A hundred years ago the wack-jobs were royal and related, today they just 'are'...Gotta wonder though, has there ever been so many wack-jobs on the world's stage simultaneously?
Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
" If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism." Lenin, 1916
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
This is dated 2014, by a Greek communist academic.
Hindsight is golden. He couldn't imagine the long drawn out stalemate, who could? Likewise the treachery of Moscow, initially we missed that too, though not for long.PERIKLIS PAVLIDIS: THE DONBASS INSURGENCY IN A CRITICAL MOMENT
Posted by * em 27/09/2014
THE DONBASS INSURGENCY IN A CRITICAL MOMENT
Periklis Pavlidis
Donbass Fighters
The reason for the war in Ukraine is that power has been seized in this country by an alliance of pro-Western-neoliberals and far right to fascist political forces, under the hegemony of the Ukrainian oligarch capitalists, and with the guidance of the USA and the support of certain EU countries.
It should be noted that the rise to power of the aforementioned alliance (following the overthrow of president Yanukovych) was directly instigated by the USA, under whose control the present Ukrainian government lies. The USA, in cooperation with the Ukrainian oligarchs and the country’s neoliberal and nationalist political forces, are strongly promoting a rupture in the ties between Ukraine and Russia, so that the former may be subject to the political and economic leadership of the West. In essence, the ultimate target of the United States (and of the leading powers of the EU), vis-à-vis the crisis in Ukraine, is Russia itself, and its neutralization as a geopolitical adversary. The implementation of this goal is being promoted in conjunction with the broader efforts of the globally dominant western capitalist pole (the Euro-Atlantic imperialist coalition) to prevent the formation of forces and coalitions capable of questioning its continuing supremacy into the 21st century. Therefore, a major role in the Ukrainian conflict is played by the fact that the change of power in the country and the process of its entrance into the sphere of influence of the USA and the EU, constitute a severe economic and military threat for Russia, which is forcing it to react dynamically. The insurgency in Donbass would have been impossible without the support of Russia, which was forced to take a decisive stand against the extremely aggressive policies of the West.
As regards the region of south-eastern Ukraine, the uprising there was the result of an attempt to deal with two significant dangers felt by the inhabitants mainly of the Donbass region, stemming from the new regime in Kiev and its pro-Western sentiments.
The first danger concerns the fact that a particularly aggressive practice is being followed in Ukraine today which aims to impose a uniform bourgeois national consciousness on all citizens, based on the nationalist and largely fascist ideological traditions of the country’s western regions. Not by chance is the currently constructed mythology about the “Ukrainian nation” inspired by figures such as the Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera and the OUN-UPA bandits, stigmatized by heinous crimes during the period of the German occupation, which they committed against Poles and Jews.
The outbreak of Ukrainian nationalism is also being accompanied by a large-scale cultivation of extreme anti-Russian, anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments and a direct political suppression of any opposing view, not only by the official state, but also by a large number of far right paramilitary units, a major part of which are being financed and armed by the country’s oligarchs. Today, Ukraine is the only country in the world that contains openly fascist units in its security forces. A typical example is that of the Azov Battalion, which operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and has often been used in the cleansing operations against the Donbass rebels; it consists purely of fascists, and includes like-minded volunteers from other countries also. It is worth noting that the battalion’s symbol is the “Wolfsangel” (Wolf’s Hook), one of the most popular symbols of the German Nazis and of neo-Nazis around the world.
As expected therefore, the insurgency in Donbass was a reaction to the political suppression of the national consciousness, language and culture of its Russian-speaking inhabitants, for whom there is no longer any place in today’s Ukraine.
Secondly, the insurgency was also a reaction to the potential opening of the Ukrainian economy to the economy of the EU, given that such a step would vitally undermine the country’s economic ties with Russia and threaten the industrially developed region of Donbass, that is also closely linked to the Russian economy, with de-industrialisation.
According to the above, it is understood that the insurgency initially acquired a national character, i.e. it concerned the efforts of the rebelling regions to maintain their Russian national identity and pursue a connection with Russia (or, in the best case scenario, a union).
Thus, the uprising first targeted the nationalist policies of Kiev, and the Ukrainian nationalist and pro-Western political forces, and also indirectly the geostrategic goals of the USA and their European allies.
For this reason, we first see political forces and figures representing Russian nationalism (Strelkov, Borodai) taking the leading role, who originated from Russia itself, and took it upon themselves to organize and guide the rebels.
It should be mentioned at this point that the political character immediately attributed to this uprising and the general course followed by political life in Ukraine serve to display in a particularly painful way the great withdrawal of the Left in Ukraine and its sheer inability to affect the course of events, a fact largely due to the total demise and collapse of the once powerful Communist Party of Ukraine.
For a long time, the said party had essentially become integrated within the bourgeois political system, acting as a political addendum to the Party of Regions, whose government it supported.
The political path followed by the Communist Party of Ukraine has proven once again that when the political forces of the Left decide to take part in the bourgeois system of governance, then as a rule, instead of leading to a solution of the social crisis, they become part of it, spreading delusions, disappointment and passivity amongst the working people.
The national liberation focus of the insurgency in south-eastern Ukraine is still predominant today.
At the same time, its severe limitations have also become apparent, given that the aim of separating Russian-speaking south-eastern Ukraine and, possibly, in some way uniting it with Russia is a goal that does not appear convincing to the majority of Ukraine’s inhabitants, who share a Ukrainian national consciousness and do not link their future prospects with Russia. In fact, the above-mentioned goal does not even seem to mobilize a large part of the Russian-speaking population living outside the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Unfortunately, the ideological-political impact of the insurgents’ actions on other regions of Ukraine has been weak to non-existent, given, on the one hand, the absence of a clear strategy and of a thorough political programme, but also of a leading political organization that could rise to the challenge, and become involved in managing the political struggle, not only in the insurgent regions, but all over the country.
However, apart from the national liberation dimension of the insurgency in south-eastern Ukraine, its social dimension has become increasingly apparent. In conjunction with their shared anti-fascist intentions, an anti-oligarch tendency is rising strongly among the insurgents. In several statements made both by their leaders and by rebel soldiers, there is the demand to rid the under construction state of Novorossia from the power of the oligarch capitalists. This demand voices the interests of the diverse social strata that are taking part in or support the uprising, which include industrial workers (miners and metalworkers), employees, self-employed professionals and owners of small and medium-sized businesses.
The social dimension of the insurgency is also framed by feelings of nostalgia for the Soviet past and the request to create a society of justice, where social rights are safeguarded.
It should be noted that the events currently unfolding in south-eastern Ukraine do not constitute a social revolution, for which the preconditions do not currently exist after all. It is an insurgency, which along with its national liberation character is now tending to adopt a social dimension, by turning against the oligarch capitalists, but not against capitalism as a system.
A very important factor affecting the political developments within the insurgents’ camp is certainly the Russian government and the political and economic elite of the country in general. Russia has supported the insurgency in a determined manner, by supplying the armed forces of Novorossia with weapons and war materials, and also by sending a large number of professional military personnel to take part in the war operations from different posts. Furthermore, Russia is the only source of supplies to the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as regards food and basic goods, which are absolutely essential to the survival of the local population, who are currently facing a humanitarian crisis, following the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure by the Ukrainian artillery fire.
At the same time, the Russian government has been using the aid it is offering the insurgents as a means to exert pressure on the latter to comply with its own geostrategic aspirations, political intrigues and diplomatic manoeuvres. This was made obvious in the way in which the leadership of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Lugansk and Donetsk changed hands, and also in the signing by the new leadership of a truce protocol at Minsk, at a very favorable moment for the insurgents’ further military advance.
It worth mentioning that the differentiated reaction to the Minsk Protocol and to the recently approved by the Ukrainian parliament laws on special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions by different insurgents’ political and military leaders (Lugansk People’s Republic Prime Minister Igor Plotnitsky welcomed the laws, while the commander of the militia “Ghost” Brigade Alexei Mozgovoi called the signing of the Minsk Protocol “an act of treason”) indicates the existence of at least two “parties” among the insurgents: the (obviously Moscow-controlled) “party” of compromise with Kiev regime and the based on some militia forces “party” of war-till-the-victorious-end for the creation of an independent big Novorossia without oligarch capitalists.
Concerning the role of Russia in the conflict in Ukraine, what we can claim is that it will continue to support the insurgency, thus ensuring that the Novorossia in some form will survive, without however wishing to incorporate it within Russia, and also most probably without also wishing its full separation from Ukraine, so that it can be used to counterbalance the western influence over Ukraine, and to exert pressure on the Ukrainian government as regards issues that concern the country’s focus vis-à-vis its economic and military international alliances.
It should be underlined here, that part of the Russian political and economic elite would be willing to reach a compromise with the Kiev regime and bring the conflict in Eastern Ukraine to a definite end. It is afraid however of the public outcry of Russian society and is therefore unable to openly denounce the insurgency in Donbass.
Moreover, the attitude of the Russian government towards the insurgency in south-eastern Ukraine is also linked to its intention not to further aggravate its relations with the West.
At this point, it should be mentioned that in the conflict between Russia and the USA/EU, the two forces involved present major differences in character and power. Russia is obviously a large capitalist country which has displayed a significant rate of development over the last decade and features increasingly in the sphere of international relations. Nevertheless, it does not fulfill the necessary preconditions that would allow it to function as a pure imperialist power. Its financial capital (the strongest capital sector in the period of imperialism) is weak, several of its businesses largely depend on the financial system of the West as regards their investment activities, while the level of Russian capital exports to other counties remains highly limited.
The country’s strength in the modern world lies in its energy resources, its military-industrial complex and its capacity to export natural gas and weapons. However, in what concerns its armed forces, and despite the visible improvement in their abilities, the latter still remain much smaller in size compared to their counterparts from the USA/NATO, and therefore could not wage large-scale military operations at a great distance from Russia’s territory. The fact that Russia occupies a huge area and only has limited armed forces at its disposal means that it is essentially basing its security on its nuclear arsenal, which is however of a defensive nature, i.e. it exists as the ultimate force that would prevent a potential generalized attack by its outnumbering enemy forces.
On the other hand, the USA and the EU, along with their closest allies, form the dominant imperialist pole of the world. They possess the strongest financial institutions and multinational companies, and control, directly or indirectly, the largest part of the world’s wealth-producing resources. In addition, the USA and EU countries also have the most powerful international mass media and control the biggest part of the world’s cultural industry, which means they can influence the shaping of public opinion worldwide.
Furthermore, the USA and NATO countries together form the strongest military machine on the planet, which can act on a global scale, by functioning as the world’s warden that will guarantee the domination of the West.
Let us always keep in mind that under the given circumstances, any radical attempt for social change and emancipation of labour in Europe or elsewhere is certain to come up against a fierce reaction precisely by the Euro-Atlantic imperialist alliance, which also has the role of guardian of the global capitalist system.
The Russian leadership, which tries to avoid a generalized economic conflict with the West taking into account the economic interests of the Russian capitalists, and is also unable to undertake immediate military action in Ukraine given the potential military reaction of the NATO forces, is entrapped in a back-peddling policy as regards the Ukrainian question, at times heightening its conflict with the West and the Kiev regime, and then taking a step back in an attempt to reach a compromise. At the same time, the aggression practiced by the West is so strong that it does not provide the Russian government with any possibility to withdraw without suffering a huge impact on the country’s economy and military security.
Right now, the insurgency in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical point. The territory controlled by the insurgents is very small, with a destroyed infrastructure. If they limit themselves to it, then the “state” of Novorossia will be an extremely weak entity from an economic and political perspective, that will be totally dependent on Russia. This will also mean that the rest of Ukraine will remain under the control of the Kiev regime, and this will strengthen the power of the oligarchs to the utmost, along with the country’s submission to the USA/ΝΑΤΟ/ EU, to nationalist hysteria and to a severe suppression of any form of political opposition.
It is a fact that the agreed truce has a limited chance of survival, given the strong desire of the Kiev regime to fully suppress the uprising and to eliminate the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as federal entities of Novorossia. At this moment, the Ukrainian army is regrouping and mobilizing new recruits very probably in order to attempt a new attack.
It is likely that the most decisive battles have not yet been fought and the conflict will erupt once again during autumn.
What should be pointed out is that the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine will have a major impact on the country itself, on Russia and on the broader post-Soviet space, on Europe and the USA, but also on the rest of the world.
