Petro Poroshenko

Poroshenko tells Constitutional Court that ousting of ex-President Yanukovich was illegal

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From Macedonia Online — MINA
20 June 2015

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appealed to the country’s constitutional court, asking the court to recognize the ousting of former President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as illegitimate.

“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional,” Poroshenko said in a court statement published on the website of the Ukrainian constitutional court.

The current Ukrainian president said the law violates the constitution, according to which the President of Ukraine is protected by law and his title remains with him forever. He also added that by enacting the law in February of 2014, the parliament of Ukraine undermined the constitution.

Now, the amusing fact is that Poroshenko himself actively supported the Euromaidan protests between November 2013 and February 2014 in Kiev that resulted in the overthrow of Yanukovych.

As the current head of Ukraine, who became the president after the illegal coup, Poroshenko’s statement seems strange at best. By admitting that the overthrow of Yanukovych was illegal and stressing that the President of Ukraine should be forever protected by the country’s law, Poroshenko might be insinuating that his own presidency is put in jeopardy.

Otherwise, why would someone else who became the president after the coup all of a sudden defend the former leader of the country? Seems illogical.

Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Lower House of Russia’s parliament, commented on Poroshenko’s bizarre revelation.

“Here we go, Poroshenko acknowledged the unconstitutional nature of Yanukovych’s removal from power. The EU and PACE both denied it. Now it’s recognized,” Pushkov wrote on his Twitter account.

Last year, Yanukovych became the scapegoat of Ukrainian politics after his government was accused of all the misfortunes in the country. Now, more than a year after the former president was gone, his legacy is still around. Mikheil Saakashvili, the new governor of Ukraine’s Odessa Region, said that in the best case scenario, Ukraine will need 20 more years to reach the economic level of Yanukovych’s government in 2013.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/27583/53/

Eric Zuesse writes on Global Research (June 23, 2015) — excerpt–

In a remarkable document, which is not posted at the English version of the website of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, but which is widely reported outside the United States, including Russia, Poroshenko, in Ukrainian (not in English), has petitioned the Constitutional Court of Ukraine (as it is being widely quoted in English):

“I ask the court to acknowledge that the law ‘on the removal of the presidential title from Viktor Yanukovych’ as unconstitutional.”

I had previously reported, and here will excerpt, Poroshenko’s having himself admitted prior to 26 February 2014, to the EU’s investigator, and right after the February 22nd overthrow of Yanukovych, that the overthrow was a coup, and that it was even a false-flag operation, in which the snipers, who were dressed as if they were Ukrainian Security Bureau troops, were actually not, and that, as the EU’s investigator put his finding to the EU’s chief of foreign affairs Catherine Ashton:

“the same oligarch [Poroshenko] told that well, all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides … Behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.”

If the Court grants Poroshenko’s petition, then the appointment of Arseniy Yatsenyuk by the U.S. State Department’s Victoria Nuland on 4 February 2014, which was confirmed by the Ukrainian parliament (or Rada) at the end of the coup on February 26th, and the other appointments which were made, including that of Oleksandr Turchynov to fill in for Yanukovych as caretaker President until one of the junta’s chosen candidates would be ‘elected’ on May 25th of 2014, which ‘election’ Poroshenko won — all of this was illegal.

However, this illegality had already been known. It was already explained in detail on 28 February 2014, that, “Yanukovych’s removal was unconstitutional.” That’s for lawyers; but, now, finally, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court is faced with the shocking predicament of Ukraine’s own President, who won his post as a result of this coup, requesting them to “acknowledge” that it was a coup, much as the founder of the “private CIA” firm Stratfor had even called it, “the most blatant coup in history.” (It was that because the authentic video and other evidence of its having been a Washington job was so massive.)

Also in the news now is that Dmitriy Yarosh‘s Right Sector — the same group that Washington had hired for the coup and for the ethnic cleansing campaign in Ukraine’s former Donbass region — have announced that they will assemble in Kiev on July 3rd to overthrow Petroshenko unless he restarts right now the war against Donbass. The people whom Washington paid to oust Yanukovych are planning to do the same to Poroshenko. There is a struggle inside the Obama Administration about how far they can successfully go with their Ukrainian nazis not formally leading the country.

Washington is having a hard time keeping in line the Ukrainian nazis upon whom Washington’s plan for Ukraine has been based. Ukraine’s nazis are thirsting for Russian blood, and want to slake their thirst faster than the Obama Administration is willing to go along with. Washington’s previous “F—k the EU!” hasn’t worked as well as they had hoped. There is thus increasingly bad blood between the Obama Administration and the Ukrainian enforcers upon whom Obama has been relying.

