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by conniption » Fri Dec 28, 2018 7:41 am
by Jerky » Fri Dec 28, 2018 10:48 am
by conniption » Fri Dec 28, 2018 8:23 pm
conniption » Fri Dec 28, 2018 2:10 am wrote:mint press news
Washington Just Injected Serious Cash and Weapons into Ukraine’s Far-Right Regime
It doesn’t seem to bother US lawmakers that the government of Ukraine is dominated by Neo-Nazi demagogues and paramilitaries who worship Stepan Bandera and other Ukrainian collaborators in the Third Reich’s Final Solution.
by Finian Cunningham
December 27th, 2018
Oh, what a lovely big stocking-filler for the Kiev regime this week from Washington. Just in time for Christmas too, and only weeks after President Petro Poroshenko tried to incite a war with Russia from a naval provocation in the Kerch Strait.
First, we had US government envoy Kurt Volker announcing this week that an additional $250 million in military weapons were being packaged in Congress for Ukraine. Then the DC-based international lending institutions, the IMF and World Bank, signed off on multi-billion-dollar loans for Poroshenko’s regime.
US government-owned Radio Free Europe described the new financial loans as a “victory” for Poroshenko. The apparent investor confidence bestowed by the Washington-based “development agencies” will boost the incumbent president’s re-election prospects in the forthcoming ballot in March. Up until recently, Poroshenko was trailing in opinion polls and looked set for a trouncing defeat in the election. How convenient that the IMF and World Bank – under the control of US government – should step up to the plate with a very big helping hand. And that’s not seen as interference in a country’s sovereign affairs?
Since the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 against the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych, it is estimated that the US has provided the cabal that seized power with up to $1 billion in military aid. And those dubious gifts keep coming, with the envoy Kurt Volker this week announcing to a forum in Brussels that the US Congress is processing an additional $250 million.
It doesn’t seem to bother American lawmakers that the Kiev regime is dominated by Neo-Nazi demagogues and paramilitaries who worship Stepan Bandera and other Ukrainian collaborators in the Third Reich’s Final Solution. Just recently President Poroshenko was photographed inspecting Ukrainian special forces some of whom were donning insignia of the Third Reich’s SS.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed out in his annual press conference this week, the Kiev regime has been waging a war and a blockade against its own Ukrainian citizens in the eastern Donbas region for over four years, in which civilians continue to be killed on a daily basis.
One reason why that war remains largely unknown in the West is that western news media don’t report on it. Or when they do, they distort with lies that Russia has “invaded Ukraine”. This is similar to how the Western news media largely “forgot” to report on the war in Yemen, and when they have bothered to mention Yemen at all, they again distort by calling it a proxy war with Iran.
The Ukraine war against the ethnic Russian people of eastern Ukraine is driven by a rabid Russophobia subscribed to by the Kiev regime consistent with the exterminatory mentality of the Third Reich with whom their antecedents collaborated with during the Second World War.
The criminal recklessness of Washington knows no bounds. Just as President Donald Trump announces this week that he is pulling out American troops from Syria (illegally present there for the past four years), the same administration is stepping up its military involvement in Ukraine.
After the November 25 incident in the Kerch Strait when three heavily armed Ukrainian warships violated Russia’s maritime border, one might have thought that the US backers of the Kiev regime would have prevailed upon it with caution not to incite Russia. Not a bit of it, it seems. The US is giving notice that it is increasing its already hefty military support. That amounts to a green light from Washington to the Kiev regime to continue its provocations.
The timing of the IMF and World Bank financing is also blatant, and equally reprehensible. The IMF said it had approved $4 billion in new money for the Kiev regime, the first tranche of which will be disbursed by December 25, Christmas Day in the Western calendar! Together, the IMF and World Bank loans will enable the Kiev regime to seek taking on even more debt from other international sources, their approval acting as an endorsement of “sound economy”.
Ukraine is already lumbering from huge national debts of around $115 billion. The IMF and World Bank are therefore pushing the country into deeper arrears. No doubt that is part of the threadbare pattern of how Western capital will strip the country of its resources and the populace thrown into debt slavery.
Nevertheless, grave legal questions arise. It is understood that the Bretton Woods institutions of the IMF and World Bank, officially affiliated with the United Nations, are forbidden from lending money to states which are in the midst of armed conflict. How is it then possible that those institutions are bankrolling the Kiev regime given the latter’s horrendous assault on its own people in eastern Ukraine, its explicit affiliation with Neo-Nazi ideology, and its brazen attempts to provoke a war with Russia?
Furthermore, IMF lending was supposedly put on hold in 2017 because the Kiev regime was not complying with demands to crack down on corruption and implement political reforms. If anything the economic and political corruption in Ukrainian territory under the control of the Kiev regime has become an even bigger, more rampant problem. The IMF and World Bank announced their “financial goodies” this week without providing any evidence of purported conditional improvements.
This all makes for a grim prognosis over the coming months. The Kiev regime has no intention to go back to the 2015 Minsk accords which called for a negotiated political settlement in Ukraine. As Putin remarked recently, as long as the current cabal in Kiev remains in power then conflict will be the order of the day.
The US government and the Washington financial institutions are ensuring that the cabal remains in power with their generous rewards of military and capital injections. More disturbing is that the Kiev regime will feel emboldened to take its warmongering against Russia to an even more reckless level.
Father Christmas is supposed to reward good boys and girls. For Washington, the gifts are evidently doled out for a Neo-Nazi rogue regime with blood on its hands.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/washingto ... me/253330/
by Grizzly » Sat Dec 29, 2018 2:47 am
The Unknown War (Russian: "Великая Отечественная" (The Great Patriotic War) or "Неизвестная война" (The Unknown War) is an American documentary television series. The 20-part series documents the World War II conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The show was produced and syndicated for international distribution by Air Time International, and the executive producer was Fred Weiner. Each episode is about 48 minutes long, similar in format to the film The World at War. The footage was edited from over 3.5 million feet of film taken by Soviet camera crews from the first day of the war during Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941 through the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in August 1945. Most of these films have never been seen outside this documentary series.
The series is hosted by Academy Award winner Burt Lancaster, who spent three weeks in eight cities in the USSR for location filming. Film footage from Soviet archives comprises a major portion of the series, supplemented by film from both the United States and British archives. Appearing in exclusive interviews would be Russian Commanders like Georgi Zhukov and Vasily Chuikov. Other interviews shot for the series included Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and Averell Harriman, who was U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II.
The series was produced with Soviet cooperation after the release of The World at War. Fred Weiner believed that a TV series featuring never before seen footage of the battles on the Eastern front would be of great interest to viewers and worldwide TV stations. Released in 1978, The Unknown War promoted the scope of the Soviet participation against Nazi Germany. The program was purchased first by German TV and quickly thereafter by TV stations in New York and Boston. Eventually the program was purchased by approximately 75 American TV stations and over 50 foreign broadcasters. After the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, several American TV stations, responding to public outcry, temporarily halted airings. Later it returned to additional airings on cable, including A&E, the History Channel and YouTube.
by conniption » Sat Dec 29, 2018 3:09 am
Grizzly wrote:Anyone here ever watch The Unknown War Narrated by: Burt Lancaster?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483223/The Unknown War (Russian: "Великая Отечественная" (The Great Patriotic War) or "Неизвестная война" (The Unknown War) is an American documentary television series. The 20-part series documents the World War II conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union...
conniption » Wed Jan 28, 2015 5:58 pm wrote:The Unknown War Ep1 June 22 1941
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuuthpJmAigPublished on Feb 8, 2013
The Unknown War
The greatest battles of World War II, the most colossal encounters of military force, the most devastating human losses which the modern world has ever seen, occurred on Russian soil during 1941-1945, on a battlefield that is unknown to most Americans. The conflict between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia claimed more than 30 million lives.
On the early morning of June 22, 1941, the Nazi Wehrmacht had amassed 4.2 million crack troops along a front that stretched for 1,800 miles, and Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union began. The Nazi high command was extremely confident, expecting the total collapse of Stalin's Russia within six weeks. In reality, The Unknown War raged on for nearly four years. Before it finished, the Nazis and Soviets fought the single greatest campaign in military history. The Unknown War covers that period of history beginning in June 1941, when Germany launched its surprise attack on Russia, through to the end of the war.
The Unknown War was a landmark television series, detailing the drama of the Eastern European front during World War II. Academy Award Winner Burt Lancaster hosts the 20 part series. Film footage from Soviet archives
comprises a major portion of the series, supplemented by film from both the United States and British archives. Burt Lancaster spent three weeks in eight cities in Russia, for location filming.
The Unknown War was made as a counter to the deliberate distortions in the Anglo-American series The World At War, which chose to give as much coverage to the US in Italy as it did to the Red Army at war from the Arctic to the Black Sea. So blatant was the politically motivated distortion in The World At War that the Soviet authorities ultimately refused to cooperate in its production. Instead they set out to make a documentary series of their own that would tell the real story of the War in the East.
The Eastern (Russian) Front of WW2 has been side-lined in the Western media for decades, reduced to just "one aspect" of the War, if it is even mentioned at all. Certainly there is never any recognition given to the fact that it was the main, decisive arena of WW2, the scene of a titanic struggle that, at the cost of 30 million Soviet lives, saved the world from fascism.
Made by the USSR's Central Documentary Film Studios, The Unknown War dealt exhaustively with the war on the Soviet front.
Narrated by Burt Lancaster, who also appeared on camera, the series featured interviews with many participants from numerous battles, partisan campaigns and SS massacres. It showed the destruction, the sacrifice and the heroism, and also the pride in their colossal achievement. As Stalin said in one of his communications to Churchill, "Hitler has 25 divisions in North Africa; I have 250 in the Soviet Union."
