Kiev’s armored vehicles attack village near Lugansk – self-defense forces
RT | May 11, 2014
The village of Novoaydar in the Lugansk region is being attacked by Ukrainian troops, according to the local self-defense leader.
“Around 15 APCs have come near Novoaydar,” Aleksey Chmilenko said. “Our self-defense guards are trying to stop the attack and prevent the vehicles moving farther in the direction of Lugansk.”
Meanwhile, representatives of another Lugansk region self-defense group, based in Krasny Luch, told RT that they have seen APCs in the region, but have not heard any fighting yet.
Reports of sightings of Ukrainian APCs in various towns and villages in the Lugansk region have been coming in throughout the day. One report said that as many as 45 APCs were moving from the Kharkov region in the direction of Lugansk.
Novoaydar election commission was reportedly evacuated by self-defense activists, after it had been attacked by National Guard troops.
Earlier in the day, shooting and artillery fire was heard on the outskirts of Slavyansk, in southeast Ukraine’s Donetsk region, RIA Novosti reported, citing its correspondent in the area.
There have also been reports of a military operation going on in the town of Krasny Liman, Donetsk region. Those emerged after communication was lost with two territorial self-determination referendum committees there, according to the head of the Central Election Commission of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” Roman Lyagin.
On Sunday, Donetsk and Lugansk regions opened polling stations for a referendum seeking autonomy from the central government. Local self-defense forces boosted security, fearing that Kiev could stage provocations to disrupt the self-determination vote.
Voting in four towns across Lugansk region has been disrupted, as military vehicles block passage to polling stations, representatives of referendum coordination council told Interfax.
“In four districts – Belokurakinsky, Svatovsky, Troitsky and Melovsky – APCs of the Ukrainian National Guard do not let residents pass to the referendum polling stations,” the sources said.
In total, two helicopters, 10 APCs and 100 National Guard troops are currently engaged in attempts at disrupting the referendum in the Lugansk region, according to deputy head of the Krasnoluchsky district referendum commission, Elena Khryapina. She says that turn-out is high despite the tense situation.
Meanwhile, the acting head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Sergey Pashinsky, said Kiev’s military operation in the Donetsk region towns of Krasny Liman, Slavyansk and Kramatorsk was in its its final stage, adding that “a lot of separatists have been eliminated during the operation.” He would not provide any figures though.
APC set on fire in Ukraine’s Mariupol as Kiev troops announce withdrawal
RT | May 10, 2014
An APC, allegedly captured by self-defense forces from Ukrainian troops, was set ablaze in the center of Mariupol in the aftermath of Friday’s bloody clashes. The Ukrainian National Guard has announced it will temporarily withdraw from the city center.
On Saturday afternoon, the sound of gunshots and explosions was once again heard in the center of the city, which is located on the Black Sea coast in southeast Ukraine.
A Ruptly producer said gunshots could be heard near the hospital where a wounded RT stringer is being treated.
Those were most likely from ammunition exploding inside an armored personnel carrier (APC), which was set on fire.
The APC appears to be the one captured a day earlier by self-defense forces. It was not immediately clear who had set the vehicle ablaze. There are unconfirmed reports that it was done by the locals, who threw Molotov cocktails at it.
Meanwhile, the Ukranian National Guard announced on Saturday it withdrew its troops from the center of Mariupol.
“Now forces of the National Guard have been withdrawn from the epicenter of events in order not to provoke more aggression of the part of activists and also for the sake of ensuring security for peaceful Mariupol residents,” the Guard’s press-service said.
The leadership of the National Guard has described the current situation in Mariupol as “steadily tense”.
Earlier on Saturday a day of mourning was declared in Mariupol by the city administration following Friday’s violence. Seven people died and 39 were wounded then as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local self-defense activists, Mariupol health officials say.
“Because of the tragic events on May 9, 2014, which resulted in casualties, May 10 is declared a day of mourning in the city of Mariupol,” the city administration statement reads.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry is providing a higher death toll for Friday’s violence in Mariupol, saying that 20 anti-Kiev activists were killed and four more were taken captive, according to a Facebook post by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Kiev’s forces were using heavy weaponry and tanks in Mariupol to storm the local Interior Ministry building, where local police have barricaded themselves in, refusing to take orders from Kiev.
