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Russia recognizes Ukraine poll despite violations, doubts

RT | October 27, 2014

It is obvious that the Supreme Rada elections in Ukraine can be considered valid despite a rather harsh and dirty campaign, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said.

“We expect the official confirmation of the elections result, the information we are getting now is quite controversial. But even now it is obvious that the elections have taken place, despite a hard struggle and dirty tricks,” the Interfax news agency quoted Grigory Karasin as saying.

“The forming balance of forces will probably allow the Ukrainian authorities to deal with some rooted problems in the society,” the senior Russian diplomat added.

Karasin’s words echo an earlier statement from Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin who described the Ukrainian parliamentary campaign as “dirty and cynical”, but did not exclude the possibility of cooperation between Russian authorities and the new Rada.

The head of the Russian Upper House’s commission for monitoring the situation in Ukraine, Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov told the RIA Novosti news agency that Russian officials would try to cooperate with the freshly elected Ukrainian government despite doubts of its legitimacy.

“The southeast has not voted and there were lots of violations,” he said.

Dzhabarov noted that the new Rada would be much more radical than the previous one and emphasized the fact that the Communist Party of Ukraine did not make it into the parliament. Communists held over 13 percent of seats in the Rada after 2012 polls. The Russian senator said that this was a very surprising fact in a democratic country.

“We will attempt to cooperate in any case. We hope that reason would prevail among our new colleagues,” the senator said. “We cannot but attempt to build cooperation with the Rada because we have common history and we are neighbors.”

He also added that Russian Upper House chair, Valentina Matviyenko, had already sent the Ukrainian parliament an invitation to participate in the November session of the parliamentary assembly of the Russia-led CIS economic and political bloc.

The head of the Federation Council’s Committee for Constitutional Law, Andrey Klishas, promised the Russian parliament would cooperate with Ukrainian politicians who press for an end to the civil war and oppose the neo-Nazi state, and the arbitrariness and mass violations of human rights in Ukraine

“Ukrainians themselves cannot fail to notice the mass violations of human rights during the latest parliamentary campaign. These were the ban of free speech, attacks on opposition candidates, mass violence in the form of the so called ‘popular gatherings,’ even lynch mobs on the side of the pro-fascist political forces,” Klishas told RIA Novosti.

According to latest reports PM Arseny Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party is ahead of rivals with 21.69 percent of votes, and President’s Petro Poroshenko Bloc is only slightly behind, so far garnering 21.63 percent. The other four parties making it into the Ukrainian parliament are the Samopomosh of Lvov’s Mayor Andrey Sadovy (10.9), Opposition Bloc (9.77), Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko (7.47), and Yulia Tymoshenko’s party Batkivshchina (Fatherland) (5.77).

October 27, 2014 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Treating Putin Like a Lunatic

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | October 25, 2014

When reading the New York Times on many foreign policy issues, it doesn’t take a savant to figure out what the newspaper’s bias is. Anything, for instance, relating to Russian President Vladimir Putin drips of contempt and hostility.

Rather than offer the Times’ readers an objective or even slightly fair-minded account of Putin’s remarks, we are fed a steady diet of highly prejudicial language, such as we find in Saturday’s article about Putin’s comments at a conference in which he noted U.S. contributions to chaos in countries, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

That Putin is correct appears almost irrelevant to the Times, which simply writes that Putin “unleashed perhaps his strongest diatribe against the United States yet” with his goal “to sell Moscow’s view that American meddling has sparked most of the world’s recent crises.”

Rather than address the merits of Putin’s critique, the Times’ article by Neil MacFarquhar uncritically cites the “group think” of Official Washington: “Russia is often accused of provoking the crisis in Ukraine by annexing Crimea, and of prolonging the agony in Syria by helping to crush a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s last major Arab ally. Some analysts have suggested that Mr. Putin seeks to restore the lost power and influence of the Soviet Union, or even the Russian Empire, in a bid to prolong his own rule.”

Yes, “some analysts” can be cited to support nearly any claim no matter how wrongheaded, or you can use the passive tense – “is often accused” – to present any charge no matter how unfair. But a more realistic summary of the various crises afflicting the world would note that Putin is correct when he describes past U.S. backing for various extremists, from Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East and Central Asia to neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

For example, during the 1980s, the Reagan administration consciously encouraged Islamic fundamentalism as a strategy to cause trouble for “atheistic communism” in Afghanistan and in the Muslim provinces of the Soviet Union.

