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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. 
—————
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

 

Will Ukraine be able to feed itself?

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And this discussion doesn’t include the impact of over 70,000 landmines ordered from the United States and being “sown” into fields. What a bloody harvest.

From Fort Russ

By Yurasumy, 2/5/2015
Translated from Russian by J.Hawk

Due to the hryvnya devaluation the price of a loaf of bread may increase to 9-10 hryvnya. This was announced by the First Deputy Minister of Agriculture Yaroslav Krasnopolskiy.

“Krasnopolskiy reminded, that in May of last year the price of wheat was 2500 hryvnya/ton. After factoring in the halving of the value of the national currency, we are estimating that in May 2015 that price will be 4500-5000 hryvnya/ton, therefore the price of flour will reach 6-8 thousand hryvnya per ton. Which means that the final price of a loaf of bread will be 9-10 hryvnya.”

Judging by everything, there is no money left to even keep the price of basic necessities at an affordable level. Including BREAD. As long as there existed a central distribution of bread flour that was sold to bakeries at a “fixed” price (possibly by using up the flour from the state reserves), the price could be held in check. But now it has turned out that the government has “washed its hands” and that nobody will be controlling the price of flour starting with May. Moreover, even those calculations do not take into account what had happened on the currency markets over the last week. And one still has to stay alive until May.

J.Hawk’s Comments: To state the obvious first, Ukraine is not Russia. A devaluation for a country like Russia which is a net exporter that runs large surpluses, which has a relatively modern industry capable of manufacturing nearly all the necessities and which, last but not least, produces its own energy, is a blessing in disguise, as acknowledged even by Goldman Sachs. Ukraine has not one of these advantages. It has many disadvantages to boot, starting with its very own “leadership” “elite”. So the prices for everything, including even bread, will begin to rise, and for the regime this will be a death knell. Even the mobilization protests will pale in comparison with what will happen once that price of bread becomes a reality. Considering that, according to Yaresko’s own estimate, the military campaign has cost Ukraine $10 million a day, it’s becoming relatively obvious that the UAF will not be able to sustain even its current level of military effort for much longer. 

And to think that not too long ago Yatsenyuk was bragging before the Rada and the entire Ukrainian people that Ukraine can always feed itself…

Source:
http://yurasumy.livejournal.com/374522.html
Bread for 10 hryvnya a loaf. Not a fairy tale but today’s estimate by the Ministry of Agriculture.

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/let-them-eat-cake-ukraine-edition.html

News from the war in Ukraine

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Here are links to some of the latest reports on the fighting in Ukraine:

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/ukraine-sitrep-debaltsevo-cauldron.html

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/05022015-ukrainian-crisis-news-latest.html

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/05022015-military-report-of-novorossia.html

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/ has been closely covering the situation with frequent updates.

“Ukrainian army is close to annihilation”–Kulikov

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“They have created military groupings on Iraqi and Afghan model…”

From Fort Russ,  2/5/2015
Russian General: DPR and LPR will continue its offensive,the Ukrainian army is close to annihilation.
By Viktor Avin
Translated from Russian by J.Hawk

The Ukrainian army is in such a condition that the militia can freely advance until they reach the boundaries of Lugansk and Donetsk regions.

This opinion was expressed by Army General Anatoliy Kulikov, the former Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, in an interview with the “Spetsialnyy Korrespondent” talk show.

“Ukraine has no prospects for an effective operation, from the perspective of either the political, moral, motivational, or technical point of view. They have created military groupings on Iraqi and Afghan model, namely company tactical teams. But over there it’s desert, while here it’s densely populated territory. So from the military-technical perspective it’s not a very appropriate decision.

Then there’s the question of weapons. The best was given to the territorial defense battalions, while the army stayed with the old weapons.

There is no repair base, no means of communications, loss of control.

Under such conditions DPR and LPR armed forces ought to continue their active offensive operations and reach their administrative borders. Only that will force Ukraine to start negotiating,” assured Kulikov.

J.Hawk’s Comment: Kulikov is entirely correct—DPR and LPR can do as they please, all they have to do is want to go on the offensive. The bulk of the UAF is already on the front line, with all the unpleasantness that it entails. The fact that the Rada had just passed a law that gives line commanders the authority to execute their own soldiers for insubordination is likewise suggestive that the level of discipline within the military is plumbing new depths. So there is a Plan B: if the Munich talks fail to accomplish anything, if Poroshenko continues to side with the party of war, then more war is what he will get. At this point, even large-scale NATO weapons supplies would do almost nothing to influence the conflict, except to antagonize Russia, which is why pretty much all EU member states have officially swore off such supplies. The US could still do it unilaterally, of course, but even the official White House position is against them—they know perfectly well that what Kulik describes above is true. Moreover, as detailed in earlier posts, Ukraine’s economic position is getting worse with every passing day.

Source:
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/ukrainian-army-is-close-annihilation.html

 

Ukraine SITREP: EXTREMELY dangerous situation in Debaltsevo

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An urgent warning about the possibility of a false flag with the evacuation of civilians from Debaltsevo.