Basically, Poroshenko now is torn between the EU, on one side, and Ukraine’s well-armed nazis, on the other; and, thus far, the ultimate decider, U.S. President Obama, who has needed cooperation both from Ukraine’s nazis and from the EU, in order for his Ukrainian gambit against Russia to work, is on the fence between those two sides. John Kerry sides with the EU; Victoria Nuland sides with the nazis. But Obama himself hasn’t yet played his hand.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraines-president-poroshenko-says-overthrow-of-yanukovych-was-a-coup/5457631

Leaked letter: Kiev wants 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for Poroshenko, U.S. is pressuring committee to get it

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By Eric Zuesse
Posted on Global Research, May 29, 2015

A leaked letter dated May 19th and sent by the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, Vladimir Groysman, to the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo Norway, thanks her for “the efforts you have made to have Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” but continues: “Still we consider your assurances of support by the two members of the Nobel Committee as insufficient,” because there are five members of the Committee, and the support of 3 of them is necessary. 

Thus,

“We expect further efforts aimed at shifting the position of Berit Reiss-Andersen, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and especially that of the Chair of the Nobel Committee Kaci Kullman Five. Regarding the latter, we recommend that you take advantage of the information you are going to receive from Germany. Your colleagues in Berlin have assured us that the dossier will soon be delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, since it could highlight the unanimous support of Ukrainian integrity by the democratic community of the world. Assistant Secretary of State Viktoria Nuland has highly estimated your job during her visit to Kyiv.”

The three mentioned Nobel Peace Prize Committee members are a politically varied group. Ms. Reiss-Andersen is from the social democratic or “Labour” party; Ms. Ytterhorn is from the libertarian or “Progress” party; and Ms. Five is from the Conservative Party. The two unidentified members are Thorbjørn Jagland from the Labour Party, and Henrik Syse from the Conservative Party. If this letter is correct, those are the two who are referred to by the letter’s phrase, “your assurances of support by the two members.”

The letter also makes a vague reference to the poor reputation that the Committee has engendered on account of the Committee’s having granted the Prize to Barack Obama in 2009 (a decision that the Committee’s Chairperson, Ms. Five, concurred with and has been criticized for):

“We understand the difficulties you face when promoting the candidacy of the President of Ukraine, therefore we ask you to exert additional leverages by engaging those U.S. Senators who effectively cooperated with the Committee in 2009.”

Presumably, this means that whomever “those U.S. Senators” were, the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament thinks that they were “effective.”

President Poroshenko entered office on 25 May 2014 after a U.S.-sponsored coup in Kiev that installed Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Ukraine’s Prime Minister on 26 February 2014, after the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, had instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev on 4 February 2014 to get “Yats” appointed as the junta’s leader; she issued that instruction to him by phone on February 4th and the coup occurred on February 22nd; Yatsenyuk was then appointed on February 26th, and he remains in power today.

One pro-Russian part of Ukraine, Crimea, then seceded and joined Russia, and another, Donbass, seceded and was not accepted by Russia; it thus was bombed by the Ukrainian Government during May through December 2014, since Donbass’s repeated requests to be allowed to join Russia were spurned by Vladimir Putin. (Yet, Ukraine accuses Russia of providing the fighters who are actually the men of Donbass, who refuse to be ruled by the U.S.-coup regime.

Russia sends them guns, and volunteers have come from Russia and many other countries to help the Donbass defenders.) German intelligence estimates that “up to 50,000” people were killed in that bombing campaign, but U.S. and other official estimates are only around 5,000.

Even before Poroshenko took office, the new Ukrainian government of “Yats” Yatsenyuk invaded Donbass, using bombers, tanks, rocket-launchers, and everything it had; and, when Poroshenko gave his victory speech in the ceremonial Presidential election on May 25th, he promised, and it was very clear from him, that: “The anti-terrorist operation [he called the residents there ’terrorists’] cannot and should not last two or three months. It should and will last hours.” (Another translation of it was “Antiterrorist operation can not and will not continue for 2-3 months. It must and will last hours.”)

But it did last months — Poroshenko’s prediction was certainly false; and, moreover, he lost first one round of the war, and then another — his prediction of its outcome was likewise false. And recently, he said that the war must be resumed for yet a third round, in order that Ukraine win back both Crimea and Donbass. However, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned him on May 12th that he must not do that, and that if he did he’d be violating the Minsk II ceasefire accords which had been arranged by France’s Francois Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel. Then, three days later, his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had arranged the February 2014 coup, told both Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko to ignore what Kerry had just said, and that, “We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine.”

Perhaps a reason why the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament is boldly demanding the U.S. State Department to arrange for Poroshenko to get at least a nomination for the Peace Prize (and even goes so far as to assert that,

“It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize”) is that otherwise they will follow through on Nuland’s statement of U.S. commitment, and re-invade Donbass. However, any invasion by Ukraine of Crimea would be exceedingly unlikely, because that would give Russia a virtual carte blanche to attack Ukraine, and neither the U.S. nor any other power will go to war against Russia in such an instance; Ukraine isn’t yet a NATO member, and NATO would be exceedingly reluctant to go so far as a third world war, this time against Russia, in order to defend the Ukrainian Government from the consequences of that Government’s own then-blatant ceasefire violation — especially in the wake of what virtually everyone now recognizes to have been a U.S. coup that had installed the present Ukrainian regime (and even EU officials were shocked to find out that it had been a coup). And it was a very violent coup, which was followed shortly thereafter by the extremely violent ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of the residents in Donbass.