To overthrow a Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan, the CIA and its Saudi collaborators financed the mujahedeen “holy warriors” who counted among their supporters Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden. Some of those Islamists later blended into the Taliban and al-Qaeda with dire consequences for the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

By invading Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush toppled a secular dictator, Saddam Hussein, but saw him replaced by what amounted to a Shiite theocracy which pushed Iraq’s Sunni minority into the arms of “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which has since rebranded itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or simply the Islamic State. Those extremists now control large swaths of Iraq and Syria and have massacred religious minorities and Western hostages, prompting another U.S. military intervention.

Obama’s Interventions

In Libya in 2011, President Barack Obama acquiesced to demands from “liberal interventionists” in his administration and authorized an air war to overthrow another secular autocrat, Muammar Gaddafi, whose ouster and murder have sent Libya spiraling into political chaos amid warring Islamist militias. It turns out Gaddafi was not wrong when he warned of Islamist terrorists operating around Benghazi.

Similarly, Official Washington’s embrace of protests and violence aimed at removing another secular Arab leader, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, contributed to the bloody civil war that has devastated that country and created fertile ground for the Islamic State and the Nusra Front, the official al-Qaeda affiliate.

Though Obama balked at demands from neocons and “liberal interventionists” that he launch an air war against the Syrian military in 2013, he did authorize secret shipments of weapons and training for the supposedly “moderate” Syrian rebels who have generally sided with Islamist fighters affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Many of these same neocons and “liberal interventionists” have been eager to ratchet up the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program, including neocon dreams to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” also a desire of hardliners in Israel.

In some of these crises, one of the few international leaders who has cooperated with Obama to tamp down tensions has been Putin, who helped negotiate conflict-avoiding agreements with Syria and Iran. But those peaceful interventions made Putin an inviting target for the neocons who began in fall 2013 arranging a coup d’etat in Ukraine on Russia’s border.

As Obama and Putin each paid too little attention to these maneuvers, neocons such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland went to work on the Ukrainian coup.

However to actually overthrow Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the coup makers had to collaborate with neo-Nazi militias which were organized in western Ukraine and dispatched to Kiev where they provided the muscle for the Maidan uprising. Neo-Nazi leaders were given several ministries in the new government, and neo-Nazi militants were incorporated into the National Guard and “volunteer” militias dispatched to crush the ethnic Russian resistance in the east.

Putin for the Status Quo

The underlying reality of the Ukraine crisis was that Putin actually supported the country’s status quo, i.e. maintaining the elected president and the constitutional process. It was the United States along with the European Union that sought to topple the existing system and pull Ukraine from Russia’s orbit into the West’s.

Whatever one thinks about the merits of that change, it is factually wrong to accuse Putin of initiating the Ukraine crisis or to extrapolate from Official Washington’s false conventional wisdom and conclude that Putin is a new Hitler, an aggressor seeking to reestablish the Soviet Union or the Russian Empire.

But the Times and other major U.S. news outlets have wedded themselves to that propaganda theme and now cannot deviate from it. So, when Putin states the obvious – that the U.S. has meddled in the affairs of other nations and that Russia did not pick the fight over Ukraine – his comments must be treated like the ravings of a lunatic unleashing some “diatribe.”

Among Putin’s ranting was his observation, according to the Times article, that “the United States supports ‘dubious’ groups ranging from ‘open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.’

“‘Why do they support such people,’ he asked the annual gathering known as the Valdai Club, which met this year in the southern resort town of Sochi. ‘They do this because they decide to use them as instruments along the way in achieving their goals, but then burn their fingers and recoil.’

“The goal of the United States, he said, was to try to create a unipolar world in which American interests went unchallenged. …

“Mr. Putin … specifically denied trying to restore the Russian Empire. He argued Russia was compelled to intervene in Ukraine because that country was in the midst of a ‘civilized dialogue’ over its political future when the West staged a coup to oust the president last February, pushing the country into chaos and civil war.

“‘We did not start this,’ he said. ‘Statements that Russia is trying to reinstate some sort of empire, that it is encroaching on the sovereignty of its neighbors, are groundless.’”

Of course, all the “smart people” of Official Washington know how to react to such statements from Putin, with a snicker and a roll of the eyes. After all, they’ve been reading the narratives of these crises as fictionalized by the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc.