At some point, residents began flocking to the scene. A representative of the self-defense forces said that one of the armored vehicles opened fire at a group of unarmed civilians.
“What happened here was mayhem and genocide,” a Mariupol resident who only gave his first name, Aleksandr, told RT. “Ordinary citizens were killed. They started with the police officers, who approved of the idea of an independent Donetsk People’s Republic… If you go online and search through the social media, you’ll quickly come across videos of people being shot in the streets. How can one possibly conduct a military operation against peaceful citizens, unarmed and unable to fight back?”
Authorities in Kiev intensified their military operation against anti-government protesters in eastern Ukraine in early May. The hotspots for military activity have been the cities of Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Konstantinovka and Mariupol, all situated in the Donetsk region, which is about to hold a referendum on the possibility of independence from Kiev.
Dangerous radioactive contamination found in an Iraqi village
MEMO | May 9, 2014
The official environmental authority in the Iraqi governorate of Missan, which is located 390 kilometres away from Baghdad, has announced the discovery of dangerous radioactive contamination that is attributed to the 2003 US-led war on Iraq.
The director of the general authority for the environment in Missan, Samir Kadim, told the New Arab news website that the authority’s specialised staff found radioactive material, mainly in military equipment and the skeletons of cars, in a small village south of Missan known as Karima.
Kadim explained that the ministry’s authority is cautiously entering the three areas where radioactive material was discovered and is taking strict procedures to remove it.
The village witnessed one of the fiercest battles between the former Iraqi army and the US-led coalition forces in 2003.
“Unfortunately, we have discovered it late, after a number of the village’s residents have been diagnosed with various diseases,” Kadim said.
One of the village’s residents told the New Arab in a phone interview that: “Cancer has spread among us, in addition to birth defects among new-born babies and other diseases that doctors cannot explain.”
“But it is only now that we have discovered the cause – it is the US,” said 45-year-old Abboud Moussa.
Moussa described how a number of Karima’s villagers, including children and his own mother, died as a result of this radioactive material. Doctors diagnosed his mother with skin cancer and bone disease, and they told him that she needed to receive medical treatment abroad, but she died very quickly before she could travel.
According to Missan’s environment authority, Karima is the third place in the governorate where radioactive material has been discovered amid primitive treatment and an American refusal to take responsibility. Any US assistance in handling the radiation would be an acknowledgement of its use of internationally banned weapons in Iraq.
Abdel Khalek Mahmoud, an environmental expert, told the New Arab that “radioactive contamination in Iraq is divided into two types: The first, which is rarely found in Iraq, is high-level radioactivity that can be discovered by electronic devices. The second is low-level radioactivity, which is more difficult to discover. It was caused by the waste of depleted uranium that was used by the US in its 2003 war on Iraq. This is abundantly found and it has caused a lot of lethal damage in the country.”
“We have often said that the reason why thousands of Iraqi soldiers went missing is that their bodies burnt as a result of uranium-saturated bombs. But the country’s new leaders, who were empowered by the US, were not willing to bother the Americans,” Mahmoud added.
Abdel-Aziz Al-Taey for the New Arab
To Understand Or Not to Understand Putin
By Diana Johnstone | CounterPunch | May 8, 2014
In Germany these days, very many citizens object to the endless Russia-bashing of the NATO-oriented mainstream media. They may point out that the U.S.-backed regime change in Kiev, putting in power an ultra-right transitional government eager to join NATO, posed an urgent threat to preservation of Russia’s only warm water naval base in Crimea. Under the circumstances, and inasmuch as the Crimean population overwhelmingly approved, reinstating Crimea in the Russian federation was a necessary defensive move.
In Germany, anyone who says something like that can be denigrated as a “Putinversteher” (a Putin understander).
That says it all. We are not supposed to understand. We are supposed to hate. The media are there to see to that.
While the West doggedly refuses to understand Putin and Russia, Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, seems to understand things pretty well.
He seems to understand that he and his nation are being systematically lured into a death trap by an enemy which excels in the contemporary art of “communication”. In a war situation, NATO communication means that it doesn’t matter who does what. The only thing that matters is who tells the story. The Western media are telling the story in a way which depends on not understanding Russia, and not understanding Putin. Putin and Russia become fictional villains in the Western version, just the latest reincarnation of Hitler and Nazi Germany.
