Month: March 2015

Ukrainian pension fund is bankrupt

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From Fort Russ

USAID cartoon about the benefits of Euro-integration

March 27, 2015
Politnavigator
Translated by Kristina Rus

The Pension fund of Ukraine is bankrupt and exists only through subsidies from the state budget. This was declared by the Minister of Labor and Social Policy of Ukraine, Pavel Rozenko on “First National” channel.

According to him, the situation with the fund is catastrophic.

“80 billion UAH is a subsidy to the Pension fund of Ukraine, which will not even suffice for the payment of all pensions. I want to say that this is a catastrophic situation for any country, when the Pension fund does not have enough money not even to raise pensions, but in order to timely and fully pay the minimum, which we have today in our country. The Pension fund today is bankrupt and without the help of the state, it would cease to exist,” –  said Rozenko.

The doctor who treated women raped by “Azov” fighters, died from a stroke in Mariupol

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From Fort Russ

March 30, 2015
Varjag2007
Translated by Kristina Rus
 
 A Mariupol doctor, who frequently treated women raped by soldiers of punitive battalions, died of a stroke.

“Kharkov” news agency has reported about atrocities by soldiers of punitive battalions stationed in Mariupol. Residents said that they live like under the occupation during the Great Patriotic War (WWII). The only difference is that back then it was the German invaders who went on a rampage, but now they are – Ukrainian.

Almost weekly raped and battered women are brought to the hospital.

Fortunately, Mariupol clinics have highly qualified doctors. They managed to save the lives and health of even those women who were not just raped, but abused in particularly brutal ways. For example, by filling the anus with construction foam. Such incidents shocked the staff of the clinics.

The facts of the atrocities of the punishers were confirmed by the “Kharkov” news agency and an employee of the Mariupol female penal colony, reporting that the soldiers from battalions stationed here are raping young female inmates.

Commanders of the battalion take 15-20 women under 35 from the 107th Azov female penal colony on a daily basis. The inmates are taken to their base, raped, and in the morning returned to the colony barely alive. Many of them had to be treated by Mariupol doctors.

The other day one of the doctors who saved the lives of the female victims died of a stroke, unable to cope with stress. To live and work in such conditions was a real trial.

KR: 

 Mariupol is a largely pro-Russian city, which held a referendum in May 2014, like the areas of DPR and LPR, while Azov battalion is notoriously filled with those neo-nazis, russophobes and ultra-nationalists, who volunteered to go to war with Donbass on their own.

Azov is one of the battalions working with the U.S. military in upcoming training and war “games”.

Donetsk-Lugansk rail service restored after 8 months

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Congratulations to the people of the Donbass for this amazing accomplishment!

From Fort Russ

March 31, 2015
Da Dzi
Translated by Kristina Rus

There are good news, which somehow went unnoticed. But actually it is very important. Because it marks a new life of Donbass, its rebirth. The first steps of peaceful development.

I am very glad that the rail service between Donetsk and Lugansk has been restored. I remember when I was in Novorossia, in order to get to Donetsk from Lugansk and Alchevsk, we had to loop around narrow bypass trails in the dark of the night in a minivan – from checkpoint to checkpoint. Hoping that we won’t make the wrong turn and stumble on the ukro-punishers. 🙂 Under the seat layed the two “Mukhi”, on the seat – the AK. The feeling was unforgettable. But now Debaltsevo is free. And the direct way is open.

“On March 28 from Yasinovataya-Passazhirskaya station departed the first train in 8 months, connecting Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. It departs 3 times a week through the stations Yenakiyevo, Debaltsevo, Rudakova and 14 other settlements with the last stop in Lugansk at 13.30.”

And this is not a small thing. This is a huge, hard work of thousands of people. And those who freed Debaltsevo, and those who restored the rail communications and power lines.

“In response to another statement of the ATO spokesman Lysenko that UAF will leave us a “lunar surface”, and as directed by the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, we are ready to lay the railway on the “lunar surface”, which is left after the Ukrainian army.”

Donbass will be peaceful. Donbass will be prosperous. Hooray!

