Month: February 2015

PACE refuses to recognize DPR, LPR as terrorist organizations

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PACE is the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

From  Sputnik News, January 28, 2015

Plenary meeting of the winter session of the Parliamentary Assembly Council of Europe
© Sputnik/ Vladimir Fedorenko

STRASBOURG, January 28 (Sputnik) — PACE on Wednesday rejected an amendment to a resolution on Russian credentials in the organization calling for recognizing the self-proclaimed Donetsk andLuhansk people’s republics (DPR andLPR) in eastern Ukraine as de-facto terrorist organizations.The amendment was introduced by the Ukrainian delegation.

In December 2014, media reports suggested that Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, had introduced a bill, according to which DPR and LPR were recognized as terrorist organizations.

Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said that this bill was “legal nonsense and absurdity” and an attempt to wind down efforts to find a political solution to the situation in Ukraine.

Lukashevich stressed that if one side of the Ukrainian crisis presented the other side as a terrorist organization, it was unclear whether further dialogue could be useful.

The Kiev forces and the independence supporters of eastern Ukraine have been fighting since April 2014 when Kiev launched a military operation in Donbas. The warring sides agreed to a ceasefire in Minsk in September, but truce violations have been reported from both sides ever since, with the violence seeing a sharp increase in the beginning of 2015.

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150128/1017470300.html

Alexander Mercouris: Diplomatic talks in Moscow — a two-part analysis

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Posted on Vineyard of the Saker, February 6, 2015

Talks in Moscow – a two-part analysis
by Alexander Mercouris

Part one (On 6th February 2015)
They have apparently continued for 5 hours and are still not finished though it seems some sort of document is being prepared for tomorrow.

Three comments:

1. If negotiations go on for 5 hours that does not suggest a smooth and conflict free discussion.

2. One of the most interesting things about the Moscow talks is that they mainly happened without the presence of aides and officials i.e. Putin, Hollande and Merkel were by themselves save for interpreters and stenographers. Putin and Merkel are known to be masters of detail and given his background as an enarque I presume Hollande also is. However the German and French officials will be very unhappy about this. The Russians less so because since the meeting is taking place in the Kremlin they are listening in to the discussions via hidden microphones.

One wonders why this is happening? Even if the Russian officials are not listening in Merkel and Hollande will assume they are. The fact that Russian officials were not present is therefore less significant than that German and French officials have been barred from the meeting by their respective chiefs, suggesting that Merkel and Hollande do not entirely trust them.

There has been an extraordinary degree of secrecy about this whole episode and it rather looks as if Merkel and Hollande were anxious to stop leaks and to prevent information about the talks from getting out. Presumably this is why their officials were barred from the meeting. From whom one wonders do Merkel and Hollande want to keep details of the meeting secret? From the media? From other members of their own governments? From the Americans? What do they need to keep so secret? The frustration and worry on the part of all these groups must be intense.

3. The fact that the British are excluded from the talks is going down very badly with many people here in London. It has not escaped people’s notice that this is the first major negotiation to settle a big crisis in Europe in which Britain is not involved since the one that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Of course it is largely the fault of the inept diplomacy of Cameron, who has taken such an extreme pro-Ukrainian position that Moscow simply doesn’t see him as someone worth talking to. Also one suspects Merkel and Hollande do not trust Cameron not to leak the whole discussion to whomever they want to keep it from. Having said that it is difficult to see this as anything other than further evidence of Britain’s decline into complete irrelevance. I cannot imagine Thatcher being excluded in this way. If the United Kingdom is indeed in the process of breaking up (and as I suspected the Scottish referendum settled nothing with polls indicating that the SNP may make an almost clean sweep of all the seats in Scotland in the election in May) then the slide into irrelevance still has a long way to go.

Part two (On 7th February 2015)
I am coming increasingly round to the view of Alastair Newman that Merkel and Hollande came with no plan to Moscow but with the purpose of having what diplomats call “a full and frank discussion” in private with Putin looking at all the issues in the one place in Europe – the Kremlin – where they can be confident the Americans are not spying on them. That must be why they sent their officials away.

It is also clear that Merkel’s and Hollande’s visit to Kiev before their flight to Moscow was just for show.

Poroshenko’s officials are insisting that the question of federalisation was not discussed during Poroshenko’s meeting with Hollande and Merkel. Hollande has however now come out publicly to support “autonomy” for the eastern regions i.e. federalisation, which makes it a virtual certainty that in the meeting in Moscow it was discussed. The point is that Merkel and Hollande did not want to discuss federalisation with Poroshenko because they know the junta adamantly opposes the idea and did not want him to veto it before the meeting in Moscow had even begun.

The problem is that since everyone pretends that federalisation is an internal Ukrainian issue to be agreed freely between the two Ukrainian sides, its terms will only be thrashed out once constitutional negotiations between the two Ukrainian sides begin. Since the junta will never willingly agree to federalisation, in reality its form will have to be hammered out in private by Moscow after consultations with the NAF and with Berlin and Paris and then imposed on the junta in the negotiations.

Saying this shows how fraught with difficulty this whole process is going to be.

Not only are there plenty of people in the Donbass who now oppose federalisation (and some in Moscow too I suspect) but this whole process if it is to work would somehow have to get round the roadblock of the Washington hardliners, who will undoubtedly give their full support to the junta as it tries to obstruct a process over which it has a theoretical veto. Frankly, I wonder whether it can be done.