The horrific massacre in Odessa on May 2 proved this. The photographic evidence, the testimony of numerous eye witnesses, the smoldering bodies and the shouts of the killers are all there to prove what happened. Tents erected to collect signatures in favor of a referendum to introduce a federal system into Ukraine (now a politically divided but totally centralized state) were set on fire by a militia of fascist thugs who attacked the local federalists as “separatists” (accusing them of wanting to “separate” from Ukraine to join Russia, when that is not what they are seeking). The local activists fled into the big trade union building on the square where they were pursued, assaulted, murdered and set on fire by “Ukrainian nationalists”, acting on behalf of the illegitimate Kiev regime supported by the West.
No matter how vicious the assaults, Western media saw no evil, heard no evil, spoke no evil. They deplored a “tragedy” which just sort of happened.
Odessa is proof that whatever happens, the NATO political class, political leaders and media united, have decided on their story and are sticking to it. The nationalists that seized power in Kiev are the good guys, the people being assaulted in Odessa and in Eastern Ukraine are “pro-Russian” and therefore the “bad guys”.
Understanding Putin
So despite everything, let’s try to understand President Putin, which is really not very hard. Behind every conscious action there should be a motive. Let’s look at motives. Today, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who certainly gives every sign of never understanding – or wanting to understand – anything, parroted the NATO line that Russia was “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation” in Ukraine’s east and south.
That makes no sense. Putin has absolutely no motive to want civil war to rage in neighboring Ukraine, and very strong reasons to do all he can to avoid it. It confronts him with a serious dilemma. Ongoing vicious attacks by fanatic nationalists from Western Ukraine on citizens in the east and south of the country can only incite the victimized Russian-speaking Ukrainians to call on Russia for help. But at the same time, Putin must know that those Russophone Ukrainians do not really want to be invaded by Russia. Perhaps they want something impossible. And it is perfectly obvious that any use of Russia’s military force to protect people in Ukraine would let loose an even wilder demonization of Putin as “the new Hitler” who is invading countries “for no reason”. And NATO would use this, as it has already used the reunification of Crimea with Russia, as “proof” that Europe must tighten its alliance, establish military bases throughout Eastern Europe and (above all) spend more money on “defense” (buying US military equipment).
The Western takeover of the Kiev government is clearly a provocation to draw Putin into a trap that certain Western strategists (Zbigniew Brzezinski being the chief theorist) hope will cause Putin’s downfall and plunge Russia into a crisis that can lead to its eventual dismemberment.
Putin can only wish to find a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian mess.
While Washington reverts to Cold War “containment” policy to “isolate” Russia, Putin today held talks in Moscow with Didier Burkhalter, the Swiss president and current chairman of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), in hope of initiating some sort of peaceful mediation.
Putin Pulls Back From False Flag Plan?
On this occasion, Putin announced that he had pulled back Russian forces from the border with Ukraine. He indicated that this was to ease concerns over their positioning, meaning claims that Russia was preparing an invasion. He also advised against holding referendums for greater autonomy in the Russophone areas until “conditions for dialogue” can be created.
However, news reports indicated that this reported military pullback caused new concerns among some Ukrainians, who felt Russia was abandoning them in their hour of need, and among some Russians, who feared the President was backing down under Western pressure.
It is not impossible that the pullback order was linked to a Novosti RIA report dated May 6, which indicated that the Ukrainian secret service was planning an imminent false flag operation in order to accuse Russia of violating the border with Ukraine.
Novosti said it had learned from security circles in Kiev that the Ukrainian secret service SBU had secretly shipped about 200 Russian army uniforms and some 70 forged Russian officer IDs into the Eastern Ukrainian protest stronghold of Donetz, to be used to stage a false attack on Ukrainian border patrols.
Novosti said the reports were unconfirmed, but they could nevertheless be taken seriously by the Russians. “The plan would be to simulate an attack on Ukrainian border troops and to film it for the media”, the report said. In connection with the plan, a dozen or so combatants from the ultranationalist Right Sector were to cross the border and kidnap a Russian soldier in order to present him as “proof” of Russian military incursion. The operation was scheduled for May 8 or 9.