Unfortunately, the Western TV networks and distributors who bought The Unknown War for telecast were not prepared to mount the kind of publicity campaigns needed to overcome 30 years of lies, distortion and simple suppression of the facts about the Soviet role in WW2.
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All the content belong to their respectful owners.
I do not earn any money with this video.
This video is for education purposes only.
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by Jerky » Sat Dec 29, 2018 7:39 am
by conniption » Mon Dec 31, 2018 9:16 pm
by Jerky » Tue Jan 01, 2019 6:53 am
by conniption » Tue Jan 01, 2019 10:39 pm
Jen
Jan, 1, 2019
Wishing Off-Guardian.org and its community of readers and commenters a Happy New Year for 2019.
Mine got off to a good start yesterday with this article from Eric Zuesse at Strategic Culture:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... roven.html
The article links to the Russian Defense Ministry September 2018 briefing on evidence presented by the Joint Investigation Team earlier in May that claimed that fragments of the BUK Telar missile supposedly used to bring down the airliner had been found and the serial number identified.
Briefing on newly discovered evidence pertaining to the crash of the MH17 flight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFZbjyoqokМинобороны России
Published on Sep 17, 2018
Briefing by the Russian Defence Ministry on newly discovered evidence pertaining to the crash of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
strategic-culture
(embedded links)
MH17 Turnabout: Ukraine’s Guilt Now Proven
Eric ZUESSE
31.12.2018
Finally, a clear and convincing — and unrefuted — case can now be presented to the public, as to precisely whom the guilty party was, that downed the MH17 Malaysian airliner over Ukraine on 17 July 2014, and why it was done. The complete case, which will be fully documented here, displays unequivocally who needed the MH17 murders (of 298 persons) to be perpetrated. This mass-murder was done for one leader’s very pressing obsession. For him, it simply had to be done, and done at that precise time.
The full MH17 case will be presented here, to be judged by the public, because no court of law which possesses the power to bring this (or even any) case on the MH17 murders, is willing to do so, and because the evidence in this 17 July 2014 case has become overwhelming, and is unrefuted. This evidence is accepted by both sides. But it still remains effectively hidden from the publics in the United States and its allied countries. (The present news-report, which is the first ever to present this entire case, is submitted to all news-media in English-speaking countries, so that any of them that wishes to provide its audience access to this uncontested and conclusive evidence in the MH17 case can do so, by publishing this article. Any of them that won’t, don’t want their audience to have access to the conclusive evidence in this case, because this article is being made available to all of them to publish, free of charge; so, there is no other reason not to publish it.)
The complete evidence will be described, and all of the conclusive evidence is linked-to, proving who perpetrated, and who demanded, the shoot-down on 17 July 2014 of the Malaysian airliner MH17.
This article will start by demonstrating the most important thing, and will demonstrate it by means of links to the most conclusive evidence of all. This is the evidence which absolutely proves that the official Netherlands-headed investigation into this matter is an intentional and utter fraud — a fraud which has already been conclusively answered and exposed by the Russian Government. (Netherlands headed the investigation because 196 of the 298 murder-victims were Dutch.) Russia’s response provided, in excruciating detail, not only clear disproofs of the Netherlands-headed investigation’s conclusions of Russian guilt, but also (and on the basis of the very same evidence that the official investigation had made public on 24 May 2018) provided the still-unrefuted (but nonetheless still effectively hidden) proofs of Ukraine’s actual and incontestable guilt, in this mass-murder. This evidence, of the Netherlands team’s fraudulence, carries the investigation a large part of the way toward its ultimate conclusion, regarding whom the person was who had demanded Ukraine to commit this crime.
Incidentally, the Netherlands Government had partially funded the coup that in February 2014 overturned Ukraine’s Government and installed the new regime, which regime is allied with the United States Government and actually perpetrated the MH17 shoot-down. The Government of Netherlands is not a neutral in this case that it is judging. It had helped install the present regime in Ukraine. In fact, as you can see here, Netherlands’ Government had been the largest single contributor to Ukraine’s Hromadske TV, which was propagandizing to exterminate the residents in Ukraine’s former Donbass region, which breakaway region had voted over 90% for Ukraine’s Democratically elected President, whom Obama’s coup had just overthrown. This operation in Ukraine is an extension from the corrupt Nazi Prince Bernhard's having established in Netherlands in 1954 the secretive Bilderberg group to coordinate NATO’s efforts for the US and its allies to conquer ultimately the world. He got caught in 1976, for one of his skimming operations, a million-dollar kickback from Lockheed Corporation. Holland’s Deep State is anything but benign.
So, Russia’s response, on 17 September 2018, used that Netherlands-headed team’s own documentation, to disprove that team’s attribution of guilt to Russia, and to prove conclusively Ukraine’s guilt as having been the actual perpetrator of this mass-murder. Thus, the Netherlands-headed team includes the actual perpetrator, Ukraine, and not only the Netherlands Government, which had helped overthrow Ukraine’s prior and democratically elected Government and bring Ukraine’s current regime into power in February 2014, just months prior to the MH17 shoot-down, which resulted from that US coup.
Most readers who click onto the links here will be shocked. What will shock them is the evidence, because it has not been published in The West (except summarized in less than a half-dozen obscure news-media — and, even there, generally not documented, such as it is here).
The links will document and fully prove this stunning turnabout, from Russia to Ukraine. The documentation that was cited by Ukraine and Ukraine’s fellow team-member (the team’s leader) Netherlands, against Russia, on May 24th of 2018, contained previously unrecognized details (which were first pointed out in the Russian presentation on September 17th of 2018) which irrefutably convict Ukraine. Consequently, Russia’s response was ignored in The West, despite that presentation’s having been based upon the very same items of evidence that had been introduced by the Netherlands-led team on May 24th. Thus, the items of evidence, there, are the same that the Netherlands-led team had themselves provided. The items of evidence here are not in dispute.
The current article will be the first-ever to hone-in on the especially shocking key data in Russia’s data-packed September 17th response, the key evidence that Russia was calling attention to there, and which prove Ukraine’s guilt beyond any reasonable doubt — prove it on the basis of the very same evidence that had been introduced by Ukraine’s own team in their presentation four months earlier. Using the other side’s evidence to convict that other side is what makes this denouement the stunning turnabout that it is.
The Netherlands-headed Ukrainian team still refuses to answer the Russian presentation, which responds to the Ukrainian team’s May 24th presentation. Western ‘news’-media have likewise almost completely ignored Russia’s response. (One Dutch medium did report on it but dismissed it by focusing on a subordinate part: their report said and focused on “Russia now claims that the video images the investigators used to track the missile's transport to the Ukraine, were manipulated.” However, the part of Russia’s presentation that will be discussed in the present article was being entirely ignored in that Dutch news-report, which, as you will see here, has nothing to do with any claim of manipulated evidence. Britain’s BBC likewise focused-in on the “manipulated evidence” that Russia’s presentation had attacked. The Washington Post instead headlined “Who spread disinformation about the MH17 crash? We followed the Twitter trail”, and it focused-in on how polarized the public is over the MH17 case. The West’s ‘news’-coverage was virtually entirely misdirection and disinformation, as you will recognize from what follows here. And the evidence here is linked-to, so that you can see it for yourself.)
Russia’s response documented beyond any question, at all, that this airliner was shot down by the Ukrainian Government, and that Western (i.e., US-allied) ‘news’media have been and are covering-up this crucial historical fact and The West’s still-ongoing lies about the downing of MH17.
Those lies are the basis of US and EU anti-Russia sanctions, which remain in effect despite the basis for those sanctions having been exposed unequivocally, on September 17th, to be based on lies. Thus, continuing to hide those lies is crucial to the liars. This is the reason why Russia’s blazingly detailed presentation on September 17th has been virtually ignored — to protect the actually guilty. The evidence here proves that those sanctions, themselves, are nothing but frauds against the public, and crimes against Russia — ongoing additional crimes, which have been, and remain, effectively hidden till now.
The reader can see and consider here all of the conclusive evidence in the MH17 case — it can be reached via the present article’s links. Unlike the ‘news’-reports in The West’s ‘news’-media, the presentation here is not presuming readers’ trust, but is instead providing to all readers access to the actual evidence — evidence that is accepted by both sides. That’s what the links here are for: examination by any skeptics.
Skepticism in judging anything is not only good; it is essential to justice. Trust should never be given; it should only be earned. Otherwise, no democracy can function. Only dictatorship can function in a country that’s controlled by lies, and by liars. Liars are believed by people who have faith in them. Thus, faith in anything or anyone can poison judgment. The way to test the case that is presented here is to click onto a link wherever one wants to see and examine the evidence. Without examining (usually by spot-checking) the evidence, no reader can intelligently judge any case. Dictatorship is almost inevitable in a counry where spot-checking of the actual evidence isn’t the norm. Most ‘news’-media don’t even enable such spot-checking. This is why ‘news’-media are so often actually propaganda-media instead.
So, here’s the complete MH17 case, for any reader to judge:
—
The last announcement from the official investigation, the Netherlands-headed “Joint Investigative Team” (JIT), was on 24 May 2018, and it headlined “Update in criminal investigation MH17 disaster”. It said:
The JIT is convinced that the BUK-TELAR [missile and launcher] that was used to down MH17, originates from the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile brigade (hereinafter 53rd brigade), a unit of the Russian army from Kursk in the Russian Federation. … This fingerprint has been compared with numerous images of BUK-TELARS, both Ukrainian and Russian ones. The only BUK-TELAR on which this combination of characteristics also was found, is a BUK-TELAR that was recorded several times when it joined a convoy of the 53rd brigade on 23 – 25 June 2014.
Consequently, the JIT presumes that within the 53rd brigade and within the circle around it, people have knowledge about the operation in which that particular BUK-TELAR was deployed. … Already in September 2016, the JIT disclosed that MH17 was downed with a BUK missile of the 9M38 series. …
The missile engine’s casing shows the number 9 д 1318869032.
