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just thought I'd post what the American people are sloppin' up
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by seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 31, 2014 8:47 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sun Aug 31, 2014 8:56 pm
Chechens Now Fighting On Both Sides In Ukraine
By contributors | Aug. 31, 2014 |
By Liz Fuller via RFE/ RL
Eighteen years after the signing of the Khasavyurt Accord that ended the 1994-96 Chechen war, a veteran Chechen field commander has issued a timely reminder that there are still three sides to the ongoing struggle for the hearts and minds of the Chechen people.
In a statement dated August 28, Isa Munayev appeals to the United States and "the countries of the democratic world" to provide "comprehensive military assistance" to the Ukrainian people, whom Munayev describes as victims of Russian imperial aggression, just as the Chechens were 20 years ago.
Munayev identified himself in that statement as commander of the Dzhokhar Dudayev international volunteer peacekeeping battalion and a brigadier general of the armed forces of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria (ChRI) of which Dudayev was the first president. He spoke to RFE/RL's Radio Marsho a week ago, shortly before he travelled to Ukraine to show "international support for the Ukrainian people." The strength of his battalion, and who is bankrolling it, is not known.
Now in his late 40s, Munayev played a key role in the defense of Grozny at the start of the 1999-2000 war, and continued fighting after the resistance forces retreated south to the mountains, acquiring a reputation for his courage and tactical skills. In late 2007, however, he distanced himself from ChRI President Doku Umarov following the latter's abandonment of the cause of Chechen independence and proclamation of a Caucasus Emirate. Munayev left Chechnya soon afterward, but continued to serve until December 2008 as ChRI prosecutor-general.
Meanwhile, evidence continues to mount of the presence on the side of the pro-Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine of hundreds of fighters sent by Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov. Those fighters are apparently primarily volunteers from among the various police and security forces subordinate to Kadyrov, who has consistently denied that there are any "Chechen battalions" in Ukraine, even after the "Financial Times" quoted a fighter named Zelimkhan who said he and his comrades in arms had been sent to Ukraine in mid-May on Kadyrov's orders.
Kadyrov has admitted, however, that a few dozen Chechen volunteers from among the 2 million (according to his estimate) Chechens living outside Russia have travelled to Ukraine on their own initiative to fight, and that a handful of them have been killed.
Republic of Ingushetia head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov similarly said in early June that 25 residents of his republic had travelled to Ukraine to fight, of whom four had been killed. In a subsequent interview, Yevkurov, a former Russian military-intelligence officer, affirmed his readiness to head to Ukraine himself "to defend those who are being humiliated and killed."
In contrast, both the Defense Ministry and the presidential and government press service of the largely unrecognized Republic of South Ossetia in May denied media reports that the breakaway Georgian region had sent volunteers to fight in Ukraine.
How many "kadyrovtsy" either volunteered or were sent to Ukraine is unclear, but separate, unconfirmed casualty reports suggest the figure may have been as high as 1,000. Between 35-45 corpses were reportedly sent back to Chechnya in late May, and between 120-150 in August. In addition, Ukrainian military sources claimed to have killed some 200 Chechens near Slovyansk in late June.
Other reports, also unconfirmed, suggest that Kadyrov's men did not distinguish themselves in battle. There have been several such reports over the past few weeks that Chechen units fighting under the command of Russian officers in eastern Ukraine have been disbanded and sent home for cowardice and/or desertion, surrendered to Ukrainian government forces, or asked for safe passage to retreat to the Russian border.
Kadyrov immediately rejected as untrue reports that any Chechens had surrendered: he declared that "once a Chechen takes up arms, he doesn't surrender."
This blog presents analyst Liz Fuller’s personal take on events in the region, following on from her work in the “RFE/RL Caucasus Report.” It also aims, to borrow a metaphor from Tom de Waal, to act as a smoke detector, focusing attention on potential conflict situations and crises throughout the region. The views are the author’s own and do not represent those of RFE/RL.
Mirrored from RFE/RL
Copyright (c) 2014. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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Related video added by Juan Cole:
AFP: “EU warns Ukraine crisis near ‘point of no return’”
Ukraine: What is the word for What is Happening There?
By contributors | Aug. 30, 2014 |
By Daisy Sindelar via RFE/RL
Oleksandr Chernov, a doctor and journalist from eastern Ukraine, spent 10 days as a captive of pro-Russian separatists based in Slovyansk.
During that time he was blindfolded, brutally beaten, and interrogated by separatist leader Igor Strelkov. He watched a hardened militant break down in tears after accidentally shooting a stray dog. And he heard countless examples of how the months of violence in Donbas had taken a deadly personal toll.
"Some people's houses had been bombed, or their children's schools. Some of their wives had been seriously injured. So they picked up their weapons and went out to fight," Chernov says. "This is a war, after all."
But is it? As fighting escalates on Ukraine's eastern front between a hazy mix of pro-Russian mercenaries, Ukrainian army soldiers, and volunteers of every stripe, officials have tied themselves in linguistic knots attempting to define what, exactly, is going on in Ukraine.
News agencies ignited a firestorm on August 28 when they quoted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as saying that Russian troops had "invaded" Ukraine.
Some agencies later changed their translation from "invaded" to "entered." But the genie was already out of the bottle.
Ukraine's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) publicly called the conflict an invasion. So did the Australian prime minister, and the foreign ministers of Latvia and Lithuania. So, in a potentially poor career move, did a human rights adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, seizing on hashtag politics, appeared to assert via Twitter that what was taking place was, in fact, an invasion.
#RussiaInvadedUkraine
— Pavlo Klimkin (@PavloKlimkin) August 28, 2014
Other officials, however, were more cautious in their rhetoric. British Prime Minister David Cameron has called the current situation in Ukraine a "large-scale incursion." The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine said Russia was "intervening directly." A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel used the term "military intervention." And U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking August 28, produced the seemingly oxymoronic "ongoing incursion."
David Kaufman, who heads the Center for the Study of Modern Conflict at Scotland's University of Edinburgh, suggests that choosing between "incursion" and "invasion" comes down to what the speaker wants to be seen as thinking about Putin's long-term intent.
"An invasion would suggest that there's an air of permanence about whether or not these troops are going to stay," he says. "An incursion is more limited, and it would suggest that maybe these troops are there temporarily, and that what they're doing isn't necessarily something that Russia might suggest as being permanent."
'Little Green Men'
Moscow, which has long sought to keep its fingerprints off the Ukraine conflict, has unsurprisingly rejected the notion of an invasion, despite NATO saying at least 1,000 Russian troops and hardware are on Ukrainian territory.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said August 29 there was "no proof" of an invasion. Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the head of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, said the Russian troops were merely volunteering their services, "rather than taking their vacations at the beach." At least one humorist who tweets as a would-be Putin suggested that what was taking place was less an invasion and more a romantic reconciliation.
It's not an invasion. It's a re-union. We shall call it the "Soviet Reunion".
— Vladimir Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) August 28, 2014
Linguistic ambiguity has been a hallmark of the Ukrainian conflict from the beginning, when Russia coined the terms "little green men" and "polite people" to avoid admitting that the insignia-free forces entering and annexing Crimea were in fact Russian soldiers.
Since then, Moscow has attempted to put even more verbal distance between itself and the conflict in Ukraine, referring to native-born Russian separatists as "Ukrainian rebels" and "pro-Russian fighters" and at times insisting that the violence is a "civil war" between Ukrainian "fascists" and Russian-speaking civilians.
Putin on August 28 went so far as to evoke the term "Novorossia," or New Russia — a tsarist-era label for the broad strip of land crossing from southern Ukraine into Moldova's breakaway, pro-Russian region of Transdniester.
Military experts say such terminology permits Putin to maintain the illusion that Russia is not formally involved in Ukraine, where nearly 2,600 people have been killed as a result of the conflict. But the wordplay works to the advantage of the other parties as well, by allowing Ukrainian and international officials, wary of antagonizing a still-powerful Kremlin, to stop short of accusing Russia of waging war.
Such a step would dramatically expand the parameters of military action, opening the way for larger troop deployments, cross-border air raids, and "deeper" targeting inside both Ukraine and Russia. It's a scenario that is deeply distasteful, both for Ukraine and for the West, which is eager to avoid military engagement with Russia.
'Interstate Face-Off'
Reuters in July cited Western officials as saying that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had confidentially categorized the situation in Ukraine as a war.
According to the report, the ICRC, which has made no public statement, informed Ukraine and Russia privately of its assessment. (Officially, the ICRC has categorized the situation in Ukraine as a "noninternational armed conflict.")
If true, the designation is significant, because it has the potential to render both Kyiv and Moscow responsible for war crimes committed by their forces — including, but not limited to, the suspected shooting-down of passenger jet MH17 by pro-Russian fighters.