H.G. Wells: War will leave the world a world of cripples and old men and children

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From Rick Rozoff

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts

H.G. Wells: Selections on war

====

H.G. Wells
From Mr. Britling Sees It Through (1916)

wells

It was acutely shameful to him that all these fine lads should be going off to death and wounds while the men of forty and over lay snug at home. How stupid it was to fix things like that! Here were the fathers, who had done their work, shot their bolts, returned some value for the costs of their education, unable to get training, unable to be of any service, shamefully safe, doing April fool work as special constables; while their young innocents, untried, all their gathering possibilities of service unbroached, went down into the deadly trenches…The war would leave the world a world of cripples and old men and children…

He began to fret and rage. He could not lie in peace in his bed; he got up and prowled about his room, blundering against chairs and tables in the darkness…We were too stupid to do the most obvious things; we were sending all these boys into hardship and pitiless danger; we were sending them ill-equipped, insufficiently supported, we were sending our children through the fires to Moloch…

***

There came drifting to Mr. Britling’s ears a confusion of voices, voices that told of reaction, of the schemes of employers to best the trade unions, of greedy shippers and greedy house landlords reaping their harvest, of waste and treason in the very households of the Ministry, of religious cant and intolerance at large, of self-advertisement written in letters of blood, of forestalling and jobbery, of irrational and exasperating oppressions in India and Egypt…It came with a shock to him, too, that Hugh should see so little else than madness in the war, and have so pitiless a realisation of its essential futility. The boy forced his father to see – what indeed all along he had been seeing more and more clearly. The war, even by the standards of adventure and conquest, had long since become a monstrous absurdity. Some way there must be out of this bloody entanglement that was yielding victory to neither side, that was yielding nothing but waste and death beyond all precedent. The vast majority of people everywhere must be desiring peace, willing to buy peace at any reasonable price, and in all the world it seemed there was insufficient capacity to end the daily butchery and achieve the peace that was so universally desired, the peace that would be anything better than a breathing space for further warfare…Every day came the papers with the balanced story of battles, losses, destructions, ships sunk, towns smashed. And never a decision, never a sign of decision.

***

All over England now, where the livery of mourning had been a rare thing to see, women and children went about in the October sunshine in new black clothes. Everywhere one met these fresh griefs, mothers who had lost their sons, women who had lost their men, lives shattered and hopes destroyed. The dyers had a great time turning coloured garments to black. And there was also a growing multitude of crippled and disabled men. It was so in England, much more was it so in France and Russia, in all the countries of the Allies, and in Germany and Austria; away into Asia Minor and Egypt, in India and Japan and Italy there was mourning, the world was filled with loss and mourning and impoverishment and distress.

And still the mysterious powers that required these things of mankind were unappeased, and each day added its quota of heart-stabbing messages and called for new mourning, and sent home fresh consignments of broken and tormented men.

Some clung to hopes that became at last almost more terrible than black certainties…

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/h-g-wells-war-will-leave-the-world-a-world-of-cripples-and-old-men-and-children/

 

In Latvia, “Summer Shield” land, air, naval exercises wrap up

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From Rick Rozoff

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
March 30, 2015

Exercise Summer Shield set to wrap up

image_thumbnail

ĀDAŽI, Latvia: In support of the Alliance’s enhanced readiness, more than 1100 troops have taken part in Operation Summer Shield XII at the Ādaži Training Area, Latvia. The exercise which began on 21 March concludes on Tuesday, 31 March.

The annual training event is a combined land, air and naval exercise, with participants from Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Luxembourg, Canada and the U.S.

The goal for the training event is to integrate and coordinate fire support in infantry unit operations through combat support elements.

“Summer shield is all combat support units involved in defensive operations,” said Summer Shield Director Maj. Girts Savins. “The main objective is to coordinate the joint fire elements in the exercise.”

Artillery, aviation, defence against weapons of mass destruction, support of engineers in united operation with overcoming obstacles, involving joint fire support front observers and close air support controllers are all elements the troops were trained and tested on.

