UK dispatches troop carriers to Ukraine
Press TV – February 14, 2015
Britain has delivered a number of troop transporters to Ukraine as fighting rages on unabated in the eastern parts of the former Soviet country despite a peace deal.
Ukrainian media reported on Friday that 20 British Saxon armored vehicles were handed in to Kiev, with another 55 expected to arrive soon.
The UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) said that the vehicles were transferred by a private firm under a 2013 deal with the eastern European country.
The troop carriers were first used by the MoD in the 1980s, but went out of service some three years ago, according to an MoD spokesperson.
The spokesperson stressed that the British government has been supplying “non-lethal assistance” to the Ukrainian army since the beginning of the crisis in the country.
“There has been no change to this and we have not provided lethal assistance. These vehicles were provided unarmed under a commercial contract dating 2013 by a private company,” the spokesperson added.
Earlier this week, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond also noted that London was keeping under review a decision not to arm Ukraine, adding it could not allow the Ukrainian army to collapse.
This is while Russia has repeatedly criticized plans by Western countries to supply weapons to Ukraine, saying it would only aggravate the situation in the country’s restive provinces.
The UK’s decision to send troop carriers to Ukraine came one day after Kiev reached a ceasefire agreement with pro-Moscow forces operating in the country’s volatile east following marathon peace talks in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, with leaders of Russia, Germany and France.
The mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russia activists and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence protests there in mid-April 2014.
More than 5,500 people have died and some 12,200 wounded in the conflict, the UN says. Around 1.5 million people have been also forced from their homes over the past months of turmoil.
Ukraine ultranationalist leader rejects Minsk peace deal, vows ‘to continue war’
RT | February 13, 2015
Ukraine’s Right Sector leader Dmitry Yarosh said his radical movement rejects the Minsk peace deal and that their paramilitary units in eastern Ukraine will continue “active fighting” according to their “own plans.”
The notorious ultranationalist leader published a statement on his Facebook page Friday, saying that his radical Right Sector movement doesn’t recognize the peace deal, signed by the so-called ‘contact group’ on Thursday and agreed upon by Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia after epic 16-hour talks.
Yarosh claimed that any agreement with the eastern militia, whom he calls “terrorists,” has no legal force.
In his statement, Yarosh claimed that that the Minsk deal is contrary to Ukraine’s constitution, so Ukrainian citizens are not obliged to abide by it. Thus if the army receives orders to cease military activity and withdraw heavy weaponry from the eastern regions, the Right Sector paramilitaries, who are also fighting there “reserve the right” to continue the war, he said.
The Right Sector paramilitary organization continues to deploy its combat and reserve units, to train and logistically support personnel, while coordinating its activities with the military command of the Ukrainian army, paramilitary units of the Defense Ministry and the Interior Ministry, he said.
The breakthrough Minsk agreement was reached on Thursday following marathon overnight negotiations between Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia, and offer hope the fighting in Eastern Ukraine may come to an end. The talks were part of a Franco-German initiative. President Francois Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Kiev and Moscow before meeting the Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the negotiating table in Minsk.
READ MORE: Right Sector refuses to obey Ukraine’s Defense Ministry – presidential aid
EU and Russia: No option but peace and coexistence
The BRICS Post | February 13, 2015
At the moment of writing, the ink on the second Minsk agreement has not yet dried.
On February 15, fighting is supposed to come to an end in Ukraine. What are the chances for success of this agreement and what’s in it for the EU and Russia?
Are we on the path to a new peace or to a new cold/hot war? That is the question that will be on the minds of many in the days to come.
There are too many uncertain factors to reliably predict what will happen. The EU and the US have different agendas, and one can even make a case that they have conflicting interests.
For Russia, a peaceful resolution to the conflict means ending the sanctions and facilitating closer economic cooperation with the EU.
But tighter economic relations with Russia, the natural hinterland of Europe, goes against the core of the transatlantic NATO alliance. This has been a nightmare scenario for the Washington elite since 1945.
Pointedly, neither the US nor the UK were involved in the Minsk negotiations, so for Washington all options are still on the table. Considering the warmongering majority in the US Congress, that is not a good omen for peace.
Then there is the matter of the government in Kiev. Hardly ever mentioned in the news, it is far from stable. Extremist militias who do not bother to hide their fascist ideologies have been integrated into the Ukrainian army.
Considering their behaviour on the battlefield so far, it is very doubtful that Kiev will be able to make them abide by the ceasefire conditions.
Besides the extremists in their own ranks, the Kiev government faces another problem – young Ukrainian men in the west are bitterly resisting military conscription. This is not to say that they sympathize with their compatriots in the east – they just do not want to die fighting them.
Furthermore, there is the inner political struggle for power.
While President Petro Poroshenko is more than willing to find a pragmatic solution to the conflict, his prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, however, is a fanatic Ukrainian nationalist, who is not a man of compromise.
He wants total victory and would be more then happy to replace his president.
Then there are the rebels in Eastern Ukraine, the so-called ‘pro-Russian separatists’.
Western media make it look like they are mere pawns in Putin’s hands, but that is hardly the case.
Nobody denies that Russia is giving them ample logistic support, but the leaders of the resistance are very unreliable. Will they accept the ceasefire? Hard to tell.
First step toward peace
Yet, despite all these challenges, history shows that worse situations have led to lasting peace.
The second Minsk agreement might just work. It is only a first step, and a peaceful long-term resolution of the conflict is still to be negotiated, but it is the only way out for the EU, Russia and Ukraine.
One of the reasons it might just work is precisely that the EU alone brokered it, or rather Germany and France, and not the US. That might seem contradictory given the different variables mentioned above, but it’s not. It all depends on who and what will prevail.