By pulling Russian troops farther away from the border, Putin could hope to make the false flag operation less plausible and perhaps to forestall it.
The whole Ukrainian operation, at least partly directed by Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department, has been characterised by false flag operations, most notoriously by the snipers who suddenly spread murder and terror in Maidan square in Kiev, effectively wrecking the internationally sponsored transition agreement. “Pro-West” insurgents accused President Yanukovych of sending the killers and forced a rump parliament to give government power to Ms Nuland’s protégé, Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk. However, there has been plenty of evidence to show that the mysterious snipers were pro-West mercenaries: photographic evidence, followed by the telephone statement by the Polish foreign minister to that effect, and finally by the German television channel ARD whose Monitor documentary concluded that the snipers came from the extreme right anti-Russian groups involved in the Maidan uprising. Indeed, all known evidence points to a fascist false flag operation, and yet Western media and politicians continue to blame everything on Russia.
So whatever he does, Putin now has to realize that he will be deliberately “misunderstood” and misrepresented by Western leaders and media. Over the heads of the American people, over the heads of the Germans, French and other Europeans, a private consensus has obviously been reached among persons we may describe as our own Western “oligarchs” to revive the Cold War in order to provide the West with an “enemy” serious enough to save the military-industrial complex and unite the transatlantic community against the rest of the world.
This is what Russian leaders are obliged to understand. What they need most to save the world from endless and useless conflict is the understanding of all those Americans and Europeans who have never been consulted or informed about this perilous shift in strategy, and who, if they understood, would surely say no.
Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr
The Kiev Putsch: Rebel Workers Take Power in the East
By James Petras | May 7, 2014
Not since the US and EU took over Eastern Europe, including the Baltic countries, East Germany, Poland, and the Balkans and converted them into military outposts of NATO and economic vassals, have the Western powers moved so aggressively to seize a strategic country, such as the Ukraine, posing an existential threat to Russia.
Up until 2013 the Ukraine was a ‘buffer state’, basically a non-aligned country, with economic ties to both the EU and Russia. Ruled by a regime closely tied to local, European, Israeli and Russian based oligarchs, the political elite was a product of a political upheaval in 2004, (the so-called “Orange Revolution”) funded by the US. Subsequently, for the better part of a decade the Ukraine underwent a failed experiment in Western backed ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies. After nearly two decades of political penetration, the US and EU were deeply entrenched in the political system via long-standing funding of so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs), political parties and paramilitary groups.
The strategy of the US and EU was to install a pliant regime which would bring Ukraine into the European Common Market and NATO as a subordinate client state. Negotiations between the EU and the Ukraine government proceeded slowly. They eventually faltered because of the onerous conditions demanded by the EU and the more favorable economic concessions and subsidies offered by Russia. Having failed to negotiate the annexation of the Ukraine to the EU, and not willing to await scheduled constitutional elections, the NATO powers activated their well-financed and organized NGOs, client political leaders and armed paramilitary groups to violently overthrow the elected government. The violent putsch succeeded and a US-appointed civilian-military junta took power.
The junta was composed of pliant neo-liberal and chauvinist neo-fascist ‘ministers’. The former were hand-picked by the US, to administer and enforce a new political and economic order, including privatization of public firms and resources, breaking trade and investment ties with Russia, eliminating a treaty allowing the Russian naval base in Crimea and ending military-industrial exports to Russia. The neo-fascists and sectors of the military and police were appointed to ministerial positions in order to violently repress any pro-democracy opposition in the West and East. They oversaw the repression of bilingual speakers (Russian-Ukrainian), institutions and practices – turning the opposition to the US-NATO imposed coup regime into an ethnic opposition. They purged all elected opposition office holders in the West and East and appointed local governors by fiat – essentially creating a martial law regime.
The Strategic Targets of the NATO-Junta
NATOs violent, high-risk seizure of the Ukraine was driven by several strategic military objectives. These included:
1) The ousting of Russia from its military bases in Crimea – turning them into NATO bases facing Russia.
2) The conversion of the Ukraine into a springboard for penetrating Southern Russia and the Caucasus; a forward position to politically manage and support liberal pro-NATO parties and NGOs within Russia.
3) The disruption of key sectors of the Russian military defense industry, linked to the Ukrainian factories, by ending the export of critical engines and parts to Russia.
