Putin signs decree suspending free trade treaty with Ukraine starting January 1, 2016
RT | December 16, 2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a decree to suspend the free trade treaty with Ukraine, starting from January 1, 2016.
“Due to exceptional circumstances affecting the interests and economic security of the Russian Federation which require immediate measures, I order … from January 1, 2016 to suspend the Agreement on the free trade zone with Ukraine, which was signed in St. Petersburg on 18 October 2011,” said the decree.
Currently, Russia and Ukraine are trading in accordance with the free trade agreement between CIS countries. However, starting next year the economic part of Kiev’s Association Agreement with the EU comes into force making Ukraine part of the European trading bloc.
Last month, Russia’s Economic Development Minister Aleksey Ulyukaev said Moscow will impose a food embargo on Ukraine from January 1. According to him, the food ban is to be introduced to counteract Ukraine joining economic and financial sanctions against Russia.
The minister explained the measure aims to protect the Russian market from the illegal supply of embargoed European goods that will become available in Ukraine under the Association Agreement.
Moscow banned agricultural and other products from European countries that joined anti-Russian sanctions.
Ulyukaev also said the Kremlin plans to introduce customs tariffs on imports of other goods from Ukraine. The tariffs will be introduced because Ukraine will no longer be part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) free trade zone and therefore should not enjoy membership benefits, according to the minister.
EU suggests Moscow cut Kiev ‘good friend’ debt rate
RT | December 10, 2015
Russia should show some good will and offer Ukraine a “good friend” rate on its $3 billion debt, suggests EU Ambassador Vygaudas Usackas.
When asked during a Wednesday radio interview, if showing good will implies allowing Kiev not to pay its sovereign debts, the ambassador was ambiguous.
“No, you have to pay the debts. Of course. But sometimes, like good friends, sometimes we have to write off. Therefore, we have made the proposal and agreed to write off 20 percent of Ukraine’s debts. I personally think that it would also be good will from Russia to follow the example of the EU and the US,” Usackas told Vesti FM.
In November, Moscow offered Kiev a three-year installment plan that included no payment this year, and three €1 billion payments in 2016, 2017 and 2018. In exchange for the offer, Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded guarantees from the US, the EU and international financial organizations. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said this week Ukraine’s Western partners have refused to provide such guarantees.
Commenting, Usackas said the EU and the US have made a 20 percent debt write-off and postponed the payout date by four years and that Russia hasn’t agreed to those terms.
The interviewer asked why the International Monetary Fund so easily changed its lending rules for Ukraine and promised to continue bankrolling Kiev despite the possible non-payment of sovereign debt to Russia, and why Greece, as an EU member, doesn’t get the same privilege.
“This is our business,” replied the EU ambassador, adding that the loans given to Greece are much bigger.
Ukraine’s debt to Russia is due December 20. Moscow has warned Kiev it will file a lawsuit if it fails to pay after a 10-day grace period expires.
Oscar-nominated Ukraine documentary distorts story of Maidan
By Ivan Katchanovski | December 2, 2015
The documentary film Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom has been shortlisted for Oscar in the documentary category. This film presents a typical version of the Maidan massacre and other cases of political violence during the ‘Euromaidan’ movement in Ukraine in late 2013, early 2014. All the cases of violence directed against Euromaidan are attributed to government forces and to agents provocateurs, while all revelations and videos of pro-Maidan snipers are ignored or edited out.
But this film also includes a previously undisclosed brief video in which a round of an automatic gunfire is heard on Maidan Square shortly before all police units fled the square on February 20, 2014 after suffering multiple casualties.
The film provides another illustration of international politics affecting representation and misrepresentation of foreign countries in Hollywood films. My study of all American, Canadian, and British movies depicting post-communist countries shows that Ukraine and Ukrainians were portrayed very negatively when Ukraine was not a U.S. ally. But the portrayal become relatively more positive after the pro-Western turn following the ‘Orange Revolution’ or 2004-05.
Similarly, when the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S. during World War II, Mission to Moscow (1943) favorably presented Stalin and show trials during the Great Terror, and The North Star (1943) depicted in positive portrayals the anti-Nazi resistance by Ukrainian villagers and Soviet collectivization. These movies distorted the history of the Soviet mass terror and ignored the artificial famine in Ukraine, which followed the Soviet collectivization of agriculture and resulted in several million deaths in the Soviet Union.
New York Times propaganda article on Ukraine’s blockade of Crimea
By Roger Annis – New Cold War – December 2, 2015
Western media has published yet another doom and gloom article on Crimea, repeating a worn theme that surely, by now, the people of Crimea must be reconsidering their vote 21 months ago to secede from Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation.
The article was published in the New York Times on Dec 1 and is titled, ‘Months after Russian annexation, hopes start to dim in Crimea‘. This one has to skate around a new, added twist to the Crimea story: the electricity and commercial road transport blockade that has been mounted by small numbers of the extreme-right in Ukraine but endorsed by the governing regime in Kyiv while Western governments turn a blind eye.
The article begins:
SHCHYOLKINO, Crimea–When residents in this typical Soviet factory town voted enthusiastically to secede from Ukraine and to become Russians, they thought the chaos and corruption that made daily life a struggle were a thing of the past. Now that many of them are being forced to cook and boil drinking water on open fires, however, they are beginning to reconsider.
The article employs time-honored methods for when a pre-determined, negative theme is required and important facts must be obscured.
One, find disgruntled citizens in the street and cite them. That’s not difficult to do–is there a country in the world without many unhappy citizens? The Times writer cites two such people in his article.
Two, make it appear that the disgruntled citizen(s) speaks for large numbers of his or her fellow citizens.
Three, negative imagery is important. Thus we read in the Times article, “Twenty months after the Kremlin annexed the Black Sea peninsula amid an outpouring of patriotic fervor by the ethnic Russian population, President Vladimir V. Putin’s promise in April 2014 to turn it into a showcase of his rule now seems as faded as Crimea’s aging, Soviet-era resorts.” Very evocative–‘aging, Soviet-era resorts’. This recalls the decades of New York Times reporting of aged-looking buildings in Cuba during the decades of the U.S. embargo of the island. The embargo made it difficult for Cuba to manufacture or obtain paint and building materials; such things as public health care, public education, international aid and solidarity, and national defense took priority. So yes, this writer visited Cuba three times during the 1990s and, indeed, many buildings in Havana looked aged. But the spirit of the people and the outlook for the country was anything but tired and worn out. To my eyes, the people were much more spirited and forward looking compared to what I experienced in wealthy Canada.