If the insurgents of Donbass suffer a crushing defeat and the oligarchic, neoliberal and nationalist regime of Kiev is fully imposed under the control of the USA/EU, then the consequences for the people of Ukraine will be catastrophic, since they will suffer due to neoliberal policies and state suppression. They will also be disastrous for Russia, since its international standing will be grievously weakened, while those members of its political and economic elite that desire the country’s submission to the West will gain decisive power.
The impact will also be grievous for the peoples of Europe however, and even more so for the peoples of southern and eastern Europe, who are currently experiencing the disastrous effects of their accession to the EU, further aggravated by the global economic crisis. In fact, for those peoples who have fought important social struggles and who view their future within the EU with skepticism, a victory of the USA and its allies in Ukraine will function as a harsh warning of the futility of any efforts to disengage from Euro-Atlantic institutions and the hegemony of the USA and Germany.
On the contrary, a victory of the insurgents in Eastern Ukraine in conjunction with a strengthening of their social/counter-oligarchic attitude will gravely affect the oligarchic-right wing-nationalist forces within the country and the interests and prestige of the USA/NATO/EU. Such a development could only have a positive effect on the social struggles taking place in Europe and the world, by sending a message of optimism stating that it is possible to question the imperialist domination of the USA/NATO/EU, and with it the power of big capital worldwide.
https://olhequenao.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... al-moment/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Donbass InterUnit Commander Nemo interviewed: 'I continue to fight'
Nom de guerre Nemo
Exclusive interview: The Italian commander of InterUnit, the team of Donbass internationalists, speaks
By Fabrizio Rostelli
"Alias" supplement to Il Manifesto, December 9, 2017
He fought for two years, arms in hand, alongside the people of Donbass in the name of socialism. This is his first interview since he returned to Italy in July 2017. His nom de guerre is Nemo, and he was commander of InterUnit, the internationalist unit founded in September 2015, and fought for the Donbass People’s Republics (Lugansk and Donetsk), which unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine on May 12, 2014, following a popular referendum. InterUnit, operating on the front line in the northwest of the Lugansk People's Republic, suspended military activities in January 2017. The conflict, however, does not cease; the civil war has continued for nearly four years, and according to official estimates has already caused more than 10,000 deaths. Nemo prefers to keep his anonymity. I met him in Rome, his hometown, on the sidelines of a public meeting on the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Among those present, the ambassadors and delegates of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua followed his intervention with interest.
Nemo in Rome.
Photo by Marco Marega
Do you still fight in the Donbass? What is the current situation from a political and military point of view?
The situation in Donbass is extremely clear -- we have won. We have defeated the fascists, we have liberated a territory and we are trying to build a socialist state. It must be clear that the detonator of the insurrection in Donbass was the fascist coup in Kiev; the people, however, did not rise only against fascism but also against capitalism, which failed in Ukraine and now shows its worst face. Despite the Minsk II agreements, there is still fighting and the People's Republics continue to be under attack. The Kiev government has understood that its frontal assaults have failed and a low-intensity war is now taking place which, however, causes on average the death of 2-3 Ukrainian soldiers a day; a significant amount. In Ukraine there is a military draft and they have exterminated a lot of "cannon fodder.” We absolutely do not like this situation, of course, we have our own dead and we think about them. Right now the Ukrainians are attacking with unconventional methods, especially with car bombs in city centers; it must be said that they do it professionally, with well-calibrated charges, and rarely are there casualties among civilians, but it is something that must be stopped and that we cannot accept. Kiev must understand that if it continues on this path there will be an inevitable resurgence.
Why do you maintain that the Kiev government is a fascist government?
The Kiev government implements a fascist policy in continuity with previous governments, but relies on Nazi apparatuses that played a decisive role in Euromaidan. The Nazis obtained, in exchange for their support, an unconditional mandate to carry out “cleansing” operations against the population, but also within the Ukrainian army, going to attack those who refuse to fight. In addition, the Nazi militias, such as the Azov battalion, are not dependent on the Ministry of Defense but on the Ministry of the Interior. In the cities of Kharkov and Mariupol, which were formerly part of our territories, the Nazis made ferocious reprisals when they reconquered them. Today, for these reasons, the Nazis are also hated by ordinary people. The revolt in Donbass was triggered emotionally by seeing the fascists in power, then it became an anti-capitalist struggle.
How much time did you spend in Donbass?
From 2015 to 2017 I spent a year and a half on the front line and six months in the rear. I had 14 days of rest and I am one of those who had the most; some comrades have been fighting for four years and this also means four icy winters. There is no respite from the cold, the fighting and the death, and after four years it starts to get very hard. There are those who have been wounded three times but continue to fight. Nobody wants to take days off because if the person who replaces you lost their life you would live forever with a sense of guilt. Unfortunately it happened to some.
What is the InterUnit and who is it composed of?
InterUnit is a military-political subject born of the Prizrak Brigade (the Ghost Brigade created by Alexei Mozgovoi, which fights in the militia of the LPR-DPR). The big difference compared to other past experiences was reuniting the political sphere with the military one, a taboo that has not been addressed in Italy in recent years. We place ourselves on the path carved out by the best internationalist struggles, both the Spanish Civil War and the liberation wars of Latin America. We are normal people, almost all without previous military experience. On the whole, 31 comrades from Italy, France, Finland, the United States and other countries have joined InterUnit. The bulk of the fighters came from Spain, precisely because of the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, something indelible in the memory of the antifascists.
InterUnit members commemorate Che Guevara, October 2016.
What are the demands of those who fight in Donbass and what are the prospects, not only in the short term?
The Donbass was born as a political project with the aim of building an alternative on the ground that was a continuation of the Soviet Union; in fact, capitalism in Ukraine was fertile ground for mafia and oligarchy. Because of some internal contradictions, the People's Republics have not developed fully, but the process is underway. The biggest problem from a political point of view is the inability of the communist parties in the Republics to read the situation; initially, in fact, they did not support the insurrection, losing a historical opportunity. In this political vacuum, the forces that seek to restore the previous economic system and the oligarchic political system have asserted themselves. All this led to a "Russianization", as the current government sees Russia as the only interlocutor. At this stage there is a war within the war, on one side the military war, in which the communists are engaged in the front line, are those who make the most dispassionate and disinterested contribution; but then there are also clashes inside, in the rear, between those who really want socialism and those who seek to restore capitalism.
Why did you decide to put your life at risk by going to fight in Donbass?
I am an antifascist and an internationalist, and those who really believe in these ideas instinctively seek their practical implementation. At this stage, I don’t think the revolution and armed insurrection in Italy are near, so anyone who wants to gain experience in revolutionary armed struggle must turn their attention elsewhere.
Is this your first experience at the front? Where were you trained?
This was my first experience as an operative at the front. Actually, my training dates back several years and took place in Yugoslavia, during the Kosovo crisis. Here too there was an attempt to establish internationalist units to defend a socialist experience, but unfortunately we arrived too late, when the wind had already changed. We lost a lot of time at the beginning because at that time the internet was only in its infancy, we had not mastered it and we could not take full advantage of its potential, because it was still underdeveloped. In Donbass we have perfected this and connected with the local comrades, both in terms of techniques and in terms of general fellowship.
Why this codename, and what were your tasks?
The name Nemo comes from literature; there are two extremely well-known cases. The first is in The Odyssey. The other Nemo is that of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," an internationalist militant ante litteram who went out into the world to fight imperialism with somewhat sci-fi but effective methods. As soon as I arrived in Donbass I was placed in an infantry unit, a couple of months later the military-political project was developed, and in InterUnit I assumed the task of political commissar. In the first two years of the war the partisan fighting system was used with a double command: political commissar and military commander. At the time I was a political commissar for a very specific reason -- I did not know the Russian language -- and when I got to a sufficient level of knowledge I took command of the unit. The classic tasks are those of territorial control. There were no big advances; however, I helped to extract pieces of territory from Ukrainian control, including two villages and a strategic hill.
The media have often emphasized the battalions of the extreme right, which also include Italians, who fight in Donbass for the independence of the People's Republics. Is this a partial narrative?
It is not only a partial reading, it is simply a dance mounted by the media. There are fascists fighting for Kiev, and then there are some who are part of the popular militias, the latter of two types: local fascists and European ones who for their own reasons have decided to go to fight against NATO. None of them are part of a fascist battalion; there are absolutely no fascist military formations that fight for the People's Republics, this is an invention. There were attempts to establish them and they were immediately dismantled because they were totally incompatible with the antifascist nature of the Donbass people. Unfortunately, however, these characters are very good at camouflaging themselves to fit into the interstices of power by assuming the role of “red-brown populism.” For example, in the Lugansk People's Republic, they occupied all the posts of the official press agency. The information that comes out is largely filtered through the fascists, and this is another great contradiction.
The fascists who actually fought alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces are no more than 10, and then there are about 20 others who fought for short periods. But there is a black hole, because it is impossible to quantify how many Europeans have gone through the training centers of the Ukrainian punitive battalions. We know for sure that the Ukrainian Nazis gave military training to Italian fascists and perhaps even weapons. For example, we know that the Ukrainian army has lost five million light weapons, of which one million were taken by the People's Republics. The other 4 million? These missing weapons have already appeared in other situations, for example in Romania and Libya. Ukraine is selling everything because the borders are very permeable. Some European fascists have already been found with stolen weapons and this would suggest that some of these may already have arrived here.
Returning to the theme of Italians in the popular militias, the antifascists who fought for long periods numbered more than 20, and there are about 10 who did so for short periods. As for the fascists, on the other hand, there were two who actually fought, while there were about 10 who were at the front for short periods. It must also be considered that there were six fascists (who receive a lot of media exposure) who say they are combatants while they have always been in the second line. If we consider the local Ukrainian fascists, the Russian and the European ones, at their peak they reached 0.9% of the fighters in Donbass, and if we add to these nationalists and religious fundamentalists (ultra-Orthodox and neopagans) we get to 2%. Low numbers. If in Italy we represent the struggle of the Donbass by looking only at this 0.9%, we deliberately create a distorted narrative.
How strong is the Soviet tradition in Donbass?
The People’s Republics are in full continuity with the Soviet Union and this also serves to debunk another myth: we are not pro-Russian [i.e., the current capitalist regime of the Russian Federation]. If the population of the Donbass were really pro-Russian, it would never have constituted a People’s Republic, because a reality that contains elements of socialism is in open antithesis with the history of the last 25 years of Russia. The majority of Donbass people consider themselves Soviet. In 1991 there was a referendum in which the population of the Soviet Union expressed itself firmly against its dissolution (77% of voters), which was carried forward anyway with a coup and only with a coup.
What is Russia's position in this conflict? Did it offer military support?
Russia was only interested in the Crimea and got what it wanted. In fact, there the clashes lasted only two days and resulted in two deaths. In the Donbass, on the other hand, we have been fighting for four years and there has been no Russian military support for our struggle. Russia is not interested in the independence of the People's Republics. It is not hostile to the cause but tends to represent it as an ethnic cause. The Prizrak Brigade has in fact fought only with Soviet weapons. At the beginning of the insurrection, hunting and self-defense weapons were used, after which the police stations were attacked to seize the weapons. At that point the conflict became high intensity and Kiev sent its army. In many cases, however, the Ukrainian soldiers defected and even joined the popular militias. Later we came into possession of the maps of the old deposits of Soviet weapons secretly buried by the USSR to be used in the event of attack and we fought with those. We took pieces of artillery from parks and many weapons even from museums; they were working weapons that maybe just needed new firing pins. Precision weapons were all taken from museums and were Soviet weapons. My personal weapon was a Kalashnikov, while the position weapon was a '43 PTRD rifle.
Didn’t Russia offer any financial support?
One must consider that the only commercial relations that the People's Republics have with the outside world are with Russia, which is, I believe, the only buyer of Donbass coal. The transactions are all in rubles and Russia, by putting in cash from the outside, has helped to reactivate the economy of the Republics that was completely stopped.
How has your life changed today?
My life has not changed much, because I am a revolutionary militant, so for me to make war or carry out normal political activity does not change anything, except the tools.
Do you think you'll go back to fight?
I continue to fight, it’s just that I’m not participating in an armed struggle; it makes no sense to do it in Italy at this stage, the conditions do not exist, so I make a political struggle. As for the Donbass, if it were necessary, I would be operating there in 48 hours, and many other comrades like me. We stopped because international diplomacy forced us not to go further, but the people of Donbass are not content with having freed a piece of land, no matter how great it may be. The enemy is the fascism that still rages in Kiev and this must be remedied. If the international community does not do it, sooner or later the peoples of the former Ukraine will do it. There is also another aspect to consider. InterUnit is a military subject that is not operating in Donbass at this stage, but it must be clear that if there were an attack on other socialist experiences of the world, the comrades would certainly be ready to intervene at any moment.
