lies

Things will get worse until the U.S. stops lying about Crimea

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By Eric Zuesse
Global Research, February 08, 2017
Strategic Culture Foundation 7 February 2017
crimea

Unless the U.S. government’s lies about Crimea — the ‘Russia seized Crimea’ narratives — become acknowledged to be lies, war between the U.S. and Russia can only continue to become increasingly likely, because the world is sliding toward World War III based upon these lies, and will therefore inevitably continue that slide until these lies are publicly repudiated by the U.S. government, which is their sole source. The liar on this is clearly the U.S. and not Russia: the U.S. is the entire source for the alleged cause for war between the U.S. and Russia. 

The preparations for war between the U.S. and Russia continue naturally apace until the United States publicly acknowledges that Russia had not ‘seized’ Crimea — acknowledges that the cause for all of these war-preparations by the U.S. and its NATO and other allies against Russia is fake, a U.S. lie, and that Russia is purely America’s victim in this entire matter and acting in a 100% defensive way against America’s aggressions in this matter.

Anyone who is closed-minded to the possibility that the U.S. is lying and that Russia is telling the truth about the relationship between the two countries, would therefore be simply wasting time to read here, because the solid documentation that will be provided here will prove that that’s not only a possibility; it is the fact, and those widespread false beliefs will, indeed, be disproven here. Proving that, is the purpose of this article. Therefore, a warning is needed beforehand, for any reader who is closed-minded about that possibility — any such person would be wasting time to read this article. Here it is:

(WARNING: The following article asserts many things that are propagandized almost universally in The West to be false, and in each such instance the documentation of the assertion’s being true is provided in a link, so that any reader who doesn’t already know its truth can easily come to know that he/she had previously been deceived about that particular matter — the reader can come to know this just by clicking onto the link. This article depends upon its links, which are rooted in the most-reliable evidence on the given topic — far more reliable than any of the ‘evidence’ that’s cited by defenders of The West’s position, lies on these matters. The links are provided so that a reader can easily connect to the actual evidence, and decide on one’s own, whom the liars are, and are not. It all depends upon the evidence. Any reader who doesn’t want to know the evidence, would be just wasting time to read here.)

PRESENTATION OF THE CASE

Obama-Trump economic sanctions against Russia are based upon the lies that are to be exposed as lies, in the links here. So too are the NATO movements of U.S. troops and missiles right up to Russia’s very borders — ready to invade Russia — based especially upon the lie of ‘Russian aggression in Crimea’. All of the thrust for WW III is based upon U.S. President Barack Obama’s vicious lie against Russia: his saying that the transfer of Crimea from Ukraine to Russia was not (which it actually was) an example of the U.N.-and-U.S. universally recognized right of self-determination of peoples (such as the U.S. recognizes to apply both in Catalonia and in Scotland, but not in Crimea) but was instead an alleged ‘conquest’ of Crimea by Russia. (As that link there documents, Obama’s allegation that it was ‘Putin’s conquest’ of Crimea is false, and he knew it to be false; he was well informed that the people of Crimea overwhelmingly wanted their land to be restored to Russia, and to be protected by Russia, so as not to be invaded by the Ukrainian government’s troops and weapons, after a bloody U.S. coup by Obama had — less than a month earlier — overthrown the democratically elected President of Ukraine, for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted. Obama’s own agents were behind that coup; they were doing his bidding. The aggressor here is entirely the U.S., not Russia, despite Obama’s lies.)

All U.S.-government-sponsored and other Western polling of Crimeans, both prior to the 16 March 2014 plebiscite in Crimea, and after it, showed that far more Crimeans wanted Crimea to be again a part of Russia as it had been until the Soviet dictator in 1954 arbitrarily transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine. U.S. President Barack Obama was actually insisting that Nikita Khrushchev’s diktat on this matter must stand permanently — that the people of Crimea should never be able to choose their own government, but must become ruled by Obama’s coup-installed regime in Ukraine, no matter about that new government’s intense hostility toward those people. And Obama instituted the economic sanctions against Russia on this basis — U.S. as the aggressor, calling Russia the ‘aggressor’, Obama’s lying basis for ‘the new Cold War’. It’s a serious lie — no mere ‘fib’.