Rationality and realism seem to have lost any place in the workings of the mainstream U.S. news media.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fragile fact-checking: How the media fell in and out of love with the Sikorski ‘revelations’

By Bryan MacDonald | RT | October 22, 2014

What’s worse than a junior neocon? A junior neocon trying to make a name for himself. Ben Judah’s meteoric rise, aided by his staunch anti-Russian credentials in a climate of fear, has imploded as quickly as it began.

As I learnt the hard way, when you are a young man in a hurry it’s easy to trip up. The first few times you’ll, probably, be forgiven but once it becomes a trend, even the most ardent supporters will abandon you. The fewer redeeming features you possess, the faster it’ll happen. When it has the potential to create an international diplomatic crisis, I can only assume it’s fatal to that once promising career.

On Sunday, the niche US journal Politico published a piece which, briefly, rocked the Russia-related media world. In a rambling, rabble-rousing diatribe by Ben Judah came a, seemingly amazing, scoop – Vladimir Putin had allegedly proposed, in a 2008 Moscow meeting, that Russia and Poland divide Ukraine between them. The source for this, supposed, latter-day Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was given as ex-Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. Carl Bildt was also included – but the less said about him the better – in a veritable neocon tea party. After reading about the ostensible carve-up, I was wondering what century I was in.

Following some nonsense about Napoleon, Sikorski was quoted as saying: “He (Putin) wanted us (Poland) to become participants in this partition of Ukraine.”

“This was one of the things that Putin said to my prime minister, Donald Tusk, when he visited Moscow. He went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow (sic) is a Polish city and why don’t we just sort it out together? Luckily Tusk didn’t answer. He knew he was being recorded,” Sikorski, supposedly, added.

If true, the only word could have been ‘wow.’ However, I doubted it right away. The author was not credible (previously he’d written a Newsweek lead which read like an audition for a post at Hello! Magazine) and the comment about recording seemed odd. It’s par-for-the-course in bilateral talks, especially in situations of mutual distrust, for both parties to record conversations – and there’s few relationships as chary as Moscow-Warsaw.

This is done to counter misquotations later and I’ve known about the practice since my cub reporter days in Dublin. John Kerry and Sergey Lavrov have become famous this year for their garden walks in Moscow and Paris. They don’t do it because they are horticulture enthusiasts – it’s an opportunity to speak candidly without fear of leaks.

The fictional piece attempts to argue that Vladimir Putin would, somehow, trust a Eurocentric leader like Donald Tusk with such a cunning plan. That raised the alarm. Did Judah and Politico really believe serious analysts would swallow this? No matter what mud is hurled at Putin, it rarely comes with the word ‘stupid’ emblazoned across it.

You don’t rise from being a minor KGB agent in East Germany to head of the FSB by being dopey. You do it by being, extremely, clever. An exceedingly savvy Russian President would hardly make a proposal to divvy up Ukraine to a, noted, pro-Western Polish PM. In fact, unless the Russian intelligence services were having a New Year’s Party that extended into May, Putin would have been well briefed on Tusk.

There are a few more wing-nut positions in the piece. The elected Russian government is described as an “imperialist dictatorship,” Never mind that for a Brit to be accusing anybody of imperialism is beyond parody, it takes some imagination to dream up that kind of nonsense.

Judah goes on to state that “European leaders, intimidated by his charisma and outspoken views on Russia, chose not to appoint him as Europe’s high representative for foreign affairs earlier this year.” It’s clear that it was something a trifle more troubling than Sikorski’s pizzazz that stymied that bid. The clue is in the article.

The desultory screed then gets bogged down with information from Kremlin ‘sources’ – who conveniently agree with the author on his anti-Russia and Putin views. The two are not synonymous – many decent western journalists dislike the current Moscow government but love the country. Judah, clearly, is fond of neither. Anyway, I don’t buy the veracity of these ‘sources’ but, luckily, I have a genuine insider in my circle of acquaintances. I asked him if I was wrong in doubting whether Judah’s ‘moles’ are not skin blemishes or figments of the imagination? “No, I don’t think he has reliable sources there,” was the succinct reply.

On Tuesday, my initial hunch was proven right. Sikorski distanced himself from Judah and claimed “his memory had failed him.” He clarified that there had been no bilateral meeting at all between Tusk and Putin in Moscow in 2008. Information about Putin’s meetings is freely available online and his own website has an archive dating back to the year 2000. There is a record of a February 2008 visit by Tusk to Moscow available there.

Sikorski tweeted that “the interview with Politico was not authorised, and some of my words have been over-interpreted.” These comments might seem odd to foreign ears (not authorised) but experienced journalists know that this is Polish custom – and, indeed, German. It’s known as ‘copy approval’ in the UK, something which is granted more often than people think. It’s quasi standard practice for controversial interviews with big hitters.

Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz, from the same party as Sikorski, criticised him: “I will not tolerate this kind of behaviour. I will not tolerate this kind of standards that Speaker Sikorski tried to present at today’s (news) conference.” This was after the ex-Foreign Minister had, initially, dodged questions before being rolled out again and, finally, opening up. Political opponents want him fired, saying there is no room in politics for what they called “irresponsibility.”

I usually conclude columns of this nature with warning of how dangerous such – often deliberately – erroneous western media commentary is. Not this time. All bar the biggest lunatics in the American press have washed their hands of this nonsense, so there’s no need.

As of midnight Tuesday, London time, Politico had still not retracted any of the allegations their piece made. The article’s foot-note read “Ben Judah is author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.” Yes, that 88 per cent approval rating Putin. I’m off now to work on my book – “How America Fell Out Of And Then Into Love With Barack Obama.” Yes, that 40 per cent approval rating Obama.

READ MORE: Sikorski U-turn: Polish ex-FM backtracks on scandalous ‘divide Ukraine’ claim

Bryan MacDonald is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and teacher. He wrote for Irish Independent and Daily Mail. He has also frequently appeared on RTE and Newstalk in Ireland as well as RT.

October 26, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

MH-17: The Untold Story

RT | October 22, 2014

Three months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was violently brought down from the skies over Ukraine, there are still no definitive answers to what caused the tragedy.

Civil conflict in the area prevented international experts from conducting a full and thorough investigation.

The wreckage should have been collected and scrupulously re-assembled to identify all the damage, but this standard investigative procedure was never carried out. Until that’s done, evidence can only be gleaned from pictures of the debris, the flight recorders or black boxes and eye-witnesses’ testimonies. This may be enough to help build a picture of what really happened to the aircraft, whether a rocket fired from the ground or gunfire from a military jet.

October 23, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Polish ex-foreign minister backtracks on scandalous claim that Putin offered to divide Ukraine

RT | October 21, 2014

Radoslaw Sikorski — the speaker of the Polish Parliament and that nation’s former foreign minister — was forced to apologize after claiming that he overheard Vladimir Putin in 2008 suggest that Ukraine should be divided between Russia and Poland.

A bombshell report published by Politico Magazine over the weekend called “Putin’s Coup” alleged that Sikorski heard that the Russian president told Donald Tusk, then the Polish prime minister, that Poland should “become participants in the divide of Ukraine” during a Polish delegation’s 2008 visit to Moscow.

“He wanted us to become participants in this partition of Ukraine… This was one of the first things that Putin said to my prime minister, Donald Tusk, when he visited Moscow,” Politico’s Ben Judah quoted Sikorski as saying following an interview that formed the basis of the Sunday article.

“He (Putin) went on to say Ukraine is an artificial country and that Lwow is a Polish city and why don’t we just sort it out together.”

“We made it very, very clear to them – we wanted nothing to do with this,” Sikorski went on.

On Monday, Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz said that, if Putin did suggest as much, then that would be “scandalous.”

On Tuesday, however, Sikorski found himself in a scandalous situation himself and had to respond to multiple accusations that he made up the conversation between Putin and Tusk. The Russian president’s spokesman labeled the alleged remark as “utter nonsense,” and Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told Russia’s Gazeta.ru the report “looks like total tripe.”

Responding to a mounting backlash, Sikorski said over Twitter that the interview with Judah was “not authorized” and that “Some of the words have been over-interpreted.” However the Politico journalist was fast to remind Mr. Sikorski that in the US members of the press do not “authorize” interviews. Judah also said to the Polish broadcaster TVN24 that he was “not sure what Sikorski had in mind” when he said some of his comments had been “over-interpreted.”

On Tuesday, Sikorski was confronted at a press conference by Polish journalists, demanding clarifications regarding his remarks. However, the ex-foreign minister was vague about whether or not he made the remarks published by Politico. Before long Sikorski admitted that he never personally heard of Putin offering to divide Ukraine, then refused to go into more details or answer additional questions from the media.

This awkward press conference infuriated even Sikorski’s fellow party members, and Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz publicly lashed at him.

“I will not tolerate this kind of behavior. I will not tolerate this kind of standards that Speaker Sikorski tried to present at today’s (news) conference,” Kopacz said, according to the Associated Press.