Source
Translated by Greg Butterfield
Posted 12 minutes ago by Greg B
https://redstaroverdonbass.blogspot.com ... -nemo.html
Nom de guerre Nemo
Exclusive interview: The Italian commander of InterUnit, the team of Donbass internationalists, speaks
By Fabrizio Rostelli
"Alias" supplement to Il Manifesto, December 9, 2017
He fought for two years, arms in hand, alongside the people of Donbass in the name of socialism. This is his first interview since he returned to Italy in July 2017. His nom de guerre is Nemo, and he was commander of InterUnit, the internationalist unit founded in September 2015, and fought for the Donbass People’s Republics (Lugansk and Donetsk), which unilaterally declared independence from Ukraine on May 12, 2014, following a popular referendum. InterUnit, operating on the front line in the northwest of the Lugansk People's Republic, suspended military activities in January 2017. The conflict, however, does not cease; the civil war has continued for nearly four years, and according to official estimates has already caused more than 10,000 deaths. Nemo prefers to keep his anonymity. I met him in Rome, his hometown, on the sidelines of a public meeting on the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Among those present, the ambassadors and delegates of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua followed his intervention with interest.
Nemo in Rome.
Photo by Marco Marega
Do you still fight in the Donbass? What is the current situation from a political and military point of view?
The situation in Donbass is extremely clear -- we have won. We have defeated the fascists, we have liberated a territory and we are trying to build a socialist state. It must be clear that the detonator of the insurrection in Donbass was the fascist coup in Kiev; the people, however, did not rise only against fascism but also against capitalism, which failed in Ukraine and now shows its worst face. Despite the Minsk II agreements, there is still fighting and the People's Republics continue to be under attack. The Kiev government has understood that its frontal assaults have failed and a low-intensity war is now taking place which, however, causes on average the death of 2-3 Ukrainian soldiers a day; a significant amount. In Ukraine there is a military draft and they have exterminated a lot of "cannon fodder.” We absolutely do not like this situation, of course, we have our own dead and we think about them. Right now the Ukrainians are attacking with unconventional methods, especially with car bombs in city centers; it must be said that they do it professionally, with well-calibrated charges, and rarely are there casualties among civilians, but it is something that must be stopped and that we cannot accept. Kiev must understand that if it continues on this path there will be an inevitable resurgence.
Why do you maintain that the Kiev government is a fascist government?
The Kiev government implements a fascist policy in continuity with previous governments, but relies on Nazi apparatuses that played a decisive role in Euromaidan. The Nazis obtained, in exchange for their support, an unconditional mandate to carry out “cleansing” operations against the population, but also within the Ukrainian army, going to attack those who refuse to fight. In addition, the Nazi militias, such as the Azov battalion, are not dependent on the Ministry of Defense but on the Ministry of the Interior. In the cities of Kharkov and Mariupol, which were formerly part of our territories, the Nazis made ferocious reprisals when they reconquered them. Today, for these reasons, the Nazis are also hated by ordinary people. The revolt in Donbass was triggered emotionally by seeing the fascists in power, then it became an anti-capitalist struggle.
How much time did you spend in Donbass?
From 2015 to 2017 I spent a year and a half on the front line and six months in the rear. I had 14 days of rest and I am one of those who had the most; some comrades have been fighting for four years and this also means four icy winters. There is no respite from the cold, the fighting and the death, and after four years it starts to get very hard. There are those who have been wounded three times but continue to fight. Nobody wants to take days off because if the person who replaces you lost their life you would live forever with a sense of guilt. Unfortunately it happened to some.
What is the InterUnit and who is it composed of?
InterUnit is a military-political subject born of the Prizrak Brigade (the Ghost Brigade created by Alexei Mozgovoi, which fights in the militia of the LPR-DPR). The big difference compared to other past experiences was reuniting the political sphere with the military one, a taboo that has not been addressed in Italy in recent years. We place ourselves on the path carved out by the best internationalist struggles, both the Spanish Civil War and the liberation wars of Latin America. We are normal people, almost all without previous military experience. On the whole, 31 comrades from Italy, France, Finland, the United States and other countries have joined InterUnit. The bulk of the fighters came from Spain, precisely because of the legacy of the Spanish Civil War, something indelible in the memory of the antifascists.
InterUnit members commemorate Che Guevara, October 2016.
What are the demands of those who fight in Donbass and what are the prospects, not only in the short term?
The Donbass was born as a political project with the aim of building an alternative on the ground that was a continuation of the Soviet Union; in fact, capitalism in Ukraine was fertile ground for mafia and oligarchy. Because of some internal contradictions, the People's Republics have not developed fully, but the process is underway. The biggest problem from a political point of view is the inability of the communist parties in the Republics to read the situation; initially, in fact, they did not support the insurrection, losing a historical opportunity. In this political vacuum, the forces that seek to restore the previous economic system and the oligarchic political system have asserted themselves. All this led to a "Russianization", as the current government sees Russia as the only interlocutor. At this stage there is a war within the war, on one side the military war, in which the communists are engaged in the front line, are those who make the most dispassionate and disinterested contribution; but then there are also clashes inside, in the rear, between those who really want socialism and those who seek to restore capitalism.
Why did you decide to put your life at risk by going to fight in Donbass?
I am an antifascist and an internationalist, and those who really believe in these ideas instinctively seek their practical implementation. At this stage, I don’t think the revolution and armed insurrection in Italy are near, so anyone who wants to gain experience in revolutionary armed struggle must turn their attention elsewhere.
Is this your first experience at the front? Where were you trained?
This was my first experience as an operative at the front. Actually, my training dates back several years and took place in Yugoslavia, during the Kosovo crisis. Here too there was an attempt to establish internationalist units to defend a socialist experience, but unfortunately we arrived too late, when the wind had already changed. We lost a lot of time at the beginning because at that time the internet was only in its infancy, we had not mastered it and we could not take full advantage of its potential, because it was still underdeveloped. In Donbass we have perfected this and connected with the local comrades, both in terms of techniques and in terms of general fellowship.
Why this codename, and what were your tasks?
The name Nemo comes from literature; there are two extremely well-known cases. The first is in The Odyssey. The other Nemo is that of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," an internationalist militant ante litteram who went out into the world to fight imperialism with somewhat sci-fi but effective methods. As soon as I arrived in Donbass I was placed in an infantry unit, a couple of months later the military-political project was developed, and in InterUnit I assumed the task of political commissar. In the first two years of the war the partisan fighting system was used with a double command: political commissar and military commander. At the time I was a political commissar for a very specific reason -- I did not know the Russian language -- and when I got to a sufficient level of knowledge I took command of the unit. The classic tasks are those of territorial control. There were no big advances; however, I helped to extract pieces of territory from Ukrainian control, including two villages and a strategic hill.
The media have often emphasized the battalions of the extreme right, which also include Italians, who fight in Donbass for the independence of the People's Republics. Is this a partial narrative?
It is not only a partial reading, it is simply a dance mounted by the media. There are fascists fighting for Kiev, and then there are some who are part of the popular militias, the latter of two types: local fascists and European ones who for their own reasons have decided to go to fight against NATO. None of them are part of a fascist battalion; there are absolutely no fascist military formations that fight for the People's Republics, this is an invention. There were attempts to establish them and they were immediately dismantled because they were totally incompatible with the antifascist nature of the Donbass people. Unfortunately, however, these characters are very good at camouflaging themselves to fit into the interstices of power by assuming the role of “red-brown populism.” For example, in the Lugansk People's Republic, they occupied all the posts of the official press agency. The information that comes out is largely filtered through the fascists, and this is another great contradiction.
The fascists who actually fought alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces are no more than 10, and then there are about 20 others who fought for short periods. But there is a black hole, because it is impossible to quantify how many Europeans have gone through the training centers of the Ukrainian punitive battalions. We know for sure that the Ukrainian Nazis gave military training to Italian fascists and perhaps even weapons. For example, we know that the Ukrainian army has lost five million light weapons, of which one million were taken by the People's Republics. The other 4 million? These missing weapons have already appeared in other situations, for example in Romania and Libya. Ukraine is selling everything because the borders are very permeable. Some European fascists have already been found with stolen weapons and this would suggest that some of these may already have arrived here.
Returning to the theme of Italians in the popular militias, the antifascists who fought for long periods numbered more than 20, and there are about 10 who did so for short periods. As for the fascists, on the other hand, there were two who actually fought, while there were about 10 who were at the front for short periods. It must also be considered that there were six fascists (who receive a lot of media exposure) who say they are combatants while they have always been in the second line. If we consider the local Ukrainian fascists, the Russian and the European ones, at their peak they reached 0.9% of the fighters in Donbass, and if we add to these nationalists and religious fundamentalists (ultra-Orthodox and neopagans) we get to 2%. Low numbers. If in Italy we represent the struggle of the Donbass by looking only at this 0.9%, we deliberately create a distorted narrative.
How strong is the Soviet tradition in Donbass?
The People’s Republics are in full continuity with the Soviet Union and this also serves to debunk another myth: we are not pro-Russian [i.e., the current capitalist regime of the Russian Federation]. If the population of the Donbass were really pro-Russian, it would never have constituted a People’s Republic, because a reality that contains elements of socialism is in open antithesis with the history of the last 25 years of Russia. The majority of Donbass people consider themselves Soviet. In 1991 there was a referendum in which the population of the Soviet Union expressed itself firmly against its dissolution (77% of voters), which was carried forward anyway with a coup and only with a coup.
What is Russia's position in this conflict? Did it offer military support?
Russia was only interested in the Crimea and got what it wanted. In fact, there the clashes lasted only two days and resulted in two deaths. In the Donbass, on the other hand, we have been fighting for four years and there has been no Russian military support for our struggle. Russia is not interested in the independence of the People's Republics. It is not hostile to the cause but tends to represent it as an ethnic cause. The Prizrak Brigade has in fact fought only with Soviet weapons. At the beginning of the insurrection, hunting and self-defense weapons were used, after which the police stations were attacked to seize the weapons. At that point the conflict became high intensity and Kiev sent its army. In many cases, however, the Ukrainian soldiers defected and even joined the popular militias. Later we came into possession of the maps of the old deposits of Soviet weapons secretly buried by the USSR to be used in the event of attack and we fought with those. We took pieces of artillery from parks and many weapons even from museums; they were working weapons that maybe just needed new firing pins. Precision weapons were all taken from museums and were Soviet weapons. My personal weapon was a Kalashnikov, while the position weapon was a '43 PTRD rifle.
Didn’t Russia offer any financial support?
One must consider that the only commercial relations that the People's Republics have with the outside world are with Russia, which is, I believe, the only buyer of Donbass coal. The transactions are all in rubles and Russia, by putting in cash from the outside, has helped to reactivate the economy of the Republics that was completely stopped.
How has your life changed today?
My life has not changed much, because I am a revolutionary militant, so for me to make war or carry out normal political activity does not change anything, except the tools.
Do you think you'll go back to fight?
I continue to fight, it’s just that I’m not participating in an armed struggle; it makes no sense to do it in Italy at this stage, the conditions do not exist, so I make a political struggle. As for the Donbass, if it were necessary, I would be operating there in 48 hours, and many other comrades like me. We stopped because international diplomacy forced us not to go further, but the people of Donbass are not content with having freed a piece of land, no matter how great it may be. The enemy is the fascism that still rages in Kiev and this must be remedied. If the international community does not do it, sooner or later the peoples of the former Ukraine will do it. There is also another aspect to consider. InterUnit is a military subject that is not operating in Donbass at this stage, but it must be clear that if there were an attack on other socialist experiences of the world, the comrades would certainly be ready to intervene at any moment.
Source
Translated by Greg Butterfield
Posted 12 minutes ago by Greg B
https://redstaroverdonbass.blogspot.com ... -nemo.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
An interested interpretation of the facts
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 12/21/2017
Golmovsky, one of the towns near Gorlovka hit by the recent Ukrainian shelling
As we approach the end of the year, the moment of balance sheets and evaluations of the last twelve months, and without great results to highlight, the US representative for the conflict in Ukraine seems to have started a personal offensive to promote his vision of the facts and of the future of the region. Kurt Volker seeks, with an interested interpretation - based on a simplistic and partial view of the origin of the conflict, falsehoods, half-truths or statements out of context - to move the process forward in a direction that favors the interests of Kiev and Washington and ignores the rights and needs of the population of Donbass.
