Media Article Links on the Troubles in Ukraine, Novorossiya/NAF, DPR, LPR/LNR

[Manny]

Venezuela and Cuba have stood up for Russia

Nicolas Maduro demanded an end to attacks on the Russian Federation, and Fidel Castro sent NATO to "the dustbin of history"

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro demanded that Western countries stop "searching for pretexts for war against Russia." With a similar criticism of the West and made the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro accuse Washington of fueling conflict, it is predicted that sooner or later the United States and NATO will be on the scrap heap of history.

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2558078

Link in Russian, but any decent browser will translate.

Discussion on this topic

[Markje]

It seems that (retired) journalists in the Netherlands are also questioning the "blanket" journalism when it comes to Russia.

They + Putin are the bad guys and news that might change that opinion is stifled or ignored.

The old guys however, are still good with pens as this dutch article sees:

http://dewaarheid.nu/aug01/Oekraine_corrupte_journalistiek_en_Atlantisch_geloof.htm#.VATuSWu3dOw.facebook

(google translate may be needed)

translated quote:

Until this moment, Washington has behaved as a suspected drunk driver refusing a breathalyzer test. A number of officers from the American intelligence agencies have leaked their 'less certainty' to a number of newspapers about American 'truths' , that the American ministry of Foreign affairs broadcast unto the world. However, already in 1991 when the soviet union dissolved the ministry has shown itself a very unreliable partner with plenty of false-flag operations. Panama, Afghanistan, Irak, Syria, Venezuela, Libya and North Korea. Where does the list end? Not today as they try to paint a black mark on Russia and Putin without providing much evidence. Especially the google-maps with painted line for the supposed flight path of the MH17 plane is ludicrous.

[ashbyclarke]

Articles like this don't help creating Russian support....

http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/how_to_solve_the_putin_problem.html

No wonder Putin's popularity is increasing, even within the younger citizens.

[Moby]

The breaking news on July 17th as to who claimed shooting down the plane over Thorez that fell exactly in the place that MH17:


http://lifenews.ru/news/136801

http://en.itar-tass.com/world/741164

[Manny]

This wont be popular with some here: http://dearputin.com/

Discussion on this topic please.

[Manny]

Two quotes of interest in todays papers here, the first of which wouldn't have received exposure a few weeks ago - demonstrative I think of the slow change in the media's stance:

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West's 'plan to force out Putin will backfire': Moscow claims US is exploiting Ukraine conflict in bid to force Russian president out of power

The West is exploiting the Ukraine conflict in a deliberate bid to force Vladimir Putin out of power, Moscow claims.

This is the real aim of US policy, but the attempt will backfire, warned former FSB secret service chief Sergei Stepashin, who preceded Putin as prime minister.

In an open letter to Barack Obama – amid a fragile ceasefire in Ukraine – he accused the US president of ‘propaganda’ in blaming Russia for the violence in Ukraine and claiming Moscow threatens its neighbours.

He said Mr Obama was ratcheting up sanctions to ‘isolate Russia and generate a new Cold War’, aiming to hurt the country’s economy to the extent that Putin is forced out.

‘It is perfectly obvious that you are preparing grounds to loudly state your main goal: “Putin should resign”,’ he said.

Stepashin, now head of the Russian government’s accounts chamber, claimed Putin had outplayed a ‘hurt’ Mr Obama over Syria, preventing Western military intervention, and with his peace plan had caused the US president ‘to lose face’ in Ukraine.

He added the White House was seeking to pull Europe into a conflict there, showing Mr Obama to be a ‘hawk who dresses up as a peacekeeper and can be called the father of the new Cold War’.

Source

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And I read very little from Donetsk and Lugansk, the Ukrainian cities which have  for months been indiscriminately shelled by the Kiev  junta whose violent, lawless seizure of power we so stupidly backed last winter.

The Kiev regime has been ‘killing its own people’ in their hundreds, and sad columns of refugees are fleeing from its guns and rockets, and from the cruel ultra-nationalist militias which fight alongside it.

But the sort of people who normally complain about such horrors, and demand the overthrow of those who do them, are silent.

They prefer to say lofty and noble things about wicked Vladimir Putin and the nasty Russians – who did not start this war and who warned for years that they had had enough of EU and Nato expansion into neutral territory.

Source.

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Per the intent of the topic, comments and discussion on this thread please.

