Report: Ukraine plans to blow up 120 tons of toxic hexane in Slavyansk; Russia struck Ukrainian Naval Base in Odessa July 23; AFU using civilians as human shields

From Strategic Stability

Report # 110. Urgent Statement of the Russian JCHQHR in Ukraine

July 25, 2022

  1. Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine issued an Emergency Statement on July 25, 2022

According to the Russian Defence Ministry, the Kiev regime has completed preparations for a monstrous provocation using highly toxic substances in Slavyansk. In the next few days, Security Service of Ukraine plan to blow up tanks with more than 120 tonnes of the chemically hazardous substance, hexane, at the oil and fats plant.
Explosion of the hexane tanks would create a toxic cloud that would spread more than 10 kilometers away. All residential areas of Slavyansk and nearby settlements will be in the chemical attack zone.
The specific cynicism of such inhuman actions by the Ukrainian authorities is that they are prepared to sacrifice tens of thousands of their own citizens living in Slavyansk, as well as servicemen of the Ukrainian armed formations stationed in the city, to achieve their criminal goals.
Hexane is a powerful neurotoxin and carcinogen. Irritating to skin, affects lungs if inhaled, acts as a strong narcotic, causes drowsiness, dizziness, peripheral nervous system damage, numbness of legs, central nervous system depression and eye irritation. Prolonged inhalation of hexane causes chronic poisoning, leading to serious nervous system disorders, manifested by decreased sensitivity, rapid fatigue, decreased muscle tone and headaches. However, because hexane is capable of igniting spontaneously at ambient temperatures of plus 23-38ºC (followed by intense combustion and high heat release), an explosion could also occur due to the abnormally high ambient air temperature currently prevailing in Slavyansk district. The most effective emergency measures for protection against hexane vapour are to take cover indoors and to close windows and doors tightly. In case of poisoning, ensure fresh air supply to the victim and protect the respiratory system and skin.
We recommend that the residents of Slavyansk and neighbouring localities take the necessary protective measures immediately.
The purpose of this provocation is to accuse the Russian Armed Forces and Donetsk People’s Republic formations of allegedly indiscriminate strikes against potentially dangerous objects, using a well-established scenario, followed by extensive coverage in the Ukrainian and Western media.
We once again emphasize that during the special military operation, the Russian Armed Forces and military formations of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics are not targeting civilian infrastructure.
We call on the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to immediately influence the Ukrainian authorities and take effective measures to prevent this provocation.

  1. Ukraine has not demined its sea ports so far

70 foreign vessels from 16 countries still remain blocked in six Ukrainian ports, including Kherson, Nikolaev, Ochakov, Chernomorsk, Odessa and Yuzhniy. The last three port are listed in the Istanbul agreement reached on July 22, 2022 as ports of exit to deliver Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products.
The threat of shelling and high mine danger posed by official Kiev prevent vessels from entering the high seas unhindered. Under the Istanbul deal, Ukrainian Armed Forces are responsible for conducting demining operations in the Black Sea, while Russian and Turkish Navies will escort all ships going out from these three ports controlled by Kiev along the Black Sea corridors and maintain security for all merchant vessels.


The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have created the necessary conditions for the operation of two maritime humanitarian corridors that constitute safe lanes for navigation:
1) in the Black Sea (from 08:00 AM to 07:00 PM every day) to leave Kherson, Nikolaev, Chernomorsk, Ochakov, Odessa and Yuzhnyi ports towards south-west from Ukraine’s territorial sea, 139 miles long and 3 miles wide;
2) in the Sea of Azov (uninterruptedly 24 hours each day) to leave Mariupol port, 115 miles long and 2 miles wide, towards the Black Sea.
Detailed information on the modus operandi of the maritime humanitarian corridors is broadcast daily every 15 minutes by VHF radio on 14 and 16 international Channels in English and Russian.
The Kiev authorities continue to avoid engaging with representatives of states and ship-owning companies to resolve the issue of ensuring the safe passage of foreign vessels to the assembly area. The danger to navigation from Ukrainian mines drifting off their anchors along the coasts of Black Sea states remains.

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Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi police state: Maidan criminalizes itself

From Unz Review

The following text is translated from Russian. It points to the total lack of support for the Kiev regime, as well as the implementation of an all encompassing Neo-Nazi Police State apparatus, based on fear, intimidation and racism, directed not only against the Russian speaking population: Ukrainians who oppose the government and exercise free speech can be arrested,  journalists are arrested and disappeared.  

by Anatoly Karlin

The following leaflets are being spread in Slavyansk, a once focal point of the Donbass resistance that was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in July last year:

are-you-a-separatist

Translation:

How to recognize your typical separatist?