Four, the key word in all reporting of Crimea is “annex”, as per the above citation. The people in Crimea voted overwhelmingly in March 2014 for secession from Ukraine, following a violent, right-wing coup against the elected president of that country (a president for whom a large majority of Crimeans had voted in 2010). The secession referendum was organized by the elected and constitutional Crimean legislature, whose legality contrasted sharply with the illegal, coup regime which came into power in Kyiv on Feb 21, 2014. Crimeans have affirmed in survey after survey that they are satisfied with the secession decision. Yet, Crimeans are presented in the Times as hapless people who have been “annexed” by Russia. The Times reference to the secession as happening “amid an outpouring of patriotic fervor” suggests that the people were so swept away by fervor as to be too dumb to realize what was really taking place. They were not choosing a future of their own free will; no, they were undergoing “annexation” without even being aware.
Five, blame the victims for their plight. Thus we read in the Times article , “… people here are not sure whom to blame more for their predicament: the Crimean Tatar activists and Ukrainian nationalists who cut off Crimea’s link to the Ukrainian power grid or the local government officials who claimed to have enough power generators stored away to handle such an emergency.” Here we have an absurd spectacle of the Crimean government being blamed for failing to foresee and prepare for the day that right-wing extremists in Ukraine would blow up the electricity transmission lines serving the peninsula. Even more recklessly, the Crimean government failed to foresee that the blowing up of transmission lines by right-wing terrorists (oops, “cutting off of Crimea’s links” by “activists”) would be endorsed and escalated by the regime in Kyiv and that Western governments would turn a blind eye and Western media would largely be silent.
Six, and finally, choice of headline to convey the negative message is key. In this case, we have “hopes start to dim”. In reality, the Times headline joins a long parade of such headlines. Pick a typical, negative word, use it alongside the word “Crimea” in an internet search, and, voilà, you arrive in a world of negativity over prospects for Crimea. Here is a small sample of the trade in negative Crimea headlines and stories:
- Crimea’s football fans shiver at prospect of their team playing in Siberia (The Guardian, March 2014)
- Why Russia’s Crimea move fails legal test, (BBC, March 2014)
- Crimea after annexation: ‘We feel utterly discouraged,’ resident says (Belsat TV, in Belarus, April 2014)
- Crimea euphoria fades for some Russians (Reuters, July 2014)
- Tourism suffers in Crimea as Ukraine shuns breakaway region (Washington Post, Aug 2014)
- Kremlin preparing to combat demos as signs of Crimea-fatigue appear, (‘Euromaidan Press‘, Sept 2014)
- Human rights in decline in Crimea (Human Rights Watch, Nov 2014)
- To many in Crimea, corruption seems no less at home under Russian rule, New York Times, Aug 2015)
Oddly–well, not so oddly–the last article in this list was about Crimean citizens trying to take back into public control Black Sea waterfront land which had been lost during Crimea’s time in post-1991 Ukraine.
Funnily enough, the Times article concludes with a quotation from a Crimean woman that is supposed to show that Russians are naïve and habitual complainers who always blame others for their failings and shortcomings. But the quotation is the closest thing to truth in the entire article (leaving aside the suggestion that the extreme rightists in Ukraine who blew up electricity lines are “Tatars”):
As often happens in Russia, some blame Washington rather than Moscow or Kiev.
“If it wasn’t for the Americans, none of it could have happened. The Tatars, who are supported by the United States, would not do a thing,” said Tatyana Bragina, 57, an energetic woman who also once worked construction at a nearby, unfinished nuclear plant.
“Please write that we are not desperate. On the contrary, we are full of joy,” Ms. Bragina said, standing near a black iron kettle boiling away in the courtyard of her apartment block.
Russian legislator Konstantin Kosachev has said that Kyiv’s electricity and road-transport blockades against Crimea constitute a “gesture of final farewell” to Crimea.
Russia is racing to construct electricity, natural gas, road and rail links to Crimea across the 3 km wide Kerch Strait, which separates the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea. The first of the electricity will begin to flow in a few weeks. Crimea will be fully supplied with electricity by the summer 2016. Soon after that, it will be producing its own electricity courtesy of the gas pipeline under construction. By 2019, the road and rail bridge will begin to operate.
War Returns to Ukraine
Tensions escalate as Ukraine tries to regain international attention diverted by Syria
By Alexander Mercouris | Russia Insider | November 29, 2015
Whilst all eyes are on Syria there has been a steady deterioration of the situation in Ukraine.
In violation of the ceasefire, shelling of the territories of the two people’s republics has resumed, and the OSCE has confirmed that the Ukrainian military has moved heavy weapons back to the contact line.
The Ukrainians meanwhile have extended their ban of commercial flights to and from Russia by also banning transit flights.
Ukraine has placed Crimea under a food blockade. To the intense embarrassment of its Western backers (see this editorial in the Financial Times, headlined “Kiev should act to end the blockade of Crimea”) it has enlarged this to an energy blockade.
Ukraine claims the power lines to Crimea were destroyed by Crimean Tatar “activists” backed by Right Sector.
Even if this were true, the Ukrainian authorities have done little or nothing to take control of the situation, arrest and punish those responsible for what was after all an act of criminal damage, or carry out the necessary repairs.
Characteristically most Western governments have said nothing, save that there has been some muted criticism from Germany.
Contrast this silence with the furious – and wrong – accusations regularly made in the West against Russia for its supposed use of energy as a political weapon.
All of this is happening to a drumbeat of demands in the Ukrainian media for the country to renounce the Minsk II agreement.
The Russians for their part have responded by stopping coal supplies to Ukraine. Since Ukraine is again failing to pay for its gas, it seems the Russians intend to stop supplying Ukraine with gas on Tuesday.
The two people’s republics have also announced they are stopping their own coal deliveries to Ukraine.
These steps increase the prospects of severe power shortages in Ukraine during what is predicted to be a harsh winter.
The Russians are also due in January to impose sanctions on Ukrainian food imports to Russia. This is in retaliation to Ukraine joining EU sanctions against Russia, and imposing sanctions of its own.
Bizarrely, this systematic severing of trade links with Russia is being hailed in parts of the Western media as proof Ukraine is “successfully reorienting” its trade to the EU and away from Russia, and is becoming “less dependent” on Russia. This of course takes no account of the damage these actions are doing to Ukraine’s economy.
There has also been an orchestrated attempt in recent weeks on the part of some sections of the Western media to talk up Ukraine’s economic situation, with claims that it is “stabilizing”. The US credit agency Moody’s has joined in the game by upgrading Ukraine’s credit rating.
To the very limited extent this is true, it is wholly the consequence of the August ceasefire, which stopped the drain of fighting the war on the civilian economy.