“I was initially thinking this would be a bigger challenge but all the troops were very professional and they overcame all the small differences, said Major Savins. “By the end they were working effectively and efficiently hand-in-hand.”

Moved to Latvia in 2014, Summer Shield tests the strength of the Alliance by bringing NATO members together working towards a common goal.

“The training we are doing in this part of the world is showing the world that we are together and we are looking to have our countries be independent,” said Major Savins.

Story by SHAPE Public Affairs Office

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/nato-completes-land-air-naval-drills-in-Latvia/

U.S. troops will train Ukrainian forces (Including Azov Battalion) in ultra-nationalist stronghold

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On March 17, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted in favor of a bill submitted by Poroshenko on admitting foreign servicemen for multinational exercises in Ukraine in 2015.

This bill violates the Minsk agreements. These actions by the United States and by Ukraine violate the Minsk agreements.

From Rick Rozoff

Interfax-Ukraine
March 30, 2015

U.S. army personnel to train National Guardsmen in Lviv region

On April 20, U.S. army personnel will arrive at Yavoriv training ground in Lviv region to participate in a joint military exercise with National Guard of Ukraine personnel, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has said.

“American commandos, numbering 290, will come to Yavoriv training ground, Lviv region, on April 20. This is where a long-term military exercise of 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team of the U.S. Army and combat units of the National Guard will be held,” he wrote on Facebook on Sunday.

Avakov said that 900 guardsmen will participate in the exercise.

“Three parts with 300 national guardsmen each. Three parts for eight weeks each. Then the joint exercise [will be held],” he said.

According to Avakov, the following battalions will take part in the exercise – Azov [Right Sector], Kulchynsky Yahuar (jaguar), Omega, and others from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Odesa, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia.

“Our American partners will present special ammunition and communication devices to the National Guard detachments that underwent training at the end of the exercise,” he said.

Avakov also said that preparative work between the Cabinet of Ministers and the National Guard had been completed.

“I’m grateful to Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and the employees of U.S. embassy in Ukraine. Without their vigor, the important and complicated preparation of training would have been impossible,” Avakov said, and he added that the agreement on the military exercise had been reached during negotiations between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden.

On March 17, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted in favor of a bill submitted by Poroshenko on admitting foreign servicemen for multinational exercises in Ukraine in 2015.

On March 22, U.S. Department of Defense reported it was taking the necessary measures to organize the military exercises, and that it would dispatch U.S. army personnel to Ukraine to train National Guard personnel

In keeping with the scheduled exercises, the Yavoriv district in Lviv region will host the Ukraine-U.S. Fearless Guardian 2015 drills scheduled for March through November 2015. Up to 2,200 servicemen will participate: up to 200 Armed Forces of Ukraine personnel, up to 1,000 National Guard of Ukraine personnel, and up to 1,000 U.S. Armed Forces personnel.

From July to October 2015, the international center for peacekeeping and security in Yavoriv district in Lviv region will host the Ukrainian-U.S. Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident 2015 exercises. The total number of participants will be up to 2,100 servicemen. This will include 1,000 Armed Forces of Ukraine personnel, 500 U.S. Armed Forces personnel, and up to 600 from NATO member states and countries participating in the Partnership for Peace program.

Servicemen from the 173rd Sky Soldiers airborne brigade stationed in Vicenza, Italy, will be sent to Ukraine to train six National Guard companies with an emphasis on domestic security and territorial defense, Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren had said.

He said that the training program is part of a long-term strategy to improve Ukraine’s defense potential and capabilities, and to increase the professionalism of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

According to Warren, the program will be similar to the ones held in Ukraine since 1995, and he added that the United States was holding joint exercises with parties and allies in Europe, and also throughout the world.

Shirokino – the new fetish of the Kiev junta that it can’t give up?

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From Fort Russ

Shirokino

March 31, 2015
YuraSumy
Translated by Kristina Rus

Back in February there were hints that Shirokino will become a new fetish that they can’t “give up”. Yesterday we received a message from the OSCE that Shirokino is under NAF (at least partially) and rebuttals immediately followed:

1. From the Right Sector, which have not dissolved. Incidentally, the deadline of the “ultimatum” from the authorities ends tomorrow.