The story of Volker, which is the United States and is inevitably linked to that of Kiev, revolves around three main aspects: the ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops (actually in that definition also enter the Donetsk militias and Lugansk) and the introduction of a peace mission that takes control of Donbass, including the border. Without progress on any of these points, the United States continues to blame the diplomatic blockade on Russia.
For this, Volker has the support of the most important media in the United States. Far from the big headlines and without a regular follow-up of the conflict, the media coverage that the big media dedicate these days to the war in Donbass can only be a simplification of the facts.
This is presented in a recent article by Josh Rogin published in The Washington Post , which uses as its main sources the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, and Volker himself. " Vladimir Putin follows a familiar pattern," Rogin begins. "It uses its military strength to intensify the battle on the ground and then it goes to the West with a proposal that presents as a reduction of tension," he continues.
However, the reality contradicts Rogin, whose article was published just days after the Ukrainian Army advanced its positions and captured two locations in the supposedly neutral area. Since then, with their positions closer to other front cities, Ukrainian bombings have increased in that sector and have even reached the center of Gorlovka.
The increase in bombings in recent weeks has also been the inspiration for Volker's speech this last part of the year. After a series of alarming messages about the socio-economic situation and security in Donbass, the representative of the United States in Ukraine referred this week, in an act of the Atlantic Council , to 2017 as " the most violent year since the conflict began" , a statement as surprising as removed from reality.
"This started in 2014 and many think that, somehow, it has become a dormant conflict, frozen, that is stable and that we now have the Minsk agreements, a ceasefire . " So it's a problem, but it's not a crisis. That is completely wrong, explained Volker, who insisted on the seriousness of the situation compared to previous years. " It's a crisis. This has been the most violent year, 2017. And frankly, last night was one of the most violent nights in eastern Ukraine, certainly since February. "
After more than three years of war, a large part of them with Donbass subjected to a commercial, banking and transport blockade, it is evident that the crisis has not ended and that the suffering of the population is immense. The lack of progress makes a short-term solution unlikely. However, with the battle located around specific points of the front line, the comparison of 2017 with years like 2014 and 2015 - with battles that lasted weeks, indiscriminate bombing in large areas of Donbass, hundreds of deaths and a level of destruction of cities and infrastructures that has not been repeated since then- clashes frontally with reality.
Uglegorsk after the battle in 2015
However, with these statements that have nothing to do with reality, Volker reaffirms a position he has maintained since he was appointed to the post last July. Following the publication of the United Nations report on the situation in Donbass - also surprisingly exaggerated and alarming considering that it was published in parallel to the announcement that the United Nations was suspending the food program - it published on social networks a message in which you could read: "Now it's worse than in 2014 because we can not take it anymore", tweeted in the link to the aforementioned report.
To construct an alarmist story in which extreme measures are necessary, it is preferable not to explain that quote and to suggest that this terrible situation refers to the entire territory. However, the report presents those words clarifying that it is a resident of one of the localities located on the front line. There, unlike in areas slightly further from the line of separation, the ceasefire has never been respected. The suffering of the population living in the vicinity of the front is well known to anyone who has followed the news of Donbass in the last three years. Conversely,
With falsehoods and statements out of context, Volker creates an image of reality that demands solutions that go beyond the Minsk agreements, - even in the American version - which forgets or manipulates the commitments of Ukraine to charge Russia with the responsibility to comply with the commitments acquired, in reality, by the RPD and the RPL.
"The process is blocked mainly because Russia refuses to comply with the ceasefire, withdrawal of its heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine and access to the border," Rogin explains to the American public without specifying that the delivery of the border is the last step of the agreements, which would only occur once all the previous points have been fulfilled. "Ukraine also has responsibilities according to Minsk," he acknowledges, "including holding local elections in eastern Ukraine, granting the region special status and guaranteeing amnesty for separatists. That can happen only if Putin does his part. "
That vision, which coincides with that held by Volker and other current and past US representatives, does not contain any mention of the causes of the suffering of the population beyond the war. No attention is paid to Ukraine's refusal to pay pensions in Donbass or to the blockade that hardened in March 2017 despite the fact that the Minsk agreements explicitly demand the resumption of the payment of pensions and social benefits and the reestablishment of economic relations between the two sides of the front line. A more nuanced description of the situation that takes into account the areas least affected by the front line bombings would imply admitting that a United Nations peace mission whose objective was to improve security would only make sense in the front line. ,
"On the one hand, Russia's initial proposal was to deploy these forces along the line of contact between the Ukrainian troops and the separatist forces. As the Ukrainian government sees it, it is simply the way that Putin has to fortify the reality that Russia has created on the ground, " explains Rogin's article, which once again conceals that it was not the militias but the Ukrainian Army who have advanced their positions, thus worsening the situation on the front, both in 2017 and 2016.
In the end, the American discourse, both that of the press and that of diplomacy, is reduced to blaming Russia both for the origin of the conflict and for the lack of solutions. So Kurt Volker summed up the current situation in his speech at the Atlantic Council forum:
"Russia denies its role in this. For that reason, from the beginning it has been so difficult to solve. Russia insists that it has nothing to do with the forces it has created, that it commands, that it controls, with the separatist governments it has set up, that it changes leaders as it wants, as it did in Luhansk last month. Russia claims that it is not there, insists that the Normandy process - France and Germany with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia - deal with the representatives of Luhansk and Donetsk that Russia has created, as if they were equal and legitimate partners. Insists that Ukraine do that. In the effort to see if Russia would be willing to change course and withdraw its forces and have a peace mission in the area, Russia has said "no,
That last part indicates that the positions remain remote. Meanwhile, Russia demands, as does the Minsk agreement, a direct negotiation with Donetsk and Lugansk when deciding something as important as the introduction of an international armed mission that, in practice, takes control of the territory to return it. to Ukraine. " If Russia is willing to do that, and we will see if it is, the whole international community is willing to help," Volker insisted. " We want to see peace in Ukraine, we want to see normality restored, we want to see people return to normal lives, we want to see security for all the population that is there, whether they are of Russian, Ukrainian or any other ethnicity."However, his proposal requires first the surrender to arrive later at that peace without any guarantee that the rights of the population of Donbass will be guaranteed.
Meanwhile, Ukraine waits, patient and reinforcing its grouping in Donbass. He may already be able to do so by incorporating American weaponry. After the approval of Trump, which confirmed its decision on December 20, Ukraine will finally be able to acquire light weapons and ammunition from the United States. Even so, everything depends on Russia, while the United States defends peace and normality for the people of Donbass. "That opportunity can only be created with a genuine peace and that can only happen with the withdrawal of the Russian forces and the Russian authorities that command and control the armed groups that are there. It is up to Russia to withdraw them, " Volker told the Atlantic Council in a statement that blames Russia for the current situation and possible future failures.
https://slavyangrad.es/2017/12/21/una-i ... os-hechos/
Google Translator
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 12/21/2017
Golmovsky, one of the towns near Gorlovka hit by the recent Ukrainian shelling
As we approach the end of the year, the moment of balance sheets and evaluations of the last twelve months, and without great results to highlight, the US representative for the conflict in Ukraine seems to have started a personal offensive to promote his vision of the facts and of the future of the region. Kurt Volker seeks, with an interested interpretation - based on a simplistic and partial view of the origin of the conflict, falsehoods, half-truths or statements out of context - to move the process forward in a direction that favors the interests of Kiev and Washington and ignores the rights and needs of the population of Donbass.
The story of Volker, which is the United States and is inevitably linked to that of Kiev, revolves around three main aspects: the ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops (actually in that definition also enter the Donetsk militias and Lugansk) and the introduction of a peace mission that takes control of Donbass, including the border. Without progress on any of these points, the United States continues to blame the diplomatic blockade on Russia.
For this, Volker has the support of the most important media in the United States. Far from the big headlines and without a regular follow-up of the conflict, the media coverage that the big media dedicate these days to the war in Donbass can only be a simplification of the facts.
This is presented in a recent article by Josh Rogin published in The Washington Post , which uses as its main sources the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, and Volker himself. " Vladimir Putin follows a familiar pattern," Rogin begins. "It uses its military strength to intensify the battle on the ground and then it goes to the West with a proposal that presents as a reduction of tension," he continues.
However, the reality contradicts Rogin, whose article was published just days after the Ukrainian Army advanced its positions and captured two locations in the supposedly neutral area. Since then, with their positions closer to other front cities, Ukrainian bombings have increased in that sector and have even reached the center of Gorlovka.
The increase in bombings in recent weeks has also been the inspiration for Volker's speech this last part of the year. After a series of alarming messages about the socio-economic situation and security in Donbass, the representative of the United States in Ukraine referred this week, in an act of the Atlantic Council , to 2017 as " the most violent year since the conflict began" , a statement as surprising as removed from reality.
"This started in 2014 and many think that, somehow, it has become a dormant conflict, frozen, that is stable and that we now have the Minsk agreements, a ceasefire . " So it's a problem, but it's not a crisis. That is completely wrong, explained Volker, who insisted on the seriousness of the situation compared to previous years. " It's a crisis. This has been the most violent year, 2017. And frankly, last night was one of the most violent nights in eastern Ukraine, certainly since February. "
After more than three years of war, a large part of them with Donbass subjected to a commercial, banking and transport blockade, it is evident that the crisis has not ended and that the suffering of the population is immense. The lack of progress makes a short-term solution unlikely. However, with the battle located around specific points of the front line, the comparison of 2017 with years like 2014 and 2015 - with battles that lasted weeks, indiscriminate bombing in large areas of Donbass, hundreds of deaths and a level of destruction of cities and infrastructures that has not been repeated since then- clashes frontally with reality.
Uglegorsk after the battle in 2015
However, with these statements that have nothing to do with reality, Volker reaffirms a position he has maintained since he was appointed to the post last July. Following the publication of the United Nations report on the situation in Donbass - also surprisingly exaggerated and alarming considering that it was published in parallel to the announcement that the United Nations was suspending the food program - it published on social networks a message in which you could read: "Now it's worse than in 2014 because we can not take it anymore", tweeted in the link to the aforementioned report.
To construct an alarmist story in which extreme measures are necessary, it is preferable not to explain that quote and to suggest that this terrible situation refers to the entire territory. However, the report presents those words clarifying that it is a resident of one of the localities located on the front line. There, unlike in areas slightly further from the line of separation, the ceasefire has never been respected. The suffering of the population living in the vicinity of the front is well known to anyone who has followed the news of Donbass in the last three years. Conversely,
With falsehoods and statements out of context, Volker creates an image of reality that demands solutions that go beyond the Minsk agreements, - even in the American version - which forgets or manipulates the commitments of Ukraine to charge Russia with the responsibility to comply with the commitments acquired, in reality, by the RPD and the RPL.
"The process is blocked mainly because Russia refuses to comply with the ceasefire, withdrawal of its heavy weapons from eastern Ukraine and access to the border," Rogin explains to the American public without specifying that the delivery of the border is the last step of the agreements, which would only occur once all the previous points have been fulfilled. "Ukraine also has responsibilities according to Minsk," he acknowledges, "including holding local elections in eastern Ukraine, granting the region special status and guaranteeing amnesty for separatists. That can happen only if Putin does his part. "
That vision, which coincides with that held by Volker and other current and past US representatives, does not contain any mention of the causes of the suffering of the population beyond the war. No attention is paid to Ukraine's refusal to pay pensions in Donbass or to the blockade that hardened in March 2017 despite the fact that the Minsk agreements explicitly demand the resumption of the payment of pensions and social benefits and the reestablishment of economic relations between the two sides of the front line. A more nuanced description of the situation that takes into account the areas least affected by the front line bombings would imply admitting that a United Nations peace mission whose objective was to improve security would only make sense in the front line. ,
"On the one hand, Russia's initial proposal was to deploy these forces along the line of contact between the Ukrainian troops and the separatist forces. As the Ukrainian government sees it, it is simply the way that Putin has to fortify the reality that Russia has created on the ground, " explains Rogin's article, which once again conceals that it was not the militias but the Ukrainian Army who have advanced their positions, thus worsening the situation on the front, both in 2017 and 2016.