The actions the Ukrainian government and “activists” have been taking over the last few weeks puts this in jeopardy.
What is causing this sudden deterioration in the situation?
At its simplest, it is growing alarm in Ukraine that Western – especially European – support for Ukraine is flagging.
It is now widely accepted that Merkel and Obama are becoming increasingly isolated in their insistence that the sanctions against Russia be extended.
In France Nicholas Sarkozy, Hollande’s likely conservative opponent at the Presidential election, has clearly signaled his opposition to sanctions, aligning himself on this issue with Marine Le Pen.
More to the point, in Germany, Merkel’s coalition partners – the SPD and the CSU – are both becoming openly critical of a sanctions policy with which one senses they both privately always disagreed.
Russia Insider has already discussed the increasingly rebellious line being taken by Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD’s leader and Germany’s Vice Chancellor.
Possibly even more important is the call from Horst Seehofer, leader of the CSU – the CDU’s right wing coalition partner in Merkel’s coalition – for a rapprochement with Russia.
Whilst Seehofer’s comments seem to have been specifically triggered by the migrant crisis and the conflict in Syria, their tone suggests a wider rapprochement.
Interestingly, Seehofer has been forging increasingly close links in recent weeks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – a bete noir in Washington – who is known to be a strong advocate of good relations between Europe and Russia.
Back in September – as the migrant crisis was starting to spiral out of control – Orban made another call for a new relationship between Europe and Russia. Significantly he did this straight after a meeting with Seehofer.
The mounting opposition in Europe to the sanctions is being picked up by the “realists” in the US.
Russia Insider recently republished an article in The National Interest – the main publication in which the US foreign policy “realists” express their views – which should be read as a call to the Obama administration to take the lead in diplomatic discussions with Moscow before the sanctions regime collapses, leaving the US looking isolated and humiliated.
A number of our readers misunderstood this article, taking literally its ritual claims about the sanctions’ effectiveness and Putin’s supposedly “desperate situation”.
The sad truth about policy debate in the US today is that it cannot admit defeat, so that even when it retreats it has to claim “victory”.
The key point about the article in The National Interest is not what it says about Putin and Russia.
It is its call for the US to initiate diplomatic negotiations with Moscow to find a face-saving way to end the sanctions before Europe splits away and they fall apart.
The gradual shift towards an improvement in relations with Russia began before Russia’s intervention in Syria.
In fact it has been underway ever since the Minsk II agreement was reached in February. We have discussed the process at length in various articles here on Russia Insider.
However the Russian intervention in Syria and the Paris attacks have markedly accelerated the process, with Western public opinion showing increasing signs of backing Russia.
All of this is causing in Ukraine growing alarm. The Ukrainians must be seething as international attention is refocusing away from them, and as Russia shows signs of winning over Western public opinion to its side.
The consistent response of the Maidan movement whenever it senses it is losing is to double down and escalate and that is what we are now seeing.
A way to rationalise it would be to say that the Ukrainians are trying to provoke Russia into an overreaction, so as to reignite the conflict in order to shore up Western support and get the sanctions – due for renewal in December – extended.
Though this is at a certain level true, it seriously underestimates the purely visceral aspect in Ukrainian behaviour.
For the Maidan movement any sign Russia is gaining credit with the Western public is like a red rag to a bull. There is no need to look for calculation in Ukrainian behaviour in order to understand it.
The underlying problem – as we have said many times – is that the Maidan movement is inherently incapable of the sort of compromise that Minsk II envisages.
To see how that is so, consider what has happened since the October summit in Paris where the Europeans in effect ordered Poroshenko to implement Minsk II within a revised timetable.
The Ukrainians have done nothing of the sort, and the new timetable for carrying out the terms of Minsk II is already slipping.
Any discussion of the internal aspect of the Ukrainian conflict – as opposed to its external aspect – has to proceed from the fact that the present Ukrainian government is simply incapable of compromise unless overwhelming external pressure is brought upon it.
The Russians long ago grasped this. Over the last few weeks there are clear signs the Europeans belatedly are starting to grasp it as well.
The question that remains is for how much longer the Europeans will be prepared to go on making their relations with Russia hostage to the ideological obsessions of the Maidan movement and its neocon supporters.
The mounting evidence – judging from comments by people like Sigmar Gabriel and Horst Seehofer in Germany, Sarkozy in France, and from what happened during the summit in Paris – is that European patience is wearing thin.
Ukraine threatens permanent economic blockade against Crimea
By Roger Annis – New Cold War – November 27, 2015
Western news media and governments are keeping hush about an economic blockade by Ukraine against Crimea that is starting to appear permanent.
TASS reports today that at least one of the electricity lines from Ukraine to Crimea that was sabotaged by right-wing extremists during the weekend of Nov 20-21 has been repaired. But no electricity is flowing to Crimea from Ukraine. The information comes from Russian Deputy Energy Minister Andrey Cherezov.
“We have information that the repair work on the Kakhovka-Titan power line has been completed,” he said. “Switching this line on would make it possible to supply about 150-200 megawatts from Ukraine to Crimea. But such hope is lost. Accordingly, all measures in Crimea are aimed at ensuring a minimum level of electricity supply to consumers.”
Kakhovka-Titan is a 220-volt line that supplies electricity to the Crimean border cities of Armyansk and Krasnoperekopsk. Much of its power goes to two districts of the Kherson region of Ukraine.
Kakhovka-Titan is one of four transmission lines that were sabotaged by rightist bombs. At the time of the sabotage, Ukraine’s electricity utility said it could restore one of the four lines in 24 hours and all four of them within days. But the Ukraine government is allowing a handful of extremists on the damaged sites to block repair crews.
On Thursday, Russian Emergency Situations Ministry sent an additional 300 mobile generators to Crimea to provide power for critical facilities.
Crimea consumes an average of 1,000 megawatts of electricity per day, according to the Russian Energy Ministry. Emergency power backups are meeting only 30 per cent of normal demand.
An electrical cable under the Kerch Strait from Russia to Crimea was already under construction before last weekend’s sabotage. The construction is now on emergency pace. The cable is being laid in two stages. The first stage will deliver app 400 MW of power before the end of December. The second stage will bring an equal amount by summer 2016.
Another energy project already on the drawing table is a natural gas pipeline under the Kerch Strait, due to open in 2018. It will power several natural gas electricity generating stations to be built in Crimea.
Western media and governments see nothing, say nothing
The Crimea emergency is going largely unreported in the West. Where it is mentioned, it is pictured as a tit-for-tat game between Ukraine and Russia.