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, and of  Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.

Comments:

What is in the dossier coming from Berlin? Is it information to blackmail Nobel Committee Chairman Kaci Kullmann?

Victoria Nuland seems involved in even this petty endeavor. At U.S. taxpayer expense.

Who are the U.S. Senators who backed Obama’s Nobel Prize bid?

All these emperors have no clothes. Yet they vainly parade with their enormous deluded egos, patting each others’ backs, as our countries fall apart and their special forces kill those who want freedom and real peace.

Spread the information.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-pressures-nobel-committee-to-declare-ukraines-president-a-peace-prize-nominee-leaked-letter/5452448

The key man behind the Odessa Trade Unions Building massacre: his many connections to the White House

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This was written just after the Odessa massacre last year.

By Eric Zuesse
Op Ed News, May 18, 2014

The key person behind the May 2nd massacre inside Odessa’s Trade Unions Building appears to have been Ihor Kolomoyskyi [pictured here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi2.jpg ], who was appointed to be the regional governor in that area by Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian Presidential candidate that the Obama Administration has apparently been hoping will win the May 25th election to take over the Ukrainian Government, from the junta that the Obama Administration imposed in Ukraine on February 22nd. Just weeks before this coup, on February 4th, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Asia, Victoria Nuland, chose Tymoshenko’s ally Arseni Yatsenyuk to head the post-coup interim government, which appointed Kolomoyskyi. Only a few months before this coup, Nuland had asserted that U.S. taxpayers had already invested more than $5 billion, in order to bring “democracy” to Ukraine, by which she was referring to the U.S. effort to oust the Russian-oriented, democratically elected, leader of Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovych, who had prosecuted and imprisoned Tymoshenko for embezzlement and abuse of governmental office. Tymoshenko was then on 11 October 2011 sentenced to seven years in prison, and was ordered to pay the government restitution of $188 million. She was released from prison less than three years later, two days after the coup, on 24 February 2014. The Ukrainian criminal code was immediately changed, in order to legalize the actions for which Tymoshenko had been imprisoned. This allowed Tymoshenko to run for the Ukrainian Presidency. She had been Prime Minister 2007-2010. Both she and her husband, Oleksandr Tymoshenko, and his father, all three of whom were on the board of United Energy Systems of Ukraine (and thus Ms. Tymoshenko was called “the gas princess”) have been legally prosecuted as embezzling state funds, but so have most of Ukraine’s oligarchs and political leaders (and there’s a lot of crossover between those two categories).

Kolomoyskyi, who lives in Geneva Switzerland, is generally regarded as the second-richest man in Ukraine, with a fortune estimated at about $6 billion. Tymoshenko used to be called “the Eleven Billion Dollar Woman,” but, like all of Ukraine’s oligarchs (including Kolomoyskyi), nobody really knows precisely how wealthy she is, nor even whether she is more, or perhaps less, wealthy than Kolomoyskyi. Almost all of the oligarchs’ money is hidden offshore; so, is invisible.

Most of Ukraine’s oligarchs live in Geneva (like Kolomoyskyi), London (like the Tymoshenkos’ daughter, Yevhenia), NYC, Rome, and other Western cities, and they tend to stash their money in secret bank accounts in tax-haven countries, not only in order to avoid paying taxes, but also in order to make more difficult their being successfully sued by each other, for violating handshake business deals that had helped them to become so rich. After all, illegal contracts cannot be enforced by any legal government (since they’re illegal, and have secret illegal terms). Thus, other means than written contracts — handshake deals — are resorted to between these aristocrats.

For example, in one such case, a Ukrainian oligarch who lives in London, Victor Pinchuk (whose fortune is around $4 billion), is suing Kolomoyskyi by alleging him to have sold him a company, “KZhRK,” for $143 million, and then to have re-seized it from him by force of arms. As is usual (since virtually all of Ukraine’s oligarchs had become oligarchs from the privatizations, or sell-offs of government assets, which accompanied Ukraine’s abandonment of communism), this case hinges on verbal testimony, and the various parties to the case contradict each other. Kolomoyskyi is well known for taking over corporations through his team entering with guns drawn. Pinchuk claims that when Kolomoyskyi did that here, Pinchuk nonetheless, somehow, managed to get Kolomoyskyi to restore Pinchuk to control, but that Pinchuk later discovered “it appears that they may have sold approximately 50% of KZhRK to a third party in 2007”; so, Pinchuk filed suit against Kolomoyskyi, in London, on this murky case.