The Ukraine had long been an important part of the Soviet Union’s military industrial complex. NATO planners behind the putsch were keenly aware that one-third of the Soviet defense industry had remained in the Ukraine after the break-up of the USSR and that forty percent of the Ukraine’s exports to Russia, until recently, consisted of armaments and related machinery. More specifically, the Motor-Sikh plant in Eastern Ukraine manufactured most of the engines for Russian military helicopters including a current contract to supply engines for one thousand attack helicopters. NATO strategists immediately directed their political stooges in Kiev to suspend all military deliveries to Russia, including medium-range air-to air-missiles, inter-continental ballistic missiles, transport planes and space rockets (Financial Times, 4/21/14, p3). US and EU military strategists viewed the Kiev putsch as a way to undermine Russian air, sea and border defenses. President Putin has acknowledged the blow but insists that Russia will be able to substitute domestic production for the critical parts within two years. This means the loss of thousands of skilled factory jobs in Eastern Ukraine.
4. The military encirclement of Russia with forward NATO bases in the Ukraine matching those from the Baltic to the Balkans, from Turkey to the Caucasus and then onward from Georgia into the autonomous Russian Federation.
The US-EU encirclement of Russia is designed to end Russian access to the North Sea, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. By encircling and confining Russia to an isolated landmass without ‘outlets to the sea’, US-EU empire builders seek to limit Russia’s role as a rival power center and possible counter-weight to its imperial ambitions in the Middle East, North Africa, Southwest Asia and the North Atlantic.
Ukraine Putsch: Integral to Imperial Expansion
The US and EU are intent on destroying independent, nationalist and non-aligned governments throughout the world and converting them into imperial satellites by whatever means are effective. For example, the current NATO-armed mercenary invasion of Syria is directed at overthrowing the nationalist, secular Assad government and establishing a pro-NATO vassal state, regardless of the bloody consequences to the diverse Syrian people. The attack on Syria serves multiple purposes: Eliminating a Russian ally and its Mediterranean naval base; undermining a supporter of Palestine and adversary of Israel; encircling the Islamic Republic of Iran and the powerful militant Hezbollah Party in Lebanon and establishing new military bases on Syrian soil.
The NATO seizure of the Ukraine has a multiplier effect that reaches ‘upward’ toward Russia and ‘downward’ toward the Middle East and consolidates control over its vast oil wealth.
The recent NATO wars against Russian allies or trading partners confirm this prognosis. In Libya, the independent, non-aligned policies of the Gaddafi regime stood out in stark contrast to the servile Western satellites like Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia. Gaddafi was overthrown and Libya destroyed via a massive NATO air assault. Egypt’s mass popular anti-Mubarak rebellion and emerging democracy were subverted by a military coup and eventually returned the country to the US-Israeli-NATO orbit – under a brutal dictator. Armed incursions by NATO proxy, Israel, against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the US-EU sanctions against Iran are all directed against potential allies or trading partners of Russia.
The US has moved forcefully from encircling Russia via ‘elections and free markets’ in Eastern Europe to relying on military force, death squads, terror and economic sanctions in the Ukraine, the Caucasus, the Middle East and Asia.
Regime Change in Russia: from Global Power to Vassal State
Washington’s strategic objective is to isolate Russia from without, undermine its military capability and erode its economy, in order to strengthen NATO’s political and economic collaborators inside Russia – leading to its further fragmentation and return to the semi-vassal status.
The imperial strategic goal is to place neo-liberal political proxies in power in Moscow, just like the ones who oversaw the pillage and destruction of Russia during the infamous Yeltsin decade. The US-EU power grab in the Ukraine is a big step in that direction.
Evaluating the Encirclement and Conquest Strategy
So far NATO’s seizure of the Ukraine has not moved forward as planned. First of all, the violent seizure of power by overtly pro-NATO elites openly reneging on military treaty agreements with Russia over bases in Crimea, had forced Russia to intervene in support of the local, overwhelmingly ethnic Russian population. Following a free and open referendum, Russia annexed the region and secured its strategic military presence.
