for some reason the Russian world appears there, it is not clear why ", - said Yagun on the air of the Chernomorskaya TRK TV channel.

The SBU general stressed that in those regions where the Russian language was destroyed, there is no threat of a Russian invasion, because in Moscow "they understand that there is no chance for them there."

"That is, a society that has definitely gotten rid of the Moscow type, it has actually recovered from this Russian world," he added.

Yagun also expressed the hope that other regions of Ukraine will be able to "recover" from the Russian language and their residents will cease to be Russian people.

https://novorosinform.org/vylechit-ot-r ... 85491.html

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But there ain't no Nazis in Ukraine....
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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