If the process is to have any chance of success then Merkel and Hollande must screw up the courage to do what they failed to do last spring and summer, which is publicly stand up to the hardliners in Washington and Kiev and impose their will upon them. Are they really willing to do that? Given how entrenched attitudes have become over the last few months and given the false position Merkel and Hollande put themselves in by so strongly supporting Kiev, the chances of them pulling this off look much weaker than they did last spring.

I would add a few more points;

1. There is one major difference between the situation now and in the Spring, which might offer some hope of movement.

Anyone reading the Western media now cannot fail but see that there is a growing sense of defeat. Sanctions have failed to work, the Ukrainian economy is disintegrating and the junta’s military is being defeated.

That was not the case last spring, when many in the West had convinced themselves that the junta would win the military struggle with the NAF. The confrontation strategy Merkel opted for in July based on that belief has totally and visibly failed. It is not therefore surprising if she is now looking for a way-out by reviving some of the ideas that were being floated by the Russians in the spring. She now has a political imperative to look for a solution in order to avoid the appearance of defeat, which would leave her position both in Germany and Europe badly weakened. That political imperative was not there in the spring. It is now. In a sense the pressure is now on her.

2. I should stress that it is Merkel who is Putin’s key interlocutor. The reason Hollande is there and appears to be taking the lead is to provide Merkel with cover. The one thing Merkel cannot afford politically is the appearance of a Moscow-Berlin stitch-up that the hardliners in Washington, Kiev, London, Warsaw and the Baltic States will claim is a new Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to divide Europe into German and Russian spheres of influence. Whether we like it or not in Germany the shadow of Hitler still hangs heavy and exposes Berlin to endless moral blackmail whenever it tries to pursue with Moscow an independent course. That is why Merkel needs Hollande present when she meets Putin for talks of the sort she’s just had in Moscow.

3. One other possible sign of hope is that there is some evidence that a sea-change in European and especially German opinion may be underway.

Whatever the purpose of the ongoing debate in Washington about sending weapons to the junta, whether it is a serious proposal or an attempt to secure diplomatic leverage or a combination of the two, it has horrified opinion in Europe, bringing home to many people there how fundamentally nihilistic US policy has become.

All the talk in the Western media yesterday and this morning is of a split between Europe and the US. That is going much too far. However for the first time there is public disagreement in Europe with Washington on the Ukrainian question. Whether that crystallises into an actual break with Washington leading to a serious and sustained European attempt to reach a diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis against Washington’s wishes is an altogether different question. I have to say that for the moment I very much doubt it.

4. I remain deeply pessimistic about this whole process. The best opportunity to settle this conflict diplomatically was last spring. I cannot help but feel that as Peter Lavelle said on the Crosstalk in which I appeared yesterday, the train has now left the station.

A peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict ultimately depends on European resolve to face down the hardliners in Washington and Kiev. It is going to be much harder to do this now than it was last year.

Moreover, despite the bad news on the economy and on the front line in Debaltsevo, the hardliners in Kiev are bound to have been emboldened by all the talk in Washington about sending them arms, which is going to make the effort to bring them round even harder than it already is.

The besetting problem of this whole crisis is that the Europeans have never shown either the resolve or the realism to face the hardliners down though it is certainly within their power to do so. In Merkel’s case one has to wonder whether her heart is in it anyway. My view remains that this situation will only be resolved by war, and that the negotiations in Moscow will prove just another footnote to that.

5. If I am wrong and some autonomy really is granted to the Donbass, then I make one confident prediction. This is that the Ukraine will in that case disintegrate even more rapidly than it would have done if federalisation had been agreed upon last spring or summer.

Following such a terrible war, I cannot see people in the Donbass accepting federalisation as anything other than a stepping stone to eventual secession and union with Russia. If the Donbass secures autonomy, I cannot see people in places like Odessa and Kharkov failing to press for an at least equivalent degree of autonomy to that granted to the Donbass. If the Europeans are prepared to see the Donbass achieve autonomy, by what logic can they deny it to the people of Odessa and Kharkov?

More to the point, the November elections showed the emergence of what looks like an increasingly strong potential autonomy or even independence movement in Galicia.

Given that a terrible war has been fought and lost in the east to defeat “separatism” in the Donbass, and given the widespread disillusion with the junta in Kiev, it is difficult to see how many people in Galicia will not feel betrayed if the grant of federalisation to the Donbass is now imposed on them after so many of their men died to prevent it. If in reaction Galicia presses for the same sort of autonomy as the Donbass – which it could well do – then the Ukraine is finished. I doubt it would hold together for more than a few months. If federalisation had been granted last spring or summer before the war began then it is possible – likely even – that the Ukraine could have been held together in a sort of state of suspended animation at least for a while. I don’t think there’s much chance of that now.

 

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/talks-in-moscow-two-part-analysis.html

 

Order from Kiev: “Break Donetsk at any cost.”

