Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Searcher08 » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:41 am

FourthBase » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:30 pm wrote:I imagine I'm being seen as adversarial, contrarian. On the contrary! I'm just guarding principles we're all supposedly on board with from the prejudices that come with treating deep geopolitics like a fucking spectator sport where you'll root for whoever is against the Yankees. See the dude to the right? I'm like him right now, except if he had to block his own teammates from stupidly scoring own-goals.


I take your point; however my 2p worth is that what is playing out on the world stage is not a Grand Chessboard of move and counter move. Why?
Because that assumes there is a game of chess of move and counter-move, in some form of agreed rules (at some level).
I see two forces interacting that are playing quite different games.

I see one 'side' the USA driven by neo-con/neo-lib Goldman Sach-esque "bust, extract resources, dominate by debt" and acting in a purely zero-sum way

I see the Russians as acting from a brutal practical real politique of what is in Russia's longer term interest externally - and what the Russian people want internally. Putin was willing to throw the Rothschild's man in Russia into jail, which is an almighty FU to the opposing side.
A few years ago there was a big BBC documentary made into the events of Georgia in 2008.

The Russians came across as meaning what they said, forthright in extremis, willing to put forward innovative designs - however the US side was dominated by neo-con ideology which trashed anything put forward as being bogus because it had been put forward by THEM RUSKIES. It was like a field with a ball where one side were playing American football, the other polo.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Peachtree Pam » Wed Mar 05, 2014 11:12 am

Ukraine Won't Pay Russia For Gas, Has Billions In Obligations Due; Europe Promises Aid Money It Doesn't Have
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-0 ... id-money-i
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/05/2014 08:03 -0500


About an hour ago, the head of Russia's top natural gas producer Gazprom said on Wednesday that Ukraine had informed the company it could not pay for February gas deliveries in full, further adding to tensions between Moscow and Kiev. Alexei Miller said Ukraine's total debt to Gazprom for gas deliveries was nearing $2 billion. "Our Ukrainian colleagues informed us that they would not be able to pay in full for February gas deliveries," he told Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As reported by Reuters, Miller added that Ukraine managed to redeem only $10 million on Wednesday from a total debt of $1.529 billion. He said that Ukraine's debt would rise by $440 million on March 7, a deadline for payments. In other words, as of this moment the Ukraine already owes Russia $2 billion, or about double what John Kerry announced to much fanfare, the US would provide the country with in terms of aid. And considering that yesterday Gazprom announed that beginning in April it would end the gas pricing discount to the Ukraine, which lowered the price of gas to $268.5 per 1,000 cubic metres from around $400, this accrual is only set to get bigger with every passing day, and very soon Ukraine may get no Russian gas at all which was and continues to be the biggest leverage Russia has over the country which nuclear power plants provide less than half of its electricity needs.

As a reminder, and as we have pointed out since the start of the Ukraine conflict, Gazprom, which meets 30 percent of Europe's gas demand, shipped 86 billion cubic meters, or over half of its total exports, to the European Union through Ukraine last year. Gazprom already warned Europe may see "fluctuations" in its gas delivieries from Russia.

A Gazprom spokesman said Russian gas transit to Europe via Ukraine was flowing normally. For now.

But gas is only the beginning of Ukraine's problems. As also announced about an hour ago, Ukraine's acting finance minister Oleksander Shlapak reported that the country needs to repay $10 billion by year end and that the country may ask for a debt restructuring. Naturally, absent outside help, no repayment is possible and the country will certainly default, which means someone has to step up and bail out the Ukraine. The only question is where this aid comes from: EU/IMF or Russia.

And that is the €/$64K question. Which is why also earlier today, the European Commission announced that it will provide Ukraine with 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in financial assistance to Ukraine. As reported by RIA, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the aid package was designed to enable “a committed, inclusive and reforms-oriented government in rebuilding a stable and prosperous future for Ukraine.” The European Commission said in a statement that financial support would be provided over a two-year period from the EU budget and EU-based international financial institutions.

There is only one problem with Europe's aid: the money is not only not "there," it is also conditional on individual countries getting approval from their populations, and most of it would come from the IMF, i.e. funded primarily by US taxpayers. As the WSJ summarized, "The EU said it would make at least $15 billion in grants and loans available for Ukraine in the next couple of years, although much of the money has strings attached and would need approval from member states and other institutions."

So basically, it comes down to a matter of timing and payment acceleration: if Russia really wants Ukraine to fold, it will make sure the bill is high enough and the gas shut off looming enough that the only source of funds would be Russia itself, not insolvent Europe. The last thing Putin will want is to give Europe the years it needs to figure out how to honor its bailout commitment (ask Greece). Which is why Medvedev has also announced Russia would be able to provide $2-3 billion immediately to Ukraine... to pay for the gas bill. Naturally, with a few strings attache
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby AlicetheKurious » Wed Mar 05, 2014 2:15 pm

Is this the Ukraine thread now?

These guys have no fake color revolution people have no imagination at all. This is EXACTLY what they did in Egypt:

Kiev snipers hired by Maidan leaders - leaked EU's Ashton phone tape

Published time: March 05, 2014 12:41


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UPDATE: Estonian Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked call

There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” Urmas Paet said during the conversation.