2. From Semen Semenchenko, who is no longer a commander of “Donbass”, who believes that Shirokino is under the junta, but “Donbass” is “withdrawn for rotation” and cannot go back  … because it’s an order from Kiev.

3.From the ATO speaker, Stelmach, who reported about partial control over Shirokino.

Actually it is not important who is right and who is lying. It is important that Shirokino has become that fetish that can ignite a new phase of the war. The very preservation of a significant hot spot of the war suggests that such a scenario is on the table. The last fetish – Donetsk airport, became the trigger for the winter campaign. Will Shirokino become a trigger for a new war?

P. S. Meanwhile LDPR defiantly comply with the Minsk agreement and accuse Kiev of non-compliance. But Kiev cannot fulfill these agreements. Every day the loop of opportunities for Kiev is shrinking. There are many facts of violations of the Minsk Memorandum and they have already reached the level of discussion at the UN.

Notorious 22 year-old Ukrainian feminazi from Aidar battalion fires a grenade at a village Shirokhino (video)

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From Fort Russ

March 26, 2015
Varjag2007
Video: Anatoly Shariy

Translated by Kristina Rus
A video of a Ukrainian radical, the infamous female fighter of the volunteer battalion “Aidar” Vita Zavirukha firing a grenade at a Ukrainian village appeared online.
Shocking video was posted online and was available for viewing for a short time. In the video a Ukrainian woman confidently fires from a grenade launcher at the village Shirokino, cynically asking to record the possible destruction.
The video was soon removed from YouTube, however, many managed to download it, and it became available on other sites.
A native of Vinnytsa, 22-year-old  follower of Nazi ideas, Zavirukha, last year joined battalion “Aidar” with the aim of destroying the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine. The woman was involved in many operations of the militants and burning people alive in Odessa on May 2, 2014.
This time Zavirukha had fun shooting at a peaceful village.
The video shows fires and destruction caused by shelling by forces of Ukraine. The target of the feminazi was the Orthodox Church and residential homes. Previously, she was involved in the arson at Lugansk TES (electric power plant), which was also caught on video.
Then she said: “This is how Lugansk TES burns. And we expect the attack of the Russians. But we saved our cat. Look how awesome everything burns!”Vita Zavirukha: “Death to the Orthodox”

11079596_839605749414283_1721356564923285142_n

http://www.fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/03/22-year-old-ukrainian-femanazi-from.html

This terrorist was glorified in the French fashion magazine ELLE in November. The magazine later apologized and claimed it didn’t know that she is a Nazi, that there was no indication of who she was, but that’s impossible to believe. She has openly posted online what she stands for and what she’s done.

Four years of Syrian resistance to imperialist takeover; delegation led by Ramsey Clark listens to Syrians

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Organizations mentioned in this article:
International Action Center
http://www.iacenter.org
Fight Imperialism, Stand Together
http://fightimperialism.org/
Syrian Solidarity Movement http://www.syriasolidaritymovement.org/

Posted on Global Research, March 28, 2015
By Sara Flounders and Lamont Lilly
Workers.org

U.S. efforts to overturn the government of Syria have now extended into a fifth year. It is increasingly clear that thousands of predictions reported in the corporate media by Western politicians, think tanks, diplomats and generals of a quick overturn and easy destruction of Syrian sovereignty have been overly optimistic, imperialist dreams. But four years of sabotage, bombings, assassinations and a mercenary invasion of more than 20,000 fighters recruited from over 60 countries have spread great ruin and loss of life.

The U.S. State Department has once again made its arrogant demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down. This demand confirms U.S. imperialism’s determination to overthrow the elected Syrian government. Washington intends to impose the chaos of feuding mercenaries and fanatical militias as seen today in Libya and Iraq.

A delegation from the International Action Center headed by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark traveled to Syria in late February to present a different message.