After that, Sikorski called in a second press conference, where he changed his position once again. He said Tusk and Putin never met during a bilateral meeting in Moscow in 2008 as he originally had suggested and the scandalous remarks were made later that year at a NATO summit in Bucharest. Additionally Sikorski apologized for putting both the former and current Polish PM in an “awkward position.”

“I apologize for the awkwardness, which took place this morning,” Poland’s TVN 24 quoted Sikorski as saying. “Especially as a former journalist, I never avoided contact with the media.”

However, Sikorski might be forced to change his version of history once again. According to the official NATO schedule of Putin’s meetings from the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, the Russian leader and his Polish counterpart didn’t hold any bilateral meetings in Romania either.

October 21, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Government Used Cluster Bombs Against Civilians

teleSUR | October 21, 2014

The Ukrainian army used cluster bombs against civilian populated areas in Donetsk, a report published by The New York Times on Monday claims.

According to the newspaper’s reporters on the ground, physical evidence and interviews with witnesses and victims have confirmed the use of such weaponry, banned in most of the world.

Evidence recovered by the newspaper such as munition fragments also indicates the use of cluster bombs.

Cluster bombs are like regular bombs but carry sub-munitions which expands the impact area indiscriminately.

Some local victims were far from the explosion site but still were affected by the bombs.

Boris V. Melikhov, 37, was chopping wood outside his house in the Gladkovka neighborhood of Donetsk when he heard a loud explosion from the street. Suddenly he felt a strong push in the back.

“I felt the blood running down my back, down my leg,” he recalled in an interview given to The New York Times last week from his hospital bed. Doctors there found several identical metal fragments in his leg, chest, shoulder and hand.

Over 100 nations have banned cluster bombs for their indiscriminate effects on the area where they are fired.

Despite a cease-fire agreement with rebel forces, implemented in the first week of September, the report also found that the Ukrainian military had fired rockets against civilian populated areas as early as the first week of October.

Witnesses also confirmed that regular army troops fired rockets from their positions in the dates coinciding with the Times’ analysis.

Press officers for the Ukrainian military denied that their troops had used cluster weapons during the conflict. But media reports as early as July had claimed there is evidence of the use of cluster bombs, ballistic missiles and some even point at the use of phosphorous bombs by the army against civilian populations in Eastern Ukraine.

The latest evidence compiled by the U.S. daily also provides evidence that recent fighting in Donetsk over the control of the airport has been launched by the Ukrainian army, contrary to official versions which claim the military responded to attacks by the rebels.

October 21, 2014 Posted by | War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Kiev denies German intel claim that militia captured BUK missile from Ukraine army

RT | October 20, 2014

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry rejected a report by Germany’s foreign intelligence agency that E. Ukraine militia shot down flight MH17 with a BUK missile captured from a Ukrainian base. The report also accused Kiev of falsifying intelligence.

“The Command of the Air Force of Ukraine officially states that information about the capture of anti-aircraft missile system Buk-M1 from a military unit of the Air Force of Ukraine by militia is not true,” the country’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry has responded to a recent report published by the German daily Der Spiegel. It revealed that on Oct. 8 BND President Gerhard Schindler announced at a secret meeting that there is “ample evidence” that militia in Donetsk captured BUK defense missile system from a Ukrainian base and fired a rocket from it. The alleged launch on July 17 resulted in deadly crash of civilian MH17 flight by Malaysian Airlines, with 298 passengers and crew on board, the report claims.

The Ukrainian Ministry insists that the BND’s finding cannot be true because “personnel, military equipment and armament stationed in the Donetsk region” was “quickly” relocated on June 29, more than two weeks before the tragedy.

“At the time when rebels entered the territory of that military base, only old and unusable vehicles were left there,” the Ministry said.

In its report the German intelligence agency has also accused Kiev of providing false information on the crash, saying that “this can be explained in detail.”

However, no “evidence” has been presented by the BND yet, which claims that it based its conclusions on “satellite images and diverse photo evidence.” It has not made any official statements on the matter.

Germany has officially refused to comment on the report, saying that the BND “collects data that are reported to the Audit Committee of the Bundestag, reported to the government.”

“But this is all secret information,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy spokesman, Georg Streiter, told reporters as he was asked to comment on the news.

The Head of Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency has said that Moscow “does not understand this position, the conclusions reached by German intelligence.”

“First of all, it is hard to speak about any information presented by German intelligence, because now everybody is discussing [only] what was published in this magazine,” Aleksander Neradko said.