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Posted on Fort Russ, February 6, 2015

Published in “Russia – Dissenting Opinion”
January 27, 2015
Translated from Russian by Tom Winter
The massive heavy artillery shelling on Donetsk has resumed. In several districts of the city natural gas lines and electric substations are now out of service. Dozens more homes are without power and heat. Dokuchaevsk and Gorlovka are under intense fire. Many wounded, mostly peaceful citizens. At the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DNR) they have no doubt that Kiev is intent on aggravating the situation to the limit, and on striking the most vulnerable.
Explosions are constantly heard, with fresh craters from the incoming shells. Close by, the roof of a house that people were still living in. The outskirts of the town are being systematically destroyed by artillery fire. There are dead and injured: the wounded are constantly being brought into hospitals, most with shrapnel wounds.
“Incoming. Unmistakeably from the Ukrainian side. Yesterday the rockets were flying in from the area between Yasnovatya and Makeevka. You could see the projectiles flying in. Multiple rocket launchers definitely, all with exhaust trails, all plain to see.” —Vladimir Alekseev.
The Ukrainian firing zone is constantly increasing. Reports of new bombardment come in every hour.
A woman in the street: “Right next to our house it came. Right next to our house. Roof, Bam! The trolleys have stopped running; we go by foot now. No public transit.”
“Isn’t walking more dangerous?”
“And where can you get to? All the same, we are still alive.”
Even as the infrastructure is being destroyed, repair crews are already at work, fixing gas and electric lines. “We live here. We keep  the city working,” says Alexander Kigol, repairman from the city gasworks.
“In spite of the continuing attacks?”
“Yes!” replies Mr. Kigol.
Many have gotten used to the mortal danger. After a strike on a residential building on Ochakovski Street, the residents return to their ruined apartment. The roof is gone. Life here without repair will be impossible. The woman from the ruined apartment says “My neighbor says two shells just came in on the other side.”
The people run in short dashes from home to the store. Since a shell may come in at any minute, it is safer to run alongside a wall. This is Gorlovka, and this is what it’s like to live here.
Throughout Gorlovka the Ukrainian forces have attacked with heavy weapons, destroying homes and ruining the streets. At the crossroads, a crater from a “Hurricane” rocket system [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-27_Uragan — Tr.] The hole is as deep as a man’s height. Useless for 500 meters. The people are afraid of new bombardments, and hide themselves in basements.
The Donetsk Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko has arrived in the city, which lies entirely within the destructive zone of Ukrainian artillery. But at least now it is easier to get to it from Donetsk. Since the DNR got the town of Krasniy Partisan, the short road has become clear.
“We’re running short on medicine; it’s hard to keep the hospitals supplied. You have to understand, there are still peaceful citizens here, and pills for internal and cardiac problems are needed, in addition to those medicines that are used to treat the wounded,” said the Prime Minister.
“The DNR militia is counter-attacking trying to drive the Ukrainian forces far enough away, out of range, so that the people can be safe. We have something to fight for.”
“The Donetsk Republic’s army is being restocked with captured trophies. They hit a BMP-2, and are using it for parts; they got a T-64 tank at the airport, damaged, but they’ve repaired it. It will soon be at the front, but now it’s just in the Donetsk tank brigade. Ukrainian forces stormed the Donetsk position there, but were repulsed, and took casualties. The combat continues at the front, as forces controlled by Kiev are attempting to strengthen the economic blockade of the region.”
“The economic blockade is in effect along the whole border, and is contrary to every stipulation of the Minsk accords. Functional checkpoints? No. The transport of any food supply? Stopped. Passenger traffic? No.” explains the Vice premier Denis Pushilin.
No let-up in the intensity of Ukrainian artillery fire on neighborhoods, ever striking deeper, even into the rear of the Donetsk Republic, including industrial zones. January 26, they got the mines, the mines at Skochinski, Abakumov, Trudovski. And at the Zasyadki mine, they got the power station, trapping about 600 miners underground.
http://www.fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/order-from-kiev-break-donetsk-at-any.html

EU threatened Ukraine with coup d’état over association agreement, while Washington masterminded the plan, says ex-Ukrainian PM

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From RT, February 4, 2015

Top EU officials, rather than Russia, threatened Ukraine with a coup d’état if Kiev refused to sign an association agreement in 2013, Nikolay Azarov, Ukraine’s former prime minister, said.

“I’ve never heard neither Putin nor Medvedev saying that if you sign an agreement with the EU, you’ll have a different government. But I’ve heard [EU Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy, Stefan] Fule, repeatedly saying that if you don’t sign then the other government will sign it,” Azarov said at the presentation of his book ‘Ukraine at a crossroads. Prime Minister’s notes’ in Moscow.

The decision to delay the signing of the association agreement by then-Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, led to Euromaidan protests in the capital, Kiev, which turned violent and resulted in a regime change in February 2014.

According to Azarov, it was Washington which masterminded the plan to ouster Yanukovich and his government.

“As for the US, I think they initially applied the tactics of gradually forcing Yanukovich from power,” he said. But first, “their goal was to get rid of the government, because they saw the government as a key to the country’s stability.”

Washington needed to “knock out this foundation from under Yanukovich and they achieved this aim by introducing the idea of a national unity government,” he added.

Azarov quit his post as prime minister in late January 2014 amid the intensification of Euromaidan riots, stating it was in the hope that his resignation would create a chance for compromise between the government and the protesters.

Meanwhile, the US, Azarov said, managed to pull Yanukovich into “useless negotiations” with the Euromaidan demonstrators, while armed men from all over Ukraine were arriving in Kiev to seize power.

Over 100 were killed last February in clashes between the police and Euromaidan protesters in central Kiev, in which firearms were widely used.

Azarov insists Yanukovich had every opportunity to “maintain order in the country” and prevent the coup, but after the killings at the Euromaidan he was “was practically paralyzed.”

Following the coup, both Yanukovich and Azarov had to flee Ukraine and found refuge in Russia, saying that they feared for their lives.

In mid-January, Interpol put the former president and prime minster on the international wanted list after a request from Kiev. Yanukovich and Azarov stand accused of misappropriation and embezzlement during their time in office.