According to a summary by wikipedia of several news reports: “Kolomyski has used [his banking company] Privat’s ‘quasi-military forces’ to enforce hostile takeovers of companies, sending a team of ‘hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws’ to forcibly take over a Kremenchuk steel plant in 2006,[17] and has used ‘a mix of phony court orders (often involving corrupt judges and/or registrars) and strong-arm tactics’ to replace directors on the boards of companies he purchases stakes in.[18] Kolomyski was criticized by Mr Justice Mann in a court case in London involving an attempted hostile takeover of an oil company, with the judge stating that Kolomyski had ‘a reputation of having sought to take control of a company at gunpoint in Ukraine’.”

Consequently, the reports of Kolomoyskyi’s tactics against the Ukrainians who refuse to be ruled by the Obama-installed government in Kiev seem to be consistent with this oligarch’s violent norm. Oriental Review headlined on 14 May 2014, “Bloodbath in Odessa guided by interim rulers of Ukraine,” and reported that, “The information provided below was obtained from an insider in one of Ukraine’s law-enforcement agencies, who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.” The account there is a more detailed one than has ever before appeared, and it’s consistent with those others (such as this and this). It alleges that:

“Ten days before the tragedy a secret meeting was held in Kiev, chaired by the incumbent president Olexander Turchinov [a long-time political ally and business-partner of Tymoshenko; he had destroyed crucial documents in the government’s case against Tymoshenko], to prepare a special operation in Odessa. Present were minister of internal affairs Arsen Avakov [a gangster who was placed on Interpol’s ‘Wanted’ list on 21 March 2012], the head of the Ukrainian Security Service Valentin Nalivaychenko [a long-time NATO agent], and the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Andriy Parubiy [co-founder of Ukraine’s National Socialist, or Nazi, Party]. Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskiy, the Kiev-appointed head of regional administration of the Dnepropetrovsk region, was consulted in regard to the operation [he being well-experienced in violent operations].

“During that meeting Arsen Avakov … reportedly came up with the idea of using football [soccer] hooligans, known as ‘ultras,’ in the operation. Ever since his time as the head of the Kharkov regional administration he [Avakov] has worked closely with the fans’ leaders, whom he continued to sponsor even from his new home in Italy.

“Kolomoisky temporarily delivered his private ‘Dnieper-1’ Battalion under the command of law-enforcement officials in Odessa and also authorized a cash payment of $5,000 for ‘each pro-Russian separatist’ killed during the special operation. [That would be over $500,000, lent by his bank to the Ukrainian Government, to pay for the estimated 116 corpses thus produced.]

Continue reading →

Poroshenko offers Yarosh a Ministry of Defense job

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Posted on Fort Russ

3/26/2015

Poroshenko offers Yarosh a Ministry of Defense job

Translated from Ukrainian by J.Hawk

President of Ukraine Poroshenko offered Right Sector leader a position at the Ministry of Defense. This was announced on the [Poroshenko-owned] TV Channel 5 by Anton Gerashchenko, a Poroshenko advisor.

“I can confirm that Dmitriy Yarosh received a proposal from the president to take up a position at the Ministry of Defense. I would be very pleased if Yarosh were to start working as part of the state administration. I’ll say more: I can see that he is very bored at the Rada. Plus he was wounded in battle. I would be most pleased to create, together with Yarosh, a Volunteer Union for the Defense of Ukraine based on the Estonian, Finnish, and Swiss systems,” Gerashchenko added.

J.Hawk’s Comment: So we’ve seen the stick (the high-profile arrests, the threats, the SBU campaign), now comes the carrot. If I were Yarosh I’d seriously consider it, though of course  I’d be concerned about losing control over the Right Sector should it become absorbed into some state structure. But a territorial defense job—now that would be something right up Yarosh’s alley. Besides, what’s the alternative? Wage a guerrilla war against Poroshenko? Hang out at Kolomoysky’s side, hoping the fortunes will turn? Nah. Besides, it doesn’t seem an offer Yarosh can refuse. If he doesn’t like the carrot, he might have to taste the stick instead.

It’s also becoming clear that Poroshenko is aiming not at destroying but at isolating Kolomoysky. The arrests during the Cabinet meeting were of officials who gave state contracts to Kolomoysky’s companies. The offer to Yarosh is an effort to peel off the oligarch’s militant support. 

Incidentally, I would not attribute any of it to the US or any other outside force. Poroshenko is doing it on his own. Remember how just a few months ago it seemed entirely plausible that Poroshenko might be overthrown and that Yats would once again be “the Man”? Well, the shoe is on the other foot now—I mean, Yatsenyuk surely thought for at least a moment that the people who came to arrest his Cabinet members were actually coming for HIM. Yes, Poroshenko can arrest Yatsenyuk’s ministers right from under his nose. He managed to similarly neutralize Parubiy and Turchinov and, at least temporarily, secure the support of Avakov and Nalivaychenko whose star is rising. The US and the EU are, at most, recognizing the reality on the ground, and that reality is Poroshenko as the clearly dominant force in Ukrainian politics. For better or worse. 