He said that from the very beginning Russia has been calling on everyone to report only facts and hard information to the investigation committee.

“The Russian side, for example, did so: all facts we had we passed to the investigation committee. Thus, we are adherents of the principle of transparent, comprehensive, open and objective investigation. Therefore, we do not understand this position, these findings of German intelligence.”

An international probe led by Dutch experts is still ongoing. A preliminary report issued in September confirmed that the plane crashed as a result of structural damage caused by a “large number of high-energy objects” that struck from outside. The investigation has not yet established who was behind the fatal launch.

Shortly after the plane’s downing, Ukrainian side blamed the crash on anti-Kiev rebels in eastern Ukraine. Officials claimed that militia targeted MH17 with a BUK system provided by Russia. This view was echoed by the international community, but no evidence proving that has ever been presented.

READ MORE:

MH17 crash: Ukraine security chief says missile only Kiev has may be found at crash site

Aussie PM owes Putin an apology over MH17 blame game – senior MP

October 20, 2014 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine and Russia agree on $385 gas price for 5 months

RT | October 20, 2014

Moscow and Kiev have confirmed the price of Russian gas to Ukraine until the end of March at $385 per 1,000 cubic meters, according to both Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“We have agreed on a price for the next 5 months, and Ukraine will be able to buy as much gas as it needs, and Gazprom is ready to be flexible on the terms,” Lavrov said Monday at a public lecture.

Russia’s foreign minister dispelled rumors of two separate prices, one for winter and one for summer.

“At the Europe-Asia summit in Milan, there was no talk of summer or winter gas prices, but just about the next 5 months,” the foreign minister said.

Included in the $385 price is a $100 discount by Russia. Ukraine is still insisting on a further discount, asking for $325 for ‘summer prices’ after the 5-month winter period.

“We talked about how there should be two prices, like how the European spot market has two prices, a winter price when demand is high, and summer when demand is low. Our joint proposal with the EU was the following: $325 per thousand cubic meters in the summer and $385 per thousand cubic meters in the winter,“ Poroshenko said in an interview on Ukrainian television Saturday.

President Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin reached a preliminary agreement in Milan on Friday for the winter period, but Russia won’t deliver any gas to its neighbor without prepayment.

Gas talks are expected to continue Tuesday in Berlin between the energy ministers of Russia, Ukraine, and the EU. On September 26, the three energy ministers agreed to provide 5 billion cubic meters to Ukraine on a “take-or-pay” contract, to help the country survive the winter months.

The so-called winter plan is contingent on Ukraine starting to repay at least $3.1 billion worth of debt to Gazprom.

Ukraine is still looking for funding to pay for the gas supplies as well as its $4.5 billion arrears to Russia’s state-owned gas company. Moscow reduced the debt from $5.5 billion to $4.5 billion, calculating in the discount of gas, Putin said on Friday.

Moscow believes the European Commission or the International Monetary Fund should provide loans for this purpose.

Russia turned off the gas to Europe via Ukraine in 2006 and in 2009, over similar pricing disputes with Kiev. This poses a risk to Europe, which receives 15 percent of its gas through Ukraine.

October 20, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Germany’s BND ‘evidence’ on MH17 tragedy looks like another disinformation operation

RT | October 20, 2014

German BND’s “evidence” that E. Ukrainian rebels are behind the MH17 crash is an attempt to muddle the waters and to throw more propagandistic mud at Russia’s door rather than to find the truth, foreign affairs expert Srdja Trifkovic told RT.

Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the BND has blamed rebel forces in east Ukraine for the MH17 plane crash in July, Der Spiegel reported. According to the weekly magazine the BND has “ample evidence”, including satellite images that the militia forces in east Ukraine used the BUK missile system to bring down the Malaysian passenger plane. However, so far the intelligence agency has not made any of that “evidence” public.

RT: Well, if Germany has this evidence, why doesn’t it make it public?

Srdja Trifkovic: This is the obvious question. Actually, several questions come to mind. First of all, if Germany has satellite images that point in this direction, then Germany must have obtained those images from someone else, presumably the US. So why should the US use the German BND service [Federal Intelligence Service] as a conduit for presentation and presumably interpretation of the data which it, the US, had obtained in the first place. This seems to me like another disinformation operation because why should the BND be called upon to come to any conclusive evidence or indeed conclusions about the MH17 affair if the Dutch have two independent investigations going, and if most of the citizens and most of the countries affected were in fact the Netherlands, Malaysia and Australia.