Typical of Western ‘news’-media’s coverage of that presentation, was CNN’s report the same day, May 24th of 2018. It was headlined "Missile that downed MH17 'owned by Russian brigade’". It stated: “‘At the time this area was under control of pro-Russian separatists,’ said Fred Westerbeke, chief prosecutor of the National Prosecutor’s Office of the Netherlands. The Buk launcher of the 9M38 series ‘was transported from the territory of the Russian Federation and was returned to that territory of the Russian Federation afterwards’.”
The Ukrainian side claimed they had finally found evidence which would enable them definitively to place the blame for the MH17 shoot-down on Russia. So, the very next day, May 25th, Britain’s Telegraph bannered "Netherlands and Australia call for compensation for MH17 victims as they accuse Russia of downing plane" and reported that “Australia and the Netherlands have said they hold Russia legally responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014 and will seek reparations for relatives of the 298 people killed.” This demand against Russia was coming “the day after the Dutch-led international investigation concluded that the Russian military had deployed the Buk surface-to-air missile that shot down the plane.”
Four months later, on 17 September 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defense youtubed its response, which is titled “Briefing on newly discovered evidence pertaining to the crash of the MH17 flight”. It presented the actual history of the Buk missile and launcher which Ukraine and the other Governments on the JIT said had brought down the MH17. (The JIT includes four countries, Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia, with a fifth, Malaysia, having been brought in only later, after it finally agreed to allow Ukraine a veto over any conclusions that the team will publish. Malaysia’s participation started on 4 December 2014; but whether Malaysia has actually been allowed to play a role in the ‘investigation’ isn’t clear.) Russia, during the intervening months after the JIT’s May 24th presentation, had tracked down all of those serial numbers, 8868720, and 1318869032, and 9M38, and found (as you can see there by clicking on each, especially onto the “Briefing” itself) that after the acquisition of the launcher and missile, by Ukraine in 1986, from Russia, that missile and its launcher had always, and constantly since their transfer to Ukraine in 1986, remained in Ukraine, and never again were located in Russia. So: if the JIT’s supplied evidence is authentic — which the Ukrainian team asserts it to be — then it outright convicts Ukraine. This is an evidentiary checkmate, against the Ukrainian side.
—
With the passage now of years, the precise cause of the shooting-down of the Malaysian passenger plane MH17 on 17 July 2014 has been becoming clearer and clearer, despite the rigorous continuing attempts by Western ‘news’ media to cover it up and to hide from the public the growing and by-now irrefutable evidence (presented here) that clearly shows what and who actually brought down this airliner.
In the years since I headlined on August 24th of 2014 the news, “MH-17 ‘Investigation’: Secret August 8th Agreement Seeps Out: Perpetrator of the Downing in Ukraine, of the Malaysian Airliner, Will Stay Hidden”, the key fact about the official ‘investigation’ has actually been that the Government of Ukraine was, on 8 August 2014, granted veto-power over any official finding which would be produced by the Joint Investigative Team. On 20 November 2014, Russian Television headlined “Dutch government refuses to reveal ‘secret deal’ into MH17 crash probe” and reported that Holland’s science-publishers Elsevier had filed for this information under that country’s Freedom of Information Act, and the Government simply refused to comply with that law. The leaders of Western nations apparently want the black-box and much other basic data in their possession to remain hidden, and the four nations had signed this secret agreement to allow the Government of Ukraine to block any report that incriminates Ukraine in the MH17 shoot-down. But additional evidence has nonetheless become public, and all of it confirms and adds yet further details to the explanation that was first put forth by the retired German Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko, whose independent investigation had concluded that Ukrainian Government fighter-jets intentionally shot down this civilian plane. He did not rule out the possibility that a Buk missile had simultaneously been used there, but he made clear that at least one fighter-jet had been used in this shoot-down.
However, if those parts of a Buk missile, which were the focus of the Netherlands team’s presentation on May 24th, were indeed retrieved from the crash-site as that team claims, then a Buk missile had also hit the MH17. Serious question would nonetheless exist as to whether that Buk was fired by troops who were working for Ukraine, or instead for Russia (or else for Donbas separatists who were working in conjunction with Russia, which was Ukraine’s and America’s original version of the event).
Precisely what the method was, by which the direct perpetrators brought down the MH17, has gradually become clearer, despite this continuation of Western secrecy (and Ukraine’s veto-power over the ‘findings’) regarding the contents of the black boxes, and of the US satellite images, and of the Ukrainian air-traffic-control radar recordings, and of other evidence-sources that are still being held secret by The West and not made available to their ‘news’ media nor to anyone outside a tight official circle of those Western nations’ intelligence agencies.
But now, Russia has actually — on 17 September 2018 — exposed the outright fraudulence of the JIT’s 24 May 2018 presentation, and The West (the US Government’s allies) entirely ignored the conclusive evidence that that presentation by the JIT itself actually contained and to which Russia was pointing, so that there can no longer be reasonable doubt about The West’s intentional and still ongoing fraudulence regarding the entire MH17 matter.
Also entirely ignored in the Ukrainain team’s ‘explanation’ of the event is why Ukraine’s air-traffic control had guided the MH17’s pilot to fly over the conflict-zone where Ukraine’s civil war was being waged and where Ukraine’s war-planes were bombing. The MH17’s pilot was instructed by Ukraine’s air-traffic control to take that path instead of the one that the airline had planned and that had become normal during the civil war. This was highly abnormal, and it doomed the MH17. Clearly, only Ukraine’s Government could, and did, do that — change the route, and for only that one plane. Yet, still, the Netherlands-headed team blames Russia and is trusted in The West, but Russia is not. (Now, why would that be?)
Russia has constantly been releasing its own investigations regarding MH-17; and, in the process, Russia on September 17th not only provided further details as to how the downing actually happened (it wasn’t by mistake, as the West contends it was), but they have also, in prior presentations, exposed the absurd impossibility of the Ukrainian Government’s ‘explanation’ of this event (that only a Buk had been used), which is the ‘explanation’ that is still being parroted unquestioningly and unflinchingly by officials in Washington, Europe, and NATO, and also by Western ‘news’ media. (As my news-report on 24 August 2014 explained, that secret August 8th agreement was signed by the four governments which formed the JIT team and which had been handed by Malaysia the black boxes to study — Ukraine, Belgium, Australia, and Netherlands — and the JIT granted to the Ukrainian Government a veto over anything that the team’s official report would say. This is probably the reason why the subsequent officially released report on those black boxes said essentially nothing. It was a brazen insult to the 298 victims’ families. The presumption has been that all of them will have faith, not be skeptical, regarding the JIT team.)
Though Russia doesn’t possess those black boxes (which, by chance, were handed by the pro-Russian separatists to the Malaysian Government’s representative, and yet that Government handed them to Netherland’s Government instead of to Russia’s — apparently trusting Netherlands more than trusting Russia or even themselves), Russia does possess, and publicly reveals, evidence that’s conclusive on its own; and it is 100% consistent with Haisenko’s reconstruction of the event, regardless whether a Buk was involved or not. Russian Television had issued in October 2014 a 25-minute documentary on the event, and it starts with people whom they interviewed in that region, who were describing their having seen at least one and perhaps two planes rising toward the airliner, and then the airliner coming down from the sky. Other witnesses told them that they saw an SU-25 fighter plane take off in that general area just minutes before the airliner came down.
FIRST, THE MISSING BBC REPORT:
The BBC had previously posted to their website on 23 July 2014, just six days after the event itself, a news report in Russian via their Russian service (fortunately archived by Global Research), about the downing, but they quickly removed it without explanation. Fortunately, however, some Russian-speakers had managed to download it before it was yanked; and at least two of those downloads were posted to youtube, the first one having been posted there on 28 July 2014, with English subscripts, and with the headline, “UKRAINE Eyewitness Confirm Military Jet Flew Besides MH17 Airliner: BBC Censors Video 25Jul2014”. (It’s gone now, but, actually, several witnesses, and not just one, were interviewed there — there wasn’t just one “Eyewitness”.) Furthermore, Global Research posted on 10 September 2014 a transcript of it, headlining, “Deleted BBC Report. ‘Ukrainian Fighter Jet Shot Down MHI7’, Donetsk Eyewitnesses.” (The video itself is still at youtube and it will be linked-to just below here, so that you will be able to view it.)
The interviews by the BBC were done by their reporter Olga Ivshina. (Also see http://archive.is/vFoh9.) She had filmed local residents in the crash-debris area. In one passage of her 23 July 2014 news-report, there were two residents simultaneously who described what they had seen. One of them said, “And there was another aircraft.” The other continued immediately, in order to describe the other plane, “a military one, beside it [‘it’ being the airliner]. Everybody saw it. It was proceeding underneath below the civilian one.”
Here is the second, and clearer, version of that clip. (It’s the one that’s still live at youtube.) The key portion on it is at 0:38-042 in the video:
Dutch Report: "MH17 broke up in air" confirmed by Donetsk Eyewitnesses that saw a Military Aircraft
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C812MrH6TK4
nibirushock
Published on Sep 9, 2014
That was the 9 September 2014 repost of it, with the same subscript-translation into English, only the visual is sharper.
And here is an apology, dated 25 July 2014, by the BBC, for their having removed their original video of this interview — and yet they still didn’t repost it; they still continue to blockade it; even today the only versions available, of these, the earliest recorded interviews of people who said they witnessed the event, are the independently posted ones, but here is the BBC’s apology:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/blogs/2014 ... shed.shtml
Here, then, is that BBC apology google-translated into English: http://archive.is/kc291
So: clearly, BBC has done all that they could to remove evidence, which they had mistakenly broadcast, which had fit the retired Lufthansa pilot Peter Haisenko’s reconstruction of the event, and which contradicted the US-Ukrainian reconstruction of it — the reconstruction that Western ‘news’ media project, and on the basis of which US President Barack Obama won from the EU stiff increases in, and subsequent extensions of, the economic sanctions against Russia, all on the basis of lies.