What that “clearly dominant force” will do is another question, of course.

 

http://www.fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/03/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_26.html

Ukraine bill to allow U.S., Polish troops to enter for multiple war games

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From Rick Rozoff

Interfax-Ukraine
March 14, 2015
Ukraine plans joint military exercises with U.S., Poland for 2015 – bill

image
Polish and Ukrainian troops in last year’s U.S.-led Rapid Trident NATO war games

President Petro Poroshenko has introduced a bill to parliament to let foreign armed forces into Ukraine to take part in five joint exercises with Ukrainian forces.

According to the draft law, Ukraine plans three Ukrainian-American command post exercises, Fearless Guardian 2015, Sea Breeze 2015 and Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident 2015, and two Ukrainian-Polish exercises, Secure Skies 2015, and Law and Order 2015, for this year.

Fearless Guardian will take place in Yavoriv district, Lviv region, in the period from March to November and will bring together a maximum of 2,200 troops. Ukraine is providing up to 200 armed forces troops and up to 1,000 National Guard personnel, and the U.S. will be represented by a maximum of 1,000 servicemen.

Sea Breeze will be a 25-day exercise held between June and October in the Black Sea and at training sites in the regions of Odesa, Mykolaiv and Kherson. A maximum of 2,500 troops will take part in it.

Ukraine and the United States will each be represented by a maximum of 1,000 troops. The rest of the personnel will come from other NATO countries and member countries of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program (up to 500 troops).

Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident will also take place in Yavoriv district. The 25-day exercise, to be held between July and October, will bring together up to 2,100 troops, with up to 1,000 representing Ukraine, up to 500 the United States, and up to 600 other NATO and Partnership for Peace member countries.

Secure Skies is a 14-day tactical air force exercise in which a maximum of 250 Ukrainian and 100 Polish servicemen will take part.

Law and Order is a one-week military police exercise in Yavoriv that will together 50 Ukrainians and 50 Poles.

Permission from parliament is needed to allow foreign military personnel into Ukraine.

https://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/war-games-in-ukraine-bill-to-allow-u-s-polish-troops-to-enter/

Poroshenko increases armed forces amid shaky truce in Donbas

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From Sputnik News, March 2, 2015

The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko introduced a bill to the Verkhovna Rada to enlarge the maximum size of the national forces.

The draft was registered on Monday and the corresponding document was published on the website of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Russia Slams Finland for Decision to Supply Laser Rangefinders to Kiev

According to the draft, the Ukrainian military should not employ more than 250 thousand people, including 204 thousand soldiers. However, it was noted that during an emergency the military may be strengthened with conscription.

“The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in emergencies shall grow by the number of servicemen recruited for military service consistent with the mobilization decrees of the Ukrainian president,” it said.

The funds for an increase in the Ukrainian Armed Forces are provided for by the budget of 2015.

This comes a week after President Petro Poroshenko said that the new Minsk agreements on regulating the crisis in eastern Ukraine give hope, but he is unsure whether they will be fully implemented.

US Plans to Send 300 Military Personnel to Train Ukrainian Soldiers

“We managed to reach agreements that give hope that the events in Donbas will transition from the hot stage to a state of political regulation. I don’t want anybody to have illusions and I don’t want to seem naive – we are still far from peace…and nobody has a firm belief that the Minsk peace agreements will be strictly implemented,” Poroshenko said last week.

The Ukrainian leader expressed hope that the situation will de-escalate, and peace will be achieved through ceasefire and withdrawal of artillery.

In early January, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Stepan Poltorak said that the state budget for 2015 will provide military funding at the amount of 44.6 billion UAH ($1.6 billion USD).

“It is almost 3.6 times more than the last year,” Poltorak said.

A similar bill was introduced the Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk on behalf of the government in January. According to him, the total financing for national security and defense in 2015 will total 90 billion UAH ($3.2 billion USD).

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150302/1018963463.html#ixzz3TQ0MA55c

What’s behind Ukraine’s secret weapons deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE)?

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From Global Research, February 25, 2015
By Eric Zuesse

U.S. President Barack Obama apparently is going ahead with his plan for NATO missiles to be placed in Ukraine aimed against Moscow, but found a way to do it that won’t violate the warnings by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin against Washington’s directly supplying those arms to Ukraine (such as is demanded of Obama by congressional Republicans, and even by a few hawkish Democrats — all passionate supporters of Hillary Clinton). Obama’s subordinate (or dependent local leader), the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, is now arranging to receive those weapons via a less direct channel; and this arrangement couldn’t happen if the U.S. White House were opposed to it. The idea might even have originated inside the White House.