In other words: the renewal of the Cold War (and an increasingly hot war by the U.S. against Russia’s ally Syria, and elsewhere) this time against Russia (no longer against the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance, none of which even existed after 1991) is based upon Barack Obama’s refusal to allow democracy for the people of Crimea. The build-up toward WW III is that simple — a vicious U.S. lie, directed against Russia.

And that’s not the only instance where the U.S. government blocks democracy in order to conquer Russia by grabbing Russian-allied nations (first Ukraine, and then, increasingly, Syria). Twice in one day, U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said that Obama’s demand that Syria’s current President, the Russia-friendly Bashar al-Assad, must be prevented from being even on the ballot in Syria’s next election for President, is unacceptable, and that (as Ban said) «The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people».

Why is the West allowed to dictate to Crimeans, and to Syrians, that they cannot choose their own government?

This is the new, anti-democratic, United States government. This is the reality.

Lawrence J. Korb, who was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense during 1981-1985, quit the Cold War against Russia when the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact all ended in 1991, and he wrote on 26 February 2016, headlining «Don’t Fall for Obama’s $3 Billion Arms Buildup at Russia’s Door». He was on the correct side about this, against the Obama-initiated thrust toward WW III, but he understated the evilness, by saying:

Continue reading →

Declassified memo proves the Pentagon had ZERO evidence of WMDs in Iraq

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From Activist Post
By Justin Gardner
January 26, 2016

Thirteen years after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it is common knowledge that this war of choice was based on fabrications and slick propaganda. There were no weapons of mass destruction, the country posed no real threat to the U.S., and it was not a hotbed of terrorism until after Saddam was deposed.

Now, a bombshell has dropped in the form of a leaked classified report—a “smoking gun” if you will—that confirms the utter deception carried out on the American people to support the invasion. It demonstrates just how far the cabal under George W. Bush, making up a group known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), would go to prey upon fear in pursuit of global hegemony.

While Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others were proclaiming their certainty about the imminent threats posed to the U.S. by Saddam’s Iraq, the leaked documents reveal that they knew almost nothing about any actual weapons or capabilities.

On August 16, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld asked Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, head of the Joint Staff’s intelligence directorate, for a report on “what we don’t know (in a percentage) about the Iraqi WMD program.”

The findings, titled Iraq: Status of WMD Programs, were underscored by this statement:

Our assessments rely heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment rather than hard evidence. The evidentiary base is particularly sparse for Iraqi nuclear programs.

Regarding the actual programs, it says:

We’ve struggled to estimate the unknowns. … We range from 0% to about 75% knowledge on various aspects of their program…

Our knowledge of the Iraqi (nuclear) weapons program is based largely—perhaps 90%—on analysis of imprecise intelligence.

When forwarding the report, Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer answered Rumsfeld’s original question by noting, “We don’t know with any precision how much we don’t know.”

Rumsfeld apparently believed the report had some significance when he sent it to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying, “Please take a look at this material as to what we don’t know about WMD. It is big.”

Considering that this was a summary of all that the U.S. intelligence apparatus knew about Iraq’s WMD capabilities (or lack thereof), how could any responsible leader try and sell the invasion to the American people?

Yet that is what happened, perhaps no more fervently than Vice President Dick Cheney. There are countless examples of Cheney stating in no uncertain terms the nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile threats that Saddam’s Iraq posed to the U.S.

Cheney asserted that Iraq was secretly reconstituting its biological and chemical weapons programs, but the report stated:

We cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi facilities that produce, test, fill, or store biological weapons.

We do not know if all the processes required to produce a weapon are in place. [The Iraqis] lack the precursors for sustained nerve agent production…we cannot confirm the identity of any Iraqi sites that produce final chemical agent.

While Cheney and the gang issued repeated fear-mongering about “mushroom clouds,” the report stated:

We do not know the status of enrichment capabilities. We do not know with confidence the location of any nuclear-weapon-related facilities.