But Christopher Langton, a British Army veteran who now heads the Independent Conflict Research and Analysis center, says it is highly unlikely that either Ukraine or Russia will make a formal declaration of war.
He adds that the term itself — which is traditionally defined as mutual military action between two or more states — is no longer "fashionable" in a world marked by increasingly asymmetric, non-state insurgencies.
"The last time I think anybody formally declared war was in the Second World War," says Langton. "It's almost seen as an unnecessary thing to do. You know, we didn't declare war on Serbia. No war was declared on Iraq."
What we're seeing in Ukraine, he says, "is the nearest thing to an interstate face-off." Declaring war, he adds, "would be a major step which could lead down some very dark alleys. And that's why I don't think either side are going to use it."
With or without a declaration, however, many of Russia's harshest critics — including Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski — say there's only one word for what's going on in Ukraine.
"If it looks like a war, sounds like a war and kills like a war," Sikorski tweeted on August 29. "It is a war."
@carlbildt If it looks like a war, sounds like a war and kills like a war, it is a war.
— Radosław Sikorski (@sikorskiradek) August 29, 2014
Ukraine Claims ‘Thousands’ of Russian Troops Invaded, Offers No Evidence
Rebels Advance, But No Sign of Putative Russian Backing
by Jason Ditz, August 29, 2014
Ukrainian officials are now claiming a Russian invasion of four to five thousand ground troops backed by columns of tanks and other armored vehicles, a dramatic escalation from yesterday’s claims of about 1,000 such troops.
As with yesterday’s allegations, Ukraine is offering no evidence to back up the claims, and the reports coming out of the region suggest such a massive invasion is not likely to be happening at all.
Ukraine’s government not offering backup for its allegations is nothing new, but is particularly conspicuous today, as media provides images of the few hundred rebel fighters’ advance in southeastern Ukraine, but offers nothing to support the claims that thousands of Russian troops and armor are traveling with them.
The US, which had been rubber stamping Ukrainian allegations for months, seems to be particularly hesitant this time, and is saying they can’t independently confirm any of the allegations being made this time. President Obama, who was eager to exploit the claims to push more sanctions, still did not lend any credence to the claims actually being true, and yesterday said nothing the US saw happening in the east was a “shift” in Russian policy.
Ukraine’s wild allegations have become so common and so often untrue that they have very little credibility left, and indeed this is the third separate invasion they’ve alleged to have taken place in the past week.
So far, the only “invasion” that had any truth to it at all was the one where Russian trucks delivered humanitarian aid to the city of Luhansk, and while Ukraine was eager to chalk it up to a military invasion, the trucks left the following day.
As with the phantom “column” on armored vehicles Ukraine claimed to have destroyed earlier this month, the lack of photographic evidence speaks volumes, and the allegations seem to be aimed primarily at getting increased “emergency aid” as opposed to informing people about the actual situation on the ground.
NATO Piling Lies, Counts on US/UK Media to Sell Them
Sunday, 31 August 2014
Read the London tabloids. Russia has launched “a full-scale invasion”. A vast propaganda campaign has been launched. Where is the evidence?
The media is spreading “fake evidence” in the week leading up to the Wales NATO Summit.
The objective is to herald Russia as the aggressor.
What is at stake is a strategic public relations stunt.
Sixty countries will be represented at the NATO Summit in Wales on 4-5 September including the 28 NATO member states.
NATO Summit Wales 2014The media lies “fit the military agenda” already formulated by the Pentagon in consultation with NATO and Her Majesty’s Government.
US-NATO requires “evidence” to build a political consensus at the Wales NATO Summit on September 4-5 hosted by Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. According to PM David Cameron in a letter addressed to heads of State and heads of government of NATO member states ahead of the Summit:
“Leaders [of NATO countries] must review NATO’s long term relationship with Russia at the summit in response to Russia’s illegal actions in Ukraine.
“And the PM wants to use the summit to agree on how NATO will sustain a robust presence in Eastern Europe in the coming months to provide reassurance to allies there, building on work already underway in NATO.”
A pretext for an all out war on Russia under a humanitarian cloak? The West coming to the rescue of civilians in Eastern Ukraine?
In late July in consultation with the Pentagon, NATO’s Europe commander General Philip Breedlove had (ahead of the Wales NATO meeting) already called for “stockpiling a base in Poland with enough weapons, ammunition and other supplies to support a rapid deployment of thousands of troops against Russia”.(RT, July 24, 2014). According to General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”:
“He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added).
Breedlove’s “Blitzkrieg scenario” which could escalate into a World War III scenario is part of NATO’s summit agenda in Wales next week. In substance it is a “copy and paste” of the draft Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) (in the US Senate) which directs President Obama to initiate the militarization of Eastern Europe with a view to confronting Russia.
The Convoy of Russian Tanks. Where is It?
In support of NATO’s planned deployments to Eastern Europe, the Western media is claiming without evidence that a large convoy of Russian tanks has crossed the border into Ukraine and are operating under Russian command inside Ukraine.
The satellite images released by NATO show tanks and vehicles inside Ukraine, within an area controlled by Donbass forces. Where did they come from? The images look so fake, it isn't funny, although the Kremlind did laugh and asked what computer game they were extracted from. There is no indication where this supposed tanks came from, when they crossed, where they crossed, or simply where are they?
Spinning a Russian Invasion
This is not the first time that the media is spinning a “Russian Invasion”. Earlier reports in June alluded to State Department sources that:
“three aging Russian T-64 tanks had been sent to Ukraine,” and that the Ukrainian government was claiming that there were 10 more tanks. The Times also noted:
Adding to Western concerns, the senior Obama administration official said, artillery has been moved to a deployment site inside southwest Russia and may soon be shipped across the border.
Not only are the anonymous claims of one official the source of the information–they also provide the analysis of that information, floating a slightly-too-perfect theory that Russia is handing over old equipment in order to make it seem like they’re not actually doing so. I
It should be noted that this as well as previous “Russian invasions” have been the object of sizable speculative gains on financial markets.
Where are the alleged Russian Tanks?
While various explanations are put forth concerning the alleged Russian tanks and armored vehicles, what is Never mentioned in Western media reports is that the Donbass militia do not need Russian tanks.
In the course of the last two months, the Donbass militia have acquired a significant arsenal of tanks and armored vehicles captured from Ukrainian forces.
The large loss of military equipment is confirmed by the Ukraine Ministry of Internal Affairs, either destroyed or captured by Donbass forces.
Official Ukraine sources acknowledge a significant loss of tanks and armored vehicles.
Based on a two week period in July, 35 Ukraine Army tanks and 96 Armoured Battle Vehicles were either confiscated or destroyed by Donetsk and Lugansk forces, according to an official brief signed by Arsen Avakov (Minister of Internal Affairs) and V. Gritsak (Head of ATO [Anti-Terrorism Operation])
Tanks: 35
Armoured Battle Vehicles: 96
Artillery: 38
Aircraft: 7
Helicopters: 2
Automobiles: 104
According to Cyberberkut: some 65 tanks and 69 armoured battle vehicles were captured by the Donbass militia over a period of less than 2 months (from June 20 to August 15).
tanks T-64 – 65 units;
infantry fighting vehicles (BMP) – 69 units;
armored personnel carriers (BTR) – 39 units;
combat reconnaissance patrol vehicles (BRDM) – 2 units;
airborne combat vehicles (BMD) – 9 units;
multiple artillery rocket systems (RSZO) BM27 Uragan – 2 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S4 “Tyulpan” – 2 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S9 “Nona” – 6 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S1 “Gvozdika” – 25 units;
howitzers D-30 – 10 units; 82 mm. caliber mortars – 32 units; anti-aircraft mounts ZU-23-2 – 18 units; wheeled vehicles – 124 units.
While we are not in a position to fully corroborate the Cyberberkut report, the figures collected over the period of June 20 to August 15 are broadly consistent with the official release.
What these two sets of figures confirm is that rebel forces in Donesk and Lugansk possess a significant military arsenal and this arsenal did not originate from Russia. It was captured from Ukraine forces as confirmed by official Ukraine sources.
This information is of crucial significance because it refutes the accusations by Washington and NATO that the tanks and armored vehicles identified in Donbass came from Russia.
Moreover, there is evidence that entire Ukrainian battalions have surrendered to the Donetsk and Lugansk militia, a large number of Ukrainian soldiers who have abandoned the battlefield have fled to Russia or have joined the Donbass militia.
The Western media has failed (refused) to cover the war theater in eastern Ukraine. More than 2000 civilians have been killed as a result of shelling and bombing by Kiev forces, close to a million Ukrainians are refugees in Russia. Hospitals and Churches are bombed, but you won't read about it in the 'Western' press.