(Subsequently, on 17 December 2018, South Front headlined “‘EDITORIAL BOARD DEMANDS BLOOD’: INSIDE LOOK AT HOW BBC TRIES TO FIND PROOF OF RUSSIAN INFLUENCE ON YELLOW VEST PROTESTS”, and they reported that Ivshina had texted to a BBC stringer, on the streets of Paris, instructions of what story-lines were wanted by BBC management regarding the “Yellow Vests” demonstrations against French President Emmanuel Macron, ”Yes, I’m searching for the angles))) The editorial board wants blood, yo)))”. “And if you find these ultra-rightists [at the protests], will they talk about Putin and Moscow? Well, at least the Russians go to the protests, right?” Ivshina was instructing her French stringer what to look for, in order for her to be able to report the type of ‘news’ that her bosses wanted to publish. Perhaps Ivshina had been chastised in 2014 and had learned to never again be caught reporting anything that challenges the UK Government’s anti-Russia propaganda-line.)
So, this valuable eyewitness-testimony to the MH17 event is available despite Western ‘news’ media (or, more-accurately, propaganda-media), and the reason for the news-suppression is clear to anyone who views that BBC 23 July 2014 report, which presents several eyewitnesses, interviewed separately as individuals, not as a group, and yet all of whose testimonies — perhaps despite Ivshina’s wish for them not to say this — report having observed the very same basic narrative, of at least one military jet rising toward the airliner just before it came down.
In other words: it is clear that BBC had yanked this report because it didn’t confirm the West’s story-line, which says that Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists had fired a “Buk” ground-based missile at the airliner, thinking that the civilian plane was a Ukrainian Government war-plane about to bomb them and their families. But, first of all, the Ukrainian Government was virtually admitting there that they were bombing these villagers, which means that they were perpetrating an ethnic cleansing operation there, which indeed that Government was doing; but, secondly, the Ukrainian Government’s statement also acknowledged that if the event had happened in that way, it would have been unintentional, a tragic accident on the part of the rebels there. (The JIT’s line now is that it was instead an outright Russian attack against the MH17.)
So, then, why did “the international community” respond with massive economic sanctions against Russia on account of this downing — by, as it turns out, Ukraine? The whole Western propaganda position was designed for a public of sheer fools, if not of outright psychopathic ones, who cared not a bit about the plights of the victims of an ethnic-cleansing campaign. They cared only about victims in “The West.” The West’s basic story-line doesn’t make sense without recognizing that we were financing ethnic cleansing to clear the land in southeastern Ukraine, and that any support that Russia would be providing to those separatists would have been defensive in nature, not offensive. Yet Russia gets the blame when this passenger jet goes down? Even though Ukraine’s air-traffic control had guided the pilot there? In any case, that story-line of Russian guilt is false, from start to finish. And now (at least after 17 September 2018) it is finished. But Western ‘news’-media still continue to broadcast the lies, as if it weren’t.
Here is how outright ludicrous it actually is, and sound reason in itself that anyone in the military had to have known, from the very get-go, that the “Buk” ‘explanation’ was a line of pure malarkey:
THE RUSSIAN DOCUMENTARY:
The 22 October 2014 Russian documentary was titled, “MH-17: The Untold Story,” and it presents, among much else, videos of several “Buk” missiles being fired on other occasions, just to show how utterly ludicrous the initial Ukraine-US-and-allied ‘explanation of the MH17 event was. On 5 November 2014, I summarized that, with screen-shots from the Russian documentary.
So, when even the BBC’s reporter wasn’t able to find anyone in that entire region who recounts having seen anything of the sort, just how likely would the Ukrainian Government’s line on that matter — that not only was this done by a lone Buk but it was fired by (at first) pro-Russian separatists, and (then) by the Russian army — actually be? Obviously, any person with any military knowledge whatsoever had to have recognized virtually immediately that the Ukrainian Government’s story-line on the MH-17 downing was a pile of sheer malarkey, but did anyone in the Western ‘news’ media report that it was — that the Western line there was not just a lie, but an absurd one, one that requires an ignorant public in order for it to be able to be taken seriously at all by the public? One that requires an ignorant public, to remain ignorant? This is supposed to be the Western ‘news’ media, with a free press, and a democracy, a truthfully informed citizenry, who can vote based upon truths, not on mere lies?
Here is the way that the Russian TV documentary opens:
Several of the locals there told Russian TV’s reporter that they had seen a military jet rise toward the airliner; and not a one of these individuals were any of the same ones who had testified the exact same thing to the BBC’s reporter, whose news-piece had been squelched by her managers.
HERE IS HOW MH17 WAS SHOT DOWN:
Now, to the substance of the explanation of how this plane was actually brought down:
Earlier, I had summarized the evidence for Peter Haisenko’s reconstruction of the event, but I questioned his having accepted the eyewitness testimony to the effect that the planes that shot down the airliner were SU-25s. In Haisenko’s Russian TV interview, he stuck by his belief that it was probably SU-25s instead of SU-27s or Mig 29s, both of which are also in the Ukrainian Air Force, and all three of which use 30-millimeter machine-guns or “cannons.” But since the fact is that all three of those attack-plane models use machine-guns (“cannons”) with 30-caliber bullets (which is the size that clearly was used, especially on the cockpit), the effect would be identically-sized round 30-caliber entry-holes, no matter what. My last major report on that evidence, prior to the 8 August 2014 formation of the JIT and their mutual agreement to report nothing that would be incriminating to Ukraine’s Government regarding the MH17 incident, was “Systematically Reconstructing the Shoot-Down of the Malaysian Airliner: The Guilt Is Clear and Damning.” That basically fills in (and the links, in that report, document with pictures and videos that) the actual way that this plane was downed, and that why it was downed was “to get the EU to go along with stiffened sanctions against Russia”. Obama (via the regime that he had installed in a February 2014 coup in Kiev) succeeded there in getting the international sanctions against Russia that he had been wanting. Obama, and certainly not Putin — and now we know it wasn’t Russia at all (not even if a Buk was involved) — was the key person behind this. The 298 MH17 murder-victims on 17 July 2014 were murdered by Barack Obama (via his agents such as Victoria Nuland — she ran Obama’s Ukrainian operation), just as clearly as (if not even more clearly than) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud (via his agents at the Sauds’ Istanbul Consulate) murdered Jamal Khashoggi on 2 October 2018.
International actions (such as economic sanctions) are based upon such fabrications, and ‘evidence’ taken out of its full context, as this from the far-right Forbes commentator Paul Roderick Gregory, but there are no such fakes, nor out-of-context items of evidence, in the case that has been presented here. That’s the difference between news-reporting versus propaganda; but, in the United States today, propaganda passes as if it were ‘news,’ and authentic news that doesn’t fit the regime’s cooked-up narrative is suppressed entirely. The scandal isn’t just Obama, and it’s not just Ukraine; it is also the propaganda-organs, and even (though to the least extent) their audiences who subscribe to such lying ‘news’-media.
Western governments, and their ‘news’ media, are treating their citizens, their own publics, not really as citizens, but as suckers. They are treating them as subjects, instead of as citizens. This is not authentic democracy. It is neo-feudal; it is, in fact, fascism.
The entire “Buk” ‘explanation’ of the downing of the Malaysian airliner (the idea that only a Buk missile caused the physical wreckage which was found) is for suckers only; and everyone in official circles, and in the press, who peddles it, is just as fake as the ridiculous story-line that he or she is peddling. To fall for it, after being provided all of the authentic evidence, which has been linked-to here, one would have to be a willing slave to psychopaths. In this case, the psychopath was Obama, who not only had perpetrated a bloody coup to overthrow the democratically elected President of Ukraine in February 2014 but who also was now struggling, and had a very pressing obsession, to get the EU to accept his sanctions against Russia for its having accepted the pleas of Crimeans (who had voted 75% for that President) to become restored again to Russia. The 14 July 2014 mass-murder that was set up to be blamed against Russia was Obama’s trick that enabled him to win his way on this.
CONCLUSIONS:
By no means do we know every detail about how the MH17 was shot down, but what we do now know for certain is that the narrative for that event which was supplied by Ukraine’s team on May 24th — the official account of how it happened — isn’t just false; it is outright fraudulent. Ukraine’s team supplied evidence which, if it is authentic, actually convicts Ukraine. And Western ‘news’-media hide this crucial fact.
So, now, we know why Western governments have hidden, instead of making available to the public, the black-box data and the other evidence that they still refuse to provide to the public. They are aiming to scam the public, not to inform it. Lying is their game. They might call it ‘patriotism.’ Traitors would likely do that. Traitors to any country could do it. And, so, they do. Their believers constitute their political base.
Unfortunately, anyone they fool becomes their tool, and everyone else is purely their victim — helpless to oust (much less, to replace) the tyrants who make things bad for everyone but themselves and their colleagues, the insiders at the very top.