Days before Bush claimed that Iraq was developing ballistic missiles that could hit Israel with WMD, the report had found:

We doubt all processes are in place to produce longer range missiles.

The secret report was kept from the view of key players in the propaganda campaign, including Colin Powell who was made to look the fool [Ed: other evidence has shown that Colin Powell knowingly lied]. Just before the invasion, Powell said before the U.N. General Assembly:

My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

With this lack of factual evidence for their yearning to invade Iraq—a goal of PNAC since 1998—the war-mongering officials with deep ties to the defense industry proceeded to fabricate their own tales to justify the propaganda campaign.

They turned to a parallel intelligence apparatus that they created, which relied on a network of Iraqi defectors and exiles, most notably the late Ahmed Chalabi who admitted he provided wrong information.

Back home, Cheney and Rumsfeld had set up something called the Office of Special Plans, run by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. This Pentagon office sent raw intelligence from Chalabi and other nefarious sources directly to the president, unvetted by intelligence analysts and uncorroborated.

If there was ever a smoking gun, this is it. If there was ever enough reason to bring charges of war crimes and other abuses of power against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, this report provides it.

Justin Gardner writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com

Copyright Justin Gardner 2016

http://www.activistpost.com/2016/01/declassified-memo-proves-the-pentagon-had-zero-evidence-of-wmds-in-iraq.html

 

Iraq War was based on lies: top Bush-era CIA official

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Global Research, May 27, 2015
The Anti-Media
by Claire Bernish

Twelve years after George W Bush initiated the illegal invasion of Iraq, ostensibly under the premise of preemptive self-defense, a stark majority — as many as 75% in 2014 — feel the so-called war was a mistake. As evidence rapidly accumulates that Bush’s yearning to launch an aggressive attack was likelier due to a personal grudge than anything else, that number will surely swell. This past Tuesday, the former president’s intelligence briefer lent yet more plausibility to that theory in an interview on MSNBC’s Hardball, making an admission that the Bush White House misrepresented intelligence reports to the public on key issues.

Michael Morell’s stint with the CIA included deputy and acting director, but during the time preceding the US invasion of Iraq, he helped prepare daily intelligence briefings for Bush. One of those briefings, from October 2002, is an infamous example in intelligence history as how not to compile a report. This National Intelligence Estimate, titled “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction”, was the ostensibly flawed intelligence cited continuously by Bush supporters as justification to pursue a war of aggression against Iraq. However, this claim is dubious at best, and serves more as a smokescreen to lend credence to a president who was otherwise hellbent on revenge against Saddam Hussein, as evidenced in his statement a month before the report, “After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad.”

In the Hardball interview, host Chris Matthews asked Morell about Cheney’s notorious statement in 2003:

“We know he [Saddam Hussein] has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” 

The following is the conversation that ensued:

MATTHEWS: Was that true?

MORELL: We were saying—

MATTHEWS: Can you answer that question? Was that true?

MORELL: That’s not true.

MATTHEWS: Well, why’d you let them get away with it?

MORELL: Look, my job Chris—

MATTHEWS: You’re the briefer for the president on intelligence, you’re the top person to go in and tell him what’s going on. You see Cheney make this charge he’s got a nuclear bomb and then they make subsequent charges he knew how to deliver it…and nobody raised their hand and said, “No that’s not what we told him.”

MORELL: Chris, Chris Chris, what’s my job, right? My job—

MATTHEWS: To tell the truth.

MORELL: My job—no, as the briefer? As the briefer?

MATTHEWS: Okay, go ahead.

MORELL: As the briefer, my job is to carry CIA’s best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it. My job is to not watch what they’re saying on TV.

Discussion continued:

MATTHEWS: So you’re briefing the president on the reasons for war, they’re selling the war, using your stuff, saying you made that case when you didn’t. So they’re using your credibility to make the case for war dishonestly, as you just admitted.

MORELL: Look, I’m just telling you—

MATTHEWS: You just admitted it.

MORELL: I’m just telling you what we said—

MATTHEWS: They gave a false presentation of what you said to them.

MORELL: On some aspects. On some aspects.