I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton answered.

The call took place after Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet visited Kiev on February 25, following the peak of clashes between the pro-EU protesters and security forces in the Ukrainian capital.

Paet also recalled his conversation with a doctor who treated those shot by snipers in Kiev. She said that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people.

And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga [Bogomolets] told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides,” the Estonian FM stressed.

Ashton reacted to the information by saying: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.

So that she then also showed me some photos she said that as a medical doctor she can say that it is the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened,” Paet said.

Olga Bogomolets was the main doctor for the Maidan mobile clinic when protests turned violent in Kiev. She treated the gravely injured and helped organized their transportation to neighboring countries, who had expressed a willingness to treat those with severe wounds. From the outset, Olga blamed the injuries and deaths on snipers. She turned down the position of Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for Humanitarian Affairs offered by the coup-appointed regime.

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The Estonian FM has described the whole sniper issue as “disturbing” and added, “it already discredits from the very beginning” the new Ukrainian power."

His overall impressions of what he saw during his one-day trip to Kiev are “sad,” Paet said during the conversation.

He stressed that the Ukrainian people don’t trust the Maidan leaders, with all the opposition politicians slated to join the new government “having dirty past.”

The file was reportedly uploaded to the web by officers of Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) loyal to ousted President Viktor Yanukovich who hacked Paet’s and Ashton’s phones.

94 people were killed and another 900 injured during the standoff between police and protesters at Maidan Saquare in Kiev last month.

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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby justdrew » Wed Mar 05, 2014 5:15 pm

well, Hillary just went to Hitler.

and over WHAT? It's absurd. I've never seen anything like this. All of the US is in hysteria over a non event, completely forcing a square peg into a round hole of preconceptions. I only occasionally listen to National Propaganda Radio, but their reporting has been awful. Shamefully so.

apparently according to this foolish idiot I had once thought of as being a semi-decent reporter, it's a battle between Ukraine joining the EU or joining the Russian Federation. That's complete bullshit.

First off, the EU is by no means guaranteeing Ukraine membership anytime soon. The money they supposedly "promised" is not coming any time soon (if at all) and there was never any talk of U joining the Russian Federation (which is not the same as a trading treaty group). And prey-tell, when is Kerry's billion dollar check going to clear? Is that going to get through congress? Or is he counting on more magic money to come from the IMF? Ukraine has oddly chosen to cut off it's nose to spite it's face. Can they truly not see how they're being used?

I expect counter protests before much longer.

The massive unprecedented amount of misinformation in the US media is breathtaking.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Mar 05, 2014 7:01 pm

What today’s GOP gets Wrong about Leadership: Obama & Eisenhower, Russian & Israeli Recklessness
By Juan Cole | Mar. 4, 2014 |