The humanitarian crisis is invariably not mentioned by the media and when it is, the blame is placed on Russia.
https://slavyangrad.files.wordpress.com ... .jpg?w=600
The above paper is from the Ukrainian Military accounting for its losses. Translated version is below:
TOTAL UKRAINIAN LOSSES
Killed in Action: 1600
Wounded in Action: 4723
Tanks: 35
Armoured Battle Vehicles: 96
Artillery: 38
Aircraft: 7
Helicopters: 2
Automobiles: 104
TOTAL MILITIA LOSSES
Killed in Action: 48
Wounded in Action: 64
Tanks: 2
Armoured Battle Vehicles: 0
Artillery: 5
Automobiles: 8
TOTAL CIVILIAN LOSSES
Killed: 496
Wounded: 762
According to the latest data, The Eastern Ukraine Militia have captured additional substantial number of tanks from the Ukrainian Army. Both Kiev and NATO call these "Russian" tanks. They are not. In fact, the rebels have captured so many pieces of equipment, they simply destroy some of the things they don't need.
Below is a list of what equipment has been captured in the past two months by the militia:
infantry fighting vehicles (BMP) – 24 units;
armored personnel carriers (BTR) – 11 units;
combat reconnaissance patrol vehicles (BRDM) – 2 units; airborne combat vehicles (BMD) – 9 units;
multiple artillery rocket systems (RSZO) BM27 “Uragan” – 2 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S4 “Tyulpan” – 2 units; self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S9 “Nona” – 2 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S1 “Gvozdika” – 10 units; 82 mm. caliber mortars – 6 units;
anti-aircraft mounts ZU-23-2 – 3 units; wheeled vehicles – 44 units.
In total, from June 20 to August 15 during the punitive action, according to the reports of the Ukrainian military, the militia forces captured:
tanks T-64 – 65 units; infantry fighting vehicles (BMP) – 69 units;
armored personnel carriers (BTR) – 39 units;
combat reconnaissance patrol vehicles (BRDM) – 2 units;
airborne combat vehicles (BMD) – 9 units;
multiple artillery rocket systems (RSZO) BM27 Uragan – 2 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S4 “Tyulpan” – 2 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S9 “Nona” – 6 units;
self-propelled guns (SAU) 2S1 “Gvozdika” – 25 units;
howitzers D-30 – 10 units; 82 mm. caliber mortars – 32 units; anti-aircraft mounts ZU-23-2 – 18 units; wheeled vehicles – 124 units.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 02, 2014 8:46 am
SEPTEMBER 02, 2014
Kiev's War Against Freedom of Speech
Ukraine: the Ugly Truth
by VLADISLAV GULEVICH
The US State Department has given its support to the military operation undertaken by Kiev in Donbass. Jen Psaki, spokesperson for the US Department of State, stated that Kiev has the right to secure order and peace on its territory.
How Ukrainian authorities secure order and peace, Jen Psaki should ask the people of Donbass. But Western journalists prefer not to speak with the people living in the war zone. They avoid citing any word which could cast doubt on Kiev`s policy.
On the other hand, they easily rely on official Ukrainian sources and repeat their false, office-made “news” about Russian aggression and rebels killing their own population. Although only insane people would kill those who give them food and other support, a support essential to the Donbass guerillas, the myth about rebels killing their own families is still alive.
If Westerners could see what is really going on in Donbass, they would have a completely different picture. Plenty of videos can be found on various websites showing dead civilians, slaughtered by Ukrainian artillery or aviation. On the videos, survivors say clearly that people are being killed by Ukrainians from Kiev and not by the rebels. But pro-Kiev media and its Western allies turn a deaf ear to their sufferings.
After the Lugansk administration building was bombed by a Ukrainian aircraft on June 2, it became clear to all that the pro-Western government in Kiev was ready to cross the red line. Here is a video taken just after the bombing. Among the victims were several women and the video shows them still alive but mortally wounded.
On July 27, after the bombing of Gorlovka, there were as many as 30 corpses in the streets. Among them were a 23-year-old mother embracing her little daughter, as witnessed in this video. Here one can see the aftermath of the Ukrainian bombing of civilian neighborhoods near Lugansk on August 15: two old ladies torn apart by missiles from Kiev. Their companion tells the cameraman the details of their death: the women didn`t manage to reach the basement in time, where locals habitually hide from the “Ukrainian liberators”.
Four days later a similar event took place: at least five residents of Makeevka near Donetsk were killed by Ukrainian bombs. Here are the victims of the Ukrainian bombing of Zugres, in the Donetsk region: a van full of corpses including a five year-old child. And here is the result of another bombing in Donetsk: women and children are regular victims of the Ukrainian army.
Such events have become part of everyday life for the inhabitants of Donbass. Independent cameramen are trying to bring the truth to the Ukrainian and Western public but this is no easy task.
Firstly, it is very difficult to publish the videos, because internet connection is now a luxury for Donbass. The Ukrainian army has destroyed not only electricity plants but water pipes and gas lines as well.
Secondly, Ukrainian forces are arresting journalists and people making videos, and treating them as criminals. Kiev has unleashed a real war against freedom of speech. Any video or text criticizing the Ukrainian government is considered as “support for Donbass terrorists.” Making such videos means risking your life or freedom.
This affects journalists beyond Donbass as well. The Security Service of Ukraine (the equivalent of the American FBI) pays regular visits to intractable reporters and throws them in prison with no scruples. Recently my empty apartment in Kirovograd was visited by agents of the Security Service of Ukraine. I was lucky enough to be in Russia but my neighbors were questioned about me.
The desire to smash any kind of resistance in the country has become an obsession of the Ukrainian authorities. The declaration recently made by the head of Ukrainian Officers’ Union, Evgeniy Lupakov, where he said he wanted to hang the “Donbass terrorists” on street poles, is of utmost importance and direst foreboding.
Will peace come to Ukraine? Will Ukrainians be able to freely express their opinion? The future will tell
by coffin_dodger » Tue Sep 02, 2014 8:55 am
Germany’s Merkel Needs To Ask Tough Questions at NATO Summit
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, August 31, 2014 Antiwar.com
MEMORANDUM FOR: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Ukraine and NATO
We the undersigned are longtime veterans of U.S. intelligence. We take the unusual step of writing this open letter to you to ensure that you have an opportunity to be briefed on our views prior to the NATO summit on September 4-5.
You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major Russian "invasion" of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the "intelligence" seems to be of the same dubious, politically "fixed" kind used 12 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. We saw no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then; we see no credible evidence of a Russian invasion now. Twelve years ago, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, mindful of the flimsiness of the evidence on Iraqi WMD, refused to join in the attack on Iraq. In our view, you should be appropriately suspicions of charges made by the US State Department and NATO officials alleging a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
President Barack Obama tried yesterday to cool the rhetoric of his own senior diplomats and the corporate media, when he publicly described recent activity in the Ukraine, as "a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now … it’s not really a shift."
Obama, however, has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration – who, sadly, lack much sense of history, know little of war, and substitute anti-Russian invective for a policy. One year ago, hawkish State Department officials and their friends in the media very nearly got Mr. Obama to launch a major attack on Syria based, once again, on "intelligence" that was dubious, at best.
Largely because of the growing prominence of, and apparent reliance on, intelligence we believe to be spurious, we think the possibility of hostilities escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine has increased significantly over the past several days. More important, we believe that this likelihood can be avoided, depending on the degree of judicious skepticism you and other European leaders bring to the NATO summit next week.
Experience With Untruth
Hopefully, your advisers have reminded you of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s checkered record for credibility. It appears to us that Rasmussen’s speeches continue to be drafted by Washington. This was abundantly clear on the day before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when, as Danish Prime Minister, he told his Parliament: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know."
Photos can be worth a thousand words; they can also deceive. We have considerable experience collecting, analyzing, and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery, as well as other kinds of intelligence. Suffice it to say that the images released by NATO on August 28 provide a very flimsy basis on which to charge Russia with invading Ukraine. Sadly, they bear a strong resemblance to the images shown by Colin Powell at the UN on February 5, 2003 that, likewise, proved nothing.
That same day, we warned President Bush that our former colleague analysts were "increasingly distressed at the politicization of intelligence" and told him flatly, "Powell’s presentation does not come close" to justifying war. We urged Mr. Bush to "widen the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Consider Iraq today. Worse than catastrophic. Although President Vladimir Putin has until now showed considerable reserve on the conflict in the Ukraine, it behooves us to remember that Russia, too, can "shock and awe." In our view, if there is the slightest chance of that kind of thing eventually happening to Europe because of Ukraine, sober-minded leaders need to think this through very carefully.
If the photos that NATO and the US have released represent the best available "proof" of an invasion from Russia, our suspicions increase that a major effort is under way to fortify arguments for the NATO summit to approve actions that Russia is sure to regard as provocative. Caveat emptor is an expression with which you are no doubt familiar. Suffice it to add that one should be very cautious regarding what Mr. Rasmussen, or even Secretary of State John Kerry, are peddling.