The new Kiev government signed the economic and political aspects of the association agreement last year, with Ukraine and the EU parliaments simultaneously ratifying them in September 2014.

The ex-PM described the current events in the south-east of Ukraine where the fighting continues between rebels and Kiev troops as a “catastrophe”.

With the sides being unable to reach a peaceful agreement on their own, the ex-PM urged the organization of an international conference, involving Russia, the US and Germany, to put an end to violence in Ukraine.

“If the forces inside the country don’t want to stop than – as it already happened in the world’s history – the Guarantor States gather and make a decision. Trust me, Germany, the US and Russia have enough influence to stop this war, they just need to come to an agreement,” he said.

The ex-PM also said that he doesn’t consider the new Ukrainian power, led by president Petro Poroshenko and prime minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, to be legitimate.

“How can I consider this a legitimate authority if it came to power through an armed coup, committed monstrous crimes and now continues a fratricidal war, doing nothing to stop (the violence)?” he wondered.

The Ukraine conflict began last April when Kiev sent regular forces and volunteer battalions to the southeastern Donetsk and Lugansk regions, after rebels within them refused to recognize the country’s new, coup-imposed authorities.

The death toll in the Ukraine conflict has exceeded 5,300 people, with over 12,000 injured, according to UN estimates.

 

Source:
http://rt.com/news/229355-ukraine-eu-washington-russia/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/europe-not-russia-pressed-kiev-over-eu-association-ex-ukrainian-pm/5429832

The Fallujah option for East Ukraine; why the US feels threatened by Russia

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Tell me; what choice does Zakharchenko really have? If his comrades are killed in future combat because he let Kiev’s army escape, who can he blame but himself?

There are no good choices.

By Mike Whitney, February 6, 2015
Posted on Counterpunch

I want to appeal to the Ukrainian people, to the mothers, the fathers, the sisters and the grandparents. Stop sending your sons and brothers to this pointless, merciless slaughter. The interests of the Ukrainian government are not your interests. I beg of you: Come to your senses. You do not have to water Donbass fields with Ukrainian blood. It’s not worth it.”

— Alexander Zakharchenko,  Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic

Washington needs a war in Ukraine to achieve its strategic objectives. This point cannot be overstated.

The US wants to push NATO to Russia’s western border. It wants a land-bridge to Asia to spread US military bases across the continent.  It wants to control the pipeline corridors from Russia to Europe to monitor Moscow’s revenues and to  ensure that gas continues to be denominated in dollars. And it wants a weaker, unstable Russia that is more prone to regime change, fragmentation and, ultimately, foreign control. These objectives cannot be achieved peacefully, indeed, if the fighting stopped tomorrow,  the sanctions would be lifted shortly after, and the Russian economy would begin to recover. How would that benefit Washington?

It wouldn’t. It would undermine Washington’s broader plan to integrate China and Russia into the prevailing economic system, the dollar system. Powerbrokers in the US realize that the present system must either expand or collapse. Either China and Russia are brought to heel and persuaded to accept a subordinate role in the US-led global order or Washington’s tenure as global hegemon will come to an end.

This is why hostilities in East Ukraine have escalated and will continue to escalate. This is why the U.S. Congress  approved a bill for tougher sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and lethal aid for Ukraine’s military. This is why Washington has sent military trainers to Ukraine and is preparing to provide  $3 billion in  “anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees, and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.” All of Washington’s actions are designed with one purpose in mind, to intensify the fighting and escalate the conflict. The heavy losses sustained by Ukraine’s inexperienced army and the terrible suffering of the civilians in Lugansk and Donetsk  are of no interest to US war-planners. Their job is to make sure that peace is avoided at all cost because peace would derail US plans to pivot to Asia and remain the world’s only superpower. Here’s an except from an article in the WSWS: Continue reading →

Six veterans of Stalingrad write open letter to Angela Merkel

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February 2, 2015 — 72nd Anniversary of the Victory at Stalingrad
Published January 22, 2015
Russian text of letter
Translated from Russian by Tom Winter