(By Juan Cole)
The usual suspects have been slamming President Obama for an alleged lack of leadership. Trolls for the military-industrial complex like Charles Krauthammer, and megalomaniacs from tiny states like Sen. Lindsey Graham have constructed a narrative in which Obama willfully withdrew from Iraq, giving it away to Iran; has been insufficiently slavish in his devotion to the ruling Israeli Likud Party; and then declined to bomb Syria, allowing a diplomatic solution to its chemical weapons stores; and now is dithering while Russia occupies Crimea. Graham, for whom surely a small minority of his state’s 4 million people actually voted, snarkily advised Obama to cease threatening action against foreign challengers: “It’s not your strong suit.” (I wonder how Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi would feel about that allegation; and, remember that Graham’s big foreign policy idea was to illegally invade and occupy Iraq). All this adds up, the war-hawks insist, to weakness on Obama’s part.
Much of what they say is just posturing, and makes no sense. It was George W. Bush who turned Iraq from a bastion of Sunni Arab secular nationalism that served as a bulwark against Shiite Iran into a natural ally of Iran. It was Bush who overthrew the secular Baath Party and enabled the takeover of Iraq by the Islamic Call (Da’wa) Party, which aims at a Shiite state. It was Bush who failed to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi parliament that would allow US troops to remain after December 2011 (as if their remaining would anyway have been a good idea). And remember that all those things Bush did were war crimes, which the hawks are lamenting Obama has not committed enough of.
Although this chorus demanding forceful “leadership” is largely from the Republican Party, they do not actually represent the positions of that party as it was constituted in saner days. Their bromides could as well be applied to President Dwight D. Eisenhower as to Obama.
So when in late 1956 Moscow crushed the Hungarian uprising, President Eisenhower could do little about it. He concentrated on helping Hungarian refugees. Privately, his heart went out to “captive peoples” whom he wanted to rescue from foreign domination (including, by the way, the Algerians laboring under French colonialism). But he was unwilling to risk WW III over Moscow’s assertion that Hungary was its sphere of influence.
Dwight Eisenhower was among America’s most distinguished military and civilian leaders and had been Supreme Allied Commander during WW II. He defeated Hitler. He was not a wimp, to say the least. And Lindsey Graham and Charles Krauthammer are not good enough to wipe his shoes. And yet his response to Moscow’s troop movements in Hungary was no more robust than Obama’s to Russian troops in Crimea. Indeed, because the Soviet Union was economically disengaged from the capitalist world system, Eisenhower had fewer levers against it than Obama’s proposed sanctions on today’s Russia, which has bought into capitalist oligarchy like everyone else. (The Russian stock market has lashed Vladimir Putin, itself, quite apart from other sanctions; warmongering is usually bad for the economy.)
Obama is not enamored of the militant Greater Israel policy of the ruling Likud Party, which is engaged in a gradual annexation of the Palestinian West Bank and its colonization by Israeli squatters. He has sought to pressure Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians, whom Netanyahu seeks to keep permanently stateless and without rights. He recently warned that a time is coming when the US can no longer protect Israel from international sanctions for its illegal actions against the Palestinians. Netanyahu came to the White House on Monday and essentially told Obama that he would not budge on his West Bank policy of land theft and squatting. (Why the US should protect Netanyahu from UNSC sanctions at all is mysterious; what is the difference between Russia in the Crimea and Israel in the Palestinian West Bank? Yet Obama wants to sanction Putin.)
As for Eisenhower, he was outraged by the aggressive war launched jointly by Britain, France and Israel against Egypt in late October 1956, and he put enormous pressure on Israel to withdraw from Sinai. I wrote elsewhere:
“The United Nations was established in 1945 in the wake of a series of aggressive wars of conquest and the response to them, in which over 60 million people perished. Its purpose was to forbid such unjustified attacks, and its charter specified that in future wars could only be launched on two grounds. One is clear self-defense, when a country has been attacked. The other is with the authorization of the United Nations Security Council.
It was because the French, British and Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956 contravened these provisions of the United Nations Charter that President Dwight D. Eisenhower condemned that war and forced the belligerents to withdraw. When Israel looked as though it might try to hang on to its ill-gotten spoils, the Sinai Peninsula, President Eisenhower went on television on February 21, 1957 and addressed the nation. These words have largely been suppressed and forgotten in the United States of today, but they should ring through the decades and centuries:
“If the United Nations once admits that international dispute can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization, and our best hope of establishing a real world order. That would be a disaster for us all . . .
[Referring to Israeli demands that certain conditions be met before it relinquished the Sinai, the president said that he] “would be untrue to the standards of the high office to which you have chosen me if I were to lend the influence of the United States to the proposition that a nation which invades another should be permitted to exact conditions for withdrawal . . .”
“If it [the United Nations Security Council] does nothing, if it accepts the ignoring of its repeated resolutions calling for the withdrawal of the invading forces, then it will have admitted failure. That failure would be a blow to the authority and influence of the United Nations in the world and to the hopes which humanity has placed in the United Nations as the means of achieving peace with justice.”
You can only imagine what Charles Krauthammer and Fox Cable News and Lindsey Graham would say about Obama if he gave a similar speech, or took a similar stance, today. Yet Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is no more justified, all these decades after 1967– a war in which Israel fired the first shots– than David Ben Gurion’s occupation of Sinai in 1956-57.
Yet Eisenhower’s handling of both Hungary and the Suez Crisis was the epitome of responsible leadership. He condemned the Soviets and tried to help Hungarian refugees, but did not want to risk nuclear brinkmanship with Moscow. He upheld the standards of the United Nations Charter and acted forcefully against even allies who contravened it with a war of aggression on Egypt an an attempted long-term occupation of Sinai. (At the time the US was a creditor Power, not a debtor nation, and so Eisenhower could threaten to call in loans to Britain, France and Israel, which would have crashed their post-war economies).
It is no accident that Eisenhower warned when going out of office of the pernicious influence of the Military-Industrial Complex. That Complex later captured Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush and led them to engage in exactly the kind of illegal and unwise behavior that Eisenhower so forcefully condemned in the 1950s. Those carping at Obama (who is unfortunately not as far left as Eisenhower) are just ventriloquists’ dummies for the Complex that Eisenhower so hated and feared, and which has taken over, as he feared.
Leadership does not consist in flailing around like Reagan, creating private death squads in Afghanistan that morphed into al-Qaeda and the Taliban; nor does it consist in falling wolf-like on other nations that have not attacked us; nor does it consist in supporting allies when they contravene international law. All that is not leadership, it is pandering to the lowest common denominator and it is the height of recklessness.
But Fox Cable News and the inside-the-Beltway chickenhawks wouldn’t recognized mature leadership if it fell on their heads.