And the host pushed just a little further:

MATTHEWS: That’s a big deal! Do you agree? If they claimed they had a [nuclear] weapon, when you know they didn’t.

MORELL: It’s a big deal. It’s a big deal.

He’s absolutely right, of course, and even further to that point, Morell made another admission of a direct misrepresentation: “What they were saying about the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda publicly was not what the intelligence community” had found. “I think they were trying to make a stronger case for the war.” Which the administration had to do, considering no such case existed. As a matter of fact, Cheney’s statement directly conflicts with what the NIE actually stated, which is that the intelligence community only found a “[lack of] persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.” Which is in line with the International Atomic Energy Agency report that came to the same conclusion: “[W]e have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons program.”

All of this solidifies what former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan resolutely stated about the US invasion of Iraq in 2004: “I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter. From our point of view and from the charter point of view it was illegal.”

The question most deserving an answer, and increasingly posed by the populace at large: If George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and others in the administration, deliberately misled the public on false pretenses, directly contradicted intelligence information through misrepresentation, and ultimately initiated a wholly illegal invasion of Iraq that led to the deaths of well over 1 million civilian, non-combatants; WHY have they not been charged with war crimes?

This article (Top Bush Era CIA Official Just Confirmed the Iraq War Was Based On Lies) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TheAntiMedia.org. Tune in! The Anti-Media radio show airs Monday through Friday @ 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. Help us fix our typos: edits@theantimedia.org .

Copyright Claire Bernish, The Anti-Media 2015

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-iraq-war-was-based-on-lies-top-bush-era-cia-official/5451817

Former CIA official on the secret wars of the CIA — Part 1

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From The Other Americas Radio:

Our ambassador to the United Nations, Patrick Moynihan, he read continuous statements of our position to the Security Council, the general assembly, and the press conferences, saying the Russians and Cubans were responsible for the conflict, and that we were staying out, and that we deplored the militarization of the conflict.

And every statement he made was false. And every statement he made was originated in the sub-committee of the [National Security Council] that I sat on as we managed this thing. The state department press person read these position papers daily to the press. We would write papers for him. Four paragraphs. We would call him on the phone and say, `call us 10 minutes before you go on, the situation could change overnight, we’ll tell you which paragraph to read. And all four paragraphs would be false. Nothing to do with the truth. Designed to play on events, to create this impression of Soviet and Cuban aggression in Angola. When they were in fact responding to our initiatives.

And the CIA director was required by law to brief the Congress. This CIA director Bill Colby – the same one that dumped our people in Vietnam – he gave 36 briefings of the Congress, the oversight committees, about what we were doing in Angola. And he lied. At 36 formal briefings. And such lies are perjury, and it’s a felony to lie to the Congress.
— John Stockwell, former CIA official
October 1987

 Transcript:THE SECRET WARS OF THE CIA:

by John Stockwell

A lecture given in October, 1987

Audio: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info//article4068.htm

Part I – Part II

John Stockwell is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to leave the agency and go public. He ran a CIA intelligence-gathering post in Vietnam, was the task-force commander of the CIA’s secret war in Angola in 1975 and 1976, and was awarded the Medal of Merit before he resigned. Stockwell’s book In Search of Enemies, published by W.W. Norton 1978, is an international best-seller.

“I did 13 years in the CIA altogether. I sat on a subcommittee of the NSC, so I was like a chief of staff, with the GS-18s (like 3-star generals) Henry Kissinger, Bill Colby (the CIA director), the GS-18s and the CIA, making the important decisions and my job was to put it all together and make it happen and run it, an interesting place from which to watch a covert action being done…

I testified for days before the Congress, giving them chapter and verse, date and detail, proving specific lies. They were asking if we had to do with S. Africa, that was fighting in the country. In fact we were coordinating this operation so closely that our airplanes, full of arms from the states, would meet their airplanes in Kinshasa and they would take our arms into Angola to distribute to our forces for us….

What I found with all of this study is that the subject, the problem, if you will, for the world, for the U.S. is much, much, much graver, astronomically graver, than just Angola and Vietnam. I found that the Senate Church committee has reported, in their study of covert actions, that the CIA ran several thousand covert actions since 1961, and that the heyday of covert action was before 1961; that we have run several hundred covert actions a year, and the CIA has been in business for a total of 37 years.