Just the day before the MH17 shoot-down, Bloomberg News had headlined, on 16 July 2014, "EU Readies Russia Sanctions Amid US Pressure on Ukraine”, and reported that “the US urges the bloc to take a tougher stance against Moscow.” The day before that, on July 15th, Bloomberg’s headline had been “EU Leaders Weigh Sanctions Against Russia Over Ukraine”, and that report opened, “European Union leaders meeting in Brussels will consider expanded sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine conflict, as the US urges the bloc to take a tougher stand against Moscow.” Was the July 17th event only coincidentally timed perfectly in order to achieve what Obama was determined to produce: the first Ukraine-based anti-Russia sanctions? The regime that Obama had installed in Ukraine in February 2014 needed not only his support, but also the support of the IMF (in order to obtain loans), and of the EU (which it was seeking to join). There was probably even more pressure placed upon the leaders in Ukraine than there was upon the leaders in the EU. But there was plenty upon them both. The EU was widely reported to be balking at increasing the sanctions against Russia. Obama needed the EU to approve quickly his increased sanctions, so as to keep the momentum going for his entire anti-Russian campaign, which had been the reason behind his February 2014 coup in Ukraine. Something dramatic now was needed, in order for Obama to win the EU’s full cooperation. After all, Obama had secretly started at least by 2011 his operation to take over Ukraine. This operation was, for him, one of the central objectives of his entire two-term Presidency. Ukraine — and Ukraine alone — now had within its power the capacity to deliver to him the EU’s participation. Ukraine delivered it, precisely when it was the most urgently needed. This was essential in order for Ukraine to be able to enter the EU. And entering the EU would be essential in order for Ukraine to be able to enter NATO — the next key step in the Bilderbergers’ plan.
Continuing the sanctions is easier than originally imposing them was. On 22 December 2018, UAwire headlined “EU extends economic sanctions against Russia”, and reported that on December 14th, the EU’s sanctions against Russia, which are based upon alleged Russian aggressions in or against Ukraine, are being extended: UAwire noted “These measures were initially introduced on July 31, 2014 for one year in response to Russia's actions to destabilize the situation in Ukraine, and then strengthened in September 2014.” The EU supports, and participates in, the US regime’s lies and sanctions against Russia. These crimes and lies started as Obama’s, but continued under his successor Trump, and have been also the EU’s crimes throughout, by the EU’s joining, instead of condemning, not only those sanctions but also the lies upon which those sanctions are based. The EU thus indirectly shares the US Government’s guilt in the mass-murders that occurred on 17 July 2014.
Perhaps the survivors’ families and Malaysia Airlines (which is owned by the Malaysian Government), and their Governments, will file both civil and criminal charges now initially against Ukraine and its President Petro Poroshenko, and ultimately against Victoria Nuland, Barack Obama, and the United States, but also against the Dutch Government, for its collusion with the United States Government in its fraudulent ‘investigation’ that had pre-established blame against Russia. (However, the secret agreement that Malaysia signed to join the JIT might prohibit Malaysia from joining such suits.) Netherlands pre-established Russian blame especially by means of its 8 August 2014 secret four-party agreement (joined later by Malaysia’s Government) to allow Ukraine, an actual suspect in this case, to hold veto power over the assignment of blame in this entire matter. However, not only the survivors of the 298 victims should be suing, but all of the victims should be represented in this case. There were also many violations of international laws. Obama’s coup against Ukraine was one such. The MH17 shoot-down resulted from that coup, couldn’t have occurred without it, and was an extension from it. That coup is thus an important part of the MH17 case.
On 20 September 2017, the now 5 countries in the JIT signed a joint “Memorandum of Understanding” saying “Arrangements for signatories and other grieving nations to make financial contributions to the national proceedings in the Netherlands will be laid down in a financial memorandum of understanding,” and that “This Memorandum will remain in effect for five years and will be automatically extended for successive five-year periods.” So, they intend to continue their ‘investigation’ into MH17 until they can present to the world evidence that Russia did it. Perhaps before that happens, however, all of the victims and their children will already have passed away and this fraud and farce will finally end, as secretly as it began, and only few people will even care, anymore, about it.
Or will victims and their families, instead, initiate whatever legal proceedings they can, right now, against all members of the JIT, for their cover-up, and against the ringleaders, in the US, who demanded this mass-murder to be done, and against the perpetrators in Ukraine, who actually ordered and did it?
Maybe they’ll even be able to get Barack Obama to return to the Nobel committee their 2009 Peace Prize.
The US regime masterminded this mass-murder in order to win the EU’s support for sanctions against Russia, and the EU knowingly complied, and continues to comply, with the American regime’s ongoing aggressions and lies against Russia. The 298 MH17 murder-victims are thus not only the US regime’s victims, but vicariously victims also of the EU — and not, at all, of Russia. Russia was instead the real intended target of the possible Ukrainian Buk missile, and of the Ukrainian fighter-jets, that brought down the MH17. The MH17 victims were merely “collateral damages” in the US regime’s secret decades-long and ongoing anti-Russia war. This is how today’s America competes in the world, by playing very dirty, and getting away with it, helped by its allies, which endorse, and join in, the US regime’s atrocities.
Now, which major news-media in The West will report these solidly documented facts? Isn’t it time, finally, that they should start doing that? Or, do they have no honor, at all?
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 14, 2019 7:32 pm
Ukraine's ex-defense minister charged with treason – PGO
Ukraine's former Defense Minister Dmytro Salamatin is suspected of participation in the criminal organization set up by ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, according to Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.
Salamatin is charged with high treason in the interests of Russia, undermining the country's defenses, as well as national and economic security by committing deliberate actions aimed at ousting Ukraine from global arms markets in Russia's favor.
He is also suspected of illegal seizure of property on a large scale by abusing his official position.
In one episode alone, Salamatin's deliberate actions in disrupting the contract between the state-owned Kharkiv-based Morozov Engineering Design Bureau, Antonov, and Progres with Iraq's Defense Ministry for the supply, repair, and maintenance of military equipment led to $560 million in losses, according to Lutsenko.
Read alsoUkraine manufactures prototype of APC hull from steel supplied by NATO ally
PGO spokesperson Larysa Sargan said that Salamatin's actions led to a significant deterioration in Ukraine-Iraq relations, early termination of contracts, and gave Russia an opportunity to strengthen their negotiating position in the market as Ukraine's competitor.
Also, Sargan noted that as a result, since the termination of the Iraq contracts, Ukraine has not concluded any similar large-scale contracts in the defense area.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on January 4, came the reports that former Defense Minister Dmytro Salamatin had been summoned to the Prosecutor General’s Office for questioning on January 8.
Salamatin occupied a top post in Ukroboronprom, Ukraine's state-owned defense concern (2010-2012), and led the defense ministry from February 8 to December 24, 2012.
https://www.unian.info/politics/1040827 ... n-pgo.html
by conniption » Fri Jan 18, 2019 8:38 pm
strategic culture
(embedded links)
Ukraine’s Cult of Stepan Bandera: Not a Detail, but a Cornerstone
Dmitry BABICH
15.01.2019
During the recent years of the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, there has been one issue where the Western mainstream press simply cannot fully ignore or reject the Russian arguments. This issue concerns the life and actions of Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) and his followers from what is known as the “Banderite” faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, a far-right organization that took terrorist actions against Polish and Soviet officials from the 1920s to the 1950s and which is now legally protected from any criticism in Ukraine).
THE “WRONG” AND “RIGHT” VICTIMS
Because Bandera was born on January 1, 1909, celebrations of his birthday have become disgusting New Year’s rituals in Ukraine in recent years, with thousands participating in Nazi-style torch-lit marches that include shouted protests against “Putin’s Russia” and rants such as, “Jews out!” which are heard by everyone except the police. This New Year was no exception, since the current Ukrainian government under President Petro Poroshenko (who publicly identified himself as a Banderite after taking office in 2014) officially added Bandera’s 110th birthday to the list of Ukraine’s most important anniversaries. This time, there were several quiet voices of condemnation heard in Poland, Israel, and even the US. Why? In truth, torches, masks, political murders, and mob attacks against “pro-Russian” public figures are nothing new in post-Maidan Ukraine. And these things usually pose no problem for the mainstream press of the US and its allies. So, why is Bandera an exception?
The answer is ethnic, as awful as that may sound. Unlike Poroshenko with his aerial bombings of the Russian-speaking Donbass in 2014 and 2015, Bandera killed the “wrong” victims, the representatives of those nations that are valued even by the modern Western media, with its double and triple standards. In the 1930s Bandera killed Polish officials, in the 1940s his people killed civilian Jews and Polish peasants, and these are groups whose plight even the New York Times cannot ignore today. If Bandera’s infamous slogan “Death to enemies!” had been directed only against “disloyal” Russians and anti-Banderite Ukrainians (the groups currently persecuted by Poroshenko), Bandera would have been no different from his modern admirers in the Ukrainian government. But Bandera’s followers from the OUN decimated the Jewish population of Lvov and Kiev in 1941, trying to curry favor with the advancing Germans. And between 1943 and 1944, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), taking its orders from Bandera’s OUN officers, ethnically cleansed his native Western Ukraine of ethnic Poles, killing from 70,000-100,000 of them (the infamous “slaughter of Volhynia”). The aim was to create an “ethnically pure” Ukraine before the arrival of the Red Army in late 1944. Documents published by the Polish historian Grzegorz Motyka indicate that Bandera and the OUN hoped that the Red Army would soon be replaced by Anglo-American domination. “His strategy was to clean up the house before the arrival of the real master,” Motyka concludes in his book.
THE LADY OF THE RADA VS. ISRAEL’S PRESIDENT
The American domination took another 70 years, but it did come. And now the Banderites’ (and Poroshenko’s) only historic disagreement with the West is over the infamous “ethnic cleansing,” to which Bandera’s “glorious heroes” subjected Ukraine in 1941-1944. When Israeli President Reuven Rivlin dared to raise the issue during his visit to Ukraine in 2016, he got a scolding from the vice speaker of the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), Irina Gerashchenko: “The Israeli president allowed himself some incorrect and undiplomatic words about the OUN’s tragic history,” Gerashchenko said at the time. “It was highly inappropriate, especially now, when Ukraine is fighting for its independence.” Gerashchenko forgot to mention the fact that Babi Yar, the burial site of some 30,000 Jews killed by German and Ukrainian Nazis in Kiev in 1941, was vandalized nine times between 2015 and 2016, according to data provided by the Ukrainian Jewish Committee.