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Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby FourthBase » Wed Mar 05, 2014 10:27 pm

I can picture a Western-interests black ops team doing that sniping, of course, to ensure an outcome they prefer for the usual demonic reasons. Could also happen to be, though, incidentally, the same ultimate outcome desired by the majority of those Ukrainian protesters, i.e., the good outcome, the more-free outcome, the less-unfree outcome. I'm not going to stop rooting for People simply because one or another dirty geopolitical clique does something evil to advance a trajectory which also happens to be what People want in any given situation: Those cliques are going to be vying for influence on every side of every major crossroads, so if their every attempt at interference automatically spoils the rightfulness of whatever cause gets promoted, then everything is predestined to be spoiled by some associated shadow agenda. That's nihilism in a bucket. I want no part of it. Am I wrong?
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that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best.” - Bill Russell
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby solace » Wed Mar 05, 2014 11:36 pm

Image

The 'aggrieved housewife', the 'soldier's mother' and the 'Kiev resident': Did Russian television 'use actress to portray FIVE different women' as it reported normal Ukrainians backed Kremlin

Blonde woman seen on television broadcasts as a housewife in Odessa
It is alleged she also appeared as the mother of a soldier in Kiev
Woman appeared in five cities, appealing for help from Russia, it is alleged
Ukrainians have accused Russia of paying 'Putin tourists' to stir trouble
She was named as Tatiana Samoilenko, 40, although now has darker hair

Russian television makers have been accused of using an actress to pose as at least five different women opposed to the revolution in Ukraine.

The blonde woman was seen on television broadcasts as an aggrieved housewife in Odessa, describing her terror at the 'pro-fascist' politicians who grabbed power in Ukraine during last month's revolution.

However, many social network users were quick to notice that the 'housewife' bears an uncanny resemblance to several other women interviewed - prompting accusations that she is an actress hired to sow discord in Ukraine and stoke pro-Moscow groups to incite people against the Kiev authorities........

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z2v9KdQDWP
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby AlicetheKurious » Thu Mar 06, 2014 4:21 am

So funny: the CIA fake color revolution people are accusing Russia of what they themselves do, and have been doing in country after country which they've reduced to ashes and rubble. But the Daily Mail photos just show a woman here and a woman there, who may or may not be the same woman. The photos are not very informative about what she was doing or saying. Compare these claims to this photo montage of an Al-Jazeera cameraman who jumped all over the place in Syria, Egypt, etc., and played the role of the grieving family member, the corpse, the wounded, the writer, the opposition activist, etc.:

Image

It's quite amazing to note how frequently and consistently the criminals (almost always falsely) accuse others of what they themselves do. Now they're doing what our own real activists are doing and purporting to "expose" the exact same kind of fakery that they've been promoting for years, and which no longer fools anyone except those who really, badly want to be fooled.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Peachtree Pam » Thu Mar 06, 2014 4:33 am

An article on the complexities of language in the Ukraine. The comments are worth reading.



http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/01/29/pe ... k-surzhyk/

Do you speak Surzhyk?

Peter Pomerantsev 29 January 2014

Commentary on the turmoil in Ukraine often focuses on the division between a Russian-speaking east and a Ukrainian-speaking west. Ethnolinguistic lines, the argument goes, explain the pro-Moscow v. pro-EU camps, pro-protest v. pro-Yanukovich. But the situation is more nuanced than that. The closest thing Maidan has to a leader is the boxing champ Klitschko, who struggles in Ukrainian and whose Russian is far purer than President Yanukovich’s. Its first martyrs include an ethnic Armenian from Russian-speaking Dnepropetrovsk and a Belarussian Ukrainian resident. Its violent front line appears to be multilingual.

The focus of the revolution is Kiev, and though the Kiev region is often defined as ‘largely Ukrainian speaking’, the same is not true of the city proper which, according to conservative estimates, is approximately 60 per cent Russian-speaking. Educational institutions and TV use Ukrainian (there are legal restrictions), but Russian is the language of the street, the bar, the home. Newspapers and magazines (which follow the market rather than the law) are mostly Russian. People will sometimes say Ukrainian is their first language as that is the language they work in, especially if they work for the state, but they will still communicate informally in Russian. The same goes for all the big cities, as opposed to rural areas, of central Ukraine: Russian dominates in interpersonal communication. But of course everyone speaks a bit of everything and often all of it badly (not so much ‘multi-cultured’, to quote the Odessan psychiatrist and poet Boris Khersonsky, as ‘multi-uncultured’).

Ukraine’s lingua franca is Surzhyk, a motley mix of Ukrainian and Russian (sometimes with bits of Hungarian, Romanian and Polish). In tsarist times it was the slang of Ukrainian-speaking peasants who took up Russian when they came to the big city. Under Stalin, certain Ukrainian words were banned for being nationalist and replaced with Russian ones. Now that Ukrainian is the official language, Russian-speaking officials sometimes have difficulty with it. Watching a session of the Ukrainian parliament can be like observing a secondary school foreign language class.

The west of the country is seen as more straightforwardly mono-Ukrainian than the centre, and it’s certainly true that Halichina, the region around Lviv, has been fighting for national (and linguistic) independence from Austro-Hungarians, Poles and Soviets for centuries: they’re not going to let anyone ruin their ambition now. But Lviv was largely a German and Polish-speaking city until the Second World War. And voting patterns don’t map simply onto the ethnolinguistic divide. Transcarpathia, in the south-west, which is in many ways the most ‘European’ part of the country, with its cross-Schengen trade and communities of Germans, Hungarians, Romanians and Slovaks, voted for Yanukovich in 2010, partly because of business connections and partly out of wariness of its more nationalist neighbours.