What we’re going to talk about tonight is the United States national security syndrome. We’re going to talk about how and why the U.S. manipulates the press. We’re going to talk about how and why the U.S. is pouring money into El Salvador, and preparing to invade Nicaragua; how all of this concerns us so directly. I’m going to try to explain to you the other side of terrorism; that is, the other side of what Secretary of State Shultz talks about. In doing this, we’ll talk about the Korean war, the Vietnam war, and the Central American war.

Continue reading →

John Pilger on modern fascism and the lies of America’s warmongers

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Why the rise of fascism is again the issue
By John Pilger
February 26, 2015

ukraine-riots-33

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism.

“To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened. Had the United States and its satellites not initiated their war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, almost a million people would be alive today; and Islamic State, or ISIS, would not have us in thrall to its savagery. They are the progeny of modern fascism, weaned by the bombs, bloodbaths and lies that are the surreal theatre known as news.

Like the fascism of the 1930s and 1940s, big lies are delivered with the precision of a metronome: thanks to an omnipresent, repetitive media and its virulent censorship by omission. Take the catastrophe in Libya. Continue reading →

David Swanson on new report: U.S. Army claims to be full of liars

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On World Without War, February 23 2015
By David Swanson

“Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession” is the title of a new paper by Leonard Wong and Stephen Gerras of the U.S. Army’s Strategic Studies Institute. Its thesis: the U.S. Army is full of liars who habitually lie as part of a lying culture that has internalized and normalized lying to the point of unrecognizability.

Finally a claim from the Army I’m prepared to take seriously!

But the authors aren’t interested in the Army’s lying press releases or lying Congressional testimony or lying sound bytes promoting each new war, predicting imminent success, and identifying each dead adult or child as an evildoer. In fact, it seems pretty clear that the authors are in fact lying to themselves about the nature of the Army’s lying.

To hear them tell it, the Army’s lying problem could be the same as in any other institution. They don’t compare the Army to any other institutions, except to say that their analysis applies to the whole U.S. military, and the implication is that other institutions do not have it so bad. But the root of the problem, as they see it, is impossible demands placed on members of the military. To meet the impossible demands, people lie. And this — not the mission of mass murder — makes them “ethically numb.”

Members of the Army, we’re told, engage in “ethical fading,” using euphemisms and obscure phrases to disguise the immorality of what they are doing — namely overstating the supplies shipped or understating their own weight or some other “ethical” matter, not burning families to death in their homes with million-dollar missiles.

All of this unethicalness, the authors maintain, can create hypocritical leaders who hide billions in the “Overseas Contingency Operations” slush fund or cover up sex scandals. Really? Immorality enters an institution of mass murder that routinely deceives the public and much of the government from the bottom up? Excessive demands on troops creates a culture of lying than infects the good generals at the top? Are you kidding me? No, of course you aren’t. You’re lying to yourselves.

Soldiers realize pretty quickly that they’re not benefitting the people of Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever country they’re terrorizing. They understand that the entire mission is a lie. They learn to lie about their own actions, to plant “drop weapons,” to invent justifications, to provide support for their commanders’ efforts to believe their own lies.

Matthew Hoh, a State Department whistleblower, said today: “The culture of lying that is endemic and systemic in the Army, as found by researchers with the Army War College, finds its expression in America’s pointless wars, a one trillion dollar-a-year, pork-filled and inauditable national security budget, chronic veteran suicides, an expanded and more globally robust international terrorist movement, and untold suffering of millions of people and political chaos throughout the Greater Middle East perpetuated by our war policies.

“However, listening to our military leaders, and the politicians who adore and deify them rather than oversee them, America’s wars and its military have been a great patriotic success. This report is not a surprise for those of us who have worn the uniform, nor should it be surprising to those who have watched and paid attention with a modicum of critical and independent thought to our wars these past thirteen plus years. The wars are failures, but careers must prosper, budgets must increase and popular narratives and myths of American military success must endure, so the culture of lying becomes a necessity for our Army at a great physical, mental and moral cost to our Nation.”