Visits to hospitals, centers for displaced families and meetings with religious leaders, community organizations and government officials conveyed the IAC’s determination to resist the orchestrated efforts of U.S. imperialism acting through its proxies in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Israel.

The IAC’s opportunity to again visit Syria came following its participation in a packed and well-organized meeting of the International Forum for Justice in Palestine, held in Beirut on Feb. 22 and 23. The conference was initiated by Ma’an Bashour and the Arab International Centre for Communication and Solidarity and again confirmed the centrality of the burning, unresolved issue of Palestine in the region.

The solidarity delegation to Syria included Cynthia McKinney, former six-term member of the U.S Congress; Lamont Lilly, of the youth organization FIST – Fight Imperialism, Stand Together; Eva Bartlett, from the Syrian Solidarity Movement; and Sara Flounders, IAC co-director.

The delegation traveled the rutted, mountainous, blacktop road from Beirut to Damascus to the Lebanon-Syria border. On the Syrian side, this road was a modern, 6-lane highway, a reminder of Syria’s high level of infrastructure development. Even after four years of war, this is still a well-maintained highway. Due to sanctions against Syria, hundreds of trucks attempting deliveries stretched for miles on both sides of the border.

Compared to two years ago, when the IAC visited Damascus, this year we didn’t hear the constant thud of incoming rockets from mercenary forces shelling the city. These military forces have been pushed back from their encirclement of the capital. Syrian military units, checkpoints, sandbags, blast walls and concrete blocks were now less pervasive. Markets were full of people and held more produce.

A visit to Damascus’ largest hospital showed the cumulative impact of four years of devastation. At the University Hospital, where children with amputated limbs receive treatments in the ICU, many children had been brought in maimed from explosives and with shrapnel wounds from mortars and rockets fired on Damascus by terrorist forces.

At a visit to a center for displaced families at a former school, we met with university students, who provide sports, crafts, tutoring and mentoring programs. Medical care, free food and education programs are provided by the centers. But conditions are desperately overcrowded. Each homeless family, often of 6 to 10 people, is allocated a single classroom as housing. Almost half the population has been displaced by the terror tactics of mercenary forces.

A Mosaic of cultures

A theme in almost every discussion was Syria’s heritage as a diverse, rich mosaic of religious and cultural traditions. Sectarian divisions and intolerance are consciously opposed. One can see the determination to oppose the rule of foreign-funded forces.

A visit with Syria’s Grand Mufti Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun and Syrian Greek Orthodox Bishop Luca al-Khoury reflected the centuries of religious harmony that previously existed in Syria.

Mufti Hassoun stressed the need for reconciliation. He described to the visitors the assassination three years ago of his 22-year-old son, Saria, who “had never carried a weapon in his life.” Saria was gunned down after leaving his university. At the funeral, Mufti Hassoun declared he forgave the gunmen and called on them to lay down their weapons and rejoin Syria. He described his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Bishop Luca al-Khoury, as his cousin and brother.

Bishop Khoury described the ease with which he received a visa to the U.S., while Mufti Hassoun was denied a visa, although both are religious leaders. “Why do they differentiate between us?” said Khoury. “It’s part of the project to separate Christians and Muslims here. It’s over gas pipelines which are supposed to run through Syrian territory. This will only happen if there is a weak Syrian state.

“If the Syrian government would agree to give a monopoly to France to extract gas from Syria, then you would find [President François] Hollande visiting Syria the next day. If the Syrian government would give the monopoly to [the United States of] America, [President Barack] Obama would declare President al-Assad as the legitimate ruler of the Syrian people.”

“Turkey is warring on us,” Khoury continued, “with financial support from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and political support from America, Europe and Britain. Drones cross our borders daily, providing coordinates for the terrorists as to where to strike.”

Both religious leaders declared, as did many others in Syria, that the only solution is an international effort to stop the flow of arms: “If the American government would like to find a solution for the Syrian crisis, they could go to the Security Council and issue a resolution under Chapter 7 for a total ban of weapons from Turkey to terrorists in Syria. In one week this would be over.”