In the end, the American discourse, both that of the press and that of diplomacy, is reduced to blaming Russia both for the origin of the conflict and for the lack of solutions. So Kurt Volker summed up the current situation in his speech at the Atlantic Council forum:
"Russia denies its role in this. For that reason, from the beginning it has been so difficult to solve. Russia insists that it has nothing to do with the forces it has created, that it commands, that it controls, with the separatist governments it has set up, that it changes leaders as it wants, as it did in Luhansk last month. Russia claims that it is not there, insists that the Normandy process - France and Germany with the presidents of Ukraine and Russia - deal with the representatives of Luhansk and Donetsk that Russia has created, as if they were equal and legitimate partners. Insists that Ukraine do that. In the effort to see if Russia would be willing to change course and withdraw its forces and have a peace mission in the area, Russia has said "no,
That last part indicates that the positions remain remote. Meanwhile, Russia demands, as does the Minsk agreement, a direct negotiation with Donetsk and Lugansk when deciding something as important as the introduction of an international armed mission that, in practice, takes control of the territory to return it. to Ukraine. " If Russia is willing to do that, and we will see if it is, the whole international community is willing to help," Volker insisted. " We want to see peace in Ukraine, we want to see normality restored, we want to see people return to normal lives, we want to see security for all the population that is there, whether they are of Russian, Ukrainian or any other ethnicity."However, his proposal requires first the surrender to arrive later at that peace without any guarantee that the rights of the population of Donbass will be guaranteed.
Meanwhile, Ukraine waits, patient and reinforcing its grouping in Donbass. He may already be able to do so by incorporating American weaponry. After the approval of Trump, which confirmed its decision on December 20, Ukraine will finally be able to acquire light weapons and ammunition from the United States. Even so, everything depends on Russia, while the United States defends peace and normality for the people of Donbass. "That opportunity can only be created with a genuine peace and that can only happen with the withdrawal of the Russian forces and the Russian authorities that command and control the armed groups that are there. It is up to Russia to withdraw them, " Volker told the Atlantic Council in a statement that blames Russia for the current situation and possible future failures.
https://slavyangrad.es/2017/12/21/una-i ... os-hechos/
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Cheap dignity of the Ukrainian revolution
Written by ORIENTAL REVIEW on 23/11/2017
The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by an Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired last week as a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program), still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media. That is hardly surprising taking into account the bombshell evidence against the real perpetrators and organizers of the 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, generally known as the “revolution of dignity“.
The documentary features Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers who were recruited to carry out a “special mission” in Kiev by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a close aid of Mikhail Saakashvili’s former defense minister Bacho Akhalaia. They claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents and were transfered to Maidan. Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to be paid 5000 USD after the “job is done”, they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and Conservatory, dominant over the Maidan Square.
The facts they exposed afterwards, were shocking. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command of an American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger (his Facebook page is here). The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car and later headed the first post-Maidan interim president administration of Ukraine. The weapons came on stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups. “There were three or four weapons in each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges.” – witnesses Nergadze.
The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos. “When Mamulashvili arrived, I also asked him. Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting – he replied that we cannot go to presidential elections. “But who to shoot?“ I asked. He replied that who and where it did not matter, you had to shoot somewhere so much to sow chaos.”
“It did not matter if we fired at a tree, barricade, or those who tossed a Molotov, what counted was making panics.”
“I listened to the screams,” recalls Revazishvili. “There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart.”
Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment and have decided to tell the truth about those who “used and abandoned” them.
The full documentary with English subtitles is available below (in two parts):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... R1NFI6TBH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rR2Fh1zWI
[Two days later a Macedonian news agency Infomax organized a 52-minutes long night talk with Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia (in Macedonian) in which they provided more details about their backgrounds and mission to Kiev.]
These three men are presenting themselves as repented military officers who were simply “obeying orders” and did not know that they “had to kill people“. A naive attempt for professional death squads operatives, to put it mildly. Meanwhile the fact and time of these confessions and revelations are absolutely synchronized with the ongoing agony of the incumbent regime in Kiev.
Since the very beginning the talking Georgians explicitly claim that the operation was initiated by the former president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. Mamulashvili’s chief Bacho Akhalaia was a very close associate and trusted person of the Georgian leader who lost parliamentary elections in October 2012 following the prison abuse scandal (the Human Rights Watch dedicated a special report to the “Georgian Abu-Ghraib”, Gldani Prison, same month). At the time when the Georgian sniper trio was hired for dirty job in Kiev, Akhalaia was under criminal trial on charges of abusing the power while heading the penitentiary branch of the Ministry of Justice, illegal detention and tortures of inmates (in October 2014 he was pleaded guilty by the Tbilisi City Court and sentenced to 7,5 years in prison). One month earlier, in November 2013, Mikhail Saakashvili, facing multiple criminal charges in Georgia, left the country for the United States, and officially settled at the Tufts University. He and his stooges, having suffered a painful defeat at the homeland, would hardly initiated a risky and adventurous project in a neighboring country if only they were not forced to do so by their masters to make up for failing to comply with their mission in Georgia.
Anyway, on the early days of the Ukrainian crisis the vast Soros-financed network in Georgia (Bacho Alakhaia, a bright offspring of the notorious Mengrel criminal clan, was got on Soros money at the Georgia Liberty Institute since his studentship in early 2000s) was activated to conduct special operations in Kiev.
Four years later the situation has drastically changed. A showcase democratic alliance of Poroshenko & Saakashvili was broken into shatters. Saakashvili again proved to a be a psychopath unable to build any stable political relationship (since September 2017 Ukraine is considering extradiction of Saakashvili to the Georgian authorities meeting their request). Meanwhile on Nov 1 one of the closest aides of Bacho Alakhaia and Saakashvili, former chief of the military police at the Georgian defense ministry, Megis Kardava, wanted to face the same criminal charges in Georgia, was detained with false passport on the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian security service has already announced that he would be extradited to Tbilisi within 40 days. Several other Georgians from Saakashvili personal protection team were arrested in Ukraine and expelled to their homeland earlier in late October.
All these factors could make the Georgian sniper trio to preventively appear on the Italian TV as “voluntary whistle-blowers exposing the truth” about Euromaidan before they are captured and punished as the scape-goats.
Prudently enough they named a number of iconic personalities of the incumbent regime in Kiev – Andriy Parybiy (currently the Chairman of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), Segrey Pashinsky (member of parliament representing pro-government People’s Front) and Vladimir Parasyuk (another charismatic parliament member) – as organizers and coordinators of the massacre on the Maidan square on Feb 20, 2014.
Their claims are confirmed by other evidence. The most comprehensive collection of such facts so far was carried out by Professor of the University of Ottawa Ivan Katchanovsky (he also commented on the Italian documentary last week).
Whatever we feel towards the repented snipers, their public confessions does not exonerate them from responsibility for deliberately killing people. They were not soldiers at the battlefield during the declared war. They could not be ordered by their commanders. They were hired for money to do a dirty job and they were aware that what they were going to do was a dirty job. Their jabbering in attempt to prove the opposite is ridiculous. So this trio, Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, as well as those who hired and ordered them – Mamuka Mamulashvili (currently he is the commander of the Geogian Legion in Donbass), Brian Boyenger (he fought on the Ukrainian side in Donbass in 2015-2016) – and other snipers from Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine have to face trial in Ukraine or any other country whose citizens perished during the Euromaidan. Next should come the turn of the Ukrainian politicians, principal beneficiaries of that massacre – those named (Andriy Parybiy, Segrey Pashinsky and Vladimir Parasyuk) and still unknown to the public.
As a matter of fact, this still underreported story totally undermines the legitimacy of Poroshenko’s regime. The crocodile tears of the incumbent rulers of that long-suffering nation over the graves of the victims of “revolution of dignity” since now onwards will every time only emphasise and highlight the former’s role in mass killing of their own supporters. Having paid a puny 1000 USD to every foreign sniper, they came to power to abuse dreams and trust of the millions of citizens of Ukraine. That was the real price of the Ukrainian “dignity” for the masterminds of their national catastrophe.
https://orientalreview.org/2017/11/23/c ... evolution/
Written by ORIENTAL REVIEW on 23/11/2017
The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by an Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired last week as a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program), still have not paved its way to the international mainstream media. That is hardly surprising taking into account the bombshell evidence against the real perpetrators and organizers of the 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev, generally known as the “revolution of dignity“.
The documentary features Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, Georgian military officers who were recruited to carry out a “special mission” in Kiev by Mamuka Mamulashvili, a close aid of Mikhail Saakashvili’s former defense minister Bacho Akhalaia. They claim that on Jan 15, 2014 they landed in Kiev equipped with fake documents and were transfered to Maidan. Having received 1000 USD each one and being promised to be paid 5000 USD after the “job is done”, they were tasked to prepare sniper positions inside the buildings of Hotel Ukraine and Conservatory, dominant over the Maidan Square.
The facts they exposed afterwards, were shocking. Along with other snipers (some of them were Lithuanians) they were put under command of an American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger (his Facebook page is here). The coordinating team also included Mamulashvili and infamous Segrey Pashinsky, who was detained by protesters on Feb 18, 2017 with a sniper rifle in the boot of his car and later headed the first post-Maidan interim president administration of Ukraine. The weapons came on stage on February 18 and were distributed to the various Georgian and Lithuanian groups. “There were three or four weapons in each bag, there were Makarov guns, AKM guns, rifles, and a lot of cartridges.” – witnesses Nergadze.
The following day, Mamulashvili and Pashinsky explained to snipers that they should shoot at the square and sow chaos. “When Mamulashvili arrived, I also asked him. Things are getting complicated, we have to start shooting – he replied that we cannot go to presidential elections. “But who to shoot?“ I asked. He replied that who and where it did not matter, you had to shoot somewhere so much to sow chaos.”
“It did not matter if we fired at a tree, barricade, or those who tossed a Molotov, what counted was making panics.”
“I listened to the screams,” recalls Revazishvili. “There were many dead and injured downstairs. My first and only thought was to leave in a hurry before they caught up with me. Otherwise, they would tear me apart.”
Four years later, Revazishvili and his two companions report they have not yet received the promised 5000 USD bills as a payment and have decided to tell the truth about those who “used and abandoned” them.
The full documentary with English subtitles is available below (in two parts):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... R1NFI6TBH0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0rR2Fh1zWI
[Two days later a Macedonian news agency Infomax organized a 52-minutes long night talk with Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia (in Macedonian) in which they provided more details about their backgrounds and mission to Kiev.]
These three men are presenting themselves as repented military officers who were simply “obeying orders” and did not know that they “had to kill people“. A naive attempt for professional death squads operatives, to put it mildly. Meanwhile the fact and time of these confessions and revelations are absolutely synchronized with the ongoing agony of the incumbent regime in Kiev.
Since the very beginning the talking Georgians explicitly claim that the operation was initiated by the former president of Georgia Mikhail Saakashvili. Mamulashvili’s chief Bacho Akhalaia was a very close associate and trusted person of the Georgian leader who lost parliamentary elections in October 2012 following the prison abuse scandal (the Human Rights Watch dedicated a special report to the “Georgian Abu-Ghraib”, Gldani Prison, same month). At the time when the Georgian sniper trio was hired for dirty job in Kiev, Akhalaia was under criminal trial on charges of abusing the power while heading the penitentiary branch of the Ministry of Justice, illegal detention and tortures of inmates (in October 2014 he was pleaded guilty by the Tbilisi City Court and sentenced to 7,5 years in prison). One month earlier, in November 2013, Mikhail Saakashvili, facing multiple criminal charges in Georgia, left the country for the United States, and officially settled at the Tufts University. He and his stooges, having suffered a painful defeat at the homeland, would hardly initiated a risky and adventurous project in a neighboring country if only they were not forced to do so by their masters to make up for failing to comply with their mission in Georgia.
Anyway, on the early days of the Ukrainian crisis the vast Soros-financed network in Georgia (Bacho Alakhaia, a bright offspring of the notorious Mengrel criminal clan, was got on Soros money at the Georgia Liberty Institute since his studentship in early 2000s) was activated to conduct special operations in Kiev.
Four years later the situation has drastically changed. A showcase democratic alliance of Poroshenko & Saakashvili was broken into shatters. Saakashvili again proved to a be a psychopath unable to build any stable political relationship (since September 2017 Ukraine is considering extradiction of Saakashvili to the Georgian authorities meeting their request). Meanwhile on Nov 1 one of the closest aides of Bacho Alakhaia and Saakashvili, former chief of the military police at the Georgian defense ministry, Megis Kardava, wanted to face the same criminal charges in Georgia, was detained with false passport on the Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian security service has already announced that he would be extradited to Tbilisi within 40 days. Several other Georgians from Saakashvili personal protection team were arrested in Ukraine and expelled to their homeland earlier in late October.