Every Museum desires to do educational outreach, and the Museum-Panorama of the Battle of Stalingrad is no exception. (Visit its site here: http://www.stalingrad-battle.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=frontpage&Itemid=)  On January 22, it hosted a Round Table discussion with actual survivors of the historic battle. These old soldiers, still resident in the Volgograd region, Maxim Matveyevich Zagorulko, Alexander Kolotushkin, Maria V. Sokolov, Mikhail Tereshchenko, Eugene F. Rogov, and Alexander Yakovlevich Sirotenko, in their late 80’s or even early 90’s, looked at the present world as well as at the past, and produced an open letter, a “letter of the living” to the Chancellor of Germany. The full text is on several Russian language sites. Their letter follows, in English. 
Letter of the Living
to Frau Angele Dorothea Merkel from the Veterans of the Stalingrad Battle
Dear Frau Merkel,
Here in the 70th year after the victory over Nazism, we, veterans of that terrible war and participants in that most horrible combat, are aware that a spectre again is haunting Europe, a spectre of the Brown Plague. This time it is Ukraine that has become the nursery of Nazism, where from the fountainhead of an ideology in ultranationalism, antisemitism, and inhumaneness, there have come into practice rejections of other cultures, physical violence, elimination of dissenters, and murders motivated by ethnic hatred.
Before us there stand familiar pictures: torchlight parades, thugs in nazi-emblemed uniforms, upraised right hands in the Nazi salute, fascist processions with police protection through the center of Kiev, and the imposition, on certain people, of second-class status. 
We have seen all this before, and we know where it leads.
In Ukraine the Brown Plague has been smoldering over the last decade, and has broken out into a civil war. Nazist-like formations such as Right Wing (Praviy Sektor), such as the so-called National Guard, numerous informal but well-armed battalions like “Azov,” with regular Ukrainian army support, with air strikes and with heavy artillery, have been systematically destroying the population of Eastern Ukraine.
They are murdering innocent people simply because the people wish to speak their own language, because they have a different idea about the future of their country, and because they do not wish to live in a government led by Banderists.
Banderists are followers of the so-called Ukraine Liberation Army, which, we remind you, Frau Merkel, fought in the time of the Second World War on the side of the Vermacht, and with the SS Galizia Division, who distinguished themselves in the murder of Soviet Jewry. They exalt their idealogical forebears, renaming the streets of Ukrainian cities after Nazi war criminals! The history of the 20th Century is being rewritten before our eyes. No wonder that the Banderists of our time — with a fanaticist’s gleam that is familiar to us veterans from the front of the World War, at Stalingrad — are calling for wiping Donbass off the face of the earth, and incinerating citizens of their own country in the east with napalm! There is documentary evidence that they have killed people simply for wearing the Ribbon of St. George, our symbol of the victory over fascism.
The truth is, Frau Merkel, that in Ukraine an all-out orgy of fascism is going on. It’s not just some anti-semitic remarks in Parliament or by dropouts about the superiority of one “race” over another. It is a matter of full-scale bloody crimes, whose victims now number in the hundreds and in the thousands.
But the west has taken a very strange position, and we do not understand it. The position can be understood as accommodating Ukrainian Nazis. It is understood in Ukraine as the position of Europe, and it is beginning to be perceived as such in Russia. And we would like to know what the German people would say about it from the vantage point of their historic national experience.
It is important for us to know your view, the view of the leader of the great people that once suffered the Brown Plague, but at the cost of terrible sacrifice, recovered from it. We are aware of how they struggle in your country with any manifestations of Nazism, and believe us, we appreciate it. All the more, it makes us wonder why, cleaning out any possible germs of nazism in you country, you are unconcerned about a full-scale outbreak of it in another part of Europe?
Why do European leaders march in support of French caricaturists murdered by Islamic terrorists, but do not march against fascism in Ukraine? Why did the head of state, who ordered annihilation of part of his own population, participate in this march? Why do 12 French victims deserve attention, but thousands of Ukrainian and Russian victims do not? 
Do you know how many children got killed in East Ukraine by thugs with Nazi emblems on their uniform? Do you want to know? We will offer you this information — if you do not already have it. Why do the people of Europe look calmly upon the massive violence in Ukraine? Is it simply because there is no mention of it in your mainstream media? Then where is their well-known independance? Independance from facts? Independance from truth? What is the actual goal of your economic sanctions? Weaken Russia as a power? Support Fascism in Ukraine? Or just to eliminate our pensions which we get as veterans of the World War?
Dear Frau Merkel, the grim history of the 20th Sentury has taught us a few lessons.
1. The re-writing of history is the first path to Nazism.
Every European fascist regime in the 20s and 30s started with this. And this is the path they have traveled in Ukraine: from re-writing schoolbook histories to the widespread demolition of Soviet memorials. The acme of falsehood was uttered  by Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk in the German media about “the Soviet Union invading Germany and Ukraine”! It would be interesting to know your sentiments about that, the sentiments of a leader where holocaust-denial is a crime entailing actual time in prison.
2. The search for scapegoats is a manifestation of Nazism.
Fascist regimes blame every failure of their country on various groups, ethnic, social, religous. In years past, this was the Jews and the Communists. In today’s Ukraine, the assigned scapegoats are Russians, Russia, and the entire east of the country.
3. If Nazism appears in one country, the disease can spread throughout the world
You cannot promote nazism in one country and suppose that it will stay within that country’s borders. The wave of Nazism spreads to all, overstepping boundaries. That’s the reason they called Nazism “The Brown Plague.” Nazism must be stopped at the distant approaches, lest it arrive in your house.
4. Nazism cannot be ignored; it must be resisted.
Should anyone suppose that one can simply ignore Ukrainian fascism, and pay no attention to it, he is utterly in error. The nature of Nazism is such that it takes being ignored as encouragement, even as an acknowledgement of its strength. Nazism is never local; it can only root, and grow. Therefore the only way with Nazism is an active bitter struggle against it.
5. The most important weapon in the struggle against nazism in its early stages is the truth.
In short, truth defeats nazism. By exhibiting the inhumane essence of nazism, the inhumane essence revealed in it own ideology, in the exhortations of its adherents, in its actual executions of persons, we fight against nazism as it is. Historical truth is the best shield against nazism. If their own government wouldn’t hide the history of their country and their people from the youth, there would be fewer nazi followers in Ukraine. Current mass media play a huge role: they can either form nazism, or they can fight it.
Dear Frau Merkel! In Russia, as successor to the USSR, we have a special and historic mission. 70 years ago, at the cost of the worst casualties of the war, we put an end to nazism in Europe. We personally, Stalingraders all, with superhuman effort, changed the course of history, not just our history, but European history, yes, world history. And we cannot allow the recrudescence of nazism. Certainly not next door! We have fought it; we will fight it; we invite you to fight it together!
A character, archetype of a fascist boss, in a well-known and favorite film here is made to say: “As soon as anywhere, instead of saying ‘Hello’ they say ‘Heil!’ you’ll know: that is where they are waiting for us, and that is where we will start our great revival.”
Frau Merkel, “Heil” is heard everywhere in Ukraine, openly, with official support. It is time for the whole European world to stop this bane.
We very much hope that the German people, and all Europe, together with the people of Russia, will stamp out the reptile, root and branch. 
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/six-veterans-of-stalingrad-write-open.html