We trust that your advisers have kept you informed regarding the crisis in Ukraine from the beginning of 2014, and how the possibility that Ukraine would become a member of NATO is anathema to the Kremlin. According to a February 1, 2008 cable (published by WikiLeaks) from the US embassy in Moscow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, US Ambassador William Burns was called in by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who explained Russia’s strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.
Lavrov warned pointedly of "fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene." Burns gave his cable the unusual title, "NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES," and sent it off to Washington with IMMEDIATE precedence. Two months later, at their summit in Bucharest NATO leaders issued a formal declaration that "Georgia and Ukraine will be in NATO."
Just yesterday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk used his Facebook page to claim that, with the approval of Parliament that he has requested, the path to NATO membership is open. Yatsenyuk, of course, was Washington’s favorite pick to become prime minister after the February 22 coup d’etat in Kiev. "Yats is the guy," said Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland a few weeks before the coup, in an intercepted telephone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. You may recall that this is the same conversation in which Nuland said, "Fuck the EU."
Timing of the Russian "Invasion"
The conventional wisdom promoted by Kiev just a few weeks ago was that Ukrainian forces had the upper hand in fighting the anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine, in what was largely portrayed as a mop-up operation. But that picture of the offensive originated almost solely from official government sources in Kiev. There were very few reports coming from the ground in southeastern Ukraine. There was one, however, quoting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, that raised doubt about the reliability of the government’s portrayal.
According to the "press service of the President of Ukraine" on August 18, Poroshenko called for a "regrouping of Ukrainian military units involved in the operation of power in the East of the country. … Today we need to do the rearrangement of forces that will defend our territory and continued army offensives," said Poroshenko, adding, "we need to consider a new military operation in the new circumstances."
If the "new circumstances" meant successful advances by Ukrainian government forces, why would it be necessary to "regroup," to "rearrange" the forces? At about this time, sources on the ground began to report a string of successful attacks by the anti-coup federalists against government forces. According to these sources, it was the government army that was starting to take heavy casualties and lose ground, largely because of ineptitude and poor leadership.
Ten days later, as they became encircled and/or retreated, a ready-made excuse for this was to be found in the "Russian invasion." That is precisely when the fuzzy photos were released by NATO and reporters like the New York Times’ Michael Gordon were set loose to spread the word that "the Russians are coming." (Michael Gordon was one of the most egregious propagandists promoting the war on Iraq.)
No Invasion – But Plenty Other Russian Support
The anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine enjoy considerable local support, partly as a result of government artillery strikes on major population centers. And we believe that Russian support probably has been pouring across the border and includes, significantly, excellent battlefield intelligence. But it is far from clear that this support includes tanks and artillery at this point – mostly because the federalists have been better led and surprisingly successful in pinning down government forces.
At the same time, we have little doubt that, if and when the federalists need them, the Russian tanks will come.
This is precisely why the situation demands a concerted effort for a ceasefire, which you know Kiev has so far been delaying. What is to be done at this point? In our view, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk need to be told flat-out that membership in NATO is not in the cards – and that NATO has no intention of waging a proxy war with Russia – and especially not in support of the ragtag army of Ukraine. Other members of NATO need to be told the same thing.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)
Coleen Rowley, Division Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)
http://antiwar.com/blog/2014/08/31/germanys-merkel-needs-to-ask-tough-questions-at-nato-summit/
by seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 02, 2014 12:49 pm
August 31, 2014 5:27 pm
Germany: In a spin
By Stefan Wagstyl
With growth slowing, the problems facing the economy – from the Ukraine crisis to rising energy costs – will have an impact beyond its borders
Exports account for 50 per cent of GDP compared to about 30% in the UK, France and ItalyExports account for 50% of GDP compared to about 30% in the UK, France and ItalyExports account for 50 per cent of GDP compared to about 30% in the UK, France and ItalyOne business estimate suggests that Germany suffers an overall investment gap of 3% of GDP or €80bn annuallyWith the EU’s oldest average age, Germany is facing an accelerating decline in its working-age populationThe IEA calculates that electricity prices for German industry have tripled since 2000
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Engineering company Trumpf is so proud of its machine tools that it displays them in a high-tech exhibition hall at its headquarters in southern Germany.
The laser-cutting rig, the punching machine, and the state-of-the art combined laser-cutter and puncher mesmerise visitors with their unerring precision – turning out anything from jewellery to car door parts. Steel sheet is transformed into components in seconds. The scrap metal disappears automatically in the blink of an eye.
All would seem to be well with this family-owned business, which posted annual sales in the year to June of €2.6bn, the highest in its 90-year history. But the Ukraine crisis is darkening even Trumpf’s horizon.
“Our customers are still investing,” says Mathias Kammüller, executive vice-president, “But they have been very cautious since the [2008] Lehman crisis. And Ukraine is now making people [even] more cautious.”
That caution is spreading across Germany, driven by the worsening conflict in eastern Europe and the recent imposition of EU sector-wide economic sanctions on Russia, which are compounding domestic problems. As Joe Kaeser, chief executive of Siemens, says, geopolitical tensions now pose “serious risks” for Europe’s growth this year and next.
What had been expected to be a strong 2014 for Europe’s largest economy – it accounts for almost 30 per cent of eurozone gross domestic product – is now looking mediocre at best. Growth in the quarter to the end of June fell 0.2 per cent, twice as much as forecast, prompting economists to cut their 2014 forecasts from 2 per cent to about 1.5 per cent.
Germany’s export-oriented economy has long been a model for the rest of Europe. But its apparent strength has concealed long-term vulnerabilities that threaten to crimp its potential.
The implications of a slowdown in Germany stretch beyond its borders. Faster growth would give more time for weaker eurozone members to restructure while a slowdown would retard eurozone recovery and add to the pressure on the European Central Bank to extend its ultra-lax monetary policies.
In August the ECB held off launching new economy-boosting initiatives, even though eurozone output growth fell to zero in the three months to June, thanks partly to Germany’s negative contribution. It meets again on Thursday, facing calls – after lacklustre eurozone inflation figures last week – for more monetary easing.
“The sudden plunge in the second quarter into virtual stagnation came out of the blue,” says Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg. “It may serve the purpose of reminding everyone, including Berlin, that the German economy is not invulnerable.
“[It is also] a clear reason for the ECB to think about doing more.”
The slowdown in Germany is not just about Ukraine. The concerns of German executives also take in emerging markets’ weakness in countries such as Brazil, plus the growing competitive threats from China and an industrially-resurgent US.
At home they worry about high energy costs, skilled labour shortages, crumbling infrastructure and bureaucratic hurdles.
Smaller companies than ours are already in difficulty. We have to show young people that factory jobs are attractive
Business also dislikes Chancellor Angela Merkel’s recent economic policy, especially the mandatory minimum wage and a costly increase in early retirements. The DIHK, the national chamber of commerce, has railed against the policy moves, which appear to run contrary to what Germany has previously urged some of its southern neighbours to do.
Germany is still doing well. With forecast 1.5 per cent growth this year, German GDP by the end of 2014 is predicted to be 10 per cent bigger than before the 2008-9 global financial crisis. That is short of the US on a projected 13 per cent, but far ahead of the rest of the EU, where output languishes below 2008 levels.
The mighty German export machine passed its pre-2009 peak in 2011 and is churning away at about €1.1tn, third in the world behind China and the US. The federal government finances are stable, with planned borrowing set to fall to zero next year. While household debt has declined, consumption is growing, albeit slowly. Unemployment is below 7 per cent, compared to nearly 13 per cent elsewhere in the eurozone.
But slow growth will make it harder to finance the new early retirement scheme, public sector wage increases and additional infrastructure spending. It will also strengthen demands for pro-business reforms.
“Germany is now in a very good position,” says Markus Kerber, managing director of the BDI, the German industry association. “But in the next 10 years every economy in the developed world must change. …[In Germany] the reform agenda is not making the progress that it did in previous years.”
At first sight, it is a puzzle why the Ukraine crisis is doing so much damage to German business confidence when Russia accounts for just 3 per cent of German exports, and Kiev a mere 1 per cent.
But the 6,000 German companies that do business in Russia have wide links across the economy. EU sanctions in defence, finance and oil equipment have been compounded by Russian countermoves in agriculture, which have hurt German farmers.
Germany: Teutonic shifts
Meanwhile other export markets remain patchy. The DIHK trade chamber in August cut its export growth forecast for the year to 3 per cent, compared to an original 4.5 per cent prediction. Henkel, the consumer products company, said Middle East turmoil as well as the Ukraine crisis would “have a negative impact on the market environment”.
Weak exports have a bigger effect on sentiment in the country than elsewhere in the developed world because Germany is particularly dependent on trade.