Syria’s accomplishments

Political and media adviser to President al-Assad, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, described the problem of stopping the weapons and mercenaries flooding into the country: “With external support and financing, and an over 800-kilometer border with Turkey, it’s very difficult to stop the flow of terrorists.

“Syria was formerly one of the fastest developing countries in the world,” Shaaban continued, “and one of the safest. We have free education and health care. We did not know poverty; we grew our food and produced our own clothing. At universities, 55 percent of the students were women. In whose interest is it to destroy this heritage? Who is the beneficiary of this?”

Shaaban described her time as a Fulbright scholar at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and later as professor at Eastern Michigan University: “I always wanted to be a bridge between Syria and Western cultures. At the beginning of the crisis, they tried to buy me. They urged me to ‘come to a civilized place,’” she said. “We have baths which are over 1,000 years old and still functioning. I studied Shelley: They didn’t have baths 800 years ago in England. We did. We were having baths and coffee.”

Meeting with PFLP Leaders

The delegation headed by Ramsey Clark also had an important opportunity to meet with Abu Ahmad Fuad, deputy general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Abu Sami Marwan, of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, and hear of the ongoing developments in Palestine and the region.

According to a Feb. 25 statement released by the PFLP after the meeting, “The PFLP leaders discussed the nature of the U.S./Zionist aggression against the people of the region, their intervention in Syria and the attempts of colonial powers to impose their hegemony by force and military aggression, through division of the land and people, and by pushing the region into sectarian or religious conflict.

“This U.S. policy is nothing new.” The Front noted that the colonial powers have waged an ongoing war against the Arab people to prevent any real progress for the region on the road to liberation, self-determination and an end to Zionist occupation.

“The U.S. delegation discussed the urgent need for building ongoing solidarity with Palestine in the United States and internationally,” continued the release, “in particular to confront the deep involvement of the United States — militarily, politically and financially — in the crimes of the occupier, and to end its attacks on Syria, Iraq and the people of the entire region.

“The solidarity delegates noted that there is a colonial scheme to divide and repartition the region according to the interests of major corporations and imperial powers, targeting the resources of the people, sometimes through blatant political interference in the affairs of the region and other times through wars and military attacks on states and peoples.

“The two sides emphasized the importance of communication between the Palestinian Arab left and progressive and democratic forces in the United States to confront Zionism and imperialism in the U.S. and in Palestine alike.”

Ramsey Clark described the aim of the visit: “To find more opportunities for dialogue and coordination among the Syrian and American people.  We saw culture and credibility in Syria and we appreciate the struggle of this people. We will disallow them to shift Syria into Iraq or Libya.”

Cynthia McKinney, former member at the U.S. Congress, said that she appreciated “Syria’s heroic stance, as people and leadership, in its war against the U.S. imperialism. The Syrian people are exceptional in their capability of resistance as the acts during four years have failed to achieve their goals.”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/four-years-of-syrian-resistance-to-imperialist-takeover/5439230

U.S. war moves in Ukraine; U.S. military trains murderous Ukrainian National Guard

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Lviv is a hotbed of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism.

By Greg Butterfield
March 16, 2015
International Action Center

As activists, students and workers gather in Washington, D.C., for the “Spring Rising” anti-war mobilization March 18-21, many are probably unaware that 300 U.S. troops arrived in Ukraine this month, with another 300 expected to join them shortly.

The U.S. soldiers are stationed at the Yavoriv Training Area in Lviv, near the Polish border in western Ukraine. Their mission, according to the Pentagon, is to train divisions of the Ukrainian National Guard.

 But their presence also establishes a provocative U.S. military “footprint” in this key agricultural and industrial country on the Russian Federation’s western border.

 The first open and public U.S. military presence on Ukrainian soil comes amid a civil war raging in former southeastern Ukraine, now the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, also called Novorossiya. It’s accompanied by unprecedented NATO war games and military buildup threatening Russia.