WHY THE WEST WANTS TO FORGET, BUT CANNOT
In the immediate aftermath of the Maidan coup in 2014, the mainstream press was ready to forget even that, since an honest account of Bandera’s activities between 1939 and 1959 could rekindle memories of the undesirable parallels to the “resistance to Russian occupation” by Poroshenko’s army in the Donbass in 2014 and 2015. Between the summer of 2014 and the winter of 2015, about 10,000 people died there, victims of the aircraft and tanks sent by Poroshenko (just months earlier, the US and the EU had been unable to abide the use of truncheons by the police of the ousted president, Viktor Yanukovych). At the time, the NYT called Bandera the “Ukrainian nationalists’ hero.” Obviously, the NYT’s authors were taking their cues from the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum, with her Banderite headline, “Nationalism is exactly what Ukraine Needs” in the once-glorious New Republic.
But here the mainstream press tried to kill off a memory that will never die — the memory of how Hitler’s East European Nazi allies participated in the destruction of the region’s Jewish population in the early 1940s. This was something not even Anne Applebaum could make people forget.
In his articles in the American press, the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, Eduard Dolinsky, tried to explain to the American public that Bandera’s cult is not an isolated, unpleasant phenomenon: Stepan Bandera never acted alone, he represented a crudely nationalist ideology. Unfortunately, this ideology reigns triumphant in modern Ukraine behind the “liberal” façade displayed for the West. For example, Dolinsky notes that Poroshenko’s hypocritical speeches memorializing Jewish victims can be heard next to, say, a memorial to OUN activist Ivan Rogach, whose newspaper called Jews “the greatest enemy of the people” in 1941. “The Ukrainian leadership set itself on the course of rehabilitating anti-Semitism and introducing censorship of history,” concludes the official statement of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human-rights group, famous for its work to bring Nazi criminals to justice.
THE RUSSIAN QUESTION BEHIND THE JEWISH ONE
If the West cannot afford to be completely silent about Bandera’s participation in the Holocaust, it is willingly ignoring another huge injustice that is inseparable from Bandera’s cult in modern Ukraine — the erasure of the Russian and anti-Banderite component of Ukraine’s historic memory. In 2017, Kiev’s Vatutin Avenue was renamed Bandera Avenue, resulting in an outcry in Russia and complete silence in the West. This avenue, a major thoroughfare in the Ukrainian capital, had originally been named in honor of General Nikolai Vatutin, who liberated Kiev from Nazi occupation in 1943 and died in a shootout with the OUN’s guerillas in 1944. At the time, there was no question about where America’s sympathies lay: the fight against Hitler was not yet over, and Vatutin, born in 1901 to a peasant family living immediately adjacent to the future Russian-Ukrainian border, was a useful ally for the United States. Will Bandera and his modern followers be a good replacement? Only someone with Poroshenko’s plans for Ukraine or with Anne Applebaum’s views on history could agree.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/ ... stone.html
by seemslikeadream » Tue Jan 22, 2019 9:31 am
Ukraine beefs up air defense amid massing of Russian troops near Ukrainian borders
Ukraine's Air Force Command is tasked with direct planning and control of anti-aircraft warfare / Photo from UNIAN
The Armed Forces of Ukraine are beefing up their air defense while Russia has been massing its troops near the Ukrainian borders.
"Given the build-up of the aggressor country's troops near the Ukrainian borders, the Air Force and other types of the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been increasing combat capabilities of the state's air defense," the press service of the Ukrainian Air Force Command said on Facebook, citing materials of a conference on air defense prospects.
Read alsoWorst-case scenario for Europe: Chief of Lithuania's army on possible escalation of Donbas war
The conference took place in Kyiv and was chaired by Commander of the Air Force Colonel-General Serhiy Drozdov.
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force Command Colonel Oleksandr Zharyk said in turn that the conference had focused on air defense issues in the context of growing armed aggression of the Russian Federation, the deployment of additional forces of the Russian army near the borders of Ukraine – not only in Russian-occupied Donbas in the east, but also in other sections of the Ukrainian-Russian border.
Under laws in Ukraine, the Chief of the General Staff is in charge of air defense. The Air Force Command is tasked with direct planning and control of anti-aircraft warfare, as well as documents preparation.
"One of the issues discussed was an improvement in the air defense system, its enhancement at the expense of additional forces and equipment, including air defense units, namely air defense missile units, radio-radar troops, fighter aircraft units and other formations to combat unmanned and manned air forces of Russia," Zharyk added.
https://www.unian.info/war/10416480-ukr ... rders.html
by seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 24, 2019 12:49 pm
Ukrainian commander Naev believes that Russia is preparing a large scale attack on Ukraine.
He sees evidence from several recent actions including a special type of satellite communications used by senior Russian army officers. Also evidence of regrouping of troops
by seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:28 am
While Putin Hardens His Line in Ukraine, Trump Goes Squishy
A report from the front lines in eastern Ukraine and in Washington D.C.
01.28.19 5:14 AM ET
MARIUPOL, Ukraine—Oleksandr was the last Ukrainian soldier entering the snow-caked trenches on a journey to the front lines of war. The Ukrainian troops and I trudged at five-meter intervals, a distance close enough so the men could communicate but far enough to minimize casualties if we were shelled by Russian-backed forces trying to take over eastern Ukraine. The five-foot deep trenches carved into the ground reminded me of photos from the front lines of World War I.
The temperature hovered around freezing after a burst of warm air invaded the biting Ukrainian winter. To a soldier, a few degrees can mean the difference between calm and conflict. “It is fighting weather,” Oleksandr told me, who like other Ukrainian soldiers asked to go by nicknames to protect their identity. Russian-backed internet trolls have targeted Ukrainian troops’ families with propaganda.
Shyrokyne, some 20 kilometers from Mariupol, used to be a resort town nestled on the Sea of Azov that housed some 1,400 people before war began in 2014. No more. “It is like a post-apocalyptic movie set,” said Oleksandr, who spoke in a machine-gun quick cadence.
On the other side of the trenches were the front lines of Ukraine’s war. Our destination was important because it doubles as the flashpoint of a proxy war between Russia and the United States. Evidence of this international influence was easy to find.
“Fuck Putin” was spray-painted on an abandoned building in Shyrokyne, a message for the Russian-backed separatists who once held the town.
Moscow has spearheaded the war in eastern Ukraine by sending troops, intelligence officers and supplies to fight the Ukrainian government and carve out territory.
On the other side, the United States and NATO countries bolster the Ukrainians.
Many, if not all, of the Ukrainian troops like Oleksandr with whom I marched received military training from the U.S., the U.K., Canada and other NATO countries. The United States is providing $200 million in 2019 for military support to Ukraine. And the Trump administration delivered a Javelin anti-tank missile system to Ukraine in 2018, support that President Barack Obama was unwilling to offer.
But in recent weeks there are signs of a shifting balance among these powers. Russia is continuing its military push in Ukraine while U.S. support is waning.
The Trump administration announced in December 2018 that it wanted to drop sanctions on companies tied to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, which where levelled in part because of Moscow’s aggression in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
The month before, Russian ships fired on three Ukrainian naval vessels and arrested 24 sailors traveling from Odessa to Mariupol. The clash follows the opening of a Russian-built bridge over the Kerch Strait that has acted as a choke-point for any ship entering the Sea of Azov that services eastern Ukraine.
In Washington, Pentagon and U.S. officials told me they are frustrated by an absence of White House strategy to deal with Russian actions in Ukraine. In particular, they note the failure to prevent Putin’s aggression in the Kerch Strait and the lack of sanctions in the aftermath of the incident.
Asked to address this issue, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders falls back on the administration’s boilerplate. “President Trump has repeatedly made clear he does not and will not tolerate Russian malign activity,” she said in a statement. “He has taken decisive and strong actions against Russia to defend American interests and hold Russia accountable for its behavior, including significant sanctions.”
The Russian embassy in Washington D.C. did not respond to a request for an interview or comment.
As I weaved through the trenches with Oleksandr and the pack of Ukrainian soldiers, a puppy joined our quest. The gangling black lab’s oversized paws scampered among the soldiers’ legs. It blatantly ignored the five-meter rule. We exited the trenches to a maze of crumbling buildings at the front line.
Ukraine wants to join NATO for protection, and the soldiers spoke admiringly of the support they have received already from the alliance. Oleksandr and Ukrainian troops proudly showed me a Pentagon-supplied Humvee they use as an ambulance. It sported a gaping cavity from a 12.7 mm machine gun bullet that pierced the ambulance’s red cross medical sign.
Among U.S. officials I talked with, however, there are real reservations about talks that might bring Ukraine into NATO. The concern is that such a move would be too provocative.
In 2014 Putin annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and underwrote the rebellions here in eastern Ukraine as retaliation and deterrence for Kiev’s moves toward integration with Europe. Moreover, NATO’s charter casts doubt on the ability of a country to join the alliance with an ongoing territorial dispute.
In Kiev, I asked Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for E.U. and NATO integration, about American concern that Ukrainian membership in the alliance would provoke Putin. She was not deterred. Russia “only understands the language of power and unity,” said Klympush-Tsintsadze, a staunch supporter of more financial sanctions on Russia.
“Russia’s end target is not Ukraine, it is the West,” she argued.
If the Ukrainian military lose their position in Shyrokyne, Russian-backed separatists will be able to lob shells into the city of Mariupol. It would be an inflection point in Ukraine’s war because of Mariupol’s strategic importance.
Mariupol is bordered on one end by the Sea of Azov, which is dotted with chunks of ice in midwinter. I watched a group of Ukrainian men celebrate the day that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by stripping to their underwear near the hulking commercial port and run into the January sea. Vodka was waiting at the end of their polar dip.