Over in Donetsk, in the eastern, ‘Russian’, ‘Yanukovich’ heartlands, the situation is no simpler. According to an 1897 census for Donbass, 24 per cent of the population were ‘Russian’ and 62.5 per cent ‘little Russian’: closer to what we now think of as Ukrainian. Over the next century, the Soviets urbanised and Russianised the region, turning it into the industrial foundry of the USSR, with peoples imported from throughout the empire. Rinat Akhmetov, Donetsk (and Ukraine’s) richest man, one of Yanukovich’s backers and the owner of the most expensive flat in London, speaks Russian with a broad Tartar accent. Yanukovich speaks a form of Surzhyk. Thirty-two per cent of people in Donetsk define their cultural traditions as Soviet, and only 30 per cent as Russian.

Meanwhile, in another twist, football fans (of the more violent persuasion) in the ‘Russian’ east, including Donetsk, have pledged their loyalty to Euro-Maidan against Yanukovich. Their sworn enemies are the ‘titushki’, hoodlums paid by the government to attack activists. ‘Titushki’ is one of the neologisms of the Ukrainian revolt, now common in both Ukrainian and Russian, named after Vadim Titushko, a.k.a. ‘Vadik the Romanian’, who was identified attacking journalists in Kiev. The greatest insult you can throw at someone is not an ethnolinguistic slur, ‘Ukrainian’ or ‘Russian’, but to label them a ‘titushka’.

The big winner from the conceptual division of Ukraine into ‘Russian’ and ‘Ukrainian’ spheres may well be the Kremlin. The idea that Russia is a separate political and spiritual civilisation, one which is a priori undemocratic, suits the Kremlin as it looks to cut and paste together an excuse to validate its growing authoritarianism. So every time a commentator defines the battle in Kiev as Russian language v. Ukrainian, a Kremlin spin doctor gets in another round of drinks.
- See more at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/01/29/pe ... kNSfU.dpuf
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby vanlose kid » Thu Mar 06, 2014 4:59 am

US, NATO, CIA supporting nazis in Ukraine project

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Photo: EPA

The overthrow of the government of Ukraine was an armed coup d’état ordered, planned, organized, funded, carried out and executed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Pentagon, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and their surrogates in the European Union (EU) using every instrument at their disposal including the National Security Agency (NSA) and all of their amassed media resources. It was carried out with the knowledge and approval of US President Barack Hussein Obama if not at his directive.

The actions of the US in organizing the armed overthrow and installation of an illegitimate puppet government in Kiev was and continues to be illegal and revelations that continue to be exposed, including the latest regarding the hiring of snipers to kill demonstrators and police, are an outrage and a crime against all humanity that must not be allowed to stand.

Snipers brought in by oppostion

The latest revelations with regard to the coup d’état in Ukraine concern the snipers that were present in an around Maidan Square during the height of the recent violence. According to multiple reports from varied sources including video footage, witness statements, released telephone conversations between officials and even statements by doctors, the snipers were shooting indiscriminately and killing both protestors and members of the security services. Of the almost 400 police officers injured in the clashes and the approximately 82 dead (figures are from initial reports on newswires) almost all of them suffered bullet wounds to the head and neck. More than 20 protestors were also reportedly killed by snipers on February 20th.

Catherine Ashton Urmas Paet conversation leaked

According to multiple reports and sources the snipers on Maidan Square were hired by the Klitschko led opposition that has now assumed itself to be the new government in Kiev. The most damning evidence to date has come in the form of a telephone conversation between EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and the Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Paet which was intercepted and recorded and has been authenticated by the Estonian Foreign Ministry.

According to the Voice of Russia in comments regarding the conversation Paet said that it had taken place last week, on February 26th, immediately after he returned to Estonia from Ukraine. He also said that it was necessary to conduct an independent investigation into the events on Maidan Square in Kiev and called on those responsible to be prosecuted.

During the conversation Paet voiced his concern that the new “authorities” were not interested in investigating the murders and that it was actually the opposition that had carried them out.

Paet: "And still, people are seriously concerned about the fact that the new coalition is unwilling to investigate what really occurred there . The understanding of the fact that somebody from the new coalition, not Yanukovych, was behind those snipers is becoming more and more strengthened with every passing day."

Ashton: “I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,”

Ashton’s response and her support of the neo-nazi opposition indicates that she knew all along who was behind the attacks and that she was on the inside of the Ukraine Project. Her telling the FM that she thinks we do not want an investigation is chilling. She merely thinks of it as “interesting” is also telling.

According to the transcript Paet was also concerned by the testimony of a doctor who said that both protesters and police were shot at by the same people.

Paet: “And second, what was quite disturbing, this same Olga Bogomolets told as well that all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.” He also added: “She also showed me some photos and said that as a medical doctor she can say that, the same type of bullets were used on both police and protestors.”

Ashton: “Well, yeah…that’s, that’s terrible.”

Ashton says it is terrible but the fact that there has been no outcry from the European Union and no calls from the European Commission for an investigation, which should have come right after she hung up the phone also point to Ashton’s collusion with Nuland and the US on the Ukraine Project.