All these factors could make the Georgian sniper trio to preventively appear on the Italian TV as “voluntary whistle-blowers exposing the truth” about Euromaidan before they are captured and punished as the scape-goats.
Prudently enough they named a number of iconic personalities of the incumbent regime in Kiev – Andriy Parybiy (currently the Chairman of Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), Segrey Pashinsky (member of parliament representing pro-government People’s Front) and Vladimir Parasyuk (another charismatic parliament member) – as organizers and coordinators of the massacre on the Maidan square on Feb 20, 2014.
Their claims are confirmed by other evidence. The most comprehensive collection of such facts so far was carried out by Professor of the University of Ottawa Ivan Katchanovsky (he also commented on the Italian documentary last week).
Whatever we feel towards the repented snipers, their public confessions does not exonerate them from responsibility for deliberately killing people. They were not soldiers at the battlefield during the declared war. They could not be ordered by their commanders. They were hired for money to do a dirty job and they were aware that what they were going to do was a dirty job. Their jabbering in attempt to prove the opposite is ridiculous. So this trio, Alexander Revazishvili, Koba Nergadze and Zalogi Kvaratskhelia, as well as those who hired and ordered them – Mamuka Mamulashvili (currently he is the commander of the Geogian Legion in Donbass), Brian Boyenger (he fought on the Ukrainian side in Donbass in 2015-2016) – and other snipers from Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine have to face trial in Ukraine or any other country whose citizens perished during the Euromaidan. Next should come the turn of the Ukrainian politicians, principal beneficiaries of that massacre – those named (Andriy Parybiy, Segrey Pashinsky and Vladimir Parasyuk) and still unknown to the public.
As a matter of fact, this still underreported story totally undermines the legitimacy of Poroshenko’s regime. The crocodile tears of the incumbent rulers of that long-suffering nation over the graves of the victims of “revolution of dignity” since now onwards will every time only emphasise and highlight the former’s role in mass killing of their own supporters. Having paid a puny 1000 USD to every foreign sniper, they came to power to abuse dreams and trust of the millions of citizens of Ukraine. That was the real price of the Ukrainian “dignity” for the masterminds of their national catastrophe.
https://orientalreview.org/2017/11/23/c ... evolution/
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Murderous attack against young communists by Neo-Nazi gangsters in Ukraine
Source: kpu.ua.
In Ukraine a group of young fascists affiliated to one of the neo-Nazi parties of the country “National Corps” attacked the premises, where the youth wing of Communist Party of Ukraine gathered for plenums in Kiev.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine highligted in the press release on the issue that these criminal groups are controlled and supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was added that during the attack, the police came to the scene and as always did not interfere in the situation.
The Communist Party of Ukraine declared: “All gangster attacks on members of the Party, members of the Komsomol, dissidents are carried out directly on instructions and are financed by political forces that seized power in Ukraine as a result of the armed coup in February 2014.” In the press release, it was also informed that the party sent detailed information about the attack to the international human organizations, PACE, OSCE, and to the UN Human Rights Office.
Previously in December 2015, the Kiev District Administrative Court banned the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In January 2016, the Ministry of Justice stated that the Supreme Administrative Court refused to open proceedings on the appeal of the CPU, which tried to challenge its ban in Ukraine.
Source: international communist press.
* * *
KNE: Condemns the fascist attack against Komsomol's members
In a statement, the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) condemns the new fascist attack against the young communists of Ukraine. Among others, the statement writes: "We denounce the identification of anticommunism and repression by the reactionary government of Ukraine which is supported- and supports- fascist groups."
"It is the same regime", the KNE statement points out "which has created black lists for its political opponents, including, among others, cadres of the KKE such as G.Lambroulis, MP and Deputy Speaker of the Greek Parliament and S.Zarianopoulos, KKE MEP, because they showed their practical interests and solidarity of the KKE to the people of Ukraine who is shedding blood in the Donbass region.
Anticommunism shall not pass. Solidarity to the communists of Ukraine".
https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/12 ... young.html
Source: kpu.ua.
In Ukraine a group of young fascists affiliated to one of the neo-Nazi parties of the country “National Corps” attacked the premises, where the youth wing of Communist Party of Ukraine gathered for plenums in Kiev.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine highligted in the press release on the issue that these criminal groups are controlled and supported by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was added that during the attack, the police came to the scene and as always did not interfere in the situation.
The Communist Party of Ukraine declared: “All gangster attacks on members of the Party, members of the Komsomol, dissidents are carried out directly on instructions and are financed by political forces that seized power in Ukraine as a result of the armed coup in February 2014.” In the press release, it was also informed that the party sent detailed information about the attack to the international human organizations, PACE, OSCE, and to the UN Human Rights Office.
Previously in December 2015, the Kiev District Administrative Court banned the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine. In January 2016, the Ministry of Justice stated that the Supreme Administrative Court refused to open proceedings on the appeal of the CPU, which tried to challenge its ban in Ukraine.
Source: international communist press.
* * *
KNE: Condemns the fascist attack against Komsomol's members
In a statement, the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) condemns the new fascist attack against the young communists of Ukraine. Among others, the statement writes: "We denounce the identification of anticommunism and repression by the reactionary government of Ukraine which is supported- and supports- fascist groups."
"It is the same regime", the KNE statement points out "which has created black lists for its political opponents, including, among others, cadres of the KKE such as G.Lambroulis, MP and Deputy Speaker of the Greek Parliament and S.Zarianopoulos, KKE MEP, because they showed their practical interests and solidarity of the KKE to the people of Ukraine who is shedding blood in the Donbass region.
Anticommunism shall not pass. Solidarity to the communists of Ukraine".
https://communismgr.blogspot.gr/2017/12 ... young.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
The first step is the full-scale offensive of the APU in the Debaltsevo-Enakievo area: the US wrote for Ukraine an attack plan for LDPR and Russia
12/12/2017 14:14 12798 Kiev, December 27th.
"The account of the killed Russian soldiers and militiamen should go to thousands" : in the United States developed and published for Ukraine a detailed plan of attack on the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as drawing Russia into a bloody conflict.
Today "Free Press" published very important information concerning the conflict in the Donbass. As it turned out, the United States wrote for Ukraine a plan to attack LDPR and draw Russia into the conflict. The document was published by the think-tank of the Heritage Foundation, which the American media call the think-tank of the administration of the US President Donald Trump.
The document says what actions Kiev needs to take to escalate the conflict in the Donbass, so that Russia is forced to intervene in it, and Washington, through this, could strengthen the sanctions pressure on Moscow. The first thing that is planned to be implemented is the full-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Debaltsevo-Enakievo area with the use of artillery, assault and bomber aviation.
Russia, the document says, will have to intervene and bring its troops into the Donbas, after which fighting will begin, as a result of which the account of the killed Russian soldiers and militiamen should go to thousands. What do the US want to achieve in the end? Legitimize in the eyes of the world public new sanctions against Russia, designed to inflict maximum damage on its economy. In conclusion, the Heritage Foundation notes that this plan will allow Washington to exert considerable pressure on Moscow and to obtain the necessary concessions from it.
As Ukrainian journalist Yuri Kot wrote on his Facebook page, it was the main task of the Maidan to draw Russia into the war.
"Yes ... It was the main task of the Maidan to draw Russia into the war, and Poroshenko promised to fulfill this function, and he was urged on by Saakashvili," the Cat noted.
On the web, this news caused a storm of emotions in people.
"For them (the USA)" games "with people, the usual business! How many sorrow and deaths on their account!
- Heavy trials are coming. Help, Lord, all this survive and do not despair.
- No wonder their statue of freedom - the goddess of death, war and chaos!
- Money from the US is needed by everyone! And Ukraine is no exception. But so sell yourself and betray your own, relatives and friends! Just for the promises of a good life! They divorced Ukraine. And they are to blame for Russia, Putin. Where are the brains of people ?!
- Did you write something for the US? Maybe it's enough to nurse with America? "- people were indignant.
Recall earlier reported that users on the network appealed to the president of Russia - " Putin, pick up planes, launch tanks ." Release the Donbass, Odessa and Kharkiv. "
Источник: https://nahnews.org/999625-pervyi-shag- ... -i-rossiyu
google translator
12/12/2017 14:14 12798 Kiev, December 27th.
"The account of the killed Russian soldiers and militiamen should go to thousands" : in the United States developed and published for Ukraine a detailed plan of attack on the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as drawing Russia into a bloody conflict.
Today "Free Press" published very important information concerning the conflict in the Donbass. As it turned out, the United States wrote for Ukraine a plan to attack LDPR and draw Russia into the conflict. The document was published by the think-tank of the Heritage Foundation, which the American media call the think-tank of the administration of the US President Donald Trump.
The document says what actions Kiev needs to take to escalate the conflict in the Donbass, so that Russia is forced to intervene in it, and Washington, through this, could strengthen the sanctions pressure on Moscow. The first thing that is planned to be implemented is the full-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Debaltsevo-Enakievo area with the use of artillery, assault and bomber aviation.
Russia, the document says, will have to intervene and bring its troops into the Donbas, after which fighting will begin, as a result of which the account of the killed Russian soldiers and militiamen should go to thousands. What do the US want to achieve in the end? Legitimize in the eyes of the world public new sanctions against Russia, designed to inflict maximum damage on its economy. In conclusion, the Heritage Foundation notes that this plan will allow Washington to exert considerable pressure on Moscow and to obtain the necessary concessions from it.
As Ukrainian journalist Yuri Kot wrote on his Facebook page, it was the main task of the Maidan to draw Russia into the war.
"Yes ... It was the main task of the Maidan to draw Russia into the war, and Poroshenko promised to fulfill this function, and he was urged on by Saakashvili," the Cat noted.
On the web, this news caused a storm of emotions in people.
"For them (the USA)" games "with people, the usual business! How many sorrow and deaths on their account!
- Heavy trials are coming. Help, Lord, all this survive and do not despair.
- No wonder their statue of freedom - the goddess of death, war and chaos!
- Money from the US is needed by everyone! And Ukraine is no exception. But so sell yourself and betray your own, relatives and friends! Just for the promises of a good life! They divorced Ukraine. And they are to blame for Russia, Putin. Where are the brains of people ?!
- Did you write something for the US? Maybe it's enough to nurse with America? "- people were indignant.
Recall earlier reported that users on the network appealed to the president of Russia - " Putin, pick up planes, launch tanks ." Release the Donbass, Odessa and Kharkiv. "
Источник: https://nahnews.org/999625-pervyi-shag- ... -i-rossiyu
google translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
An exchange of prisoners with traps
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 12/29/2017
After months of work and negotiations, Ukraine and the People's Republics of Donbass finally carried out the most important prisoner exchange since the end of the great battles waged in 2014 and 2015. This first major exchange of prisoners in fifteen months - all the that have been carried out since then have been achieved in "one-for-one" and small-group formats. It also implies an attempt to fulfill one of the points of the Minsk agreements. Although the agreements require an exchange according to the "all for all" format that has not been produced and that prisoners of war are still in captivity, the large number of prisoners released represents an important step towards compliance with that point of the agreement, which always it was considered the simplest.
Days before, in his appearance with Chancellor Merkel in Germany, the Ukrainian president had demanded a quick exchange, comment that, considering that the negotiation process was in its final phase, it seemed an opportunistic attempt to give more importance to the real one in facts already agreed and in which it had not had a visible role. That contrasted with the images of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Medvedchuk, in charge of the negotiations, at their meeting a few weeks ago, which culminated with the Russian president's call to the leaders of the Popular Republics to confirm his willingness to carry out this exchange. Finally, both the DPR and the RPL complied with their commitments and - except in the case of a person who chose not to return to Ukraine - they handed over all the prisoners they had included in the lists. The same can not be said about Ukraine.
In addition to the local media and the Russian and Ukrainian press, the exchange has also captured the attention of large international media. Some of them have wanted to see an important step towards the implementation of the peace agreements signed in Minsk more than two and a half years ago. However, the refusal of Ukraine - which continues to make statements promising repression against those who have collaborated with the PRD and the RPL when the territory returns to Ukraine - to negotiate the political points of the agreement or the amnesty for the participants in the war reflects that that opinion is based on an interpretation of the agreements centered on the military points and that avoids the political situation. That vision, focused exclusively on military aspects and avoiding politicians, is precisely what Ukraine,
International organizations such as the Red Cross, which oversaw the exchange process on the ground, have also expressed their satisfaction with the success of the procedure. "More than 300 detainees in connection with the conflict in Ukraine have been released today with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "This will allow many families on both sides of the contact line to spend the holidays with their loved ones," says Alain Aeschlimann, director of the Red Cross in Ukraine, "he published in his official account the Red Cross in Ukraine. Like the Western press and much of the Russian and Ukrainian press, this version has opted to downplay the discrepancies between the planned exchange, 306 by 74, and the final number of released prisoners.