On Tuesday, 24 February 2015, in Abu Dhabi, the capital of United Arab Emirates, Poroshenko placed the finishing touches on the purchase of Western, mainly U.S., weapons, via the UAE, from Western firms such as, perhaps, Lockheed, GE, Krupp, Euromissile, etc., which will be paid for by Western taxpayers, via IMF ‘loans’ to Ukraine, which money comes from taxpayer contributions to the IMF, but which ‘loans’ can never be paid back to the IMF — they’ll inevitably default, because these ‘loans’ are at the very end of the long line of creditors of Ukraine, which is a bankrupt country, having been looted for decades (and especially during the past year) by its aristocrats (called “oligarchs”), who have already spirited tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars off to Western tax-haven countries, so that only Ukraine’s public (who received little if any benefit from those debts of the Ukrainian Government) will pay even the pennies-on-the-dollars that Ukraine’s bondholders will be receiving (and the recipients will be only the holders of the oldest of Ukraine’s bonds, which won’t be the IMF, EU, or U.S., Ukraine’s post-coup ‘lenders’).

This is called the IMF’s “austerity” program, for looted nations such as Greece and Ukraine, and it holds sacred the thefts by aristocrats, while it transfers all of aristocrats’ losses off onto their respective publics, who (as Ukrainians now will) pay it via their stripped governmental services and hiked taxes; and these poor people then serve aristocrats as virtual slaves (low-wage labor), many of whom thus migrate to wealthier countries, which, in turn, reject the burden of caring for them, thus producing yet more resentments and hatreds against these poor people, regardless of how they behave.

Here is the way this Ukrainian arms deal works:

The deal itself was publicly, but only vaguely, announced on Tuesday, the 24th, along with “what Poroshenko described as a ‘very important negotiation about the facilitation of the United Arab Emirates investment in the Ukraine.’ He declined to provide specifics of the deal.” The reason why Arabic royals (in this case the Al Nahyan family that controls Abu Dhabi) are naturals for this — the logical persons to serve as the middle-men to sell Western-made weapons to Russia’s new (since the time of Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup) enemy, Ukraine — is that the U.S. aristocracy has, for at least 70 years, been allied with Sunni aristocracies, against, originally, the Soviet Union, and then Russia. Russia had been the chief supplier of oil and gas to the other Soviet republics; it was and is the local oil-and-gas giant. Whereas Russia’s aristocrats bonded instead with Shia Iran (which alliance was interrupted during 1953-79 by the CIA’s coup there and then the Shah’s ultimate overthrow and then the restoration of Iran’s alliance with Russia), the American aristocrats had bonded with Sunni Saudi Arabia, and with other Arab royals, in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, etc. So, with the exception of Armand Hammer’s Occidental Petreoleum, which bonded with Libya’s pro-Soviet Sunni anti-imperialist and anti-Western Muammar Gaddafi, Western oil companies generally allied with the Saud family, who had allied with the most intensely Sunni clergy of all, who were the followers of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who had personally agreed in 1744, with Muhammad bin Saud, that the Sauds and Wahhabs would jointly control the Kingdom and ultimately the world — Wahhabs controlling the laws, and Sauds controlling the military.

In short: America’s aristocracy bonded with Sunni aristocrats, and Russia’s aristocracy bonded with Shia ones. Ukraine has now joined the Sunni alliance, and this is done with Obama’s blessing. Continue reading →

“Horror, darkness, fire, and death”–the agony of Debaltsevo Cauldron

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From Fort Russ

2/18/2015
The Mopping Up of Debaltsevo
By Yurasumy

Translated from Russian by J.Hawk

The cauldron will cease to exist in a few hours, a day at the most. Novorossia’s army has taken most of Debaltsevo. UAF and volunteer battalions have lost their HQ, therefore are acting in an uncoordinated, chaotic fashion, in order to save themselves. Many of the soldiers who have nothing to fear (draftees and reservists) are laying down their arms. DPR/LPR is mentioning hundreds of POWs. But that is only the beginning.

Most of the prisoners will likely be captured today or tomorrow, and here’s why.

Up to yesterday UAF troops could still hope they’d be rescued. The yesterday’s assault on Debaltsevo by Republican forces [a reference to the Spanish Civil War? Because the other side is fascist, after all…] which went very well, showed that the cauldron can quickly turn into a graveyard unless they do something fast.

They can do only two things: either surrender or break out. Surrendering is not the best option for the volunteers. The draftees and reservists it means a new lease on life. It means getting out of the war which feels alien to many of them. Moreover, the experience from last summer means that captivity equals life and…freedom. Many UAF prisoners prefer not to return to Ukraine but rather to sit out the mess in Russia—that’s the reality of the civil war.

But one has to keep in mind that these brigades are not merely reservists. Many territorial battalions have been incorporated into their organization (the 128th Brigade has three of them). So far from all 128th Brigade soldiers will be wiling to surrender. Nevertheless, already last evening we were seeing reports that the soldiers of the 40th “Krivbass” Battalion were surrendering. This was reported by the battalion commander himself.