While Russia retained its naval presence on the Black Sea … the NATO junta in Kiev unleashed a large-scale military offensive against the pro-democracy, anti-coup Russian-speaking majority in the eastern half of the Ukraine who have been demanding a federal form of government reflecting Ukraine’s cultural diversity. The US-EU promoted a “military response” to mass popular dissent and encouraged the coup-regime to eliminate the civil rights of the Russian speaking majority through neo-Nazi terror and to force the population to accept junta-appointed regional rulers in place of their elected leaders. In response to this repression, popular self-defense committees and local militias quickly sprang up and the Ukrainian army was initially forced back with thousands of soldiers refusing to shoot their own compatriots on behalf of the Western-installed regime in Kiev. For a while, the NATO-backed neo-liberal-neo-fascist coalition junta had to contend with the disintegration of its ‘power base’. At the same time, ‘aid’ from the EU, IMF, and the US failed to compensate for the cut-off of Russian trade and energy subsidies. Under the advise of visiting US CIA Director, Brenner, the Kiev Junta then dispatched its elite ‘special forces’ trained by the CIA and FBI to carry out massacres against pro-democracy civilians and popular militias. They bussed in armed thugs to the diverse city of Odessa who staged an ‘exemplary’ massacre: Burning the city’s major trade union headquarters and slaughtering 41, mostly unarmed civilians who were trapped in the building with its exits blocked by neo-Nazis. The dead included many women and teenagers who had sought shelter from the rampaging neo-Nazis. The survivors were brutally beaten and imprisoned by the ‘police’ who had passively watched while the building burned.
The Coming Collapse of the Putsch-Junta
Obama’s Ukraine power grab and his efforts to isolate Russia have provoked some opposition in the EU. Clearly US sanctions prejudice major European multi-nationals with deep ties in Russia. The US military build-up in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Black Sea raises tensions and threatens a large-scale military conflagration, disrupting major economic contracts. US-EU threats on Russia’s border have increased popular support for President Putin and strengthened the Russian leadership. The strategic power grab in the Ukraine has radicalized and deepened the polarization of Ukrainian politics-between neo-fascist and pro-democracy forces.
While the imperial strategists are extending and escalating their military build-up in Estonia and Poland and pouring arms into the Ukraine, the entire power grab rests on very precarious political and economic foundations- which could collapse within the year – amidst a bloody civil war/inter-ethnic slaughter.
The Ukraine junta has already lost political control of over a third of the country to pro-democracy, anti-coup movements and self-defense militias. By cutting off strategic exports to Russia to serve US military interests, the Ukraine lost one of its most important markets, which cannot be replaced. Under NATO control, Ukraine will have to buy NATO-specified military hardware leading to the closure of its factories geared to the Russian market. The loss of Russian trade is already leading to mass unemployment, especially among skilled industrial workers in the East who may be forced to immigrate to Russia. Ballooning trade deficits and the erosion of state revenues will bring a total economic collapse. As a result of the Kiev junta’s submission to NATO, the Ukraine has lost billions of dollars in subsidized energy from Russia. High energy costs make Ukrainian industries non-competitive in global markets. In order to secure loans from the IMF and the EU, the junta has agreed to eliminate food and energy price subsidies, severely depressing household incomes and plunging pensioners into destitution. Bankruptcies are on the rise, as imports from the EU and elsewhere displace formerly protected local industries.
No new investments are flowing in because of the violence, instability and conflicts between neo-fascists and neo-liberals within he junta. Just to stabilize the day-to-day operations of government, the junta needs a no-interest $30 billion dollar handout – from its NATO patrons, an amount, which is not forthcoming now or in the immediate future.
It is clear that NATO ‘strategists’ who planned the putsch were only thinking about weakening Russia militarily and gave no thought to the political, economic, and social costs of sustaining a puppet regime in Kiev when Ukraine had been so dependent on Russian markets, loans, and subsidized energy. Moreover, they appear to have overlooked the political, industrial, and agricultural dynamics of the predictably hostile Eastern regions of the country. Alternately, Washington strategists may have based their calculations on instigating a Yugoslavia-style break-up accompanied by massive ethnic cleansing amidst population transfers and slaughter. Undeterred by the millions of civilian casualties, Washington considers its policy of dismantling Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya to have been great political-military successes.