The alarm started hours before the exchange occurred. Several of the prisoners' lawyers accused Irina Gerashenko of personally selecting a number of prisoners who, despite having been transferred to the Donbass region, would not be exchanged. The vice-president of the Parliament and representative of Ukraine in the Minsk Contact Group would have selected some fifteen prisoners who were left behind when the prisoners were taken to the buses that would take them to the places of exchange.
Among those lawyers who denounced this change of last minute plans were Tetiana Montyan, known for having defended the case of Ruslan Kotsaba. The Ukrainian lawyer reported early in the morning that one of her clients, a national, Estonian, was not going to be exchanged. Montyan also added that his client should be released according to the agreement reached with the prosecution. However, it was neither exchanged nor released.
The words of Montyan were joined by the lawyer Valentin Rybin, who denounced that three of his clients were not going to be delivered to the DPO as planned. Among them was Evgeny Mefedov, the best known case since he was one of the defendants in the case of May 2 that ended in Odessa last September. This Russian citizen residing in Odessa was accused of inciting and participating in the riots of the morning of May 2, 2014 in the city. These incidents resulted in the death of six people (including the local leader of the Praviy Sektor) that morning, hours before the Nationalists set fire to the building of the House of Trade Unions, causing nearly fifty deaths.
Mefedov was injured and was arrested in the days after May 2. The accusation against Mefedov was based, in its entirety, on two tests: less than a second of images that placed him on the scene and a witness. The video, which only proved the presence of the accused in the place and no violence, disappeared months ago. After too many changes in its version, the only testimony that incriminated Mefedov was rejected by the judges last August. At that time , Yuri Tkatchev, the journalist from Odessa Timer, summarized the situation, stating that two and a half years of views had gone "as they say, to hell".
Despite the paucity of evidence against him, and sometimes against the judgment of the judges, Mefedov has remained in prison for the three years that has lasted the more than questionable investigation and instruction of the case. Pressure from the far right to withdraw his decision to transfer Mefedov and other defendants to house arrest or the initiation of new cases against him (usually with the ex-leader of Praviy Sektor in Odessa, Serhiy Sternenko, as witness or complainant) has kept him in preventive detention for more than three and a half years .
Like the rest of the defendants in the case, Mefedov was declared innocent in the case of May 2 last September. However, in the same room, Mefedov was arrested again and accused of inciting separatism. Instead of being released after being declared innocent, he was sent back to preventive detention, where he has remained these months. His situation changed a few days ago, when he was finally transferred to house arrest and was included in the lists for the exchange of prisoners held on December 27.
At the end of the exchange, the People's Republics handed over 73 prisoners to Ukraine, one less than planned, as one person chose not to return to Ukrainian territory. Among the freed prisoners were, for example, the ultras of the Zorya Lugansk accused of espionage and whose freedom demanded the members of the Azov battalion.
On the other hand, the Popular Republics received former members of the militias, although they also claim to have received civilians accused of supporting the DPR as well as people imprisoned for acts of sabotage in the Ukraine. Stresses above all others the story of a man who, according to the Ukrainian authorities at the time of the arrest, had approached a Ukrainian checkpoint to deliver a large jar of honey to the soldiers. When opened, the explosive that had supposedly entered exploded causing the death of a soldier and wounding two more.
Also drew attention to the image of a prisoner who, when asked why he was traveling with a cat, replied that the animal had been, during the two years he had spent in Kharkiv prison, his only antidepressant.
As the newspaper Timer highlights , among the prisoners handed over there were also nine people from the Odessa prison, some of them accused of "spying" for the DPR. Among the political prisoners of Odessa delivered was also Alexander Kushnarev, father of one of the deceased on May 2, falsely accused of attempted kidnapping by deputy Goncharenko (who on May 2 entered the House of Trade Unions and, without any shame, was photographed with the bodies that had not yet been retired). According to DADA Morozova, the national defender of the DPR, the Ukrainian authorities had not given the prisoners their documentation, so in practice, people like Kushnarev have been forced to choose between remaining in prison or exile. an area at war and under a commercial blockade and transport.
Morozova also confirmed that four people decided not to return to the DPR and the RPL, which finally received half a hundred people less than expected, a fact that the Ukrainian authorities explained, throughout the day, claiming that all of them had refused to return to "territory occupied by Russia". In the evening, Viktor Medvedchuk, who had carried the weight of the negotiations, clarified that 43 of those people had been released after having already served their sentences in Ukraine. Actually, those people should never have been on the exchange lists.
But the most striking case is that of a fortnight of people, many of them of Russian nationality, of whom, for hours, it was repeated that they had voluntarily refused to be handed over to the People's Republics. Among them were the Estonian citizen defended by Montyan and the Russian citizens defended by Rybin. Both denied categorically that their clients, who had been preparing for weeks, had rejected the exchange, a fact also confirmed by Elena Berezhnaya, director of the Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection, who personally confirmed that all the prisoners demanded to be exchanged as planned. Berezhnaya denounced that, as the lawyers had already stated, the prisoners had been returned to the prisons from which they came. In the case of Mefedov, who was under house arrest,
At night, Russian media such as Komsomolskaya Pravda justified the absence of Russian citizens in the exchange by claiming that, in the case of foreign citizens, according to current legislation, they could only be delivered through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The fact that they were included in the lists for exchanges and that neither the prisoners themselves nor their lawyers were notified of any change makes this version little credible.
However, in his triumphant appearance, dressed as a soldier and surrounded by religious, liberated prisoners and their families, it was the Ukrainian president himself who denied both the Russian version and that which the Ukrainian authorities had maintained throughout the day. Poroshenko confirmed what was evident from the beginning: the Russian prisoners had not been exchanged specifically for their nationality. Despite the deception that they were included in the exchange lists, Poroshenko and his emissary Gerashenko never intended to deliver them. Playing with the fate of people who have already met the requirements necessary to be released (either without charges or with the presidential pardon necessary to enter the exchange lists) is more profitable than fulfilling the commitments made, so ,
Satisfied with the result of the exchange of prisoners, the Ukrainian authorities demand that negotiations continue for a new exchange in the coming months.
https://slavyangrad.es/2017/12/29/un-in ... on-trampa/
Google translator
Porky looks like a little boy playing soldier, uncomfortable and unhappy. Somebody give him a bottle.
No justice in Novorussia until the Nazis are crushed like vermin.
POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 12/29/2017
After months of work and negotiations, Ukraine and the People's Republics of Donbass finally carried out the most important prisoner exchange since the end of the great battles waged in 2014 and 2015. This first major exchange of prisoners in fifteen months - all the that have been carried out since then have been achieved in "one-for-one" and small-group formats. It also implies an attempt to fulfill one of the points of the Minsk agreements. Although the agreements require an exchange according to the "all for all" format that has not been produced and that prisoners of war are still in captivity, the large number of prisoners released represents an important step towards compliance with that point of the agreement, which always it was considered the simplest.
Days before, in his appearance with Chancellor Merkel in Germany, the Ukrainian president had demanded a quick exchange, comment that, considering that the negotiation process was in its final phase, it seemed an opportunistic attempt to give more importance to the real one in facts already agreed and in which it had not had a visible role. That contrasted with the images of Vladimir Putin and Viktor Medvedchuk, in charge of the negotiations, at their meeting a few weeks ago, which culminated with the Russian president's call to the leaders of the Popular Republics to confirm his willingness to carry out this exchange. Finally, both the DPR and the RPL complied with their commitments and - except in the case of a person who chose not to return to Ukraine - they handed over all the prisoners they had included in the lists. The same can not be said about Ukraine.
In addition to the local media and the Russian and Ukrainian press, the exchange has also captured the attention of large international media. Some of them have wanted to see an important step towards the implementation of the peace agreements signed in Minsk more than two and a half years ago. However, the refusal of Ukraine - which continues to make statements promising repression against those who have collaborated with the PRD and the RPL when the territory returns to Ukraine - to negotiate the political points of the agreement or the amnesty for the participants in the war reflects that that opinion is based on an interpretation of the agreements centered on the military points and that avoids the political situation. That vision, focused exclusively on military aspects and avoiding politicians, is precisely what Ukraine,
International organizations such as the Red Cross, which oversaw the exchange process on the ground, have also expressed their satisfaction with the success of the procedure. "More than 300 detainees in connection with the conflict in Ukraine have been released today with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross. "This will allow many families on both sides of the contact line to spend the holidays with their loved ones," says Alain Aeschlimann, director of the Red Cross in Ukraine, "he published in his official account the Red Cross in Ukraine. Like the Western press and much of the Russian and Ukrainian press, this version has opted to downplay the discrepancies between the planned exchange, 306 by 74, and the final number of released prisoners.
The alarm started hours before the exchange occurred. Several of the prisoners' lawyers accused Irina Gerashenko of personally selecting a number of prisoners who, despite having been transferred to the Donbass region, would not be exchanged. The vice-president of the Parliament and representative of Ukraine in the Minsk Contact Group would have selected some fifteen prisoners who were left behind when the prisoners were taken to the buses that would take them to the places of exchange.
Among those lawyers who denounced this change of last minute plans were Tetiana Montyan, known for having defended the case of Ruslan Kotsaba. The Ukrainian lawyer reported early in the morning that one of her clients, a national, Estonian, was not going to be exchanged. Montyan also added that his client should be released according to the agreement reached with the prosecution. However, it was neither exchanged nor released.
The words of Montyan were joined by the lawyer Valentin Rybin, who denounced that three of his clients were not going to be delivered to the DPO as planned. Among them was Evgeny Mefedov, the best known case since he was one of the defendants in the case of May 2 that ended in Odessa last September. This Russian citizen residing in Odessa was accused of inciting and participating in the riots of the morning of May 2, 2014 in the city. These incidents resulted in the death of six people (including the local leader of the Praviy Sektor) that morning, hours before the Nationalists set fire to the building of the House of Trade Unions, causing nearly fifty deaths.
Mefedov was injured and was arrested in the days after May 2. The accusation against Mefedov was based, in its entirety, on two tests: less than a second of images that placed him on the scene and a witness. The video, which only proved the presence of the accused in the place and no violence, disappeared months ago. After too many changes in its version, the only testimony that incriminated Mefedov was rejected by the judges last August. At that time , Yuri Tkatchev, the journalist from Odessa Timer, summarized the situation, stating that two and a half years of views had gone "as they say, to hell".
Despite the paucity of evidence against him, and sometimes against the judgment of the judges, Mefedov has remained in prison for the three years that has lasted the more than questionable investigation and instruction of the case. Pressure from the far right to withdraw his decision to transfer Mefedov and other defendants to house arrest or the initiation of new cases against him (usually with the ex-leader of Praviy Sektor in Odessa, Serhiy Sternenko, as witness or complainant) has kept him in preventive detention for more than three and a half years .
Like the rest of the defendants in the case, Mefedov was declared innocent in the case of May 2 last September. However, in the same room, Mefedov was arrested again and accused of inciting separatism. Instead of being released after being declared innocent, he was sent back to preventive detention, where he has remained these months. His situation changed a few days ago, when he was finally transferred to house arrest and was included in the lists for the exchange of prisoners held on December 27.
At the end of the exchange, the People's Republics handed over 73 prisoners to Ukraine, one less than planned, as one person chose not to return to Ukrainian territory. Among the freed prisoners were, for example, the ultras of the Zorya Lugansk accused of espionage and whose freedom demanded the members of the Azov battalion.
On the other hand, the Popular Republics received former members of the militias, although they also claim to have received civilians accused of supporting the DPR as well as people imprisoned for acts of sabotage in the Ukraine. Stresses above all others the story of a man who, according to the Ukrainian authorities at the time of the arrest, had approached a Ukrainian checkpoint to deliver a large jar of honey to the soldiers. When opened, the explosive that had supposedly entered exploded causing the death of a soldier and wounding two more.
Also drew attention to the image of a prisoner who, when asked why he was traveling with a cat, replied that the animal had been, during the two years he had spent in Kharkiv prison, his only antidepressant.