 All this despite a ceasefire agreement, negotiated by Russia, Germany and France, which went into effect Feb. 15. As happened during previous ceasefires, the U.S.-backed government in Kiev routinely violates the terms and is using the “breathing spell” to rebuild its military forces to assault the embattled Donbass mining region.

 “Before this week is up, we’ll be deploying a battalion minus … to the Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces for the fight that’s taking place,” the U.S.’s 173rd Airborne Brigade commander, Michael Foster, told a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington on March 3. (Global Research, March 3)

 U.S. forces are scheduled to stay six months. But discussions are underway about “how to increase the duration and the scope of the training mission,” Foster said, echoing remarks made in January by former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Derek Chollet.

 Meanwhile, in London, Prime Minister David Cameron told a House of Commons committee on Feb. 24 that up to 75 British soldiers would be sent to Ukraine to develop “an infantry training program with Ukraine to improve the durability of their forces,” the BBC reported.

 “Today’s announcement builds upon the work that we have already undertaken through NATO and bilaterally,” added British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon. (Sputnik, Feb. 24)

 Poland, too, plans to send military instructors to train Ukrainian soldiers, Boguslaw Pacek, advisor to the country’s defense minister, told Reuters on Feb. 26.

 What is the Ukrainian National Guard?

When most people in the U.S. hear the term “National Guard,” they think of the recruiting commercials touting “one weekend a month, two weeks a year” of training to “serve your country.” The Pentagon is playing on this association to make their mission sound benign.

Of course, the National Guard in the U.S. has a long history of being employed to put down rebellions and strikes in the U.S., often with the most brutal methods. And in the last 15 years, since the start of Washington’s “war on terror,” many National Guard soldiers have been required to serve long stretches in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the Ukrainian National Guard is something else altogether. The brainchild of far-right Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, it came into being one year ago, shortly after the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected president.

The National Guard is based on neo-Nazi street-gangs and fascist political organizations that formed the power base of the Euromaidan protest movement which carried out the February 2014 coup in Kiev. It answers to Avakov, not the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which the coup makers considered unreliable, and which has continued to disintegrate during the war in the southeast.

The National Guard, in fact, has been the backbone of Kiev’s brutal “Anti-Terrorist Operation” against Novorossiya. This operation has targeted civilians throughout the Donbass mining region since April 2014. It is nearly as ruthless as the “volunteer” fascist battalions affiliated with the openly fascist Right Sector.

While the Ukrainian Armed Forces today are a meat grinder for workers, unemployed people and youth forcibly drafted, and who frequently desert at the first opportunity, the National Guard comprise the forces most loyal to the junta of oligarchs, neoliberal politicians and fascists in Kiev.

This is the force the U.S. wants to train and strengthen.

NATO provocations

But there’s much more to the story.

Throughout Europe, the Baltic and Central Asian states bordering Russia, and even on U.S. soil, an unprecedented volume of provocative war games are underway, all clearly threatening Moscow.

Why? Because the real aim of the U.S. power play in Ukraine is to establish NATO military power on Russia’s border, with the aim of fomenting regime change aimed at breaking up the Russian Federation into pliable, profitable pieces that can be easily dominated by Wall Street and its European junior partners.

That’s why since day one of the Ukrainian crisis, Democrats, Republicans and the corporate media have united to turn reality on its head by portraying Russia as the aggressor — a Big Lie to cover up their own role.

Here’s a sampling of the provocative moves in the past month, culled from U.S. military sources, Ukrainian and Russian media, as well as anti-war sites like StopNATO.org and Global Research:

  • On Feb. 10 — as ceasefire talks were underway in Minsk, Belarus — the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution to authorize $1 billion for training, equipping and providing “lethal aid” to Kiev through September 2017.
  • On Feb. 24, U.S. military vehicles took part in a NATO parade in the Estonian town of Narva, just 300 meters from the Russian border. It included 140 armored vehicles and nearly 1,500 troops, including U.S. soldiers.
  • The same day, in Alaska, paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team performed the largest U.S. airborne mission north of the Arctic Circle in more than a decade as part of Exercise Spartan Pegasus. “This exercise demonstrated their unique ability to rapidly mass power on an objective in extremely cold and austere environments,” said an Army press release.
  • U.S. Marines and soldiers from the Republic of Georgia staged a “pre-deployment training” during Mission Rehearsal Exercise in Hohenfels, Germany, on Feb. 27.
  • NATO Supreme Commander in Europe and Chief of the U.S. European Command Philip Breedlove told the Senate Armed Forces Committee on March 3 that it is “essential” for Washington to provide “military support” to “U.S. partners Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine [which] face a different security challenge from Russia than those facing NATO allies.”
  • On March 6, U.S. and Canadian soldiers carried out drills “in winter conditions” with their Latvian counterparts, while live-fire training exercises were conducted at Drawsko Pomorskie in northern Poland.
  • Some 450 U.S. soldiers and 25 Black Hawk helicopters will be deployed to Illesheim, Germany, in March “in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a multinational training mission to reassure Poland and the Baltic countries of NATO’s commitment in the face of Russia’s aggressive moves in Ukraine.” The deployment is to last nine months.
  • The European Union needs its own army to confront Russia, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a German newspaper on March 8.
  • Latvia received more than 120 armored units, including tanks, from the U.S. on March 9. U.S. Army Gen. John O’Connor, who witnessed the tanks’ arrival, declared that “Freedom must be fought for, freedom must be defended.”
  • A major NATO naval force is amassing in the Black Sea, including U.S., Canadian, German, Italian, Turkish, Bulgarian and Romanian warships.

Washington’s unreal ‘debate’ over arming Ukraine

“Watch what they do, not what they say” — the old adage is always good advice when dealing with U.S. imperialism. And nowhere is that more apparent than in Washington’s current “debate” over arming Ukraine.

The media depict a dispute over whether the U.S. should provide “lethal weapons,” heavy weapons and offensive weapons to Ukraine for its war against “pro-Russian separatists,” as the anti-fascist resistance in Donbass is usually labeled.

For example, on March 6, leading congressional Republicans and Democrats, headed by John Boehner, urged President Obama to provide “lethal defensive weapons” to Kiev due to Russia’s “grotesque violation of international law.”

The White House states that it is still “considering” whether to provide so-called lethal aid. However, top administration officials, from Secretary of State John Kerry on down, have voiced their support.

All of this amounts to smokescreen and posturing for political gain. In fact, the Obama administration and Congress have colluded all along to arm the fascist junta, which they collaborated with in bringing to power. In December, Congress overwhelmingly approved and Obama signed the “Ukrainian Freedom Support Act,” in fact authorizing “lethal aid.”

Airfields in eastern Ukraine immediately shut down as U.S. military cargo planes flew in massive amounts of old and new NATO weaponry. Much of this war materiel was captured and put on public display by the Novorossiyan people’s militias following the defeat of Ukraine’s January 2015 military offensive.

In February, Ukrainian President Peter Poroshenko inked an arms agreement with the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. client state that frequently serves as a hub to funnel advanced weaponry to right-wing regimes and counterrevolutionary movements supported by Washington.

On March 11, Obama approved $75 million in additional “nonlethal” military aid to Ukraine, including secure communications equipment, drones, counter-mortar radars, night-vision goggles and military ambulances, to be delivered in the next six to nine months. He also approved the provision of 30 armored and 200 unarmored Humvees, Sputnik reported.

The same day, the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund approved a new $17.5 billion financial aid package for Ukraine in exchange for additional painful austerity measures. (RT.com, March 11)  This is meant to ensure that Kiev will remain solvent enough to continue its proxy war in the coming months, despite its collapsing economy.

Whether or not the U.S. openly arms Ukraine with offensive weapons, or continues to do so covertly and through third countries, is far less significant that the blatant war moves of U.S. and NATO forces in the region.

Every day, it grows more urgent for the anti-war forces in the U.S. to stand up and demand: Stop the weapons, stop sanctions, stop provocations against Russia! Stand with the people of Donetsk and Lugansk resisting austerity and genocide!

http://www.iacenter.org/ukraine/ukraine031715//