Exports account for 50 per cent of GDP, compared to about 30 per cent for the UK, France and Italy, and about 15 per cent for the US and Japan.
The fear is that as companies pull in their horns, declining exports could hit investment. At WSM, an association of 5,000 metal working enterprises, Christian Vietmeyer, managing director says: “The first half of the year was good, with production growth of 6.1 per cent. But, in a poll in July, our members said the outlook was darkening.”
Low investment is a longstanding German economic shortcoming. The share of gross fixed capital formation in GDP is just 17 per cent, well below the 21 per cent average for industrialised countries.
Both public and private investment fell in the 2000s – in reaction to the 1990s credit-financed investment boom following German reunification. But economists say investment levels have now been too low for far too long. A DIHK study says the overall investment gap amounts to 3 per cent of GDP, or €80bn annually.
In the public sector, the gaps are even more visible, for example, in the ageing bridges across the Rhine in western Germany. In Leverkusen, for example, lorries above 3.5 tonnes have been banned from using the A1 motorway bridge – a key east-west link. A stronger replacement is not scheduled to open for at least six years.
The federal government has responded with an extra €10bn in the 2014-17 budget plan but that falls way short of the International Monetary Fund’s estimate earlier this year, which urged Berlin to spend €50bn.
In the private sector, domestic machinery investment is at a record low of 6.2 per cent of GDP. Admittedly, German companies are investing heavily overseas, notably in eastern Europe and China. But foreign direct investment is about 1 per cent of GDP, on World Bank estimates, so that alone does not explain the domestic investment gap.
The immediate threat is energy policy. Industry fears the costs of the government’s push to boost renewable energy and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, while simultaneously phasing out nuclear power by 2022.
According to data from the International Energy Agency, German industry’s electricity prices have tripled since 2000, climbing from the bottom of the EU ladder to near the top.
The government is betting that alternative energy will make industry sustainable and create exportable technologies. At Trumpf, Mr Kammüller backs Berlin: “We don’t see the energy transformation as a threat. Germany is ahead because German companies are making energy-saving investments others still have to do.”
But heavy industry displays less optimism. BASF, the chemicals group, this year announced plans to locate a proposed plastics plant in the US because of low energy costs.
At the metal workers’ association, Mr Vietmeyer says: “We can’t measure this interest in investing outside Germany. But by the time it appears in the statistics in 10-15 years it will be too late to do anything about it.”
With the EU’s oldest average age, Germany is also facing an accelerating decline in its working-age population even earlier than its EU partners.
In the past decade, the effects were masked by sharp increases in the proportion of women working, and of men over 55. But as the baby-boom generation retires, the working-age population will fall by about 6m from 42m by 2030, according to projections.
Employers are fighting to fill shortages, especially among skilled crafts people. For example, in the industrial region around Hof, in northern Bavaria, entrepreneurs are holding “girls’ days” to encourage females to consider jobs that were once a male preserve, organising internships for school students, and visiting primary schools to promote factory work.
Maximilian Waldenfels, chief executive of Scherdel, a family-owned car parts maker, says: “Smaller companies than ours are already in difficulty. We have to show young people that factory jobs are attractive.”
Business also complains about red tape, especially in services. For example, most shops are still closed on Sundays, in a policy that protects small outlets against supermarkets. Teachers cannot move freely because each of the 16 federal regions has its own qualifications. In construction, big schemes are held up sometimes for decades by political disputes.
Despite the worries of domestic companies, the country remains the globe’s fourth most attractive investment destination according to the World Economic Forum, the conference group. It scores highly for its skilled workers, innovation record and super-efficient intercompany networks. At 3 per cent of GDP, spending on research and development is among the EU’s highest.
But it faces huge international competition. While China is a major market, it is also a source of growing rivalry. Meanwhile, the US poses a challenge in the form of Google and other internet-based companies, which are looking to capitalise on their dominance of global data flows.
Slowing growth makes it more difficult to focus on these challenges even as they become more urgent.
A decade ago Germany went through painful economic reforms to revive growth. It will not want to relive the experience.
by seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:10 pm
U.S., allies to stage exercises in West Ukraine as battles rage in East
BY PETER APPS
WASHINGTON Tue Sep 2, 2014 1:41pm EDT
(Reuters) - As fighting between the army and Russian-backed rebels rages in eastern Ukraine, preparations are under way near its western border for a joint military exercise this month with more than 1,000 troops from the United States and its allies.
The decision to go ahead with the Rapid Trident exercise Sept. 16-26 is seen as a sign of the commitment of NATO states to support non-NATO member Ukraine while stopping well short of military intervention in the conflict.
The annual exercise, to take place in the Yavoriv training center near Ukraine's border with Poland, was initially scheduled for July, but was put back because early planning was disrupted by the crisis in the eastern part of the country.
"At the moment, we are still planning for (the exercise) to go ahead," U.S. Navy Captain Gregory Hicks, spokesman for the U.S. Army's European Command said on Tuesday.
NATO stepped up military activity in its eastern member states after Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, and is expected to agree at a summit in Wales this week to create a new rapid reaction force of several thousand troops.
In addition to staging air force exercises, the United States is moving tanks and 600 troops to Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for joint maneuvers in October, replacing a more lightly armed force of paratroopers.
But Rapid Trident will entail the first significant deployment of U.S. and other personnel to Ukraine since the crisis erupted.
President Barack Obama will visit Estonia on Wednesday to reassure the former Soviet Baltic states of U.S. support, and Estonia's prime minister on Tuesday called for a more visible NATO presence in eastern Europe.
Washington has promised Ukraine $52 million in non-lethal security aid and has already provided combat rations, body armor, radios and other equipment. Pentagon leaders have met with Ukrainian counterparts to discuss a range of cooperation, but, for now, arms supplies have been ruled out.
"It is very important to understand that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming," Obama told reporters at the White House last week.
The United States European Command (EUCOM) says the exercise this month will involve about 200 U.S. personnel as well as 1,100 others from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Britain, Canada, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania and Spain.
Focused on peacekeeping, it will include command post drills, patrolling and dealing with improvised explosive devices.
While it involves many NATO members as well as countries such as Ukraine, who are part of NATO's broader "Partnership for Peace," the exercise is not formally a NATO drill.
More broadly, under a broad program titled "Operation Atlantic Resolve" meant to show U.S. commitment to the European allies, NATO is running what officials say is a ramped up version of its regular summer and autumn training schedule.
(Reporting by Peter Apps; Editing by David Storey and Gunna Dickson)
by conniption » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:11 pm
Adam Baum @Adam1Baum
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Breaking News:#NATO has just leaked a high-resolution satellite image of a Russian military convoy invading #Ukraine.
12:24 PM - 2 Sep 2014
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by seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 02, 2014 6:15 pm
by zangtang » Tue Sep 02, 2014 7:38 pm
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 03, 2014 8:33 am
Arming Ukraine could lead to nuclear war: Lech Walesa
Krynica (Poland) (AFP) - European military assistance to Ukraine could lead to a nuclear conflict between Russia and NATO, according to Poland's iconic cold warrior and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa.
"It could lead to a nuclear war," the anti-Communist legend told reporters when asked whether the EU should send weapons to Ukraine to help it fights off separatist rebels and Russian aggression.
"The EU is well aware that Russia has nuclear weapons. NATO has them too. Must we then destroy each other?" said the former Solidarity trade union leader famous for negotiating a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989.
"This is why the EU keeps on repeating: stop being silly (...) This is why it isn't getting involved too much!" he added, at an annual regional economic in Krynica, southern Poland.
The EU on Saturday agreed to impose fresh sanctions on Russia should Moscow failed to change its behaviour in Ukraine, after Kiev said Russian soldiers were fighting along side pro-Moscow rebels
Our Cold War With Russia Could Turn Hot
Ukrainian tinderbox may set off World War III
by Justin Raimondo, September 03, 2014
As the NATO summit approaches, and Ukraine’s ruthless war on its eastern provinces sets off an exodus of nearly a million refugees to Russia, war hysteria in the West is reaching epic proportions. The pundits are up in arms: miffed that the long-awaited Russia invasion has failed to materialize, they are now declaring it happened anyway – it’s a "stealth" invasion, i.e. the kind only a neocon can see. There has to have been a Russian invasion, because, after all, the Ukrainians are losing, and it can’t be because their soldiers are deserting in droves or turning tail and running at the prospect of having to shoot their fellow countrymen
Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, who doesn’t realize that even the most expansive estimates of the number of Russians fighting in Ukraine put it at a mere one-thousand, says it’s a "direct invasion" in which "thousands" of Russkies are overrunning the place. He wants us to arm the Ukrainians with "defensive" weapons – although Anne Applebaum’s somewhat overwrought contention that Moscow is planning to nuke Kiev makes Menendez look like a piker. The Amazonian Applebaum is demanding “total war.”