Posted on Vineyard of the Saker, February 6, 2015

Ukraine SITREP: *Extremely* dangerous situation in Debaltsevo

The Novorussian and the junta have agreed to a cease-fire to allow the civilian population to leave Debaltsevo.  In theory, each civilian will get to chose whether he/she wants to be evacuated to Novorussia or to the Nazi-occupied Ukraine.  The convoy of refugees will be escorted by senior OSCE officials.  Both sides to the conflict have pledged not to open fire during the time needed for this operation.  Now consider this:

1) The only thing protecting the junta forces are, precisely, these civilians.  If these civilians leave, then Debaltsevo will turn into Saur Mogila.  Until now, the Novorussians have advanced rather slowly precisely because they could not use the full power of their artillery to soften up the well dug-in junta forces.  But thanks to the Voentorg, the Novorussians now have plenty of firepower now and if they decide to really open up upon the junta forces the latter will suffer the same devastating consequences as their (now dead) colleagues in Saur Mogila.  Everybody understands that.

2) Tonight the junta has used white phosphorus again, and in the recent days they have used both ballistic missiles and cluster munitions.  Why this sudden concern with the Debaltsevo civilians (whom the Nazis consider as “bugs” anyway)?  Does anybody really believe that the Nazi freaks in Kiev care for Novorussian civilians?!

3) Kerry, Hollande and Merkel were in Kiev today.  The latter two will be in Moscow tomorrow.   In Germany, the Munich Security Conference is meeting.  NATO is still claiming that “hundreds and hundreds” of Russian Federation soldiers are operating in Novorussia.  While some US officials speak of sending “lethal aid” to the junta, others seem to oppose it.

What does that all tell you?

Me – it tells me that this is the PERFECT opportunity for the kind of false flag massacres NATO and the US are so good at.  That is how the “Empire of Kindness” justified bombing the Bosnian Serbs, that is how the “Empire of Kindness” justified bombing Kosovo and that is how the “Empire of Kindness” justified bombing Libya.

Tomorrow, such an attack will be very easy to organize.  Just send a group of men to post a Claymore mine anywhere along the convoy’s route, plant a 152mm shell with a remote under the road where the bus will collect the refugees, pay some patsy to hide in the ditch with an RPG, or use a regular Grad strike at any time – and, voilà, you will have exactly the kind of atrocity which was used to justify all the previous wars of the “Empire of Kindness”.

Except that this time around, the goal will not be to bomb or invade Novorussia (that is something the US/NATO simply cannot do), but to create the kind if hysteria which might make it possible to save the junta forces in the Debaltsevo cauldron.  That, at least, could be the plan.  Also, if a massacre happens at the evacuation of refugees, then this will “prove” that the Novorussians don’t care about civilians and create a “Sarajavo-like” situation in which the surrounded force gets to shoot as much as it wants while the surrounding force is crucified by the imperial propaganda for every shell fired.

I sure hope that I am wrong, but I won’t breathe normally again until tomorrow evening because if no false flag happens tomorrow this will be a real miracle.

The Saker

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/2015/02/ukraine-sitrep-extremely-dangerous.html

Donetsk Republic Memorandum declares state continuity with Donetsk – Krivoy Rog Republic

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Posted on Fort Russ

February 5, 2015
Novorossia-Novosti
Translated by Kristina Rus

MEMORANDUM of Donetsk People’s Republic on the principles of state-building, political and historical continuity

We, members of the People’s Council of Donetsk People’s Republic of the first convocation, elected by universal democratic and free elections on November 2, 2014, taking into account the principles of international law, embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, proclaim the Memorandum on the principles of state-building, political and historical continuity.

Based on the will of the people of Donbass, expressed in the referendum of May 11, 2014, in the Act of the proclamation of state independence of Donetsk People’s Republic, the Declaration of Sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic from April 7, 2014, understanding of the need for the progressive development of law-making and state-building process, we affirm the historical connection of the state formations of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic.

On February 12, 1918 at the IV Congress of Soviets of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog basin based on the idea of economic integration created the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic (DKR). At the outset of building of the multinational people’s state was Fyodor Sergeyev (Artyom). The Republic comprised of the territories of Kharkov and Ekaterinoslav governorate [Dnepropetrovsk], Krivorozhye of Kherson governorate [Kherson governorate included Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson], part of the counties of Taurida governorate [Crimea and parts of southern Kherson region] and industrial areas of the Don Host Oblast.

Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic did not formally cease to exist, despite the German occupation, war and other social disasters. Its ideas lived on in the hearts and souls of millions of people.

In the late 80’s “International Donbass Movement” was created under the leadership of Dmitry Kornilov, which in 1991 raised the black-blue-and-red flag of the DKR. In March 1994 the people of Donbass called for the federal structure of the state. Federal trends were expressed at the Severodonetsk Congress in 2004, where a decision was made to hold a referendum in Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts on the issue of gaining the status of autonomous republics. Such attempts to reorganize the state were declared as criminal by the Kiev authorities. Popular protest resulted in the creation of a political movement “Donetsk Republic”. The people of Donbass finally confirmed their choice at the referendum of 2014.

We, members of the People’s Council of Donetsk People’s Republic, recognizing our responsibility to the past and paving the way to the future:

– declare the continuation of the traditions of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic and declare that the state of Donetsk People’s Republic is its successor;

– call for cooperation and uniting efforts to build a federal state on a voluntary contractual bases of all the territories and lands, that were part of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic.

Source:
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/donetsk-republic-memorandum-declares.html