[Luik]

Discussion is here

[Manny]

I am seeing more and more in the UK Telegraph that is on the money. Here are two from the last couple of days with excerpts. The links will take you to the full articles.

It cannot be said often enough that what triggered the crisis was not Mr Putin’s desire to restore the boundaries of the Soviet Union, but the ludicrously misguided ambition of the West to see Ukraine absorbed into the EU and Nato. There was never any way that either Mr Putin or all those Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine and Crimea were going to take kindly to seeing the country which was the cradle of Russian identity become part of a Western power bloc. Russia would be even less happy to see the only warm-water ports for its navy taken over by a military alliance that had been set up to counter Russia in the first place.

Vladimir Putin’s 'unacceptable’ action in Ukraine was predictable and provoked

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The “we must stand up to Putin as we did to Hitler” line is pure schoolboy politics. Putin, of whom I saw a fair amount as UK ambassador to Moscow, is not an ideologically driven fanatic, but much closer to Talleyrand – the calculating, pragmatic rebuilder of his country’s status in the world. Certainly the seizure of Crimea was illegal and destabilising. But it was a panicky response to a unique set of circumstances, not the start of an attempt to rebuild the USSR. Of course we are right to reassure those who feel most threatened – as Nato has done with its decision to create a “spearhead force”. We are right to condemn the destruction of MH17, which a report confirmed yesterday was almost certainly shot down. But the idea that sabre-rattling is necessary to convince Russia of Nato’s seriousness is ridiculous. If the Russians didn’t take the Nato security guarantee seriously, why would they be so worried about Ukraine joining?

The second false premise is that economic sanctions can stop Russia. We have deployed sanctions six times against Russia since the Second World War; they have never worked, and won’t this time. There was an air of desperation around claims at last weekend’s Nato summit in Newport that sanctions pushed Russia into the current ceasefire. In reality the US, UK and Ukraine resisted a ceasefire that left Russia in command of the field in East Ukraine. Ukraine only moved to accept the ceasefire because it suddenly started losing the war.

It’s time to back away from the Russian wolf

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Discussion is here

[mhr7]

Most Europeans in poll think Ukraine should be offered EU membership.

A majority of Europeans think Ukraine should be offered membership of the European Union but they are divided about whether it should be admitted to NATO, according to a major public opinion survey published on Wednesday.

http://news.yahoo.com/most-europeans-poll-think-eu-offer-ukraine-membership-183628706.html

[MrMann]

An article by a Russian journalist who was detained and interrogated by the "Donetsk People's Republic" and witnessed the torture of others while being held captive.

http://www.znak.com/moscow/articles/25-08-14/102823.html

[Manny]

An interesting statement by Strelkov translated to English. Its quite long, here is an excerpt:

During these same months, several rounds of sanctions have been imposed against Russia, and the half-forgotten claims regarding Abkhazia and South Ossetia have already begun to sound from the mouths of senior military officials and diplomats of the Western countries; unconcealed threats are also heard from Islamist militants controlled by the United States. They are preparing to fight Russia for a long time and in earnest. The West and the Fifth Column make virtually no secret of their plans to overthrow President Putin; and subsequently to completely dismantle Russia. Their agents of influence use all means at their disposal to convince the leadership of the country that reconciliation is not only possible, but also singularly necessary. The fact that nothing but Russia’s complete capitulation will appease its enemies is being carefully concealed from the public and, possibly, even from the President.

You can read it all here: http://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/12/we-will-not-allow-for-russia-to-be-ripped-asunder-and-ruined/



Discussion is here

[mhr7]

http://news.yahoo.com/special-report-moscow-stifles-dissent-soldiers-return-coffins-090051931.html

Vitaly Cherkasov, a human rights lawyer, said that authorities are using threats and administrative punishments - like ‘foreign agent’ status - to keep people from talking. But even with that pressure, information spreads.

Yulia Ganiyeva, 22, received a phone call from an anonymous officer on Sept. 4, informing her of the death of her fiance Alexei Zasov, 22, who served in the 31st paratroopers brigade in Ulianovsk, Vladimir Lenin's home town on the Volga river.

"They officially said that he was killed on Russian territory but the truth is that he was killed in Ukraine," she said.

"I got in touch with soldiers who served with him. They told me he was killed in Ukraine." 

[Manny]

Opening Remarks of President Vladimir Putin at the Russian Security Council Meeting.