In seeming response to these hysterics, Putin told Euro-commisar Jose Manuel Barroso "If I want to, I could take Kiev in two weeks," which caused blabbermouth Barroso to go wailing to the international media that Putin is on the march. The key words here, of course, are "If I want to" – because he clearly can, and just as clearly doesn’t want to. Indeed, the Russian leader has steadfastly refused to recognize the self-proclaimed "Donetsk Peoples Republic" and has publicly urged them to negotiate with Kiev. The rebels, for their part, have taken Putin up on this, dropping their previous demand for complete independence and asking now, instead, for autonomy.
Kiev, however, isn’t interested in peace talks: the entire goal of their "anti-terrorist" operation in east Ukraine has been to stamp out the rebellion as quickly as possible, and their tactics have reflected this timeline. Air strikes against civilian population centers have been a key feature of the Ukrainian civil war, and the UN estimates that at least 2,200 have died (the reality is closer to 2,600). The UN report, however, ascribes the blame not to the Kiev authorities, but – incredibly – to the rebels, who are blamed for firing from within their own territory. In short, the UN justifies the mass slaughter of civilians in the same way the Israelis rationalize their Gaza massacre.
Kiev’s eagerness to crush the rebels is due to the high costs of the military offensive, both financial and political. Ukraine is bankrupt and is gearing up to impose a severe regime of austerity that will make the government even more unpopular than it is already. And the imposition of military conscription has provoked well-attended anti-draft/antiwar rallies, which pose a direct threat to the government’s legitimacy. These two factors, in combination, could pose a big problem for the US-backed regime in the upcoming parliamentary elections: the ultra-nationalist and overtly fascist Radical Party is reportedly making big gains in the polls.
The fuehrer of the Radicals is one Oleg Lyashko, a member of the Rada (parliament) who leads a group vigilantes who abduct and torture people suspected of rebel sympathies in east Ukraine. He videotapes the whole gruesome scene and posts the videos on his scary web site.
Yes, these are the US-backed fighters for "democracy" in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials say they can’t afford to do without Lyashko and his stormtroopers: after all, according to Ukrainian defense minister Valeriy Heletey "A great war has arrived at our doorstep, the likes of which Europe has not seen since World War Two." And while hyperbole as a rhetorical device is often resorted to by politicians backed into a corner, the Ukrainian government has taken it to a whole new level.
At one point, when they were trying to convince the world – and themselves – that the rebels were on their last legs, they claimed to have killed one-thousand insurgents in two battles just a few days apart. When no evidence for this emerged, they switched gears and instead of talking about the rebels they started focusing on the Russians, claiming that four Ukrainian soldiers were killed in an attack by a Russian helicopter. Most Western news organizations, who have been remarkably tolerant of reporting these tall tales with a straight face, have since removed this story from their web sites.
What’s especially scary about the escalating rhetorical and military situation surrounding the Ukraine civil war is that whenever Kiev issues one of their over-the-top pronouncements, NATO general secretary Anders Rasmussen repeats it verbatim a few hours later. Together, the Rasmussen-Kiev-Washington axis of hyperbole is fanning the flames of a "great war" – the consequences of which are the sort we haven’t contemplated since the bad old days of the cold war, when American schoolchildren routinely cowered under their desks in "duck and cover" air raid drills.
Naturally, Western media have been all too eager to up the temperature of a hot war already veering out of control: for example, when Putin likened the demands of the rebels for autonomy to "statehood" – as in granting the eastern provinces the same rights Washington accords the separate states of the Union – the media jumped on this, averring that the Russians were pulling another Crimea. And while the Russian Foreign Ministry was quick to issue a correction, Washington’s journalistic stenographers continue to report their "error" as fact.
The rebels, energized by the horrific attacks on civilians by Ukrainian air power – and more popular in the region than ever – are pushing back against Kiev’s "anti-terrorist" operation, and seem to be winning, at least for the moment. The government’s big fear is that they will take the port of Mariupol, which will connect Crimea to the Donestk Republic. Faced with debilitating desertions – a whopping 750,000 Ukrainian citizens, many of them former soldiers, have defected to Russia in recent months – and growing unrest back home in Kiev, the authorities have tried to turn what is a civil war into a confrontation with Russia. Their whole shtick is to garner Western military support.
Western leaders are all too eager to buy into this, and the NATO summit to be held this week is promising to be the launching pad of a new military initiative. The NATO-crats are already announcing the formation of a "spearhead" rapid-reaction force, numbering in the thousands, to counter Russia’s "stealth invasion."
What this means is that it’s not out of the question that US "peacekeepers" could be fighting the rebels a few miles from the Russian border – and this could happen sooner than anyone now imagines. The next time Kiev issues one of its outrageous lies claiming direct Russian intervention, we’ll be a border incident away from a face-off with nuclear-armed Russia. "Duck and cover," here we come.
This entire episode of Cold War II has been a farce from the very start: far from a case of Russian "aggression," the destabilization of Ukraine and subsequent coup against the democratically-elected government of President Yanukovich was bought-and-paid-for by Washington, which poured millions into Ukrainian "NGOs" and did everything to encourage the violence that ended in Yanukovich’s overthrow. When Crimea rose up against Kiev, the West framed it as a Russian "invasion," when it was the Americans in concert with their European junior partners who were and are the real invaders.
NATO should’ve been buried at the end of the cold war: instead, the NATO-crats went on the offensive – breaching the understanding reached by Western leaders with then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev – and expanded into most of eastern Europe. George Kennan characterized this as the greatest tragedy of the post-cold war era, and his starkly realistic vision of world affairs is being confirmed as Barack Obama heads to Estonia to do his best John F. Kennedy impression – "Icht bin ein Ukrainians!" – The seeds of World War III are being planted, as none other than Lech Walesa has pointed out. It isn’t and it isn’t due to "global warming" that they just may sprout sooner than anyone thinks.
by Morty » Wed Sep 03, 2014 9:00 am
by American Dream » Wed Sep 03, 2014 3:19 pm
Interview with a Donetsk anarchist
The Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists - N. I. Makhno (Революционная конфедерация анархо-синдикалистов им. Н. И. Махно), established in Ukraine in 1994, was one of the most famous anarchist organizations which emerged from the former Soviet Union. Platformist in essence, the organization managed to assemble a cohort of vigorous activists who wanted to adopt a strategic and responsible approach to the question of achieving a libertarian society. The RKAS survived many troubles, it was involved in the miners' strike and had several long-tem projects, but it was not without its internal squabbles and splits. Over the past year, however, the organization has been heard from less and less. To find out what had happened to the RKAS, and also hear their opinion on the current events in Ukraine, our Russia-based comrades of Autonomous Action interviewed a comrade from the RKAS, Samurai.
What is the situation in Ukraine? Your assessment.
A bourgeois national political revolution is taking place, against the background of which Civil War and the ill-concealed intervention of the neighbouring state are developing. I mean Russia. To put it simply. If I were to use more lyrical words, life is flowing in two parallel realities: people go to cafés, live their daily lives, children walk around, and in the same place nearby – deaths, violence, hatred…
The situation is very difficult and it will last for quite a long time. Perhaps a couple of years. The echoes will hardly ever subside at all. Mutual confrontation and the split in society are growing deeper every day. There is a tangle of contradictions and games of interests from the political point of view. I wrote about this in my articles a good while ago, at the time of Maidan and soon after it, and said in interviews to the ADSR (Autonomous Action Social-Revolutionary) media channel and Radio RKAS Libertaire back in winter. Since then, the situation has become even more multilayered. A lot of things have proved to be true; new players have apparently joined, some things became more obvious. Some foci have shifted. But in general everything is going according to the scenario which I predicted in the article “Baptism of Blood”. They laughed then at my expectations… Now the split of the country and the Civil War are a simple fact.
by conniption » Wed Sep 03, 2014 5:25 pm
Published on Sep 3, 2014
Ukraine's civil war has grounded in stalemate and the economy is crashing. This has created an opening for dialogue. Will all parties seize the moment or will Moscow continue to be blamed?
CrossTalking with Karel van Wolferen, Neil Clark and Gilbert Doctorow.
Foreign Affairs
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault
The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin
By John J. Mearsheimer
From our September/October 2014 Issue
According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.
But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.
Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.
But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant -- and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.
U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border.
THE WESTERN AFFRONT
As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred that U.S. forces remain in Europe and NATO stay intact, an arrangement they thought would keep a reunified Germany pacified. But they and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise, and in the mid-1990s, it began pushing for NATO to expand.