Ukraine most certainly will enter a prolonged and deep depression, including a precipitous decline in its exports, employment, and output. Possibly, economic collapse will lead to nationwide protests and social unrest: spreading from East to West, from South to North. Social upheavals and mass misery may further undermine the morale of the Ukrainian armed forces. Even now, Kiev can barely afford to feed its soldiers and has to rely on neo-Fascist volunteer militias who may be hard to control. The US-EU are not likely to intervene directly with a Libya-style bombing campaign since they would face a prolonged war on Russia’s border at a time when public opinion in the US is suffering from imperial war exhaustion, and European business interests with links to Russian resource companies are resisting consequential sanctions.
The US-EU putsch has produced a failing regime and a society riven by violent conflicts – spinning into open ethnic violence. What, in fact, has ensued is a system of dual power with contenders cutting across regional boundaries. The Kiev junta lacks the coherence and stability to serve as a reliable NATO military link in the encirclement of Russia. On the contrary, US-EU sanctions, military threats and bellicose rhetoric are forcing Russians to quickly rethink their ‘openness’ to the West. The strategic threats to its national security are leading Russia to review its ties to Western banks and corporations. Russia may have to resort to a policy of expanded industrialization via public investments and import substitution. Russian oligarchs, having lost their overseas holdings, may become less central to Russian economic policy.
What is clear is that the power grab in Kiev will not result in a ‘knife pointed at the heartland of Russia’. The ultimate defeat and overthrow of the Kiev junta can lead to a radicalized self-governing Ukraine, based on the burgeoning democratic movements and rising working class consciousness. This will have to emerge from their struggle against IMF austerity programs and Western asset stripping of Ukraine’s resources and enterprises. The industrial workers of Ukraine who succeed in throwing off the yoke of the western vassals in Kiev have no intention of submitting themselves to the yoke of the Russian oligarchs. Their struggle is for a democratic state, capable of developing an independent economic policy, free of imperial military alliances.
Epilogue:
May Day 2014: Dual Popular Power in the East, Fascism Rising in the West
The predictable falling out between the neo-fascists and neo-liberal partners in the Kiev junta was evidenced by large-scale riots, between rival street gangs and police on May Day. The US-EU strategy envisioned using the neo-fascists as ‘shock troops’ and street fighters in overthrowing the elected regime of Yankovich and later discarding them. As exemplified by the notorious taped conversation between Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Kiev, the EU-US strategists promote their own handpicked neo-liberal proxies to represent foreign capital, impose austerity policies and sign treaties for foreign military bases. In contrast, the neo-fascist militias and parties would favor nationalist economic policies, retaining state enterprises and are likely to be hostile to oligarchs, especially those with ‘dual Israeli-Ukraine’ citizenship.
The Kiev junta’s inability to develop an economic strategy, its violent seizure of power and repression of pro-democracy dissidents in the East has led to a situation of ‘dual power’. In many cases, troops sent to repress the pro-democracy movements have abandoned their weapons, abandoned the Kiev junta and joined the self-governing movements in the East.
Apart from its outside backers-the White House, Brussels and IMF – the Kiev junta has been abandoned by its right-wing allies in Kiev for being too subservient to NATO and resisted by the pro-democracy movement in the East for being authoritarian and centralist. The Kiev junta has fallen between two chairs: it lacks legitimacy among most Ukrainians and has lost control of all but a small patch of land occupied by government offices in Kiev and even those are under siege by the neo-fascist right and increasingly from its own disenchanted former supporters.
Let us be absolutely clear, the struggle in the Ukraine is not between the US and Russia, it is between a NATO-imposed junta composed of neo-liberal oligarchs and fascists on one side and the industrial workers and their local militias and democratic councils on the other. The former defends and obeys the IMF and Washington; the latter relies on the productive capacity of local industry and rules by responding to the majority.
Moscow’s roadmap for Ukraine settlement sees mixed response
RT | May 8, 2014
Moscow’s call on pro-federalization protesters in Ukraine to postpone the referendums was welcomed by the West and Kiev, yet they still do not recognize the need to halt the military op in southeast as a prerequisite for national dialogue and elections.
Ukraine presidential hopeful Pyotr Poroshenko (UDAR Party) has welcomed President Vladimir Putin’s statements, saying that the situation significantly improved following the news from Moscow. “We have an appeal to stop an illegal referendum, Russia accepting presidential elections. I think this is great news for stabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine,” Poroshenko told reporters in Berlin.