After traversing Mariupol’s winding hills and slipping through the industrial city center, I watched an endless plume of clouds churn out from the city’s towering metal plant. Both the commercial shipping port and the metal factory, ugly as they may be, are engines of life in eastern Ukraine. And they are sputtering now because of Russia’s bridge across the Kerch Strait, which opened last year. Large cargo ships cannot service Mariupol because the bridge was built too low, and the last major metal factory in eastern Ukraine has reduced production as a result.
Ukrainian military officials told me the effects of Putin’s siege on Mariupol could end up being more significant than the artillery fire exchanged in Shyrokyne, and the partial naval blockade already is draining the morale of local residents.
Exiting the trenches in Shyrokyne and now at the front lines, the puppy meandered around the cluster of collapsing buildings. I ventured with Oleksandr and other soldiers inside a blasted brick home fitted with pillboxes facing the Russian separatists. The Ukrainian soldiers wore white camouflage coats with faint grey streaks that blended in with the surrounding snow.
One soldier showed me how to view the no-man’s-land safely. He sprang up on a step, craned his neck through the opening in the pillbox, and jumped back down. It was graceful. l jolted up to get a view.
No-man’s-land in the American and Russian proxy war in eastern Ukraine consists of fallow fields that are golden in color and motionless. Bullets have whizzed across the undulating landscape in both directions for four years, but on my visit the guns were silent, and the soldiers were grateful for this temporary relief.
When we left the pillboxes, Oleksandr and the other soldiers took me to their underground bunker for tea. The puppy remained somewhere outside in its home of wasted streets, camouflaged soldiers, and cracking bullets.
The underground bunker was dark, damp, and smelled of kerosene. Tattered drawings from Ukrainian schoolchildren wishing safety and pledging support were peeling from the concrete wall. I asked the troops what message they wanted to send lawmakers and officials in Washington, D.C.
"We are soldiers,” Oleksandr responded. “We don’t get involved in politics.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/while-put ... ia=desktop
Over 850 foreign observers expected to arrive in Ukraine to monitor elections
28.01.2019 11:00
Ukrainian multimedia platform for broadcasting
Monday, 28 January 2019, 14:27
Over 850 foreign observers expected to arrive in Ukraine to monitor elections
More than 850 foreign observers are expected to arrive in Ukraine to monitor the presidential elections scheduled for March 31, 2019.
Head of the National Police of Ukraine Sergiy Knyazev stated this at a staff meeting of the Interior Ministry, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
"We expect that more than 850 foreign observers will arrive for the presidential elections," Knyazev said.
He noted that a large number of observers is expected to come from Canada.
https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polyti ... tions.html
Paul Manafort in Ukraine
An adventure that wrecked a country.
by Sergiy Rachinsky, Brendan OswaldJanuary 27, 2019
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For a convicted felon dumb enough to lie to Robert Mueller after agreeing to a plea bargain, Paul Manafort sure gets a lot of credit. To some, he’s the man who took a drifting presidential campaign and helped deliver an unlikely nomination for Donald Trump. This represented a triumphant return to domestic politics after a decade in Ukraine, where Manafort polished the previously unelectable Viktor Yanukovych and took him to an improbable 2010 victory as that nation’s president.
But dig a little deeper into Manafort’s time in Ukraine and a different picture emerges. Under President Yanukovych, Ukraine was a kleptocracy run by and for a gang of crooks who had carved up the country after the fall of the Soviet Union. Manafort may have introduced Yanukovych to power dressing, a good barber, and a neat line in soundbites. But, in the end, this made little difference in an election already bought and paid for.
So why was Manafort paid vast sums (more than $60 million at last count) if his brand of political consultancy wasn’t essential for victory? It was because Manafort gave the campaign the international respectability it needed to conduct a huge money-laundering operation necessary to handle the theft of the country’s wealth.
Manafort, of course, is now in jail, having been convicted of multiple counts of financial fraud related to his role in Ukraine. In November, he was accused by Robert Mueller, the special counsel looking into ties between the Trump Administration and Russia, of lying to federal investigators, putting his plea bargain at risk.
The underlying criminal charges against Manafort deal with how he tried to bring the money he had earned in Ukraine into the United States by illegal means, but do not fully explain why Manafort was working for players in Ukraine or the nature of their work together. It is true that Manafort’s political savvy and experience were attractive to the men behind Yanukovych. A longtime political consultant who specialized in representing repressive regimes, Manafort knew how to lobby successfully in the United States and elsewhere.
Moreover, Manafort’s record indicates that he didn’t give a damn who he worked for—just as long as the money came in. He had earned significant amounts in the service of military dictators including Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). He also worked extensively with the Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. All three resorted to oppression, abduction, murder, and torture to achieve their political goals, and enriched themselves in the process.
None of this perturbed Manafort unduly, and he was paid handsomely for his services, which included helping these figures legitimize the millions they had stolen from their countries. One of Imelda Marcos’s last acts before fleeing the Philippines was to get Manafort on the phone to thank him for his efforts. His reputation in the Philippines was such that one member of Congress there, former journalist Teddy Locsin, said, “Manafort’s name [then] was like Voldemort today.”
Although Manafort’s client was Yanukovych, his route to Ukraine was via Russia. His first contact was with long-time Putin ally Oleg Deripaska, who became one of the richest and most influential men in Russia after emerging on top from the bloody aluminium wars of the 1990s.
Manafort was keen for a role in Russia and pitched for a $10 million a year job to, as one news account put it, “influence politics, business dealings, and news coverage inside the United States . . . to benefit the Putin government.” Instead Deripaska passed him on to Rinat Akhmetov. Akhmetov is Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch and its most influential power broker.
While Manafort’s role was not key to the 2010 election, it was crucial in legitimizing the Yanukovych presidency and cranking up of the kleptocracy.
Manafort was initially unimpressed with Yanukovych, convinced he could never win. But Yanukovych was Putin’s favored candidate, and he wasn’t going anywhere. He headed the Party of Regions, a criminal organization masquerading as Ukraine’s largest political party. With the backing of most of the country’s leading oligarchs and the full support of the Kremlin, the party seemed likely to be in power for a long time.
But in 2005, when Manafort came into the picture, the Party of Regions was in disarray. The party had been caught rigging the election and was deposed in a popular uprising. With corrupt leaders unseated by the Orange Revolution, rival Viktor Yushchenko assumed the presidency with a mandate to reform the system and root out corruption. Infighting with former President Leonid Kuchma had obstructed party members in Donbas and Crimea, meaning that cheating was their only recourse to assuming power.
They had also been rocked by the 2004 conviction in the United States of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko for extortion and money-laundering. He is thought to have stolen around $200 million from the Ukrainian government. Lazarenko admitted that he had used his position to make a fortune, but said that this “had been usual and acceptable behavior in the 1990s in Ukraine.”
Yanukovych and the oligarchs behind him saw Lazarenko’s conviction as a threat to their lucrative racket. They needed to improve their image abroad to allow them to clean their money offshore. Manafort was brought in to do that for them.
Manafort went to work on creating a Western-style campaign for Yanukovych, and introduced him to the world’s political elite. He was tasked with coordinating the wide network of offshore accounts, businesses, and banks to ease the movement of money abroad. He developed relations with powerful U.S. political actors who would be friendly to Yanukovych’s Ukraine and worked to improve the image of the oligarchy abroad.
In the process, Manafort got close to Yanukovych, regularly visiting his opulent Mezhyhirya estate, with its private zoo and gilded bathrooms. He was Yanukovych’s preferred tennis partner, usually letting him win, and they would swim naked together in the private lake next to where Yanukovych’s personal galleon was moored.
Manafort began to reassess his view of Yanukovych. He had certainly underestimated Yanukovych’s power base. Russian political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky, who was heavily involved in Ukrainian politics before 2005, recently said in an interview for this article, “Yanukovych wasn’t a weak candidate. President Kuchma had prevented him from mobilizing the Donbas in 2004 and he lost. In 2010 he mobilized the Donbas and Crimea and that made the difference.”
Asked whether Manafort changed the image and presentation of the rough and ready Yanukovych, Pavlovsky said, “Yes, but that was the easy part!” The main political strategy was devised in Ukraine. Manafort went along with it and focused on the presentation.
While Manafort’s role was not key to the 2010 election, it was crucial in legitimizing the Yanukovych presidency and enabling the cranking up of the kleptocracy following his victory. Two major factors in the victory were unconnected to Manafort.
The first was the collapse of the Yushchenko government after a falling out with his Orange Revolution partner, Yulia Tymoshenko. To survive in government, President Yushchenko had to make deals with the oligarch Akhmetov; this strengthened his hold on power, but stifled his ability to enact reforms. He was even forced to accept Yanukovych as prime minister in 2006.
The second factor was the Donbas, a region of Ukraine in which Akhmetov had almost total control. Its industrial base was dominated by coal and steel, all owned by Akhmetov. Essentially, the region’s whole population was his workforce. And where Akhmetov could not direct votes, Yanukovych and the Party of Regions controlled the voting systems, so they had carte blanche to ballot-stuff to bring in the number of votes they needed. Yanukovych received 90 percent of votes in the Donbas region. In several districts, and in all prisons and hospitals, the result was 100 percent.
While Manafort’s role may have been incidental to Yanukovych’s win, it was crucial in what came next—the looting of a country’s assets on an industrial scale.
Brian Whitmore of the Center for European Policy Analysis once said in a podcast: “Corruption in Russia is not a glitch in the matrix. Corruption is the matrix.” This was equally true of post-Soviet Ukraine, where politics and corruption were indivisible.
According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, in 2014 Ukraine ranked the 142nd worst out of 175 countries for corruption. What was purportedly a modern democracy was in fact a kleptocracy, run by about a dozen men made wealthy by privatization deals following the fall of communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In the Ukraine of the time, it was impossible to separate politics, business, and crime. They were all one. Election campaigns were some of the most expensive in the world. The total amount spent by all candidates in a typical presidential election or in races for the 450-seat parliament was $2 billion, or 1 percent of GDP. In GDP terms, this is 2,000 times more than is spent on an average U.S. election campaign.