What Steven F. Cohen & other liberals get wrong about Obama & Ukraine’s war

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By Eric Zuesse, February 5, 2015
Posted on Fort Russ

Liberals won’t acknowledge that they’ve “been had” by Barack Obama when they believed his liberal rhetoric; they won’t acknowledge it, even after Obama has proven by his actions that he is actually extremely conservative (a total agent of Wall Street; and, thus, inequality has been rising under his rule); Obama is conservative despite his liberal rhetoric, which is designed to deceive them; and he has — which is the worst thing of all — intentionally caused an extremely bloody ethnic cleansing in Ukraine, a war there against those of Ukraine’s citizens who think that Russia is a better country than the United States: an ethnic cleansing to cement-in, as permanent, a rabidly anti-Russian Government in Ukraine, by getting rid of the people there who had voted for the man Obama overthrew. This is, historically, the first time in history that any American President has sponsored an ethnic cleansing: it’s an attempt to exterminate a civilian population. That’s how bad Obama actually is.
Liberals won’t acknowledge either the violent coup in Ukraine, or the brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign to cement its result: an anti-Russian Government on Russia’s doorstep — a very real threat to Russia’s national security, and a very aggressive American policy against Russians.
The founder of Stratfor, the “private CIA” firm, says that the overthrow of Viktor Yanokovych in Ukraine in February 2014 was “the most blatant coup in history.” The President of the Czech Republic contrasts that coup versus Czechoslovakia’s authentically democratic 1968 “Velvet Revolution,” and he says that “only poorly informed people” don’t know that the governmental overthrow in Ukraine in 2014 was a coup. America’s liberals, then, are indeed poorly informed, and they are so partly because they don’t want to know the truth about Obama; America’s conservatives, by contrast, simply hate Obama, merely because he’s a black Democratic politician (and any President who has been so good to Wall Street would be loved by them if he were a white Republican); they don’t mind (and they actually support) that Obama hates Russia and institutes an ethnic cleansing campaign in his aggressive war against Russia. Whereas conservatives don’t mind Obama’s ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of pro-Russians in Ukraine, liberals don’t want to know about it. The result is actually conservatives reigning in both Parties, not just in one: we now have one-party government, in all but name.
Typical on the liberal side is Professor Steven F. Cohen, a supposed Russia-expert, who sometimes writes articles for his wife’s liberal magazine (which she, Katrina vanden Heuvel, owns), The Nation, and plays dumb about Obama’s anti-Russian coup in Ukraine, and he even says, on Amy Goodman’s February 3rd “Democracy Now!”: “Many people have argued that the United States organized a coup in February to overthrow the president of Ukraine and bring to power of this new pro-American, pro-Western government. I do not know if that’s true.”
The founder of Stratfor is correct: it’s not only true, it is blatantly true. In fact: this was the best-documented coup in all of human history; and some of the documentation of it is simply stunning. For example: Here is Obama’s selected and hired U.S. State Department official, who is responsible for policy in Europe, Victoria Nuland, telling the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on 4 February 2014, whom to get appointed to be the leader of the Ukrainian Government to replace Ukraine’s democratically elected President — and it was “Yats” Yatsenyuk, who, 22 days later, did, in fact, become appointed to rule in Ukraine as the new Prime Minister when the coup occurred, to rule that country not as being its President, because that would be unseemly (to replace the President directly); but, instead, Yatsenyuk himself chose the rabidly anti-Russian fundamentalist Baptist preacher Oleksandr Turchynov to fill that post until the voters in the extremely conservative and anti-Russian northwestern half of Ukraine would select a ‘democratic’ President, from among a field of pre-selected extremely right-wing anti-Russian candidates on May 25th. (The voters in Ukraine’s non-fascist southeastern half were so turned off (if they hadn’t already seceded from this rabidly right-wing Ukrainian Government), so that the electoral turnout in that half of the country was small to nil. The current Ukrainian Government does not represent those people, but still wants to control their land and all the resources that lie under it (such as gas).
This was an extremely violent coup that Professor Steven Cohen says he doesn’t know about (that he doesn’t know about even though it was captured in hundreds of shocking videos, which he apparently hasn’t seen or else doesn’t want to understand — here are some of the best of those).
Cohen should look at what Obama is doing in the former Ukraine, right now:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/02/ukraine-war-feb-4th-updates-prezrak-ghost-battalion-commander-alexey-mosgovoy-future-ukraines-war.html
Is he blind, or does he simply refuse to see?
Will he blame the slaughter on Obama’s underlings, whom Obama hired? They’re doing the jobs Obama hired them to do. This is Obama’s Administration — no  one else’s. They ran his coup, appointed the new Government, and oversee the ethnic cleansing this Government does after being installed.
Is Cohen going to excuse Obama’s total lack of expressed outrage against the barbarisms that the Government he placed into power has perpetrated? Of course not: these things have been done on Obama’s behalf. That’s why Obama perpetrated the coup: this is the purpose of it: to install a rabidly anti-Russian Government on Russia’s doorstep, in Ukraine, ready and eager to place nuclear missiles within a ten-minute flight to Moscow — checkmate. In order to do this, Obama needs to get rid of the people in the area of Ukraine whose 90% votes for the former neutral Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, had made Yanukovych President. If those voters aren’t eliminated, then the current, Russia-hating Ukrainian Government, will be elected out of office in a subsequent election. That’s the reason why the area of the former Ukraine that is now undergoing firebombing, clusterbombing, and other exterminationist measures, which is the area that’s shown in dark purple on the far-eastern side of this map, is exactly the same area that had voted 90% for the person, Yanukovych, whom Obama overthrew (and the EU was shocked to find out that it had, indeed, been a coup). The purpose of this ethnic cleansing is to assure that, in the future, pro-Russian voters in Ukraine, most especially the 90%-voters-for-Yanukovych (the residents in this area), won’t ever again be in Ukraine to vote on candidates for the national Government. Obama wants the U.S. Government to control all of Ukraine, including the land where those people have lived their lives, but he doesn’t want those people on it. He wants them either dead, or gone to Russia, so that they won’t be able to participate in future Ukrainian elections and reverse the strategic impact of Obama’s 2014 Ukrainian coup.
Evading Obama’s culpability in both the coup and the subsequent ethnic-cleansing in Ukraine is nothing new for Cohen, and any ‘news’ media that participate in spreading or else ignoring such evasions are not to be trusted by any intelligent reader or viewer or hearer. Spreading of such liberal pap is placing against the conservative poison of Fox ‘News’ etc., not an opponent but a nullity. It might be liberal, if liberalism is simply the verbal repudiation of conservatism, but it’s not an alternative to conservatism; it is definitely not progressivism; it is just an absence of ideology, being put up against the very real — and this nation’s dominant — ideology, which is conservatism, or “the right.”
No nation whose political discourse ranges between conservatism and nothingness can be anything else than extremist conservative, or fascist (essentially pure conservatism), which seems to be what now exists in the United States.
In the case of Barack Obama, who is the first American President to install an outright racist-fascist (in this instance, a rabidly anti-Russian) government — in other words a nazi government — anywhere in the world, and who is also the first American President to sponsor an ethnic cleansing anywhere in the world, what we actually have in the U.S. right now is a nazi President and a nazi Congress to support his nazism. Obama is not out to exterminate the Jews as Hitler was; he is out to exterminate, or else to achieve U.S. domination over, the Russian people.
If America does not repudiate that, then America has transmogrified into what America was waging war against in World War II. It’s spitting onto the graves of America’s WW II heroes.  
‘News’ media that tolerate (as liberals do), or else encourage (as conservatives do), nazi control over the U.S., are not news media for a democratic nation. They are ‘news’ media for a fascist one. That’s what we’ve now got.
There should be millions of people marching on Washington to stop this U.S.-initiated and -backed genocide of Ukraine’s pro-Russian [anti-Kiev] population. Where are the ‘peace’ marchers? Maybe they think that people such as Steven Cohen are the ones to follow.
Is that the best America now has?
This American anti-Russian nazism could lead to a nuclear WW III.