The first report in Canada’s largest daily newspaper, the Toronto Star, was published on Nov 27, six days following the attacks that cut Crimea’s electricity supply from Ukraine. The Star report is taken from the New York Times.
The Times article is a shortened version of a longer article that appeared two days earlier, both written by the newspaper’s Moscow bureau journalist Neil MacFarquhar. He traveled to southern Ukraine.
MacFarquhar describes the terrorist action by the Ukrainian extremists as a “standoff between Moscow and Kiev, with each side finding new ways to increase the tension daily”.
Ukraine’s government has not lifted a finger against the vigilante road blockade of food shipments to Crimea which extreme-rightists began on September 20.
Following the latest outrageous attack, the regime in Kyiv began on November 23 to block all commercial transport to and from Crimea. This is described by the Times thusly: “Ukraine seeks to avoid further Russian aggression to stymie its political and economic stability, and an already unpopular government does not want to go against public sentiment.”
Interestingly, MacFarquhar provides an interpretation of the claim in most Western media that the vigilante actions against Crimea are being perpetrated by “Crimean Tatars”. He writes:
In Kiev, the main driver of the confrontation seems to be the leaders of the Tatar community who were exiled by Russia after it annexed the peninsula and who are now in Parliament as allies of President Petro O. Poroshenko… [1]
Here around Chongar, however, Tatar activists were not much in evidence. They seemed to have been assigned logistical tasks like providing food and housing for the men guarding road checkpoints and the fallen pylons. The fighters were mostly veterans from the east [Ukraine] who did not want to go back to civilian life.
MacFarquhar describes one of the Western media’s “Tatar activists”:
“The people of Crimea are not supposed to feel like they live in a resort while the country [Ukraine] is at war,” said Oleksiy Byk, 34, a chunky, bearded veteran who serves as the area spokesman for the Right Sector, a right-wing Ukrainian organization violently opposed to any accommodation with Russia.
Mr. Byk said he used to fight the separatists [sic] in the east, but after the ceasefire negotiated under the Minsk peace accords [in February 2015] finally took hold in September, he and many other hard-core fighters gravitated to the area just north of Crimea. They are spoiling for a fight, since Ukraine rejects Russia’s March 2014 annexation [sic] of the Black Sea peninsula as illegal.
Ukraine pours on the rhetoric
In its latest, self-destructive measure for the Ukrainian economy (and against the Ukrainian people), the government in Kyiv announced on November 25 that all air travel to and from Russia will be severed. Last month, Ukraine banned landing and takeoff rights for Russian airlines, prompting a move in kind by Russia.
Ukraine’s government has also announced that it wouldn’t buy gas anymore from Russia. But that statement is posturing which followed the decision by Russia’s Gazprom on Nov 25 to cease gas deliveries due to non-payment. The government is effectively bankrupt, living on borrowed money from the IMF. A declaration of default on the international loans it owes is expected.
The Donetsk People’s Republic has taken emergency measures to protect coal stocks and electricity infrastructure in the aftermath of the sabotage directed at Crimea, reports DAN news service. Prime Minister Aleksandr Zakharchenko has assumed direct responsibility over the measures.
The DPR has also halted coal shipments to Ukraine. This began in response to non-payment of bills, but has now also become a gesture of disapproval of Ukraine’s failure to restore electricity service to Crimea and of solidarity with the people of the peninsula.
(See a photo gallery on TASS of Crimea’s electricity situation , here. )
Notes:
[1] Tatar civil organizations in Crimea utterly deny the claims in Western media that the Tatar figureheads in Kyiv who have accepted appointments to the Rada by Petro Poroshenko’s political machine– Mustafa Djemilev and Refat Chubarov—are “leaders” of Crimean Tatars. They say the two represent the viewpoints of only a small section of Tatars. The two figures have been denied entry to Crimea since the secession referendum of March 2014 because they refused to renounce inciting civil war on the peninsula.
Read also:
State of emergency in Crimea after right-wing extremists in Ukraine blow up electricity lines to the peninsula, by Roger Annis, Nov 25, 2015
OSCE Refutes US, Ukraine Allegations of Minsk Deal Implementation by Kiev
Sputnik – 27.11.2015
Reports by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Monitoring Mission to Ukraine contradicts the United States and Ukraine’s vocal confirmations that Kiev is faultlessly fulfilling the complex of measures in complying with the Minsk agreements, Russian OSCE Envoy Alexander Lukashevich said Friday.
“Everyone here reads the Monitoring Mission to Ukraine on the situation in Donbass, on ceasefire violations and machinations with withdrawing arms. They contradict vocal allegations from representatives from the United States and Ukraine on Kiev’s faultless fulfillment of the Minsk Complex of Measures,” Lukashevich said during an OSCE council session.
Voluntary military formations resort to looting, robbery and violence despite Kiev’s claims, an OSCE envoy said.
The Minsk agreements are a set of measures developed by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany to facilitate the process of Ukraine’s reconciliation after Kiev launched a military operation against local independence supporters in eastern Ukraine in April 2014.
Under the deal, constitutional reforms aimed at decentralizing power in Ukraine and the initiation of local elections in Donbass must be concluded before the end of 2015.
The country’s breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk agreed to postpone their local elections until 2016. Before elections in those regions can take place, Ukraine authorities must fulfill all the Minsk agreement obligations.
Turkey Provokes Russia with Shoot-down
By Robert Parry | Consortium News | November 24, 2015
President Barack Obama – always sensitive to neocon criticism that he’s “weak” – continues to edge the world closer to a nuclear confrontation with Russia as he talks tough and tolerates more provocations against Moscow, now including Turkey’s intentional shoot-down of a Russian warplane along the Turkish-Syrian border.
Rather than rebuke Turkey, a NATO member, for its reckless behavior – or express sympathy to the Russians – Obama instead asserted that “Turkey, like every country, has a right to defend its territory and its airspace.”
It was another one of Obama’s breathtaking moments of hypocrisy, since he has repeatedly violated the territorial integrity of various countries, including in Syria where he has authorized bombing without the government’s permission and has armed rebels fighting to overthrow Syria’s secular regime.
Obama’s comment on Turkey’s right to shoot down planes — made during a joint press conference with French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday — was jarring, too, because there was no suggestion that even if the SU-24 jetfighter had strayed briefly into Turkish territory, which the Russians deny, that it was threatening Turkish targets.
Russian President Vladimir Putin angrily called the Turkish attack a “stab in the back delivered by the accomplices of terrorists.” He warned of “serious consequences for Russian-Turkish relations.”
Further provoking the Russians, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels then killed the Russian pilot riddling his body with bullets as he and the navigator parachuted from the doomed plane and were floating toward the ground. (Update: On Wednesday, the Russian defense minister said the navigator was alive and was rescued by Syrian and Russian special forces.)