The first round of enlargement took place in 1999 and brought in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The second occurred in 2004; it included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Moscow complained bitterly from the start. During NATO’s 1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, “This is the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders. ... The flame of war could burst out across the whole of Europe.” But the Russians were too weak at the time to derail NATO’s eastward movement -- which, at any rate, did not look so threatening, since none of the new members shared a border with Russia, save for the tiny Baltic countries.
Then NATO began looking further east. At its April 2008 summit in Bucharest, the alliance considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine. The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia. In the end, NATO’s members reached a compromise: the alliance did not begin the formal process leading to membership, but it issued a statement endorsing the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine and boldly declaring, “These countries will become members of NATO.”
Moscow, however, did not see the outcome as much of a compromise. Alexander Grushko, then Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said, “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.” Putin maintained that admitting those two countries to NATO would represent a “direct threat” to Russia. One Russian newspaper reported that Putin, while speaking with Bush, “very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.”
Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 should have dispelled any remaining doubts about Putin’s determination to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was deeply committed to bringing his country into NATO, had decided in the summer of 2008 to reincorporate two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But Putin sought to keep Georgia weak and divided -- and out of NATO. After fighting broke out between the Georgian government and South Ossetian separatists, Russian forces took control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow had made its point. Yet despite this clear warning, NATO never publicly abandoned its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. And NATO expansion continued marching forward, with Albania and Croatia becoming members in 2009.
The EU, too, has been marching eastward. In May 2008, it unveiled its Eastern Partnership initiative, a program to foster prosperity in such countries as Ukraine and integrate them into the EU economy. Not surprisingly, Russian leaders view the plan as hostile to their country’s interests. This past February, before Yanukovych was forced from office, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the EU of trying to create a “sphere of influence” in eastern Europe. In the eyes of Russian leaders, EU expansion is a stalking horse for NATO expansion.
The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.” As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country “the biggest prize.” After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.
When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”
CREATING A CRISIS
Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico.
The West’s triple package of policies -- NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion -- added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.
Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.
For Putin, the time to act against Ukraine and the West had arrived. Shortly after February 22, he ordered Russian forces to take Crimea from Ukraine, and soon after that, he incorporated it into Russia. The task proved relatively easy, thanks to the thousands of Russian troops already stationed at a naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Crimea also made for an easy target since ethnic Russians compose roughly 60 percent of its population. Most of them wanted out of Ukraine.
Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep. Toward that end, he has provided advisers, arms, and diplomatic support to the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, who are pushing the country toward civil war. He has massed a large army on the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade if the government cracks down on the rebels. And he has sharply raised the price of the natural gas Russia sells to Ukraine and demanded payment for past exports. Putin is playing hardball.
THE DIAGNOSIS
Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.
Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia -- a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.
Officials from the United States and its European allies contend that they tried hard to assuage Russian fears and that Moscow should understand that NATO has no designs on Russia. In addition to continually denying that its expansion was aimed at containing Russia, the alliance has never permanently deployed military forces in its new member states. In 2002, it even created a body called the NATO-Russia Council in an effort to foster cooperation. To further mollify Russia, the United States announced in 2009 that it would deploy its new missile defense system on warships in European waters, at least initially, rather than on Czech or Polish territory. But none of these measures worked; the Russians remained steadfastly opposed to NATO enlargement, especially into Georgia and Ukraine. And it is the Russians, not the West, who ultimately get to decide what counts as a threat to them.
To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed to understand that its Ukraine policy was laying the groundwork for a major clash with Russia, one must go back to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration began advocating NATO expansion. Pundits advanced a variety of arguments for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on what to do. Most eastern European émigrés in the United States and their relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they wanted NATO to protect such countries as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy because they thought Russia still needed to be contained.
But most realists opposed expansion, in the belief that a declining great power with an aging population and a one-dimensional economy did not in fact need to be contained. And they feared that enlargement would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in eastern Europe. The U.S. diplomat George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998 interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved the first round of NATO expansion. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies,” he said. “I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.”
The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer.
Most liberals, on the other hand, favored enlargement, including many key members of the Clinton administration. They believed that the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international politics and that a new, postnational order had replaced the realist logic that used to govern Europe. The United States was not only the “indispensable nation,” as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it; it was also a benign hegemon and thus unlikely to be viewed as a threat in Moscow. The aim, in essence, was to make the entire continent look like western Europe.
And so the United States and its allies sought to promote democracy in the countries of eastern Europe, increase economic interdependence among them, and embed them in international institutions. Having won the debate in the United States, liberals had little difficulty convincing their European allies to support NATO enlargement. After all, given the EU’s past achievements, Europeans were even more wedded than Americans to the idea that geopolitics no longer mattered and that an all-inclusive liberal order could maintain peace in Europe.
So thoroughly did liberals come to dominate the discourse about European security during the first decade of this century that even as the alliance adopted an open-door policy of growth, NATO expansion faced little realist opposition. The liberal worldview is now accepted dogma among U.S. officials. In March, for example, President Barack Obama delivered a speech about Ukraine in which he talked repeatedly about “the ideals” that motivate Western policy and how those ideals “have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.” Secretary of State John Kerry’s response to the Crimea crisis reflected this same perspective: “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.”
In essence, the two sides have been operating with different playbooks: Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting according to realist dictates, whereas their Western counterparts have been adhering to liberal ideas about international politics. The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.
BLAME GAME
In that same 1998 interview, Kennan predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a crisis, after which the proponents of expansion would “say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.” As if on cue, most Western officials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in the Ukraine predicament. In March, according to The New York Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that Putin was irrational, telling Obama that he was “in another world.” Although Putin no doubt has autocratic tendencies, no evidence supports the charge that he is mentally unbalanced. On the contrary: he is a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on foreign policy.
Other analysts allege, more plausibly, that Putin regrets the demise of the Soviet Union and is determined to reverse it by expanding Russia’s borders. According to this interpretation, Putin, having taken Crimea, is now testing the waters to see if the time is right to conquer Ukraine, or at least its eastern part, and he will eventually behave aggressively toward other countries in Russia’s neighborhood. For some in this camp, Putin represents a modern-day Adolf Hitler, and striking any kind of deal with him would repeat the mistake of Munich. Thus, NATO must admit Georgia and Ukraine to contain Russia before it dominates its neighbors and threatens western Europe.
This argument falls apart on close inspection. If Putin were committed to creating a greater Russia, signs of his intentions would almost certainly have arisen before February 22. But there is virtually no evidence that he was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other territory in Ukraine, before that date. Even Western leaders who supported NATO expansion were not doing so out of a fear that Russia was about to use military force. Putin’s actions in Crimea took them by complete surprise and appear to have been a spontaneous reaction to Yanukovych’s ouster. Right afterward, even Putin said he opposed Crimean secession, before quickly changing his mind.
Besides, even if it wanted to, Russia lacks the capability to easily conquer and annex eastern Ukraine, much less the entire country. Roughly 15 million people -- one-third of Ukraine’s population -- live between the Dnieper River, which bisects the country, and the Russian border. An overwhelming majority of those people want to remain part of Ukraine and would surely resist a Russian occupation. Furthermore, Russia’s mediocre army, which shows few signs of turning into a modern Wehrmacht, would have little chance of pacifying all of Ukraine. Moscow is also poorly positioned to pay for a costly occupation; its weak economy would suffer even more in the face of the resulting sanctions.
But even if Russia did boast a powerful military machine and an impressive economy, it would still probably prove unable to successfully occupy Ukraine. One need only consider the Soviet and U.S. experiences in Afghanistan, the U.S. experiences in Vietnam and Iraq, and the Russian experience in Chechnya to be reminded that military occupations usually end badly. Putin surely understands that trying to subdue Ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine. His response to events there has been defensive, not offensive.
A WAY OUT
Given that most Western leaders continue to deny that Putin’s behavior might be motivated by legitimate security concerns, it is unsurprising that they have tried to modify it by doubling down on their existing policies and have punished Russia to deter further aggression. Although Kerry has maintained that “all options are on the table,” neither the United States nor its NATO allies are prepared to use force to defend Ukraine. The West is relying instead on economic sanctions to coerce Russia into ending its support for the insurrection in eastern Ukraine. In July, the United States and the EU put in place their third round of limited sanctions, targeting mainly high-level individuals closely tied to the Russian government and some high-profile banks, energy companies, and defense firms. They also threatened to unleash another, tougher round of sanctions, aimed at whole sectors of the Russian economy.
Such measures will have little effect. Harsh sanctions are likely off the table anyway; western European countries, especially Germany, have resisted imposing them for fear that Russia might retaliate and cause serious economic damage within the EU. But even if the United States could convince its allies to enact tough measures, Putin would probably not alter his decision-making. History shows that countries will absorb enormous amounts of punishment in order to protect their core strategic interests. There is no reason to think Russia represents an exception to this rule.