Two excerpts:

However, ever more frequently today we hear of ultimatums and sanctions. The very notion of state sovereignty is being washed out. Undesirable regimes, countries that conduct an independent policy or that simply stand in the way of somebody’s interests get destabilized. Tools used for this purpose are the so-called color revolutions, or, in simple terms – takeovers instigated and financed from the outside.

People came to power through the use of armed force and by unconstitutional means. True, they held elections after the takeover, however, for some strange reason, power ended up again in the hands of those who either funded or carried out this takeover. Meanwhile, without any attempt at negotiations, they are trying to suppress by force that part of the population that does not agree with such a turn of events.

At the same time, they present Russia with an ultimatum: either you let us destroy the part of the population that is ethnically, culturally and historically close to Russia, or we introduce sanctions against you. This is a strange logic, and absolutely unacceptable, of course.

The rest is here: http://slavyangrad.org/2014/07/23/opening-remarks-of-president-vladimir-putin/


Discussion is here

[Manny]

An interesting article on an interesting site I encountered today. It is more of an overview of what is happening in Ukraine and why.

http://www.russiaotherpointsofview.com/2014/09/reality-check-from-russia.html#



Discussion is here.

[mhr7]

"It's not the (local) militia here anymore, it's mostly Russians who take part in combat," says the former paratrooper.

http://news.yahoo.com/former-russian-paratroopers-lead-combat-rebel-held-east-141444296.html

[Manny]

James Bissett is a former Canadian diplomat. He was Canada’s ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria:

Sadly, the crisis is completely unnecessary and the responsibility lies entirely in the hands of the United States – led NATO powers. The almost virulent propaganda onslaught blaming Russia for the instability and violence in Ukraine simply ignores reality and the facts.

NATO, spurred on by the United States, has been determined since the collapse of the Soviet Union to surround Russia with hostile NATO members. The first attempt to win Ukraine over to the West through the Orange Revolution in 2004 failed but NATO kept trying and now has “let slip the dogs of war” on that unfortunate country.

It was inevitable that NATO’s expansion eastward would at some point run into hostile Russian reaction.

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/nato-at-the-heart-of-a-new-cold-war-says-former-ambassador

[mhr7]

“No leader of a major power has behaved as overtly aggressively since Stalin in the postwar period, and sadly Putin would be very pleased with the comparison. He has said the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century and he claims the right to act on behalf of Russian minorities in other states. As there are Russian minorities throughout the old Soviet Union and far wider he is in principle claiming the right to interfere in the affairs of all of the independent sovereign states of eastern Europe. Stalin’s policies pushed the world into the cold war. Putin has the potential to be equally as dangerous.”

Bob Ainsworth MP - British Labour Party

http://www.inquisitr.com/1479376/vladimir-putin-as-dangerous-as-stalin-and-bigger-threat-than-isis-claims-former-defence-secretary/

[Markje]

“No leader of a major power has behaved as overtly aggressively since Stalin in the postwar period, and sadly Putin would be very pleased with the comparison. He has said the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century and he claims the right to act on behalf of Russian minorities in other states. As there are Russian minorities throughout the old Soviet Union and far wider he is in principle claiming the right to interfere in the affairs of all of the independent sovereign states of eastern Europe. Stalin’s policies pushed the world into the cold war. Putin has the potential to be equally as dangerous.”

Bob Ainsworth MP - British Labour Party

http://www.inquisitr.com/1479376/vladimir-putin-as-dangerous-as-stalin-and-bigger-threat-than-isis-claims-former-defence-secretary/

I answer you: Farage (UKIP)  :

[Manny]

A reported claim by Ukraine’s Defense minister that Russia used tactical nuclear weapons against his troops sparked sarcastic comments from Moscow and criticism from the rival Ukrainian Interior Ministry.

The allegations, by Col. Gen. Valery Geletey, were first reported by Roman Bochkala, one of the Ukrainian journalists accompanying the minister in his recent trip to Poland.

http://rt.com/news/189420-ukraine-nuclear-strike-russia/

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Let Putin enjoy his Ukraine victory

Last week the ‘West’ was roundly beaten by Vladimir Putin in the First Ukrainian War. The EU not only delayed a crucial part of its imperial deal with Kiev. It openly admitted that this was a concession to Moscow.

The resulting compromise could have been had last winter, before the EU and Washington mounted their violent mob putsch against the elected President of Ukraine, ludicrously claiming they did this in the name of democracy and good government. All the thousands of lives lost since that putsch were needlessly sacrificed. There is no magic formula which says that Ukraine, under Western domination, will cease to be grossly corrupt, lawless, bankrupt and unfree.