 PS: This is a response to the earliest group of reader-comments to the article, because those comments fall into two categories, both of which I find disturbing:

1) There are several comments that are plainly anti-Semitic, and which therefore belong in the league along with the ethnicity that was the obsession of Germany’s form of nazism, that of the original Nazi Party. Such readers apparently have nothing better to respond to the American aristocracy’s and their Ukrainian agents’ anti-Russian nazism than to side with Hitler’s form of nazism, and that’s neither an intelligent nor a germane way to respond to any form of racist fascism; I find all racist fascisms to be deplorable.
2) There are also several comments that defend Professor Cohen’s claimed ignorance on whether there was a coup in Ukraine, and that assert that because Cohen is a liberal and is the highest-profile one who is allowed onto the major ‘news’ media to discuss this matter, he should not be held to account for understating the vileness of the reality here. I do not respect any such blurring of Obama’s horrendous guilt in this extremely important historical matter: Obama caused the coup, and Russia had to respond to it, which was a basic defensive necessity for that country, not at all optional, neither as regards Russia’s accepting the obvious desire of the vast majority of Crimeans to rejoin Russia, nor as regards Russia’s assisting the tragic victims in Donbass to protect their lives against the Obama-nazi assault from Kiev. If one (such as Cohen) alleges that there is question as to whether Obama perpetrated a coup in the violent overthrow of Yanukovych, then one is alleging that Russia might have been the instigator of the conflict here, when Russia responded to it with protection of the Crimeans and protection of the Donbassers. What Cohen is doing is to assert that he doesn’t have any idea which side was the aggressor here. If there was no coup, then Obama was not the aggressor. Is that really a serious possibility? I would not be devoting most of my time since at least last May 2nd to reporting on the return of the nazi threat, if there was any reason whatsoever to doubt Obama’s guilt as the aggressor in the Ukrainian war. To me, what Obama is doing here is to spit on the graves of all Americans who died in World War II. Tolerance of nazism, such as by saying “I don’t know which side is the aggressor here, and which side is responding to that aggression” is despicable. One might as well say that maybe Germany’s Nazis were defending Germany’s Christians from the depradations by all Jews inside and outside Germany. Steven F. Cohen’s expressed position compromises truth just as much. 
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010,  and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/what-steven-f-cohen-other-liberals-get.html
Editor: It is shocking to witness the inaction, the silence, and even, the continued support, by the majority of American liberals/Democrats for President Obama for abuses and illegal actions that would have had them howling for President Bush’s impeachment. Though many of these same people loudly protested President Bush’s policies, they seem reluctant to get upset about President Obama. Instead, they proffer excuses.
The hypocrisy and lack of integrity of these so-called liberals and so-called progressives in America is horrifying when one considers the ongoing actions of this administration, and leads me to wonder what they really stand for. Party affiliation seems to be their most important value, not truth, not justice, not right. That is deeply shameful.
What they fail to understand is that they are equally  perpetrators in these terrible deeds.