Another Russian soldier was killed when a U.S.-supplied TOW missile brought down a Russian helicopter on a search-and-rescue mission, according to reports.
But Obama, during the news conference, seemed more interested in demonstrating his disdain for Putin, referring to him at one point by his last name only, without the usual use of a courtesy title, and demeaning the size of Putin’s coalition in helping Syria battle the jihadist rebels.
“We’ve got a coalition of 65 countries who have been active in pushing back against ISIL for quite some time,” Obama said, citing the involvement of countries around the world. “Russia right now is a coalition of two, Iran and Russia, supporting [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad.”
However, there have been doubts about the seriousness of Obama’s coalition, which includes Sunni countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which have been covertly supporting some of the jihadist elements, including Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its ally, Ahrar al-Sham.
Syrian rebels, including jihadists fighting with Ahrar al-Sham, have received hundreds of U.S. TOW anti-tank missiles, apparently through Sunni regional powers with what I’ve been told was Obama’s direct approval. The jihadists have celebrated their use of TOWs to kill tank crews of the Syrian army. Yet Obama talks about every country’s right to defend its territory.
Obama and the U.S. mainstream media also have pretended that the only terrorists that need to be fought in Syria are those belonging to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh), but Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and its ally, Ahrar al-Sham, which was founded in part by Al Qaeda veterans, make up the bulk of the Turkish-and-Saudi-backed Army of Conquest which was gaining ground – with the help of those American TOW missiles – until Russia intervened with air power at the request of Syrian President Assad in late September.
The SU-24 Shoot-down
As for the circumstances surrounding the Turkish shoot-down of the Russian SU-24, Turkey claimed to have radioed ten warnings over five minutes to the Russian pilots but without getting a response. However, the New York Times reported that a diplomat who attended a NATO meeting in which Turkey laid out its account said “the Russian SU-24 plane was over the Hatay region of Turkey for about 17 seconds when it was struck.”
How those two contradictory time frames matched up was not explained. However, if the 17-second time frame is correct, it appears that Turkey intended to shoot down a Russian plane – whether over its territory or not – to send a message that it would not permit Russia to continue attacking Turkish-backed rebels in Syria.
After shooting down the plane, Turkey sought an emergency NATO meeting to support its attack. Though some NATO members reportedly consider Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a loose cannon, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared that the allies “stand in solidarity with Turkey.”
Further increasing the prospect of a dangerous escalation, NATO has been conducting large-scale military exercises near the Russian border in response to the Ukraine crisis.
Erdogan’s government also appears to have dabbled in dangerous provocations before, including the alleged role of Turkish intelligence in helping jihadist rebels stage a lethal sarin gas attack outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013, with the goal of blaming Assad’s military and tricking Obama into launching punitive airstrikes that would have helped clear the way for a jihadist victory.
Obama only pulled back at the last minute amid doubts among U.S. intelligence analysts about who was responsible for the sarin attack. Later evidence pointed to a jihadist provocation with possible Turkish assistance, but the Obama administration has never formally retracted its allegations blaming Assad’s forces.
One motive for Erdogan to go along with the sarin “false flag” attack in 2013 would have been that his two-year campaign to overthrow the Assad government was sputtering, a situation similar to today with the Russian military intervention hammering jihadist positions and putting the Syrian army back on the offensive.
By shooting down a Russian plane and then rushing to NATO with demands for retaliation against Russia, Erdogan is arguably playing a similar game, trying to push the United States and European countries into a direct confrontation with Russia while also sabotaging Syrian peace talks in Vienna – all the better to advance his goal of violently ousting Assad from power.
The Neocon Agenda
Escalating tensions with Russia also plays into the hands of America’s neoconservatives who have viewed past cooperation between Putin and Obama as a threat to the neocon agenda of “regime change,” which began in Iraq in 2003 and was supposed to continue into Syria and Iran with the goal of removing governments deemed hostile to Israel.
After the sarin gas attack in 2013, the prospect for the U.S. bombing Syria and paving the way for Assad’s military defeat looked bright, but Putin and Obama cooperated to defuse the sarin gas crisis. The two teamed up again to advance negotiations to constrain Iran’s nuclear program – an impediment to neocon hopes for bombing Iran, too.
However, in late 2013 and early 2014, that promising Putin-Obama collaboration was blasted apart in Ukraine with American neocons playing key roles, including National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Sen. John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland.
The neocons targeted the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych, recognizing how sensitive Ukraine was to Russia. The Feb. 22, 2014 coup, which was spearheaded by neo-Nazis and other extreme Ukrainian nationalists, established a fiercely anti-Russian regime in Kiev and provoked what quickly took on the look of a new Cold War.
When the heavily ethnic Russian population of Crimea, which had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych, reacted to the coup by voting 96 percent to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, the neocon-dominated U.S. mainstream media pronounced the referendum a “sham” and the secession a Russian “invasion.” Cold War hysteria followed.
However, in the nearly two years since the Ukraine coup, it has become increasingly clear that the new regime in Kiev is not the shining light that the neocons and the mainstream media pretended it was. It appears to be as corrupt as the old one, if not more so. Plus, living standards of average Ukrainians have plunged.
The recent flooding of Europe with Syrian refugees over the summer and this month’s Paris terror attacks by Islamic State jihadists also have forced European officials to take events in Syria more seriously, prompting a growing interest in a renewed cooperation with Russia’s Putin.
That did not sit well with ultranationalist Ukrainians angered at the reduced interest in the Ukraine crisis. These activists have forced their dispute with Russia back into the newspapers by destroying power lines supplying electricity to Crimea, throwing much of the peninsula into darkness. Their goal seems to be to ratchet up tensions again between Russia and the West.
Now, Turkey’s shoot-down of the SU-24 and the deliberate murder of the two Russian pilots (Update: Russia says one airman saved.) have driven another wedge between NATO countries and Russia, especially if President Obama and other NATO leaders continue taking Turkey’s side in the incident.
But the larger question – indeed the existential question – is whether Obama will continue bowing to neocon demands for tough talk against Putin even if doing so risks pushing tensions to a level that could spill over into a nuclear confrontation.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Tracking ISIS to DC’s Doorsteps
By Ulson Gunnar – New Eastern Outlook – 23.11.2015
The problem with America’s “anti-ISIS coalition” is not a matter of poor planning or a lack of resources. It is not a matter of lacking leadership or military might. The problem with America’s “anti-ISIS coalition” is that it never existed in the first place. There is no US-led war on ISIS, and what’s worse, it appears that the US, through all of its allies, from across the Persian Gulf to Eastern Europe and even within Washington itself, are involved in feeding ISIS, not fighting it.