Whether the EU is merely a pawn in the Ukraine Project or a witting collaborator has yet to be seen but the telephone conversation points to far more knowledge than what has been admitted to and to the fact that everyone is merely operating according to a script that has already been agreed upon and from which no one is allowed to stray.

Russian Foreign Ministry statement

The Russian Foreign Ministry has studied the recordings and issued a statement expressing surprise that the EU had not commented on the recording as they had boisterously commented on the now infamous Nuland/Pyatt “F- the EU” conversation.

"We have paid close attention to this audio recording, and we are surprised to hear that the EU refuses to give its commentary on this score. As you know, some time ago the high-ranking representatives of the EU member countries actively commented on the audio record of Victoria Nuland," a Foreign Ministry official said .

The Russian Foreign Ministry also stated: "As it appears, the European Union is well aware of the fact that the Ukrainian opposition backed the snipers on the Maidan Square!"

The black operations side of the Ukraine project

In documented regime change operations, which Ukraine clearly was, the CIA has classically used snipers to heighten the panic and the terror and in the end to blame whichever side it is against for crimes against the people. In other violent regime change operations terrorist attacks and bombings are also common, usually blamed again on the government, or “the regime” that is targeted for destruction.

In the case of Ukraine the illegitimate “authorities” immediately “filed charges” against the acting President Yanukovich. These charges of course came in unison with choreographed statements by western officials (EU officials, the White House and others), massive choreographed media coverage, showing selected scenes and footage of “poor defenseless peaceful protestors” bloodied and apparently the victims of “the brutal police forces” who themselves were completely unarmed having to face snipers, guns, Molotov cocktails, steel cement filled pipes and highly trained armed protestors bent on killing them.

Western media footage is absent of Berkut troops and police being literally beaten to death, shot to death and taken hostage to be executed later. This does not play with the narrative.

The snipers played two functions; they provided cover for the murderous thugs who were attacking the police and they provided the West with its “victims of a brutal regime”. The western media did not need many victims, the ones they had were enough. The order was probably for 20 protestors and 100 police which would explain the onslaught on the law enforcement officers.

The methodical nature and the timing of the sniper killings point to a carefully planned operation and not to a mob gone mad or crowd control operations by security officers. The sniper killing did not coincide with clashes or the actions of law enforcement bodies and all happened within a few hours. It is not a coincidence that the killings happened in the same period that President Yanukovich was to meet with a delegation from the EU. Very similar to the killing of 426 children in Latakia Syria and the gas attacks in Damscus when Syrian President Bashar Al- Assad had welcomed UN chemical weapons inspectors.

Just as the killing of 426 children was to serve as the pretext for the invasion of Syria, the killing of “civilians” served as the pretext for toppling the government and to charge the president with mass murder.

Reports from witnesses, media and police say that there were foreign mercenaries on Maidan and video footage shows a sniper lair with various shooters including Muslim clad sniper teams, which is backed up by reports that mercenaries and terrorists were brought in from Syria.

Television footage in Russia of one of the “protestors” who was returning to Russia and stopped on the border undergoing questioning, shows him stating under no duress, that there were 50 Americans involved and that he had counted them. During the height of the violence there is also television footage of men running around shouting instructions in English.

The violence is not over in Ukraine. The US/CIA/NATO/EU are growing desperate and having problems getting the Ukrainian people to accept that the murderers and neo-nazis are now their new leaders. Almost no one accepts their legitimacy, except of course western lackeys and politicians who are in on the coup.

The Ukrainian people know there was no popular uprising. A delay in an EU agreement which in fact meant nothing was not something that brought the people out into the streets en-mass, however it was the ridiculous pre-planned pretext that the choreographers had planned.

The goal of turning Ukraine into NATO territory is first on the agenda and later today NATO is expected to push NATO membership documentation through the Verhovnaya Rada. This has to be done before their puppets are all arrested or the people rise up and take their parliament back.

The nazis are having problems on other fronts as well. Recently their “Foreign Minister” made a ridiculous statement to the United Nations that charges from the Soviet Union against the Bandera nazis at the Nuremburg Trials were not legitimate and the Ukrainian Nazis were basically just normal Ukrainians who as the EU recently stated, expressed “real European values”.

The Ukraine scenario is almost identical to the Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya scenarios on the black operations side. The only difference is that air support has not been used, yet. 300 US mercenaries from the former Blackwater/XE/Greystone Limited a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC, are now in Ukraine to provide illegal “non-state” military support to the thousands of mercenaries already in the country.

Greystone Limited mercenaries are part of what is called “America’s Secret Army.” They are called in when there is no legal basis for an American military intervention and no basis for NATO or other surrogate armies to intervene or provide air-support to their initial illegal internal takeover force, this time the Bandera nazis who have been training for 10 years.

Nuland’s nazi project

In a video briefing to her controllers and press in Washington last December, after returning from her innocent looking but ridiculous doughnut trip, in front of logos from the Chevron and Exxon oil companies, Victoria Nuland, former US Ambassador to NATO, stated that they had spent $5 billion dollars on Ukraine.