  • Calls for the entry of Russian troops or suggests surrendering to Russia.
  • Propagandizes Russian symbols and spreads the idea of the “Russian world.”
  • Denigrates the values of the Ukrainian people, expresses doubts about the fact of the existence of the Ukrainian nation, Ukrainian language, etc.
  • Spreads rumors about the non-existent threats to the Russian language or Russian speakers in Ukraine.
  • Denigrates Ukrainian state symbols – the flag, national anthem, coat of arms, etc.
  • Praises the so-called DNR and LNR.
  • Protests against military mobilization.
  • Initiates events in which people call for overthrow of the government and mass riots.
  • Spreads lies and inflames interethnic hatred (racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism).
  • Promotes fear, panic, and defeatist attitudes.

A SEPARATIST IS EVEN SOMEONE WHO AGITATES AGAINST MOBILIZATION OR AWAITS PUTIN’S ARRIVAL! Punishment: 7-12 years imprisonment (Article 110 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code).

If you have encountered a case of separatism, please call the SBU or the government hotline and record the evidence on your phone, video recorder, photo camera.

0 800 507 309 – Government hotline

0 800 501 482 – SBU hotline

Toll free from landline phones.

Useless to argue the morals of this; it is justified or not depending on your particular partisan sympathies and the consistency of any convictions you might have on free speech, etc. So I won’t bother.

I will however make a few wider points:

1) The utter hypocrisy (and hardheaded practicality) of a regime that came to power through an illegal coup on a wave of mass riots now banning the same thing that got them into power in the first place. And of course the incredibly hardline restrictions on free speech implicit in all this, which are and will continue to be abused (Your neighbor’s dog is too loud? Maybe he’s a separatist!).

Lest one think this all just talk, consider the case of Ruslan Kotsaba, a (West Ukrainian!) journalist arrested for making a video in which he came out against mobilization, which is strictly speaking without legal basis during a time in which war has not been declared, i.e. up till now. He faces up to 15 years in prison. This is just what is probably the most visible case; there have been sackings, denunciations, business shakedowns, arrests, and imprisonments for non violent expressions of different opinion (or allegations of such) on a scale that would have saved Yanukovych’s “bloody regime” had he been even a tenth as ruthless.

2) A corrolary is that the results of opinion polls, which generally show drastic declines in attitudes towards Russia, while certainly real at some level, surely overstate the level of the decline. If you live in Kharkov and some unknown person phoned you and asked you for your opinions on Crimea then you’d have to be fairly brave or at least confident that you are dealing with an ethical pollster before voicing any opinion that goes against the Maidan party line.

3) As the Ukrainian economy plummets into the abyss with a helping hand from the IMF, the incidence of repressions (of which witchhunts for separatists is but a part) is ratcheting up and this process will continue further because after all they will have all been organized by Russia. After all, what possible valid reason could a pensioner with skyrocketing heating bills and devalued savings living on $50 a month have for opposing the oligarchs who rule Ukraine? And with the regime having promoted plenty of Neo-Nazis to positions of power, who’ll be happy enough to crack heads while the money continues flowing.

The fact that the regime is driven to such repressive measures is an indication that it does not enjoy firm and overwhelming support from the population. With things likely to get much worse before they get better, it is only a matter of time before the regime will have to drop what remains of its liberal democracy European values facade.

Copyright Anatoly Karlin the Unz Review, 2015

http://www.unz.com/akarlin/maidan-criminalizes-itself/

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraines-neo-nazi-police-state-the-maidan-retroactively-criminalizes-itself/5442413