As the newspaper Timer highlights , among the prisoners handed over there were also nine people from the Odessa prison, some of them accused of "spying" for the DPR. Among the political prisoners of Odessa delivered was also Alexander Kushnarev, father of one of the deceased on May 2, falsely accused of attempted kidnapping by deputy Goncharenko (who on May 2 entered the House of Trade Unions and, without any shame, was photographed with the bodies that had not yet been retired). According to DADA Morozova, the national defender of the DPR, the Ukrainian authorities had not given the prisoners their documentation, so in practice, people like Kushnarev have been forced to choose between remaining in prison or exile. an area at war and under a commercial blockade and transport.
Morozova also confirmed that four people decided not to return to the DPR and the RPL, which finally received half a hundred people less than expected, a fact that the Ukrainian authorities explained, throughout the day, claiming that all of them had refused to return to "territory occupied by Russia". In the evening, Viktor Medvedchuk, who had carried the weight of the negotiations, clarified that 43 of those people had been released after having already served their sentences in Ukraine. Actually, those people should never have been on the exchange lists.
But the most striking case is that of a fortnight of people, many of them of Russian nationality, of whom, for hours, it was repeated that they had voluntarily refused to be handed over to the People's Republics. Among them were the Estonian citizen defended by Montyan and the Russian citizens defended by Rybin. Both denied categorically that their clients, who had been preparing for weeks, had rejected the exchange, a fact also confirmed by Elena Berezhnaya, director of the Institute of Legal Policy and Social Protection, who personally confirmed that all the prisoners demanded to be exchanged as planned. Berezhnaya denounced that, as the lawyers had already stated, the prisoners had been returned to the prisons from which they came. In the case of Mefedov, who was under house arrest,
At night, Russian media such as Komsomolskaya Pravda justified the absence of Russian citizens in the exchange by claiming that, in the case of foreign citizens, according to current legislation, they could only be delivered through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The fact that they were included in the lists for exchanges and that neither the prisoners themselves nor their lawyers were notified of any change makes this version little credible.
However, in his triumphant appearance, dressed as a soldier and surrounded by religious, liberated prisoners and their families, it was the Ukrainian president himself who denied both the Russian version and that which the Ukrainian authorities had maintained throughout the day. Poroshenko confirmed what was evident from the beginning: the Russian prisoners had not been exchanged specifically for their nationality. Despite the deception that they were included in the exchange lists, Poroshenko and his emissary Gerashenko never intended to deliver them. Playing with the fate of people who have already met the requirements necessary to be released (either without charges or with the presidential pardon necessary to enter the exchange lists) is more profitable than fulfilling the commitments made, so ,
Satisfied with the result of the exchange of prisoners, the Ukrainian authorities demand that negotiations continue for a new exchange in the coming months.
https://slavyangrad.es/2017/12/29/un-in ... on-trampa/
Google translator
Porky looks like a little boy playing soldier, uncomfortable and unhappy. Somebody give him a bottle.
No justice in Novorussia until the Nazis are crushed like vermin.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
A pair of famous Russian telephone pranksters known for fooling politicians worldwide has struck again, this time duping Ukrainian parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy.
Vladimir 'Vovan' Kuznetsov and Alexei 'Lexus' Stolyarov, two Russian comedians who have gained global notoriety for telephone antics involving politicians including US UN ambassador Nikki Haley, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Senator John McCain, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, have set their sights on a new target, Ukrainian neo-Nazi party founder-turned senior lawmaker Andriy Parubiy.
Posing as NATO Parliamentary Assembly President Paolo Alli, whose voice they were able to record earlier, the pair of jokers fooled Parubiy into speaking for 40 minutes straight to a robot consisting of prerecorded audio clips on some very serious topics.
"The automated robot consisted of phrases from the head of the parliamentary assembly. We played them one by one to Parubiy and his translator. He didn't realize over the course of 40 minutes that he was speaking to a recording, and gave responses to it," Stolyarov explained.
The main topic on the agenda was a referendum in Ukraine regarding the country's bid for entry into the NATO alliance. Vovan and Lexus' Alli 'told' Parubiy that the alliance was not exactly thrilled with the referendum idea, since NATO was not exactly popular among Ukrainians and there was a danger that it could fail.
The lawmaker cautiously and repeatedly assured 'Alli' that Kiev would be certain to consult with its Western partners ahead of time, and at the moment there are no concrete plans to hold a referendum.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman (L) and Andriy Parubiy, chair of the Ukrainian Parliament, hold bouquets of red roses during a parliamentary session in Kiev on April 14, 2016
© AFP 2017/ GENYA SAVILOV
"At this stage, the idea of a referendum, voiced by President Poroshenko, is just an idea; we have not launched any organizational processes in this respect," Parubiy stressed. The politician assured 'Alli' that the referendum will continue to be discussed by experts and would be contingent on the position of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Soon after, Alli's 'assistant' joined the conversation, warning Parubiy of a new dangerous kind of "Russian aggression" in the form of a viral internet casino commercial featuring rapper Vitya AK-47. An oblivious Parubiy responded that he had not heard of this potential threat.
Vovan and Lexus' conversation with the notorious Ukrainian politician is not their first appearance in the media spotlight. The pair garnered the attention of media worldwide last week after calling US UN Ambassador Nikki Haley posing as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. During the course of the phone call, the pranksters asked Haley's opinion on the fictional South China Sea island nation of Binomo, saying that the Russians may have meddled in the island state's elections, to which Haley replied "of course they did!" Haley also promised to look into a nonexistent claim by President Poroshenko that Kevin Spacey had harassed him in 2015.
https://sputniknews.com/viral/201712301 ... recording/
Vladimir 'Vovan' Kuznetsov and Alexei 'Lexus' Stolyarov, two Russian comedians who have gained global notoriety for telephone antics involving politicians including US UN ambassador Nikki Haley, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Senator John McCain, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, have set their sights on a new target, Ukrainian neo-Nazi party founder-turned senior lawmaker Andriy Parubiy.
Posing as NATO Parliamentary Assembly President Paolo Alli, whose voice they were able to record earlier, the pair of jokers fooled Parubiy into speaking for 40 minutes straight to a robot consisting of prerecorded audio clips on some very serious topics.
"The automated robot consisted of phrases from the head of the parliamentary assembly. We played them one by one to Parubiy and his translator. He didn't realize over the course of 40 minutes that he was speaking to a recording, and gave responses to it," Stolyarov explained.
The main topic on the agenda was a referendum in Ukraine regarding the country's bid for entry into the NATO alliance. Vovan and Lexus' Alli 'told' Parubiy that the alliance was not exactly thrilled with the referendum idea, since NATO was not exactly popular among Ukrainians and there was a danger that it could fail.
The lawmaker cautiously and repeatedly assured 'Alli' that Kiev would be certain to consult with its Western partners ahead of time, and at the moment there are no concrete plans to hold a referendum.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman (L) and Andriy Parubiy, chair of the Ukrainian Parliament, hold bouquets of red roses during a parliamentary session in Kiev on April 14, 2016
© AFP 2017/ GENYA SAVILOV
"At this stage, the idea of a referendum, voiced by President Poroshenko, is just an idea; we have not launched any organizational processes in this respect," Parubiy stressed. The politician assured 'Alli' that the referendum will continue to be discussed by experts and would be contingent on the position of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Soon after, Alli's 'assistant' joined the conversation, warning Parubiy of a new dangerous kind of "Russian aggression" in the form of a viral internet casino commercial featuring rapper Vitya AK-47. An oblivious Parubiy responded that he had not heard of this potential threat.
Vovan and Lexus' conversation with the notorious Ukrainian politician is not their first appearance in the media spotlight. The pair garnered the attention of media worldwide last week after calling US UN Ambassador Nikki Haley posing as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. During the course of the phone call, the pranksters asked Haley's opinion on the fictional South China Sea island nation of Binomo, saying that the Russians may have meddled in the island state's elections, to which Haley replied "of course they did!" Haley also promised to look into a nonexistent claim by President Poroshenko that Kevin Spacey had harassed him in 2015.
https://sputniknews.com/viral/201712301 ... recording/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV
Ukrainian court sentences Brazilian to 13 years for defending Donbass from Kiev Nazi forces
Thursday, January 26, 2017 - 14:04
On January 25 the Kiev's Pechersky district court pronounced a sentence to the citizen of Brazil Rafael Lusvarghi: 13 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property. The 32-year-old Brazilian fought in 2014 and 2015 in Donbass unit "Viking" defending Donbass Republics from Ukrainian war criminals and Nazi battalions.
Considering that the authorities of Brazil hadn't shown interest in defending the compatriot, he was provided with the "free" Ukrainian lawyer. Following this Rafael in the first days after his arrest was forced to cooperate with the SBU (the State Security Service of Ukraine). In court Lusvarghi has confirmed practically all data announced by the official prosecution. Of course, it means he was forced to do this.
The Brazilian resident was arrested at the International airport "Boryspil" on October 6, 2016.
The plane with Rafael on board shouldn't have landed in Kiev, but was intentionally forced to take ground at the request of the Ukrainian SBU.
Rafael's friend claims, the volunteer decided to enter civil life and get a job. "In early 2016 Lusvarghi sent a lot of email messages to the private security companies looking for a job. He has received several offers from different companies. Six months later he got a message from "Omega Consulting Group". He replied to the British office," his friend said.
The chairman of the Union of political emigrants and political prisoners of Ukraine Larisa Shesler believes that Donbass friends underestimate the SBU actions.
"It happened, most likely, because many foreigners underestimate the activity of the Ukrainian intelligence agencies. And they don't even have a clue that not only Donbass defenders, but also ordinary representatives of humanitarian missions in People's Republics, and even journalists "are under a cloud" by the Kiev intelligence agencies, and their personal data are transferred to the Interpol … We took a number of actions concerning Rafael Lusvargghi's release - actually only the way to save him is to extradite to Brazil. But, alas, meanwhile there aren't any results".
Brazil shows an absolute indifference to his destiny. Therefore we call on all international human rights activists, the representatives of the OSCE Mission and the International Red Cross with a request to make every effort to save his life.
Rafael Lusvarghi, a real hero and defender of Donbass residents from US-backed Kiev Nazi forces is tortured by the Ukrainian criminals and may be killed in prison. He is in bastards' hands now and they can do with him whatever they want.
DONi News Agency
https://dninews.com/article/ukrainian-c ... ?_utl_t=tw
Thursday, January 26, 2017 - 14:04
On January 25 the Kiev's Pechersky district court pronounced a sentence to the citizen of Brazil Rafael Lusvarghi: 13 years of imprisonment with confiscation of property. The 32-year-old Brazilian fought in 2014 and 2015 in Donbass unit "Viking" defending Donbass Republics from Ukrainian war criminals and Nazi battalions.
Considering that the authorities of Brazil hadn't shown interest in defending the compatriot, he was provided with the "free" Ukrainian lawyer. Following this Rafael in the first days after his arrest was forced to cooperate with the SBU (the State Security Service of Ukraine). In court Lusvarghi has confirmed practically all data announced by the official prosecution. Of course, it means he was forced to do this.
The Brazilian resident was arrested at the International airport "Boryspil" on October 6, 2016.
The plane with Rafael on board shouldn't have landed in Kiev, but was intentionally forced to take ground at the request of the Ukrainian SBU.
Rafael's friend claims, the volunteer decided to enter civil life and get a job. "In early 2016 Lusvarghi sent a lot of email messages to the private security companies looking for a job. He has received several offers from different companies. Six months later he got a message from "Omega Consulting Group". He replied to the British office," his friend said.
The chairman of the Union of political emigrants and political prisoners of Ukraine Larisa Shesler believes that Donbass friends underestimate the SBU actions.
"It happened, most likely, because many foreigners underestimate the activity of the Ukrainian intelligence agencies. And they don't even have a clue that not only Donbass defenders, but also ordinary representatives of humanitarian missions in People's Republics, and even journalists "are under a cloud" by the Kiev intelligence agencies, and their personal data are transferred to the Interpol … We took a number of actions concerning Rafael Lusvargghi's release - actually only the way to save him is to extradite to Brazil. But, alas, meanwhile there aren't any results".
Brazil shows an absolute indifference to his destiny. Therefore we call on all international human rights activists, the representatives of the OSCE Mission and the International Red Cross with a request to make every effort to save his life.
Rafael Lusvarghi, a real hero and defender of Donbass residents from US-backed Kiev Nazi forces is tortured by the Ukrainian criminals and may be killed in prison. He is in bastards' hands now and they can do with him whatever they want.
DONi News Agency
https://dninews.com/article/ukrainian-c ... ?_utl_t=tw
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."