Going from Syria itself, outward according to geographical proximity, we can trace ISIS’ support all the way back to Washington itself. And as we do, efforts like the “talks” in Vienna, and all the non-solutions proposed by the US and its allies, appear ever more absurd while the US itself is revealed not as a stabilizing force in a chaotic world, but rather the very source of that chaos.
In Syria
Within Syria itself, it is no secret that the US CIA is arming, training, funding and equipping militant groups, groups the US now claims Russia is bombing instead of “ISIS.” However, upon reading carefully any report out of newspapers in the US or its allies it becomes clear that these “rebels” always seem to be within arms reach of listed terrorist organizations, including Jabhat al Nusra.
Al Nusra is literally Al Qaeda in Syria. Not only that, it is the terrorist organization from which ISIS allegedly split from. And while the US has tried to add in a layer of extra plausible deniability to its story by claiming Nusra and ISIS are at odds with one another, the fact is Nusra and ISIS still fight together on the same battlefield toward the same objectives.
And while we’ll get to who is propping up these two terrorist groups beyond Syria’s borders, it should be noted that the US and European media itself has reported a steady flow of weapons and fighters out from its own backed “rebel” groups and into the ranks of Nusra and ISIS.
Articles like Reuters’ “U.S.-trained Syrian rebels gave equipment to Nusra: U.S. military” give at least one explanation as to where ISIS is getting all of its brand new Toyota trucks from:
Syrian rebels trained by the United States gave some of their equipment to the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday, the latest blow to a troubled U.S. effort to train local partners to fight Islamic State militants.
The rebels surrendered six pick-up trucks and some ammunition, or about one-quarter of their issued equipment, to a suspected Nusra intermediary on Sept. 21-22 in exchange for safe passage, said Colonel Patrick Ryder, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, in a statement.
Before this, defections of up to 3,000 so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) “rebels” had been reported, even by the London Guardian which claimed in its article “Free Syrian Army rebels defect to Islamist group Jabhat al-Nusra” that:
Abu Ahmed and others say the FSA has lost fighters to al-Nusra in Aleppo, Hama, Idlib and Deir al-Zor and the Damascus region. Ala’a al-Basha, commander of the Sayyida Aisha brigade, warned the FSA chief of staff, General Salim Idriss, about the issue last month. Basha said 3,000 FSA men have joined al-Nusra in the last few months, mainly because of a lack of weapons and ammunition. FSA fighters in the Banias area were threatening to leave because they did not have the firepower to stop the massacre in Bayda, he said. Advertisement
The FSA’s Ahrar al-Shimal brigade joined al-Nusra en masse while the Sufiyan al-Thawri brigade in Idlib lost 65 of its fighters to al-Nusra a few months ago for lack of weapons. According to one estimate the FSA has lost a quarter of all its fighters.
Al-Nusra has members serving undercover with FSA units so they can spot potential recruits, according to Abu Hassan of the FSA’s al-Tawhid Lions brigade.
Taken together, it is clear to anyone that even at face value the US strategy of arming “moderate rebels” is a complete failure and that to continue proposing such a failed strategy is basically an admission that (in fact) the US seeks to put weapons and trained fighters directly into the ranks of Al Nusra and other hardcore terrorist groups. Of course, in reality, that was the plan all along. So even before our journey leaves Syria, we see how the US is feeding, not fighting terrorism, completely and intentionally.
Turkey
And of course, before many of the fighters even reach the battlefield in Syria, they have spent time training, arming up and staging in Turkey and Jordan. There has been a lot of talk in Washington, London and Brussels about establishing safe havens in Syria itself for this army of rebel-terrorists, but in reality, Turkey and Jordan have served this purpose since the war began in 2011. All the US and its allies want to do now is extend these safe havens deeper into Syrian territory.
But before that, a steady stream of supplies, weapons and fighters have been pouring over the border, provided by the Persian Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular) and with the explicit complicity of the Turkish government.
German broadcaster Deutsche Welle videotaped hundreds of trucks pouring over the Turkish border, bound for ISIS in Syria as part of its story, “ISIS and Turkey’s porous borders” (video here). It was not a scene one would describe as “smuggling” behind the back of Turkish authorities, but rather a scene reminiscent of the Iraq War where fleets of trucks openly supported the full-scale invasion of Iraq by America’s military.
Turkey’s borders aren’t merely porous, they are wide open, with the Turkish government itself clearly involved in filling up the fleets of supply trucks bound for ISIS on a daily basis.
In recent days, as Russia has begun decimating fleets of these trucks, and in particular, oil tankers that, instead of bringing supplies into Syria, are stealing oil for export beyond Syria’s borders, there has been talk about just who this oil is being sold to. Turkey’s name comes up yet again.
Business Insider in its article “Here’s How ISIS Keeps Selling So Much Oil Even While Being Bombed And Banned By The West” reveals:
Most of the oil is bought by local traders and covers the domestic needs of rebel-held areas in northern Syria. But some low-quality crude has been smuggled to Turkey where prices of over $350 a barrel, three times the local rate, have nurtured a lucrative cross-border trade.
And if some readers don’t find the argument that ISIS sustains itself from within Turkish territory entirely convincing, perhaps a direct admission from the US State Department itself might help. Its Voice of America media network recently reported in an article titled “US, Turkey Poised for Joint Anti-ISIS Operation, Despite Differences” that:
Some have even suspected the Turkish government of cooperating with IS, making allegations that range from weapons transfers to logistical support to financial assistance and the provision of medical services. The Cumhuriyet daily this week published stories that alleged Turkish Intelligence was working hand-in-hand with IS. A former IS spy chief told the paper that during the siege of the Syrian city of Kobani last year, Turkish Intelligence served McDonald’s hamburgers to IS fighters brought in from Turkey.
Some analysts say the pending border operation could help silence some of the criticism.
That the US is still working openly with Turkey despite increasing evidence that Turkey itself is sustaining ISIS in Syria, indicates that the US itself is also interested in perpetuating the terrorist group’s activities for as long as possible/plausible.Eastern Europe
Those nations in Eastern Europe who have either joined NATO or now aspire to, also appear to be directly involved. The large torrent of weapons needed to sustain ISIS’ terrorism within Syria cannot, as a matter of managing public perception, appear to be coming entirely from US arsenals themselves (though hundreds of TOW missile systems and M16s do regularly show up in the hands of Nusra, ISIS and other terrorists organizations). Instead, Soviet bloc weapons are needed and to get them, the US has tapped NATO members like Croatia and aspiring NATO member Ukraine to help arm its ISIS legions.