Today Obama is set to hand $1 billion to the militants parading as officials and of course there are the billions that have been spent by CIA front USAID, George Soros and the like in the Ukraine Project. So no matter how obvious it is to the world that what occurred in Kiev is an illegal western backed coup, they must keep to their scripts and no amount of evidence against them is going to change their public statements.

Even if the Bandera Nazis start hanging people from street lamps and making nazi salutes at the United Nations, Obama and company are going to continue to call them legitimate and “peaceful demonstrators”. It will not even matter if the Ukrainian people, down to the last woman and child start waving Russian flags, and protesting the Bandera Nazis, the US and the subservient controlled corporate media will continue to follow their own narrative.

Why Nazis in Ukraine? It does not bother Obama or US/NATO/EU who they support in a targeted country. It does not matter to Nuland, who is in fact Jewish herself, if she is supporting the same Nazis that are calling for her brethren to be killed in the street, because they have their objectives. Divide and surround Russia. Remove Russia from Ukraine, establish NATO/US military bases and seize the resources.

Just like in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia and everywhere else the US has targeted it does not matter who they support and arm and fund as long as the target government is gotten rid of. In South America there are far-right groups. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan and other Middle East countries there is Al-Qaeda (created by the CIA). In Ireland there were Republican paramilitaries, in the Caucuses Chechen terrorists, in Ukraine? Well neo-nazis. They take what they can get as long as their objective is attained.

Why 300 US mercenaries? I would say the violence in Ukraine is just beginning. It takes a lot of death and mayhem to destroy a country. Especially when there is no NATO air-support or a fake UN resolution to allow for bombing. They will have to go house to house and kill anyone who resists, something which Nuland’s peaceful opposition is already doing.

Fake Russian invasion

RT reported about the “Russian invasion of Crimea” and the collusion of the western media as follows: Ukraine’s statement at the UN that 16,000 Russian soldiers have been deployed to Crimea has caused a frenzy among Western media which chooses to ignore that those troops have been there since the late 1990s in accordance with a Kiev-Moscow agreement. Western media describes the situation in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as if a full-scale Russian invasion were under way, with headlines like: “Ukraine says Russia sent 16,000 troops to Crimea” and “Ukraine crisis deepens as Russia sends more troops into Crimea,” as well as “What can Obama do about Russia's invasion of Crimea?”It seems they have chosen to simply ignore the fact that those Russian troops have been stationed in Crimea for over a decade. Russia’s representative to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, reminded on Tuesday that the deal surrounding the Black Sea Fleet allows Russia to station a contingent of up to 25,000 troops in Ukraine. However, US and British media have mostly chosen to turn a deaf ear.”

No international or other outcry

Has the world been terrorized into silence or does the NSA now control the flow of information so well that no one is getting the truth of what is occurring in Ukraine? Why is no one calling for sanctions or legal measures against the US/NATO/EU for overthrowing a democratically elected European government? How much blood will US/NATO be allowed to spill before the world stands up? Why does it seem that the world is cowering in terror? Even what I thought were die-hard anti-NATO activists have jumped boat and refuse to stand up and protest.

Dear readers and citizens of the world

How many more countries are we going to sit by and watch be destroyed by the US/NATO war machine and their secret armies? When they decide your country is no longer following orders they will come for you too, make no doubt.They rape and pillage they send in illegal armies

These are the ancestors of the same people who committed genocide on the indigenous peoples of North America for their resources. They do not know anything else but violence, force and stealing whatever they need. Are we powerless to stop them?

I would like to leave you with parts of two speeches which I think are completely relevant and topical, although they had different reasons for writing both of these speeches they these words apply exactly to what the US/NATO are doing today, in 2014, a year when all war, hunger and poverty on earth could have been long eradicated:

“There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” - Mario Savio

“It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions, by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.” – John F Kennedy

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Best wishes.

http://voiceofrussia.com/2014_03_06/US- ... ject-2569/


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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Dradin Kastell » Thu Mar 06, 2014 6:02 am

justdrew wrote:The massive unprecedented amount of misinformation in the US media is breathtaking.


The Russian media has a massive amount of misinformation, too. Though I would argue that is not unprecedented.

I haven't been on RI for a while, and decided to check back on how the board is coping with the Ukraine/Crimea crisis. After going through this thread, I have to say that I was expecting a little better, from a forum with this many highly knowledgeable and smart people. The critical eyes directed towards Western interests and the hypocrisy and misinformation of the Western media here is admirable and there is a lot of info here about that I can't find at any of my usual haunts on the nets. But on the other hand, I am dismayed at how uncritically many people here are regurgitating similarly (if not more) biased commentary and outright lies by the Russian state media and pro-Russian sites. Then again, that seems something like kryptonite for this forum - people assuming that anyone disagreeing with the pushers US hegemony must be right by default even if that is sometimes far from the truth.