Ukraine blocks 10,000 websites, confiscates a newspaper

Posted on Fort Russ

April 10th, 2015
by Eric Zuesse

As I reported yesterday, the Security Bureau of Ukraine, on April 7th, had seized and disappeared two Odessa bloggers, who were trying to get an independent investigation, and ultimate prosecution, of the individuals who participated in the 2 May 2014 massacre of regime opponents, and who burned, shot, and clubbed to death perhaps over 200 in the Odessa Trade Unions Building — the event that precipitated the breakaway of Donbass from the rest of the former Ukraine, the country’s civil war.
And I also reported that April 7th saw the official announcement that, “The security service of Ukraine … has discontinued operation of a number of Internet sites that were used to perpetrate information campaigns of aggression on the part of the Russian Federation aimed at violent change or overthrow of the constitutional order and territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.”
The follow-up to that story is the news on April 9th, which was reported in the courageous independent Kiev newspaper, Vesti, that “SBU has blocked more than 10,000 websites.” It says that, “Law enforcers seized the servers,” and that one SBU official told the newspaper, “‘We have made the decision of the court and confiscated equipment.’ He promised to return the servers in two months.”
Another news report on April 9th in Vesti tells of seizures of that day’s edition of newspapers by far-right toughs at news stands throughout the city, and the story even shows a video of Right Sector toughs raiding and emptying a Vesti delivery van headed out for distribution. The report also said:
“On Thursday, April 9, machines [coin-operated distribution boxes] that were transporting part of the circulation of the Kiev edition of the newspaper ‘Vesti’ were attacked. The attacks occurred around the metro stations ‘Heroes of Dnepr’ and ‘Vasylkivska.’ In both cases, the scenario was the same: the circulation machine was blocked by two cars that emerged containing unidentified men wearing symbols of the ‘Right Sector’ who illegally seized the circulation. In the case near the metro station ‘Vasylkivska,’ a driver was beaten, and the attackers threatened to burn his car.”
<iframe width=”320″ height=”266″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/nOSTqXNs6ds&#8221; frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>
Back on 5 July 2014, Vesti had headlined, “Masked men smashed and fired into ‘Vesti’: broke windows, spread tear gas.” A video accompanied that news report, too. The video showed a man outside the newspaper’s office, opening the door, being suddenly attacked by approximately a hundred men who rushed at him from hiding and beat him.
The accompanying news report from a witness said:
“I first heard several shots. Then stones and Molotov cocktails were hurled at windows on the first and second floors. After that, the room filled with tear gas, which quickly spread throughout the office, and it’s still very hard to breathe. One of the guards who tried to stop the thugs was beaten.”
The video shows all of this from the outside of the building.
There are accompanying photos of the ransacked office.
That news report, in turn, linked to an earlier one, on 27 June 2014. That report had said: “Suddenly, four dozen masked strangers came, headed by the controversial deputy of Kyiv City Council, Igor Lutsenko.” These men “began to shout anti-Putin slogans, and then climbed onto the improvised stage” where there was to be presentation of a Constitution Day award. “Finally, radicals tried to throw bricks at our editors, but Maidan volunteers blocked that.”
The head of the Security Bureau of Ukraine, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, the man who closed 10,000 online sites on April 7th, was reported, a week earlier, on April 1st, (translation here) saying:
“SBU does not need to invent anything new. It is necessary only to build on the traditions and approaches that were set forth by the Security Service of the OUN-UPA in the 1930-1950 years. They battled against the aggressor [Russia] during the temporary occupation of the territory [Ukraine, which ’temporary’ period was already 350 years], had a patriotic education, military counterintelligence, and relied on the peaceful Ukrainian population, using its unprecedented support.”
This video recounts and shows the history of “OUN-UPA in the 1930-1950 years” and documents that it carried out most of Adolf Hitler’s extermination program in Ukraine during World War II — including 80% of the Babi Yar massacre of Jews, which the Russian poet Yevtushenko memorialized. To the people that the Obama Administration has placed in power in Ukraine, it was a heroic achievement. And yet, far-right Jews are part of it — ideological brothers-under-the-skin, and it also has the support of 98%+ of the U.S. Congress.
The head of the Security Bureau of Ukraine lied about the ‘temporary’ inclusion of Ukraine as part of Russia, and also about how ‘peaceful’ was the reign of Ukraine’s and Germany’s nazis over Ukraine during 1940-1944. But at least he was honest that he is returning to those “traditions and approaches.”
Barack Obama reigned over the entire process and installed these people into power over Ukraine. He has almost 100% congressional support for that within both the Republican and Democratic Parties, even though over two-thirds of Americans who have an opinion on the matter are opposed to his policy. America’s Establishment wants him to pursue this policy more aggressively. And the West’s newsmedia blame Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Here is a video of Ukraine’s troops shelling the Donbass village of Slavyansk and joking that they’ll turn it into a “crematorium.”
As I reported earlier, the founder of Right Sector, Dmitriy Yarosh, was the leader of the thugs who perpetrated the May 2nd massacre, and who also carried out the February 2014 coup that brought these people to power in Ukraine. Starting on April 20th (Hitler’s birthday), his men will be receiving military training and weapons from U.S. troops, whom Obama is sending in to help them and other executioners with their program of exterminating the residents in Donbass — the region that rejects the coup-imposed government. So, Yarosh helps Obama not only by terrorizing the few remaining independent news media in Ukraine, but also by installing Obama’s regime there, and now, increasingly, by fighting his war there. Yarosh is already the most powerful person in Ukraine, and yet his power is still increasing there. He’s a man to watch. He wants Putin dead, so Putin is probably watching him carefully. Obama meanwhile, is watching Putin’s ‘aggression.’