RT: There’s an official international investigation underway. Why not share these findings with it?

ST: Because the obvious target in this case is yet again Russia and pro-Russians in the east of [Ukraine] and not the establishment of the truth. Because after all as we have seen with incomplete, inconclusive and ambiguous findings of the interim investigation six weeks ago, it was immediately misinterpreted as pointing into the direction of the pro-Russians or of the Russian-supplied weapon system. So I think we should really treat anything that comes from the Western intelligence agencies, the BND included, as not as an attempt to find the truth, but as an attempt to muddle the waters and to throw more propagandistic mud at the Russian door.

RT: So far, the investigators have only made very basic conclusions, as seen in the report they had released. How could Germany have already reached such a definite conclusion?

ST: Well, first of all, the question is whether Germany really did come with a fairly definite conclusion or whether this is an exercise in disinformation or propaganda. I think it is the latter because whatever the German intelligence, the Germans, might have had at their disposal to conclude that the rebels obtained the Buk system from the Ukrainian base, that there were no Ukrainian jet fighters in the vicinity of the aircraft and so on, could have come only from US satellite sources, not from Germany’s own which it doesn’t have. So the fact that it was made public, and the fact that the information was presented allegedly to the German parliamentary subcommittee and not to the official investigating body, to my mind, simply means that the MH17 issue is being kept on the backburner as a propagandistic tool of various Western powers to be deployed if and when needed and then to be put back on the backburner again. This is how it is being treated from the very beginning when unsubstantiated allegations started flying regardless of the fact that there was no real evidence. It was really interesting how some journalists misinterpreted the interim findings six weeks ago to support the thesis about a missile because even though it is stated high-[energy] objects which could have been consistent with machine-gun fire with small caliber, cannon-fire from an aircraft – it was still taken to mean… [it] was a missile. So I don’t think the BND story deserves a great deal of attention until and unless we see raw intelligence upon which it is based and until we see where that intelligence come from and with what purpose it was presented.

RT: Why hasn’t anyone else come up with their own conclusions like this?

ST: I’m afraid that at the end of the day for the propagandistic purposes it will come to the same thing – “maybe Russia was not directly involved but by virtue of supporting the rebels in this Russia bears the ultimate responsibility” or something along those lines. Obviously the propaganda of the first couple of days after the incident… could not be taken seriously. I simply think that this is a little bit more sophisticated in a way: ultimately still a pointing finger is at Russia and at the self-defense forces in the east, even though formal and direct Russian involvement is no longer acknowledged… Nevertheless, if it is the rebels and since Russia allegedly is supporting them, then Russia will bear the ultimate responsibility. What is interesting is that the Germans are so categorical about the absence of the Sukhoi in the vicinity of the Malaysian airliner even through there is ample evidence that indeed there was one at least from the Russian sources. Since the Germans simply do not have the satellite imagery and the electronic resources comparable to those of the US, for the BND to come up with such a compulsive story means either that they are making it out as a plot, or else that they have been presented raw intelligence by the US and they are coming to their own conclusions because the Americans themselves prefer not to be the ones to do so. Either way it doesn’t look like something aimed at establishing the truth and the full facts of the case of MH17.

READ MORE: Germany’s intel agency says MH17 downed by Ukraine militia – report

October 20, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

MH17 FULLY EXPOSED

corbettreport | August 26, 2014

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=11947

When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down on July 17, 2014, we were immediately inundated with base propaganda trying to convince us that the shootdown could be traced back to the Kremlin. But what was this rush to judgement based on? What have we learned about the crash since then? Why has MH17 completely disappeared from the news cycle? And who really stood to benefit from the disaster?

October 19, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

Lavrov: West’s ‘colonial-style’ sanctions on Russia have little to do with Ukraine

RT | October 19, 2014

Making Russia change its stance by way of sanctions is outdated thinking in an age when diversity of opinion is supposed to be appreciated, Foreign Minister Lavrov believes. He says Russia is already “doing more than anybody else” to help Ukraine.

Moscow can hardly be accused of non-facilitating the peace-process in Ukraine, as it is exerting all of the authority it can on the anti-government forces in eastern Ukraine to make sure they comply with the September Minsk peace agreements, Sergey Lavrov said in his Sunday interview to the Russian NTV channel. It’s the West, according to him, who could actually do more to resolve the Ukrainian crisis.

“Our Western partners… aren’t really using their influence on Kiev to persuade them that there’s no alternative to the agreements they’ve already reached with the self-defense,” the minister said.