In 2013 it was revealed by the New York Times in their article Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A. that:
Although rebel commanders and the data indicate that Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been shipping military materials via Turkey to the opposition since early and late 2012, respectively, a major hurdle was removed late last fall after the Turkish government agreed to allow the pace of air shipments to accelerate, officials said.
Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in southern Syria and for retransfer to Turkey for rebels groups operating from there, several officials said.
One wonders how many of these weapons “coincidentally” ended up in Nusra or ISIS’ hands.
More recently, the NATO-installed junta in Ukraine has been implicated not in supplying weapons to ISIS by proxy, but supplying them to ISIS much more directly after a high-profile bust was made in Kuwait implicating Kiev.
International Business Times reported in its article “Ukraine Weapons To ISIS? Kiev Denies Charge After Islamic State Terrorists Caught In Kuwait” that:
The Ukrainian military has denied knowledge of how its weapons made it into the hands of Islamic State group terrorists. Lebanese citizen Osama Khayat, who was arrested this week in Kuwait with other suspects, said he purchased arms in Ukraine that were meant to be delivered to the militant group in Syria via smuggling routes in Turkey.
Perhaps readers notice a pattern. Washington is using its vast global network and allies to arm and fund terrorists in Syria, supported by massive logistical networks flowing through Turkey and to a lesser extent, Jordan. Everyone from America’s allies in Kiev and Zagreb, to Riyad and Doha, to Ankara and Amman are involved which goes far in explaining just how ISIS got so powerful, and why it still remains so powerful despite its widening war on what appears to be the entire world.
The United States
And all of this brings us back to Washington itself. Surely Washington notices that each and every single one of its allies is involved in feeding, not fighting ISIS. When each and every one of its allies from Kiev to Ankara are involved in arming and supplying ISIS, Washington not only knows, it is likely orchestrating it all to begin with.
And proving this is not a matter of deduction or mere implications. Proving this requires simply for one to read a 2012 Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) report (.pdf) which openly admitted:
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).
If, at this point, one is unclear on just who these “supporting powers to the opposition” are, the DIA report itself reveals it is the West, NATO (including Turkey) and its allies in the Persian Gulf.
This Salafist (Islamic) principality (state), or ISIS for short, was not an indirect consequence of US foreign policy, it was (and still very much is) a concerted conspiracy involving multiple states spanning North America, Europe, and the Middle East. It could not exist otherwise.
While Russia attempts to reach westward to piece together an inclusive coalition to finally put an end to ISIS, it is clear that it does so in vain. Washington, Brussels and their regional allies in the Middle East have no intention of putting an end to ISIS. Even today, this very moment, the US and its allies are doing everything within their power to ensure the survival of their terrorist armies inside of Syria for as long as possible before any ceasefire is agreed to. And even if a peace settlement of some sort is struck, all it will do is buy Syria time. No matter how much damage Russia and its genuine coalition consisting of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon deal ISIS within Syria, the networks that fed it from Turkey, Jordan, the Persian Gulf, Eastern Europe and Washington itself remain intact.
One hopes that these networks can be diminished through the principles of multipolarism within the time being bought for Syria through the blood, sacrifice and efforts of Syrian soldiers and Russian airmen.
Ulson Gunnar is a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer.
‘Ukrainian PM should be tried for war crimes’ – Russian investigators
RT | November 23, 2015
Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk is responsible for numerous war crimes committed by the Ukrainian military and law enforcement and sooner or later will face a trial, the spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee has said.
“Yatsenyuk was among many well-known persons, including top military officers, who personally issued orders to fire upon the civilian population of Donbass,” Vladimir Markin said in an interview with Zvezda television.
The Russian official also said that he hoped people from southeast regions of Ukraine would sooner or later put those responsible for war crimes on trial, noting that the trials should take place in the same places where the crimes had been committed. “The very just trial is where the crimes took place,” he said.
Markin added that PM Yatsenyuk must share responsibility with other Ukrainian politicians and businessmen who helped to unleash and wage the war in Donbass. He named the former head of Ukrainian Security Service, Valentin Nalivaychenko, and oligarch Igor Kolomoisky as prime candidates for the war crimes tribunal.
The Russian official also reminded the reporters that the Investigative Committee had already begun a criminal investigation into the Donbass events, charging the yet-unnamed suspects with the genocide of Russian-speaking residents in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine. “The events in Donbass cannot be described by any other term than genocide. This was the reason why we started our probe, including into the genocide which is a crime under Russian criminal law. International law and the Russian criminal code allow us to instigate and investigate criminal cases, to bring to justice people who commit such crimes,” Markin said.
In September this year, the head of the Investigative Committee, Aleksandr Bastrykin, said in an interview to the media that his agency had started a criminal case into Yatsenyuk’s alleged participation in the war in Chechnya on the side of terrorists, as well as in tortures and executions of Russian prisoners.
In March last year, the Investigative Committee began a criminal investigation into Dmitry Yarosh, the leader of the Ukrainian extreme nationalist movement Right Sector, which was one of the main driving forces behind the Maidan unrest and the subsequent war in Donbass. In Russia, Yarosh faces charges of publicly calling for extremist activities.
Ill-informed first words on Ukraine by Canada’s new prime minister
New Cold War – November 17, 2015
Canada’s new prime minister is sounding not-so-new when it comes to the civil war that has devastated the lives of millions of people in eastern Ukraine. CBC News reports that Justin Trudeau directed critical and ill-informed words to Russian President Vladimir Putin two days ago during the G20 summit meeting in Antalya, Turkey. Trudeau’s words portend badly for the people of Ukraine if continued.
CBC cites Trudeau speaking of his exchange with Putin: “I pointed out that although Canada has shifted its approach on a broad range of multilateral and international issues, we remain committed to the fact that Russia’s interference in Ukraine must cease; that we stand with the Ukrainian people and expect the president to engage fully in the Minsk peace process.”
The reference to the Minsk ceasefire agreement of Feb 12, 2015 (‘Minsk-2’) is ill-informed or malevolent. Russia was a key international sponsor and negotiator of the agreement, along with Germany and France. Canada and the United States were nowhere to be seen or heard from. The agreement was effectively a refutation of the aggressive egging-on of Kyiv’s civil war in which the U.S., Canada and Britain have engaged ever since Kyiv launched its civil war–‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’–in eastern Ukraine in April 2014.