Russia has shown quite clearly that it means what it has patiently said for years, and will fight against any further Western expansion of the EU.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2763824/PETER-HITCHENS-All-devolved-power-end-just-one-place-Brussels.html



Discussion and comment here please.

[redroo]

"Jim Bob" wants to shoot people, and he doesn't even know why?? God help us 

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/american-fighter-in-east-ukraine-calls-on-u-s-compatriots-to-join-pro-russian-rebels/507503.html

[Halo]

Giving lie to Vladimir Putin’s claims that Russia isn’t fighting in Ukraine, up to 80 Russian troops were killed in a skirmish there last month, according to information released by an opposition politician.

Members of an elite Russian paratroop force talked about the brutal battle near Lugansk, a city in eastern Ukraine, in telephone transcripts leaked to politician and newspaper publisher Lev Shlosberg.

“We’re f——g walking along looking for these f—–g Ukrainians,” one paratrooper says in an account reported by the Sunday Times of London.

“We get out into the open and are seen, kapow!” the paratrooper says.

“We dashed out onto the road, there was a field, sunflowers, and a checkpoint,” he continues. “They started to bomb it — bam bam bam — and they destroyed it.”
“Eighty guys were killed,” said the paratrooper, who was wounded in the attack. He added: “I was told only 10 made it out.”

He related the story to a fellow soldier in a phone call from a hospital where he was being treated.

‘WE’RE F——G WALKING ALONG LOOKING FOR THESE F—–G UKRAINIANS. WE GET OUT INTO THE OPEN AND ARE SEEN, KAPOW!’
 - Russian paratrooper

In the recorded conversation, a second paratrooper asks: “Did they warn you straight away where you were off to?”
“Gradually,” answers his friend. “I knew where I was going and told my wife straight away: ‘Am off to war’.”
“What did they tell you, why are you going there?” one paratrooper asks.

“They don’t tell us anything. They say we are off on an exercise…” comes the answer.

The dialogues were reported to have occurred between members of the elite 76th Guards Air Assault Division, which is based in the city of Pskov. Shlosberg owns a newspaper there.

Ukrainian officials reported a skirmish with the 76th Guards in mid-August. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on its website that its troops destroyed three of the unit’s tanks and seized two troop carriers. Russia denied the skirmish took place.

But despite the denials, last month President Vladimir Putin bestowed one of Russia’s highest awards, the Order of Suvorov, on the division.

He cited 76th Guards Air Assault Division’s “successful completion of military missions” and “courage and heroism” — odd words for a country that claims it is at peace.

Shlosberg’s newspaper reported in August on the funerals of two 76th Guards paratroopers, Leonid Kichatkin and Alexander Osipov.

Kichatkin’s widow, Oksana, announced her husband’s funeral on her social media page. When reporters began asking about her husband, the post was replaced with one claiming he “is alive and well.”

And when reporters called the Kichatkin home, the phone was answered by a man pretending to be Oksana’s dead husband.

The paratroopers in Shlosberg’s transcript served with Kichatkin, and confirmed that he died fighting in Ukraine. They also talked about why someone posed as Kichatkin on the telephone.

“If I found the guy who grabbed the phone away from [his] wife, I’d smash his face,” says one.

Thugs attacked reporters who visited the cemetery where Kichatkin and Osipov are buried. Thugs also attacked Shlosberg on Aug. 29 after his newspaper reported the mens’ deaths.

Across Russia there have been reports of secret funerals for soldiers killed in Ukraine, the Sunday Times says.

At least 400 Russian servicemen have been killed or wounded in the fighting, according to estimates by the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers, an independent group set up in 1989 to protect the rights of conscripts involved in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Shlosberg’s political party, Yabloko, issued a statement saying the attack on him “is the direct consequence of the state propaganda mobbing people with a different point of view and labelling them enemies and ‘the fifth column.’”

http://nypost.com/2014/09/21/leaked-transcripts-reveal-putins-secret-attack-in-ukraine/

[Halo]

http://nr2.com.ua/News/world_and_russia/Aleksandr-Sotnik-Kreml-reanimiruet-chekistskogo-Frankenshteyna-stalinskih-vremen-80450.html

Synopsis -

Aleksandr Sotnik, who has set up an independent television studio in Moscow, says that “unfortunately Western politicians absolutely do not understand what is happening in present-day Russia” and thus are incapable either of assessing the nature of the threat Vladimir Putin represents or countering it effectively.