Western leaders have also clung to the provocative policies that precipitated the crisis in the first place. In April, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden met with Ukrainian legislators and told them, “This is a second opportunity to make good on the original promise made by the Orange Revolution.” John Brennan, the director of the CIA, did not help things when, that same month, he visited Kiev on a trip the White House said was aimed at improving security cooperation with the Ukrainian government.
The EU, meanwhile, has continued to push its Eastern Partnership. In March, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, summarized EU thinking on Ukraine, saying, “We have a debt, a duty of solidarity with that country, and we will work to have them as close as possible to us.” And sure enough, on June 27, the EU and Ukraine signed the economic agreement that Yanukovych had fatefully rejected seven months earlier. Also in June, at a meeting of NATO members’ foreign ministers, it was agreed that the alliance would remain open to new members, although the foreign ministers refrained from mentioning Ukraine by name. “No third country has a veto over NATO enlargement,” announced Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general. The foreign ministers also agreed to support various measures to improve Ukraine’s military capabilities in such areas as command and control, logistics, and cyberdefense. Russian leaders have naturally recoiled at these actions; the West’s response to the crisis will only make a bad situation worse.
There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however -- although it would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.
To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly rule out NATO’s expansion into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West should also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine funded jointly by the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the United States -- a proposal that Moscow should welcome, given its interest in having a prosperous and stable Ukraine on its western flank. And the West should considerably limit its social-engineering efforts inside Ukraine. It is time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution. Nevertheless, U.S. and European leaders should encourage Ukraine to respect minority rights, especially the language rights of its Russian speakers.
Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late date would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There would undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries are likely to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately devises a policy that deals effectively with the problem at hand. That option is clearly open to the United States.
One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians think the same way about Ukraine joining the West. It is in Ukraine’s interest to understand these facts of life and tread carefully when dealing with its more powerful neighbor.
Even if one rejects this analysis, however, and believes that Ukraine has the right to petition to join the EU and NATO, the fact remains that the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these requests. There is no reason that the West has to accommodate Ukraine if it is bent on pursuing a wrong-headed foreign policy, especially if its defense is not a vital interest. Indulging the dreams of some Ukrainians is not worth the animosity and strife it will cause, especially for the Ukrainian people.
Of course, some analysts might concede that NATO handled relations with Ukraine poorly and yet still maintain that Russia constitutes an enemy that will only grow more formidable over time -- and that the West therefore has no choice but to continue its present policy. But this viewpoint is badly mistaken. Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time. Even if Russia were a rising power, moreover, it would still make no sense to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. The reason is simple: the United States and its European allies do not consider Ukraine to be a core strategic interest, as their unwillingness to use military force to come to its aid has proved. It would therefore be the height of folly to create a new NATO member that the other members have no intention of defending. NATO has expanded in the past because liberals assumed the alliance would never have to honor its new security guarantees, but Russia’s recent power play shows that granting Ukraine NATO membership could put Russia and the West on a collision course.
Sticking with the current policy would also complicate Western relations with Moscow on other issues. The United States needs Russia’s assistance to withdraw U.S. equipment from Afghanistan through Russian territory, reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, and stabilize the situation in Syria. In fact, Moscow has helped Washington on all three of these issues in the past; in the summer of 2013, it was Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by forging the deal under which Syria agreed to relinquish its chemical weapons, thereby avoiding the U.S. military strike that Obama had threatened. The United States will also someday need Russia’s help containing a rising China. Current U.S. policy, however, is only driving Moscow and Beijing closer together.
The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process -- a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.
by conniption » Wed Sep 03, 2014 9:52 pm
RT
Obama & State Dept. contradict each other on ‘Russian troops in Ukraine’ - Putin’s spokesman
Published time: September 03, 2014
Edited time: September 04, 2014
The US President says it is now “provable” that "Russian combat forces and tanks" moved into Ukraine. But Kremlin says Obama’s words are in conflict with the State Department that said it has no proof of Russian troops in the area.
A statement from the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov came in response to Barack Obama’s address to the Baltic States’ leader. Speaking ahead of NATO summit, President Obama said that the US has no doubt that Russian troops are involved in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.
"The Russian forces that have now moved into Ukraine aren't on a 'humanitarian' or 'peacekeeping mission.' They are Russian combat forces with Russian weapons in Russian tanks. There are Russian warheads with Russian weapons and Russian tanks. Now, these are the facts. They are provable. They're not subject to dispute," Obama said at a press-conference in Tallinn.
However, this information comes into conflict with the recent statement of the US State Department, Peskov said.
“We have repeatedly said there are no Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine. While Obama says there can be no doubts about that, US Department of State officials say simultaneously with their president that the United States has no proof of Russian military presence in Ukraine. This situation underscores their reluctance to use facts,” the Russian president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian News Service radio station.
“It’s an obsession with attributing a negative role in the development of the Ukrainian crisis to Russia, and we strongly object to this,” Kremlin’s spokesman added.
On Tuesday the US State Department spokeswoman told reporters that the US does not have “anything new to confirm” that Russian military moved into Ukraine.
The only information the US has on the movement of Russian troops across the Ukrainian border was “confirmed” last week, Jen Psaki said, referring to NATO’s satellite images released as a “proof” of Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine.
The images were ridiculed by Russia’s Defense Ministry, while an alliance of seven former US intelligence officers - the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) – said the evidence produced by NATO from the Ukrainian-Russian border was on a par with the “same dubious, politically ‘fixed’ kind used 12 years ago to ‘justify’ the US-led attack on Iraq.”
‘Many of our comrades can’t look quietly’
On Wednesday, Russian veterans have called to end speculations around those Russian men who voluntarily joined east-Ukrainian rebels in the fight against Kiev.
“These are not adventurers, not criminals, not mercenaries, these are Russian people, who have it already laid down in their genes: to help our friendly nations in a difficult situation. We understand that this internal conflict or civil war in Ukraine is not Russia’s business. But this way Russia [through volunteers] has a right to help,” said Colonel-General Valery Vostrotin, the chairman of the Council of the Moscow Department “Battle Brotherhood”.
Several veterans’ organizations have issued a statement in which they explained what makes them, retired military servicemen, take arms again.
“Many of our comrades can’t look quietly [at what is happening in Ukraine] and take part in this conflict,” Igor Shevchuk, a veteran of Alpha special forces, said.
A retired Russian officer Vladimir Melnik is one of those men. He is now undergoing treatment in Moscow after being injured in leg in Ukraine.
He does not call himself a hero. For him, born and raised in the Donetsk region, when it still was part of the USSR, supporting rebels in his native land is a duty. His relatives and friends still leave there. Melnik says he could not leave them in trouble.
“If somebody intrudes into you house, starts killing your brothers, your sisters, raping your women, killing your children and rob elders how would you react to this? I understand that this is, primarily, a spiritual struggle; looking at what is happening in the world today, I would not like to stand and watch as our Orthodox people are being killed in their own home,” he says.
Melkin says there are many volunteers - former military personnel like him - fighting along with self-defense forces in the south-east of Ukraine.
“There are many of us and more people were ready to come. For now, Thank God, we are coping [with the situation] with the tools we have,” Melnik says.
When asked if he was paid or offered anything for coming to Ukraine, he says: “If I came to my father and said: Dad, I’m here to protect you from fascists for money, he would not understand me, neither would others. I wouldn’t have any respect to myself as well.”
Melnik says it was tough for eastern Ukrainian men “to leave their mines” and take arms, but now, thanks to the experience which people with military background shared, they “understand more.”
Asked about military equipment, Melnik confesses that everything rebels have is old, “from the Soviet time”, but this is enough to hold the fort.
“It is not difficult to find arms in Ukraine,” he says. “There are many ammunition depots left after the Soviet Union. It is old, from Soviet times. Yes, guys had to repair some of it or replace some of the details, but it works.”
OSCE: No armed men crossing Ukraine border
OSCE’s observer mission has indicated in its latest report that it has not witnessed any Russian troops or tanks crossing the border into Ukraine.
What it did record, however, was an increased presence of unmanned aerial vehicles and young men and women crossing from Russia into Ukraine unarmed.
There has been “increased military activity principally of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the vicinity of the Border Crossing Points,” OSCE said in the weekly update from August 28 to September 3.
“Throughout the week, the OTs [Observer Teams] noticed a net increase of young people (both men and women) wearing military-style dress crossing the border in both directions but did not observe any weapons among these groups.”
OSCE noted that supporters of self-defense forces said they are not allowed to cross the border with weapons. But once they cross into Ukraine, weapons can be obtained from self-defense forces.
The observer mission added that situation in Lugansk remains “dire.” OSCE cites accounts of “severe destruction caused by artillery fire which resulted in the interruption of water, gas and electricity supplies, the latter apparently unavailable for more than five weeks in some areas including Lugansk city itself.”
by conniption » Wed Sep 03, 2014 9:57 pm
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