In other words, War Is A Lie.

 

Source:
http://worldbeyondwar.org/u-s-army-claims-full-liars/

As posted on
http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-army-claims-to-be-full-of-liars/5432959

Events in Debaltsevo — “The lies are obvious…We no longer control Debaltsevo”

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Posted on Fort Russ

2/18/2015
“The Debaltsevo Cauldron had closed. It’s a second Ilovaysk.”
By Yuliana Skibitskaya

Translated from Russian and Ukrainian by J.Hawk

We have collected the statements from combat participants and commentary from social networks concerning the events at Debaltsevo.

Dmitriy Gross, Deputy Commander, 25th “Kievan Russ” Battalion

“We are under fire from mortars, Grads, self-propelled howitzers, small arms, and lots of other stuff. There is close combat in the streets. 90% of the civilian population had left. Debaltsevo is not fully surrounded, but all roads leading into it are under militant [sic] fire. It is practically impossible to enter the city.

“Gusar,” an officer of the 128th Brigade (published on the Zerkalo Nedeli web site):

“We are facing the second Ilovaysk. It’s been five days since the cauldron had closed. When the Donetsk Airport was taken, they lied to people for five days that it’s under control. In reality it was the other way around. Debaltsevo is under de-facto encirclement since five days ago. There used to be a small path out, which they tried to use to break out. They lost vehicles but broke out. The enemy occupied the commanding heights along the road and has it covered with fire. People are telling us nice stories that there are still communication routs, some detours, dirt roads…There was a road like that, but as of yesterday the convoy of five vehicles that left Debaltsevo yesterday lost all five of them. Only seven guys made it out. We don’t know what happened to the rest.”

Viktor Baloga, Politician [Transcarpathia oligarch, governor] (comment on facebook).

“Mr. President. You and I both know well that we no longer control Debaltsevo. I’ll say more. Preventing the media from reporting the true state of affairs will not help anyone. Our own HQ is lying worse than the Russians. Moreover, the lies are obvious—there are so many people there that it’s impossible to conceal the truth. My local guys are there, lots of them. But since nobody is doing anything, they are losing faith.

You know what needs to be done, both in the military and diplomatic sense. In other words, either we cancel the ceasefire which had never existed for the entire region, switch on the artillery and send weapons and ammunition in. Or we decide to withdraw. The decision must be made NOW!”

Deputy Commander of the 25th “Kievan Rus” Battalion

“The situation in Debaltsevo is critical, very bad. 90% of Debaltsevo is under their control. It is in operational encirclement. All three roads to the city are mined and under dense enemy fire. Our higher command is gone. The Sector command and commander were here. But in reality he abandoned this position and caused  senseless losses. The command is not in control of the situation here.”

Vitaliy Tilizhenko, volunteer (facebook)

“The Debaltsevo cauldron had closed! There is exfiltration by small groups. Somebody is covering the withdrawal and holding positions, gradually abandoning them and withdrawing. We have lost the police HQ and the rail station in the morning. We lost 1/3 of our equipment at Ilovaysk. We’ll lose 1/5th of all equipment, abandoning it because people are more valuable, and there will be nothing to fight with, as always. All withdrawing groups are falling into ambushes and are losing men and equipment. The ambushes are growing stronger and more fortified with every hour, and the percentage of people making it out of the cauldron is dropping. They won’t say this on TV. Everything is great there. Pete [Poroshenko] outplayed everyone, no need for martial law, Europe is concerned, etc.”

Debaltsevo Update, morning 2/17

“The separatists [sic] fired from all kinds of weapons, from mortars to SP howitzers and Uragan rocket launchers. Our guys held their positions to the last. We had no communications with them. They started to come out of the city at night, in a column of trucks and APCs. There were many wounded in the column. Our intelligence was able to find a relatively save path out. Our guys broke into groups. ‘McCloud’s’ group went second. Tolya was behind them. They fell into an ambush. Lost lots of equipment, but managed to break out. But that corridor is now closed.”

 

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/its-second-ilovaysk-ukrainian-reactions.html