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Donetsk authorities claim NATO ammunition found in Ukraine

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From Sputnik News, February 3, 2015

The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) forces has found ammunition used exclusively in NATO countries that the Ukrainian Army is not usually equipped with, Deputy Donetsk Militia Commander Eduard Basurin said Tuesday.

“These types of ammunition are designed for NATO countries. One of them [devices] is equipped with a base fuse. For instance, when this type of ammunition hits the wall, it blasts and destroys it [wall]. The Ukrainian forces do not have this type of ammunition,” Basurin said, demonstrating the ammunition to journalists.

DPR authorities have repeatedly claimed finding US-made weapons in the Donetsk Airport, previously occupied by the Ukrainian military. On January 19, Basurin said that DPR forces had found large quantities of US-made weapons, including M16-A5 assault rifles, grenades and communication devices. Prior to Basurin’s remarks, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko said that US-made weapons had found in the airport.

On January 21, 2015 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov harshly criticized the deliveries of weapons by a number of NATO members and European Union countries, saying this move went against EU and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) norms.

On Thursday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that no lethal weapons had been delivered to Kiev by the West, despite an announcement made by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in September that a number of NATO countries had agreed to supply the country with modern weapons. Presidential adviser Yuri Lutsenko later claimed that an agreement on the supply of weapons from the United States, France, Poland, Norway and Italy had been reached at the NATO summit in Wales. However these countries denied the statement.

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150203/1017703053.html

Donetsk Authorities Claim NATO Ammunition Found in Ukraine

On the brink of Doomsday

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From Fort Russ, 2-5-2015

What doomsday looks like on the financial markets–the course of Hryvnya today.

2/5/2015

Merkel and Hollande are coming with new proposals
By Yurasumy
Translated from Russian by J.Hawk

Interesting things are happening on the diplomatic front.

No. 1. Kerry has been talking about something with Poroshenko. Seemingly no big deal. As expected. But the initial expectation was that their talk was supposed to have happened tomorrow, and then Kerry and Poroshenko would have gone to visit Angela in Munich.

No. 2. What is more, Merkel and Hollande are coming to Kiev already tonight. They want to present Poroshenko with new apartment swap options (just kidding, of regulating the Kiev crisis).

No. 3. And tomorrow the sweet Euro decisionmaking pair is flying to Moscow. To convince Putin to adopt their variant.

All of that is happening against the background of Strategic Rocket Forces drills and Russian Ground Forces maneuvers along Ukraine’s borders.

A reminder: even a few days ago the weekend was planned differently. Kerry was supposed to meet with Poroshenko on Friday, and on Saturday everyone was to fly to Bavaria for shish-kebabs. There they’d put together a new Munich agreement aimed at Russia.

But something had changed their plans. Considering that they are working over Poroshenko first, it means that the EU proposals are not going to be on the basis of the Minsk Protocol. Considering that the Kremlin doing everything (balalaika, vodka, Budenovka, and PPSh) to show that it is not about to retreat and in view of yesterday’s discussions in Washington concerning federalization, I can assume that has already been decided. Now Putin only has to believe them. But after all that’s happened a “gentleman’s word” is not going to be enough. Apparently they are bringing “cookies” to Moscow.

What can this mean for the Donbass. Well, maybe nothing. They may fail to reach an agreement. Secondly, as long as the bombardment of cities continues, Putin will not order the destruction of the UAF to stop. The main issue is the line of demarcation. It was already raised, but it is not yet known in any detail (it was announced earlier that it would be wherever the front line is at the moment of a new ceasefire). Therefore it is not in the West’s interests to prolong the process, because the line will change with every day. On the other hand, I can’t imagine (or, rather, can imagine) what they will do to Poroshenko in Kiev after that.

In any event, the weekend will not be boring.

J.Hawk’s Comment: As noted just yesterday, Ukraine is facing the options of peace, victory, or doomsday. Victory is out of the question for obvious enough reasons. Continued fighting can only lead Ukraine into a nation-wide disaster. But for that to be averted the “parties of peace” at some point have to neutralize the “parties of war” and reach a solution. Kerry, Merkel, and Hollande are in the “peace” camp, so their meetings with Poroshenko and then Putin suggest it will be a meeting of like-minded (on the question that the fighting ought to stop, rather than escalate) individuals.

What Yurasumy’s analysis leaves out (though hints at) is the problem of the war parties. What if Biden makes one of his “trips” to Kiev again? What if the “volunteer battalions” raise the cry of “treason” against Poroshenko? Might Turchinov and Yatsenyuk not be tempted to oust Poroshenko using yet another “wave of popular anger”? 

On the other hand, it is clear that Ukraine is on the brink of its doomsday. The Ukrainian currency is plummeting, the country’s currency reserves appear to be completely exhausted, and there is zero possibility than IMF assistance will suddenly provide Ukraine with new financial means to continue the war. 

http://yurasumy.livejournal.com/375027.html

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/on-brink-of-doomsday.html