Already yesterday we say several units withdraw toward Debaltsevo, which could have meant preparations for a break-out. Indeed, it began yesterday morning. It’s hard to tell how successful it was (it’s chaos out there), but it’s clear that they suffered enormous losses in the attempt. Semenchenko writes the following on facebook:

“The situation at Debaltsevo is growing more tense. I received a report from a commander who is holding positions on the “road of life” closer to Debaltsevo. The column exiting Debaltsevo was without tank support for part of the way. Terrorist [sic] tanks came out and shot it to pieces. Our artillery and Grads are firing against enemy tanks. We are evacuating the killed and wounded. We are holding the road. The information is being verified.”

At the same time, Poroshenko announced earlier today that UAF units are leaving Debaltsevo in practically a parade formation (and with only 30 wounded). But Porky has certain credibility issues. It’s already clear that the break-out attempts led to huge personnel losses and a near total loss of heavy equipment. We’ll know how much only in several days. We’ll also find out how many UAF soldiers made the rational decision to surrender to avoid death during the break out. To be sure, DPR/LPR authorities said they are not going to announce the identities of these soldiers if they don’t wish them to be revealed, and will release the captives to their relatives.

In the meantime the situation in Debaltsevo is this: HORROR, DARKNESS, FIRE, and DEATH. One thing is for sure: the comparison between Debaltsevo and Ilovaysk is not only appropriate but obvious.

P.S. The Debaltsevo recriminations will play themselves out against the background of the first anniversary of the coup. Hang on, Porky.

 

http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/02/horror-darkness-fire-and-death-agony-of.html

Financial Times: Kiev is the aggressor

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From Russia Insider, February 14, 2015

Even those in Donetsk who originally supported Kiev have come to realize that Ukraine is waging a war against its own people.

Although this article tries to make the people of Donetsk appear gullible and indoctrinated, it does make one incredible admission: Kiev is waging a vicious war against its own people—something that East Ukrainians will never forget, and probably never forgive. This article originally appeared in Financial Times

As world leaders convened in Minsk this week to decide the fate of east Ukraine, Tatiana Prussova, a teacher at Khartsysk school number 23, stood in front of her class, a map on the wall behind her.

For 10 minutes, she led a group of 15 and 16-year-old students through the day’s lesson: a review of the recent developments in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). She explained a new local holiday — February 8: Day of the Young Anti-Fascist Heroes — and recounted a pivotal week in which the US was considering arming Kiev while the rebel army had gained ground around the crucial rail hub of Debaltseve.

“Thanks to the gains of our Donetsk People’s Republic rebels, the road to Debaltseve has been closed and the town has been encircled,” Ms Prussova told the students, gesturing at the map in the same way other history teachers might point to the battle lines in Flanders or the Napoleonic War.

The class is one of dozens of so-called political information lessons now being taught at schools across rebel-controlled east Ukraine. It is a Soviet tradition that was disbanded following the fall of the USSR but has been revived by the pro-Russian DPR’s education ministry.

“We decided to inform the children from an objective point of view about the current developments of what’s happening inside the Donetsk People’s Republic,” said Lidiya Aksyonova, the school’s principal. “The beliefs that we form here in school will in 10 years become the political views of our government.”

While some may see this week’s Minsk memorandum, which calls for a ceasefire in east Ukraine and the eventual re-establishment of national borders, as the first step towards the DPR’s disbandment, there are few signs in the region of a rebel leadership preparing to relinquish control — or a society that wants them to.

After a months-long siege that has destroyed local infrastructure, and left the population under the near-constant percussion of artillery, a new sense of regional identity has taken hold in Donetsk. Though some of it is being transmitted through top-down initiatives such as Ms Prussova’s class, much of it has come through the Ukrainian army’s shelling, which has turned many formerly pro-Ukrainian locals against Kiev.

Another source of anger for many was an October speech by President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, in which he declared that the region’s citizens would suffer for the rebel leaders’ actions. “Our children will go to school and nursery school, and theirs will sit in basement!” he declared, waving a finger.

“As a student, as the future generation, I was for a united Ukraine. We really believed in Poroshenko,” said Yekaterina, a 20-year-old student at Donetsk National University. While her family fled to the Ukrainian side during the summer, they were forced to return to Donetsk in September after they ran out of money. It was then that her feelings changed.

“We thought [Mr Poroshenko] would come to Donetsk, but he didn’t come once,” she said. She dismissed claims that Donetsk locals were being brainwashed by the rebel leadership and Russian television. “You don’t need to be a soldier to understand from what direction artillery fire is coming,” she said. “We have access to the internet. We’re not in the stone age. We’re not zombies.”