In an interview with NR2.com.ua, Sotnik says that Putin has assembled around himself backward lumpenized people who dream of Soviet “’greatness’” when “’they feared us and this means they respected us’” and who are all too happy to come out again as exemplars of Homo Sovieticus”
 
But that is not enough for Putin, the Moscow journalist says. Instead, what is on offer as a result of his intense propaganda campaign which appeals to “the basest instincts” of the population is “the reanimation of  the Chekist Frankenstein of Stalin’s times” – angry and suspicion beings who are prepared to see enemies everywhere and ready to kill them.

The regime is clearly preparing to move even further in that direction, Sotnik says, noting that he recently discovered a new prison under construction near Moscow. Supposedly for illegal migrants, it was in fact being overseen not by the migration service but by the interior ministry and suggests Putin wants to “convert the country into a fascist Auschwitz.”

The support Putin is getting from the Russian population reflects many things, he continues: indifference, fear, despair, but also “’convinced Soviet people’” who really want to believe what Putin is saying.  These are pure Putinists, “active as a virus and strong and decisive in their plans for career growth. Today is their star hour,” and they are ready to seize it.

While the poll numbers being reported are exaggerated, Sotnik says, his own informal surveys suggest that popular support for Putin is quite high. Most people with whom he has talked say “’Putin is right,’ ‘he is doing everything correctly,’ ‘he is a wise politician,’ and ‘in Ukraine are fascists and a junta.’”

People who say this get most of their information from Moscow television, but they also like to say that they have used alternative channels like the Internet.  “No one,” he points out, “wants to feel himself to have been zombified, and it is always possible to find justification for a cannibal-like position.”

Fewer than a third of Russians have ever been abroad, and those who have often find themselves uncomfortable and in a panic run back to what is for them their own familiar and comfortable society. And this desire to restore a past, despite all its horrors, is very much in evidence in the Kremlin itself, Sotnik says.

Citing Churchill’s remark that “’the next generation of fascists will call itself anti-fascist,’” Sotnik suggests that something similar is at work among post-communist Russians and their leaders. Playing games with words and meanings, he points out, is the everyday task of the Russian secret police.

Those who refuse to call along are labelled enemies. And many find it much simpler not to look at the Internet but to go along with what is on television: such people know that by not swimming “against the current,” they won’t have any problems with the authorities or suffer doubts themselves.

And most Russians are prepared to accept the false logic that because “we defeated fascists, we cannot be fascists by definition” and that anyone “who does not love us is a fascist.”  Thinking that way is “very simple, convincing and sympathetic,” Sotnik says. But even these people sometimes reflect that they are following leaders who are taking them into a new hell.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.ca/2014/09/window-on-eurasia-western-leaders-dont.html

[Manny]

The UK is planning on asking the EU to block Russia from using the SWIFT banking transaction system under an expansion of sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, a British government official said. SWIFT is Russia's main access point to the international banking system.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-29/u-k-wants-eu-to-block-russia-from-swift-banking-network.html

Discussion on this topic

SWIFT said no: http://rt.com/business/193464-no-authority-swift-russia-israel/

[Manny]

A Downing St Petition:

No to Nato military exercises in Ukraine

Responsible department: Ministry of Defence

We note with great concern that UK and US troops are scheduled to participate in joint military exercises in Ukraine in July as part of NATO’s Rapid Trident manoeuvres. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Its participation in military exercises by a nuclear-armed alliance with a first-strike policy can only further destabilise the country.

We call on the British government to urge the US and other NATO governments to cancel the Rapid Trident exercise, and to give a plain and public undertaking that Britain will not participate.

Initial signatories:
Lindsey German, convenor of Stop the War Coalition
Kate Hudson, general secretary of CND
Caroline Lucas MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
John Rees, Stop the War Coalition
Baroness Jenny Tonge
Ken Loach, film and TV director
Mark Rylance, actor
Miriam Margolyes OBE actor
Michael Rosen, author and broadcaster
Salma Yaqoob, former leader of the Respect Party
Andrew Murray, chief of staff for Unite union

Anyone that wants to sign it can do so here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/64756

[sparky114]

Ukrainian army accused of using cluster bombs on civillian areas 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29702522

Discussion here please.