The West is meanwhile ever ready to put additional pressure on Moscow in the form of sanctions, which in Lavrov’s point of view have little to do with the situation in Ukraine.

“You can essentially feel in their statements and actions the true goal of restrictions – to alter Russia, to change its position on key issues, the most fundamental for us, and make us accept the vision of the West. That is last-century, past-epoch, colonialist thinking.”

Whatever economic difficulties the sanctions entail, they are unlikely to divert Russia from its current stance, Lavrov believes.

Lavrov acknowledged current Russia-US relations are “difficult” and has accused Washington of only thinking of American interests when offering solutions to political problems. The Russian foreign minister would like to see more balance in proposals coming from the US.

“This is a common thing for the US – a consumerist approach to international relations. They believe that they have the right to punish the countries that act contrary to Washington’s vision, while demanding cooperation in other issues vital for the US and its allies.”

Balance on the international arena could have come from the EU, if it was more independent from Washington in its decision making, according to Lavrov.

“The EU with all of its current Washington leaning has the potential to act independently. This, however, remains almost totally unused. That’s sad, because the EU’s own voice could have added balance to international discussions and efforts to solve various problems.”

Friday’s talks between Russia and Ukraine in Milan which were mediated by the EU, proved “difficult and full of disagreements,” according to the Kremlin.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “no breakthrough” was achieved.

One of the most essential issues the parties disagree on is gas supply. Kiev owes billions of dollars to Gazprom. There have been fears that the crisis-struck country won’t be able to pay, which could possibly lead to disruptions of gas supplies, including those to Europe via Ukraine.

The Milan negotiations have resulted in some progress on the issue – an agreement for winter supplies was reached, according to the Russian president. A new round of talks has been scheduled for October 21 and the EU will once again mediate the process.

Ukraine might meanwhile soon find itself forced to conduct similar negotiations with Poland. On Thursday, the country’s Deputy Prime Minister Janusz Pehochinsky expressed disappointment that Ukraine hasn’t yet paid for 100,000 tons of Polish coal.

October 19, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia at the gates? US State Dept, Pentagon grilled over NATO expansion

RT | October 17, 2014

US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki and Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby have been challenged over the Department of Defense’s claims that the US must “deal” with “modern and capable” Russian armed forces on NATO’s doorstep.

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu expressed “grave concern” and “surprise” at a Wednesday speech made by US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel during the Association of the United States Army’s annual conference. Hagel declared that US armed forces “must deal with a revisionist Russia – with its modern and capable army – on NATO’s doorstep.”

During a State Department briefing on Friday, however, an AP journalist suggested that it would be more logical to say that “NATO has moved closer to Russia’s borders.”

“Is it not logical to look at this and say – the reason why Russia’s army is on NATO’s doorstep, is because NATO expands,” journalist Matt Lee said.

“That’s the way [Russian] President Putin probably looks at it, it’s certainly not the way that we look at it,” Kirby said in response to the journalist’s reasoning.

Though he eventually admitted that NATO has expanded, Kirby added that “NATO is not an anti-Russia alliance, it is a security alliance.”

“It wasn’t NATO that was ordering tons of tactical battalions and army to [the] Ukraine border,” Kirby added, before being reminded that Ukraine is not part of NATO.

Kirby then refused to agree with the point that the Russians could understandably perceive NATO’s expansion as a “threat,” especially given that the alliance existed as “anti-Soviet” for half a century.

“I’m not going to pretend to know what goes in President Putin’s mind or Russian military commanders… I mean, I barely got a history degree at the University of South Florida,” Kirby joked, dodging the question.

Kirby assured that NATO’s moves were not “hostile and threatening,” but rather a matter of security. He added that he was “worried about their [Russia’s] moves around Ukraine.” Psaki then cut in, saying that “other countries feel threatened,” and urged the conversation to move on.

In terms of new threats at NATO’s borders, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Friday that it is the US which has been “stubbornly approaching… closer to our doors.”

Relations between Russia and NATO have been tense since the alliance accused Russia of becoming involved in the Ukrainian conflict – a claim Russia has continuously denied.

Following Crimea’s accession to Russia in March, the US and Europe bombarded Moscow with sanctions. NATO also significantly increased its military presence near Russia’s borders, especially in Poland and the former Soviet Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which have expressed concern at the potential for Russian incursions into their territories.

READ MORE: US works on military ‘scenarios’ near our borders – Russian defense minister

October 17, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

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