Minsk-2 sets out 13 very specific clauses which must be met by the governing regime in Kyiv and the rebel, pro-autonomy forces in Donetsk and Lugansk. Kyiv has violated every single one of those clauses. Today, only the first two of the clauses are close to being met by Kyiv–a ceasefire, and a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the front line of the conflict which runs through the heart of the Donbas region (Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts).
Clause four requires the holding of local elections in Donetsk and Lugansk which would recognize principles of local autonomy. Clauses 11 and 12 require constitutional changes that recognize autonomy for Donbas. None of this has happened. On the contrary, Kyiv has crafted new political measures which block and deny said autonomy.
Clauses five and six require Kyiv to provide amnesty to combatants who resisted its civil war and to conduct a full prisoner exchange with the rebel side. It has failed on the first count, and Kyiv continues to hold many combatants and political prisoners it refuses to exchange.
Clause eight requires Kyiv to end its economic sanctions (cutting of social payments) against the population of the east which it implemented in the summer of 2014 and to end its obstruction and blocking of economic transactions. This has not occurred. Indeed, in the the latest in a string of human rights reports critically examining the situation in Ukraine, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe Nils Muižnieks admonishes Kyiv for failing to end its economic blockade of eastern Ukraine. His report was issued on November 3.
Clause ten of Minsk-2 reads, “Pullout of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, and also mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under OSCE supervision. Disarmament of all illegal groups.” Yet Canada, the U.S. and Britain dispatched soldiers to Ukraine in the months following February 12, under the guise of launching “training missions” of the Ukrainian army. And as for the disarming of “illegal groups” (referring to the extremist paramilitary battalions fighting alongside the Ukrainian army), Kyiv has solved that little problem by incorporating the battalions into its National Guard. This effectively worsens the situation by legitimizing the battalions and giving them more formal access to training and weaponry, including from the aforementioned NATO countries.
So if Ukraine has violated the clauses of Minsk-2 so widely, and if the human rights commissioner of the European Union(!) effectively acknowledges much of this, what is Justin Trudeau talking about when he blames a foreign country, Russia, for violations of the agreement?
Trudeau is either being played by the governing regime in Kyiv, or he and his government have decided to play along.
Last summer, Kyiv began to face up to the fact that it could not longer openly flout Minsk-2 and continue its shelling of Donbas. The military setbacks it suffered during 18 months of civil war cannot be easily fixed. Polls of Ukrainians show very high numbers of people wanting an end to the fighting. Kyiv’s economic and social disaster at home is looming ever larger, including an impending default on its foreign debt. And Berlin and Paris decided last summer that a continued war in Ukraine was not in their interest; they had bigger problems requiring their undivided attention. So as of September 1, Kyiv largely ceased its shelling and it began to match the withdrawals of heavy weaponry already begun by rebel forces. This was and remains a significant political setback to Kyiv’s efforts to crush resistance to its pro-Europe, anti-Russia and pro-austerity program.
The one card that remains for Kyiv to play in order to avoid its obligations under Minsk-2 and obfuscate the real situation is the enduring myth of a Russian invasion and occupation of eastern Ukraine. This is what Trudeau is talking about when he speaks of Russian violations of the agreement. He is parroting the wording to this effect that was begun by Kyiv as it faced its forced climbdown on September 1.
Trudeau can get away with uttering nonsense about Russia violating Minsk-2 because the Canadian population has been deeply misled and misinformed about the situation in Ukraine. Parliamentarians of all parties in Ottawa and the country’s corporate media are 100 per cent united behind a hostile, anti-Russia policy that blames all the ills in Ukraine on its large neighbour to the east. Much of the Canadian population knows of no other story of Ukraine than the one it has been aggressively fed for two years now. But the unfolding disaster of U.S., Canadian and European policy taking place in Syria and the Middle East, and the contrast to that of the apparent, early achievements of Russian diplomacy, have growing numbers of Canadians on full alert against more foreign policy deceptions and misadventures.
Justin Trudeau and his government, not to speak of the people of Ukraine, have nothing to gain and much to lose by a continuation of Stephen Harper’s aggressive and hostile policy towards Ukraine and Russia.
The Toronto Star report on Justin Trudeau’s encounter with Vladimir Putin explained, “Trudeau’s brief chat [with Putin] is in contrast with the lengthy discussion that unfolded here between Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama on the crisis in Syria.”
Featured Video
Billionaires and Officials Are Just Blatantly Ignoring the Will of the People
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
World War II Didn’t End The Great Depression
Stark Realities with Brian McGlinchey | April 4, 2024
A principal goal of Stark Realities is to “expose fundamental myths across the political spectrum” — and few myths are as universally embraced as the notion that US participation in World War II (1941-1945) lifted the American economy out of the Great Depression.
This myth is dangerous not only because it leads citizens and politicians to see a bright side of war that doesn’t really exist, but also because it helps foster a belief that government spending is essential to countering economic downturns. That belief, in turn, has helped propel us to a point where the national debt now exceeds $34.6 trillion, with interest payments alone on pace to reach $1 trillion a year in 2026, inviting financial catastrophe. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- ‘Little Sparta’: Why The UAE Attacked Iran for Israel’s Sake
- Iran Blames European Tanker for Oil Slick Near Kharg
- Hamas leaders say targeting families will fail to extract concessions
- Harrowing testimonies expose Israeli torture of Gaza hospital director
- UAE provides $100m for US-backed Gaza police force vetted by Shin Bet
- Britain quietly approves $11.85m arms licence to Israel despite Gaza ban
- Britain’s population replacement has passed the point of no return
- US-Iran ‘Calibrated Escalation’ Risks Sliding Into All-Out War – Expert
- Iran – End of the Drought & the Destruction of US Radar Installations in the Middle East
- Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is enabling a possible plague in Gaza – Daily Update
- A Conservative’s View: Trump’s War on Iran Is Destroying America
- Israel’s war on the West Bank comes for Palestinian greenhouses
- New $270 million Israeli-only roads project in the West Bank is Netanyahu’s latest bid to impose de facto annexation
- Gaza investigation: A family’s fight to find their missing relatives
- MSF: Israel’s deliberate restriction of food and aid led to alarming malnutrition levels in Gaza
- Israel earmarks $270M for Israeli-only roads (that’s apartheid) – Daily Update
- Two Supreme Court Justices were secret agents who helped Israel cover up its attack on the USS Liberty
- Bari Weiss ‘Meddles’ With ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Story on Palestine
- Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Declining Trends In 1980-2023 Tropical Cyclone Frequency, Accumulated Energy
- 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims
- Another Study Links Warming To Cloud Forcing, Shortwave Radiation, Natural Atmospheric Circulation
- Wind Energy Is Toxic, Hazardous To Human Health, Scientific Review Shows
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
Aletho News 