Example:

justdrew wrote:well, in between frothing commentary, "the World" (a show on our NPR affiliate) got around to mentioning, very briefly, once, a key bit of info... that renders the "invasion" not too "de facto" - apparently the forces surrounding Ukrainian military bases are not Russian Federation forces at all, they are locally organized self-defense militias - aka "people power" :wink: . The R.F. military forces are contained only within the naval base, where they are, by treaty, allowed to be. Up to 25,000 soldiers. Also, Putin has stated that he has no intention of annexing Crimea, and sees no need for further advances of troops. It seems all the hysteria has just gotten a bit ahead of itself.


The idea that the unmarked, masked troops occupying the Crimea would be "local self-defence militias" is absurd and easily refutable. For one thing, they use highly professional, expensive, uniform military gear that is used by the Russian Federation, and sometimed basically only by it. This includes weapons like customised sniper rifles used by Russian special forces (Spetznaz). It includes military vehicles like the GAZ Tigr, called the Russian Hummer, very expensive and modern.

Some of these unmarked troops taking control of Crimean roads, airports and government buildings on the February 27th:

Image

And on March 1st:

Image

The rifle held by the unmarked soldier on the other's shoulder has been identified by a private imgur user Sean Gallup here as a specially shortened SVD-S sniper rifle, a paratrooper version used only by the Russian Federation. The writer's analysis of the weaponry from several photos:

Conclusion: at the very least, these irregulars are armed by the Russian Federation. More likely, they are VDV / spetsnaz troops -indicated by a degree of weapon customization (optics, rail systems, etc) not usually seen among conscript troops, even special forces units. While this analysis is speculative, and admittedly amateurish, I nevertheless stand by my conclusions. Sources available on request.


The jeep in the second picture is the GAZ Tigr, a military vehicle in use with the Russian Federation armed forces and police authorities since 2005-2007. It is the same type of vehicle seen here taking part in the 2012 Victory day parade in Moscow. Very expensive as a military version.

Image

Take a look at the licence plates in both pictures, from Simferopol, Crimea, in 2014 and from Moscow in 2012. The Russian Federation military uses plates with white text on black background. On the right, these plates give a two-number code identifying the command the vehicle is assigned to, like this:

Image

The list of the codes can be found from the Russian Wikipedia.

In both the Simferopol and Moscow pictures we see that the code is "21", which means that both these jeeps have been registered to the Russian Southern Military District (prior to 2010 the North Caucasus Military District) - the Russian military command just east of the Crimea. In fact when one goes through the pictures of the parade that includeded unit from all around Russia and the photos being taken on the Crimea on the last days, some of the plates on the jeeps are only a few digits off from the plates on some of the vehicles now being photoed on Crimean roads - possibly meaning that they are even from the very same unit.

Conclusion - this "local militia" seen outside the Russian bases on the Crimea, against treaties between Russia and Ukraine since the 27th at least, is most likely well-equipped Russian troops or (at the very least) well-trained military of uncertain origin heavily supported by the Russian military with expensive, high-end military gear and vehicles and logistics support. Certainly the difference between these very professional-looking troops (that Putin says are local militia who bought their equipment from a sports store) and the violent masked thugs in makeshift apparel at the Euromaidan protests is striking.

I will keep following the discussion on the forum, just because there are people here with excellent abilities to look behind the lies by careful research and analyzing sources rigorously and because the RI is a excellent source for thoughtful analysis - but I also wish that the same level of analysis would be used on all sources, not in this case giving Russian news outlets or blogs, say RT and Voice of Russia, a free pass to spout misinformation while sources such as CNN or Fox News get called on their egregious fabrications.
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby conniption » Thu Mar 06, 2014 7:16 am

FULL VIDEO: Putin speaks Ukraine, Yanukovich, Maidan, Crimea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiKF8JN1qmk

Published on Mar 4, 2014

Transcript - http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6763
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby FourthBase » Thu Mar 06, 2014 7:54 am

It's quite amazing to note how frequently and consistently the criminals (almost always falsely) accuse others of what they themselves do.


Are you saying that there are no such criminals on Russia's end who could possibly resort to conniving tactics to advance their agenda, too, like firing upon themselves in a false flag or like hiring an actor/actress to play a role in the media?
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby RocketMan » Thu Mar 06, 2014 7:54 am

Lovely bit of pre-emptive use of the sin-absolving term "conspiracy theory" here by The Guardian. It doesn't even fit very well, but what the hell, conspiracy theory it is.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/m ... urmas-paet

Ukraine crisis: bugged call reveals conspiracy theory about Kiev snipers

A leaked phone call between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet has revealed that the two discussed a conspiracy theory that blamed the killing of civilian protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on the opposition rather than the ousted government.

The 11-minute conversation was posted on YouTube – it is the second time in a month that telephone calls between western diplomats discussing Ukraine have been bugged.

In the call, Paet said he had been told snipers responsible for killing police and civilians in Kiev last month were protest movement provocateurs rather than supporters of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. Ashton responds: "I didn't know … Gosh."
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Re: Russia's de facto invasion of Ukraine

Postby Morty » Thu Mar 06, 2014 8:40 am



You can tell by her thick ankles that it's the one and same woman.

Damn those conniving Russkies!
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