On Wednesday, Putin called the presidential election in Ukraine, now scheduled for May 25, “a move in the right direction” adding however it would mean nothing unless all citizens of Ukraine have a full understanding of how their rights would be guaranteed afterwards.
The direct dialogue between Kiev and representatives of the southeastern regions is the “key element” of settling the conflict, Putin said, supported on this by the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and Swiss President Didier Burkhalter. In order to “create the necessary conditions for this dialogue,” Putin urged rescheduling of the referendum planned by anti-government protesters to determine the future of southeastern Ukraine.
However, for a dialogue to succeed, a ceasefire and halt of any violence should take place by all the military, paramilitary and illegal radical armed groups, Putin added. “Russia urgently appeals to the authorities in Kiev to cease immediately all military and punitive operations in southeast Ukraine,” he said.
Russia is not responsible for the deepening crisis in Ukraine, Putin reiterated, reciting concrete steps it made to de-escalate tensions.
“We have been told that our troops by the Ukrainian border are a concern – we have withdrawn them. They are now not near the border, but at locations where they conduct regular drills at ranges,” he said. “This can be easily verified using modern intelligence techniques, including from space, where everything can be seen.”
“We helped to secure the OSCE military observers’ release and I think also made a contribution to defusing the situation,” he added.
The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, noted on Wednesday evening that a “genuine national dialogue and the cessation of acts of violence and provocations are essential elements in advancing towards a political solution.”
“I take note of President Putin’s recent statements signalling a willingness to de-escalate the situation, including his call to refrain from holding a referendum in the Eastern part of Ukraine and the stated withdrawal of Russian troops from the borders of Ukraine,” Rompuy said.
The United States however claimed that, although being a step forward, is not enough and Russia should try harder to deescalate tensions in Ukraine.
“It is a helpful step but again there is far more the President Putin and the Russians can do to deescalate the situation and to ensure safe elections,” US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told journalists on Wednesday evening, without elaborating on which other moves she was expecting from Russia.
Shortly afterwords, Ukraine’s foreign ministry issued a statement welcoming the “important role of the OSCE in international efforts aimed at de-escalating the situation”, but adding that Moscow was covering up its “support of terrorist actions against Ukrainian citizens” behind a facade of “good will”.
“A full-scale national dialogue… is an absolute priority of the Government of Ukraine,” the ministry’s statement reads.“However, a dialogue with terrorists is impermissible and inconceivable. Protection of peoples’ lives and elimination of terrorism which undermines any possibility of the dialogue is the goal of the anti-terrorist operation being conducted in certain locations in the east of our country.”
The OSCE was ready to take responsibility for coordinating the “road-map” to resolve the crisis and negotiations with the US and the EU would be taking place soon, Burkhalter said earlier. But Ukraine’s FM stated that discussion of the peaceful settlement in Ukraine “without Ukraine” is “senseless and unacceptable.”
Representatives of the southeast in the meantime said they were ready for negotiations with Kiev and would on Thursday discuss possible rescheduling of the referendum.
But neither those in power in Kiev, nor the United States seem to be interested in accepting any kind of road-map that could bring about peaceful solution to the crisis, Lawrence Freeman of the Executive Intelligence Review magazine told RT.
“You have to keep in mind that the US State Department and in particular Victoria Nuland, who has been behind this coup since the end of last year, these are people who are actually running the show. And they want to force a confrontation. They’ve been lying about the entire situation since February 21-22… have not been telling the truth about who is actually responsible for the confrontations in Kiev and in Eastern Ukraine,” Freeman said.
The road-map proposed by President Putin and the OSCE chief, Freeman believes, is the best way of ”avoiding the confrontation” some would like to have with Russia.
“I think President Putin is actually strategically handling the situation quite well. Because he knows that there are people who would like to use this conflict to escalate to major war. So he is outmaneuvering the actual people behind this,” Freeman said.
If authorities in Kiev are really worried about Ukraine’s future as a country and its territorial integrity, Freeman says they have no other choice but stop their full-scale military operation against the population in the southeast.
“They have to, if they want to have a country,” he said. “They cannot allow neo-Nazis and right-wing fascists to run the country, to be part of security and military operation. If they want to be a country – they can’t do that.”
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UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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