Seats in Ukraine’s parliament could be bought and sold, and the millions candidates and parties spent to get elected would be repaid, many times over, with the levers of government at their disposal.
Seats in Ukraine’s parliament could be bought and sold. According to a report by Anders Åslund, then a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., “A safe seat in Parliament could fetch up to $5 million.” Speculators would buy a seat and then sell it off to the winning party at a handsome profit. In turn, the winning party would sell off government posts that gave opportunities for graft and personal advancement.
However many millions candidates and parties spent to get elected would be repaid, many times over, with the levers of government at their disposal. The most savvy businessmen would seek to buy and control a bloc of votes to better influence policy and budgets in their favor. The entire political apparatus was set up for corruption. The country never stood a chance.
There were several ways that a Ukrainian oligarch could divest himself of his ill-gotten gains. The first was to reinvest in politics. This might be through rewards or kickbacks to others who had helped, the buying of further political influence, or currying favor with political leaders in either Ukraine or Russia.
For example, “Gas King” Dmytro Firtash, currently in Austria awaiting extradition to the United States on bribery charges, used his wealth to buy up key TV stations in Ukraine, which were then tasked with supporting Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, and attacking the European Union and the West. This was his version of paying a tribute. And to keep the whole system going, Yanukovych is thought to have had $3 billion squirreled away as a war chest for Manafort and the Party of Regions to spend during the next elections, according to the Åslund report.
For the rest, Manafort’s business partner Rick Gates described in court testimony how he and Manafort had laundered money for several Ukrainian oligarchs by setting up offshore shell companies and bank accounts, mostly in Cyprus.
Yanukovych and Manafort’s cozy project came crashing down in early 2014, when the Maidan Revolution toppled the government and sent Yanukovych scurrying to Russia. The Yanukovych clan had gotten too greedy. In his final year in power, Yanukovych had granted hundreds of millions of dollars worth of state contracts to his dentist son, Oleksandr, making him one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine at the time. Another beneficiary was then-twenty-seven-year-old Serhiy Kurchenko, who in a single year built a business empire in oil refining, media, energy, and banking worth more than $3 billion, due to Yanukovych’s patronage.
The Yanukovych family had tried to act against the laws of economics. About 60 percent of the Ukrainian economy was in “shadow,” so the government was not able to replenish public finances through conventional methods like taxation. But the biggest surprise for Yanukovych and Manafort were the Ukrainians, who became fed up with corruption and poverty. Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union, following the promise of a $15 billion loan from Putin, kick-started the chain of events that led to the Maidan Revolution.
What began as a peaceful demonstration about the nonsigning of a treaty escalated quickly into a bloody conflict due to a series of desperate and disastrous decisions, which cranked up the tension and made the protesters feel that they had less to lose. Where was the skilled political strategist in all this? Was Manafort counseling Yanukovych on the folly of his actions? He was surely aware how it looked to the Western world.
Could Manafort have had an even more direct role in the last bloody days of the Yanukovych regime? In a series of hacked SMS messages between Manafort’s two daughters, Andrea Manafort suggested that it was her father’s strategy to cause “the revolts and what not . . . as a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine.” She claims it was their father’s idea to “send those people out and get them slaughtered” on the fateful morning of February 20, 2014.
On the morning in question, the riot police suddenly retreated from their positions surrounding the protesters in Independence Square in Kiev. Sensing victory, the protesters pursued the police up the hill in the direction of parliament. Back at the main square, people around the stage started to suspect something was amiss. It looked too easy. Through the public address system, they implored the protesters to return. But it was too late.
The protesters flooded into the area vacated by the riot police only to be met by sniper fire. With their wooden shields and yellow construction helmets, they were picked off one by one. Many were killed trying to treat fallen comrades or to drag them back to the barricades. More than fifty protesters lost their lives in the bloodiest day of the revolution.
More than fifty protesters lost their lives in the bloodiest day of the revolution.
It’s no wonder that Manafort’s daughter, in the hacked SMS messages, described their family’s wealth as “blood money.”
After Yanukovych fled, Manafort stayed in Ukraine for a while to rebrand the remnants of the disgraced Party of Regions as the Opposition Bloc and establish them as a parliamentary force. He then returned to America and offered his services for free to the Trump campaign.
It is out of character for Paul Manafort to work for nothing, particularly when he’d just lost such a lucrative income stream. As Kiev-based political commentator Paul Niland recently said in an interview for this article, “Manafort’s an opportunist. He always went wherever the money was. When there was a way of getting onto Trump’s team, there will have been money coming to him from somewhere or an assumption that in the future there would be.” We can only speculate who or where the source of that money would be.
The Paul Manafort who presented himself to Trump certainly had an impressive track record in political campaigning in America and around the world. But he also had a back story of dishonest failure. A trail of corruption and crime, always leaving countries under a cloud, his clients fleeing or incarcerated. A man who, in the words of his own daughter, “had no moral or legal compass.”
The smallest amount of due diligence would have brought this to Trump’s attention and highlighted the dangers of associating with a man like Manafort. Or Trump may have known about all the dirt on Manafort and just didn’t care. Or could it be that Manafort’s experience and contacts from his time in Ukraine were exactly what Trump was looking for?
Sidebar: How a Ukranian Leader Robbed His Own Country
It is difficult to get a handle on the total amount that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies took out of the country during his time in office, from 2010 to his removal in 2014. That’s because they used a myriad of methods and shadow accounts to achieve their aims. Economist Anders Åslund gave a detailed estimate of the amounts and the methods used in his 2014 report, “Oligarchs, Corruption, and European Integration.”
1. The gas trade
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For any oligarch wanting to acquire serious wealth, control of state gas monopoly Naftogaz was the most effective method. Government subsidies kept the price of natural gas piped from Russia artificially low, which benefited Ukrainian households during the cold winters.
However, 8 percent of the nation’s GDP was spent each year on subsidizing Naftogaz, and the main beneficiary was not the Ukrainian consumer. A few businessmen in Russia and Ukraine managed to shave off billions by diverting some of the gas and selling it to industry at vastly inflated rates. Gas could be bought at $53 per 1,000 cubic meters and sold for as much as $410.
It is thought that corruption in the gas sector yielded profits of more than $3 billion a year. And then there was the opportunity cost. Today, a properly regulated gas industry is Ukraine’s biggest taxpayer, contributing 14 percent of the total revenues of the state budget.
2. Infrastructure tenders
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Each year, Yanukovych doled out large infrastructure projects to friends and family. There was little to nothing by way of oversight or transparency. He was fortunate to become president just as Ukraine was preparing to co-host the prestigious UEFA European Championship, so there was a lot of money to go around.
It’s thought that the state paid double the real cost of each project. Corruption is not unheard of in government procurement around the world, but kickbacks of 50 percent are unusually high. The process is believed to have enriched the Yanukovych clan to the tune of $2 billion a year.
3. State budget
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It is telling that Ukrainian has its own word—deriban—for theft from the state budget. It’s difficult to do, but there is an art to it, and Yanukovych clearly mastered this art. He is reported to have stolen $3 billion to $5 billion per year from state budgets.
Åslund has calculated that during his five years in power, Yanukovych and his clan plundered between $8 billion and $10 billion per year from the Ukrainian state. And that was only due to public corruption; they made a lot of money privately, too. A key method was “corporate raiding,” where the Yanukovych family forced a sale of a company at a price way below its market value.
Ukraine’s general prosecutor has estimated that Yanukovych and his associates stole a total of $40 billion from the state during Yanukovych’s time as president, and he personally amassed a fortune of $12 billion, according to Åslund’s report. Even in a region where corruption is rife, the scale of the theft is shocking.
“My assessment is that Putin and his cronies steal $15 billion to $25 billion a year from the Russian government,” Åslund says in an interview. “But the Russian economy is $1.6 trillion and the Ukrainian economy under Yanukovych was $180 billion, so the share of the economy that Yanukovych stole was much greater.”
January 27, 2019
https://progressive.org/magazine/paul-m ... rachinsky/
by JackRiddler » Mon Jan 28, 2019 1:30 pm
seemslikeadream » Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:49 am wrote:
Remember:Paul Manafort installed Yanukovych as Putin puppet in Ukraine, then did the same in 2016 with Trump.
JackRiddler » Mon Jan 28, 2019 12:13 pm wrote:.
Okay, here's a long interview transcript with sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, who is also of the endangered left in Ukraine, with a lot of straight talk about the present nature of the Kiev state. If the right-wing extremists are a small minority, then only in a context where extreme nationalist ideology and xenophobia as well as oligarchic control and harsh neoliberal policy have long been normalized among the major parties, and where everyone remotely leftist-seeming has been labeled as treasonous and pro-Russian. The Communist Party is banned. Worse, the right-wing extremists and straight-up Nazi battalions are the only organized and readily violent force on the street, largely deputized within the police and military. They act with impunity to enforce their ideas of purity and social conformity through terror, assault and murder. Things are very bad for LGBT, independent journalists and anyone who can be associated as insufficiently nationalist, vaguely Jewish, and above all "pro-Russian" whether that is true or not. This small minority are the spearpoint of the events and the poison in a long-ago poisoned system, and have been since they took over as the vanguard of the Maidan protests in 2013, which were initially popular but dominated by right-wing parties. Right-wing, avowedly nationalist parties, all of them at least rhetorically anti-Russian, comprise almost the entirety of electoral politics in the Ukraine. Each is sponsored or competes more or less opportunistically for the favor of given oligarchs. Unless Poroshenko can come up with some favorable manufactured crisis, it looks like 2019 will finally bring Yulia Timoschenko's turn at the throne.
Full transcript posted at
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