In Donetsk’s Kievsky district, one of the most heavily bombed parts of the city, a middle-aged worker named Svetlana said she had been living underground in a cold war-era bomb shelter with 50 of her neighbours since the bombing began in May. While she refused to take part in the separatists’ referendum and appeal to join Russia in May — “I could tell that something smelt funny,” she explained — her views changed during the months underground.

“How can I be for a united Ukraine when Kiev has spent the past six months bombing us?” she asked. “They came to power and destroyed the entire infrastructure of southeast Ukraine.”

Enrique Menendez, a Ukrainian-born businessman with Spanish roots, said one of Kiev’s biggest mistakes was to vilify the people of southeastern Ukrainian rather than open a dialogue.

“At the beginning, a lot of journalists, bloggers, opinion leaders — most of them pro-Ukrainian — left Donetsk. But when they got to Kiev, the rhetoric [about southeast Ukraine] was very negative,” said Mr Menendez. “This aggression and lack of understanding of what was going on here really offended the people that stayed behind.”

One of a dozen organisers of a March rally for a united Ukraine, Mr Menendez eventually decided to stay in Donetsk to set up an organisation that delivers humanitarian aid.

In August, there were only five people left in his apartment building. They would crowd into the corridor during the worst of the shelling. Now, nearly all the 80 or so former residents have returned.

“The wartime mentality has changed us,” he explained. “We’ve stopped valuing the superficial things in life. We’ve lost everything: our savings, our prospects, our businesses. Some people lost their relatives. But we’ve become more pure.”

Even though the rumble of artillery fire could still be heard in central Donetsk this week, much of city life felt normal. A ghost town for much of last year, most of the city’s residents have now returned. Restaurants and shops are reopening, and most local schools are in session.

Igor Kostenok, the DPR’s education minister, appears determined to use his post to encourage a lasting regional identity. In addition to the new political information classes, Mr Kostenok said schools would also teach students about the experience of youngsters who fought for the rebels during the summer.

“Our story of the Great Patriotic War [second world war] tells us that many children who were forced to grow up early because of the war took up arms and defended their home. History is doomed to repeat itself,” he said.

One such youngster is Alexander Vasin, a 16-year-old student from the Donetsk suburbs who fought at Donetsk airport over the summer in a rebel battalion called the 15th International Brigade, despite his parents’ objections. He returned when school resumed in September, but said he would go back to the battalion later this year if the war had not ended. Of the fighting, he said: “It’s difficult at the beginning, but you get used to it.”

A video of the fighting he shot on his mobile phone won a prize from the DPR education ministry and is now being shown at schools across the region.

 

http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/02/14/3489

Reprinted under Fair Use Rules.

The Paet-Ashton transcript and the snipers at Maidan

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Excerpt from annotated transcript below:

It is, and actually the only politician the people from civilian society mentioned positively was Poroshenko, so that he had some so to say trust among all these Maidan people and civilian society; and  second, what was quite disturbing, the same oligarch [Poroshenko] told that well, all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers, from both sides, among policemen and people from the streets, that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides.
Well, that’s yes, …
So that and then she [Dr. Olga Bolgomets] also showed me some photos, she said that as medical doctor, she can, you know, say that it’s the same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition that they don’t want to investigate, what exactly happened; so that now there is stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.
I think that we do want to investigate.  I mean I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh?
So that it was in this instance disturbing that if it’s us now to live its own life very powerfully, then it already discreditates from the very beginning also this new coalition.

Posted on Fort Russ
By Eric Zuesse, 3 Feb. 2015

Here is a complete transcript of the extraordinarily revealing phone conversation, that occurred on 26 February 2014, in which the foreign-affairs chief of the European Union, Catherine Ashton, was informed by her investigator, Urmas Paet, into his findings regarding what had been the cause of the violence that brought down the Ukrainian Government of President Viktor Yanukovych — whether it was Yanukovych himself, or the people who had opposed Yanukovych and who had supported Ukraine’s joining the EU (which Yanukovych had finally decided not to do). 
This conversation makes absolutely clear that the EU had not participated in bringing down Yanukovych and was shocked to learn that Yanukovych had not been behind the violence on that historic occasion, which had occurred only days prior.
This conversation goes by so fast so that a transcript of it is really necessary, in order for one to be able to absorb the full import of what’s happening and being revealed in it. Consequently, what now follows will be the transcript of this entire astounding phone call, with explanatory notes added in brackets by myself, for the reader’s comprehension of what was being referred to by these officials, in this phone-call that shows the truly astonishing extent of U.S. President Barack Obama’s depravity — a depravity that clearly shocked these EU officials, even while they seemed to have been resigned to it. (Subsequently, they went along with it, with only weak ongoing resistance to it.)
Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet phones the EU’s foreign-affairs chief Catherine Ashton, to report on the findings of his February 25th inquiry for the EU, into the situation in Ukraine right after the coup that had just overthrown Ukraine’s democratically elected (in 2010) President Viktor Yanukovych:

Continue reading →