The real issues are still on the table – disarmament and federalization of the country. If the EU really wants it, Brussels has the financial leverage to force Kiev’s hand in accepting a new constitution granting the eastern regions meaningful autonomy.
The EU has experience with forging complex compromise solutions. After all, the EU itself is a permanent compromise.
What is really at stake is much more than just an end to an internal conflict stoked by outside forces. A resumption of violence carries with it the risk of an all out war between nuclear powers.
This is about a possible major war on European soil.
Border control
Hence, peace is the only option for Europe and Russia.
Personally, I consider one of the last paragraphs in the Minsk agreement, which focuses on control of the border, the most difficult one.
Kiev wants to regain full control of the border between the eastern provinces and Russia. This may at first appear to be a technicality, but it isn’t. Control of the border is highly symbolic, for all parties involved.
Kiev’s control of the border would impede Russia’s direct influence on the ground; for the rebels it would symbolize a partial surrender. The only party that stands to gain from this paragraph in the agreement is Kiev, which would have been delivered a highly symbolic victory.
A reasonable option would be to deploy UN troops on the border. Russia has proposed it, but apparently it was not on the negotiating table in Minsk.
While the Cold War has prevented Europe and Moscow from peaceful coexistence on their common continent, peace in Ukraine might just open up the whole Russian hinterland to the European economy.
At the end, it boils down to two options: The renewal of the old transatlantic pact with the ally overseas leading to a new Cold War (that could turn very nasty), or peace and coexistence with Russia.
Kiev MPs try to fool US senator with ‘proof’ of Russian tanks in Ukraine
RT |February 13, 2015
MPs in Kiev hoodwinked a US senator, presenting his office with photos of columns of Russian military hardware allegedly roaming Ukrainian territory. The photos turned out to have been taken during the conflict in South Ossetia back in 2008.
The photos were “presented to the Armed Services Committee from a delegation from Ukraine in December,” Senator Jim Inhofe’s communications director Donelle Harder told The Washington Free Beacon.
The Americans planned to publish the photos with credits to the Ukrainian MPs, and “they were fine with that,” the spokesperson said.
Yet, after thorough checking, images of the Russian convoys turned out to have been taken years ago, in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia.
“We are currently making calls to our sources,” Harder said.
“The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice,” Senator Inhofe said in a statement.
“I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008,” the lawmaker wrote.
At the same time the revealed forgery “doesn’t change the fact that there is plenty of evidence Russia has made advances into the country with T-72 tanks and that pro-Russian separatists have been killing Ukrainians in cold blood,” the US senator maintains.
Poroshenko After Minsk Talks: Donbas Autonomy, Federalization Not an Option
Sputnik News | February 12, 2015
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko has flatly rejected the idea of granting a broad autonomy to the eastern Donbas region, and of making Ukraine a federation.
“Ukraine was, is and will remain a unitary state. Federalization is not an option,” President Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page in the immediate wake of the four-sided talks on ending the yearlong conflict, which wrapped up in Minsk on Thursday.
The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany met for 16 hours trying to thrash out a peace roadmap that would ease tensions in Ukraine’s war-torn east.
After the talks it was announced that before this year is out Ukraine would change its constitution to include a clause on decentralization and a special status for the Donbas region.
On Wednesday President Poroshenko said the proposed decentralization program his government was working on had absolutely nothing to do with making Ukraine a federative state.
Ukrainian specialists find no signs of military activity in Russia’s Rostov region
TASS | February 12, 2015
MOSCOW – Ukrainian specialists have not observed any military activity on the part of Russian army units in the course of an inspection that was held in the southern Rostov region from February 9 to February 12, the chief of the Russian Defense Ministry’s department for observance of agreements, Sergey Ryzhkov said on Thursday.
He said the ministry had complied with the provisions of the 2011 Vienna Document and had ensured inspection on an area of about 15,000 sq km that had been selected by the Ukrainian side.
“Ukrainian representatives said they hadn’t noticed any military activities on the part of units of the Russian Armed Forces in the area chosen for the inspection,” Ryzhkov said. “They pointed out precise observance of the Vienna document by the officials who had escorted them.”
IMF announces new $17.5bn bailout package for Ukraine
RT | February 12, 2015
The International Monetary Fund announced a new $17.5 billion lifeline for Ukraine, which would bring the total bailout package to $40 billion. The new sum would be a four-year program.
Lagarde will propose the $17.5 billion expansion program to the IMF by the end of the month.
“The program is not yet approved by the governing council. I hope to offer it for approval by the end of February,” she said Thursday.
“This new four-year arrangement would support immediate economic stabilization in Ukraine as well as a set of bold policy reforms aimed at restoring robust growth over the medium term and improving living standards for the Ukrainian people,” Lagarde said in a statement.
In return Ukraine will have to present a “program of deep economic reforms,” which includes the whole economy and a plan to transform Naftogaz, Ukraine’s state oil and gas company.
“It’s a large program, it’s a longer-term program than the previous one, which was a traditional SBA [Stand-By Arrangement] for two years,” the IMF chief said.
“It’s ambitious, it’s not without risk, but we believe it is a realistic set of macroeconomic framework, ambitious reforms, but reforms the authorities feel confident they can deliver,” Lagarde said.
IMF head Christine Lagarde didn’t answer the question as to whether the four-year international bailout program for Ukraine included credits from Russia.
“The sum includes funds from the IMF and the EU, and also bilateral and multilateral loans.”
Earlier this month, the US promised Ukraine as much as $2 billion in loan guarantees, while the EU said it would disburse €1.8 billion ($2.1 billion).
Boon to Ukraine’s economy
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk stressed that the new bailout program would open sources for Ukraine to get help from other international organizations and partners, making the total sum thus $25 billion.
He confirmed the commitment to reforms that will stabilize Ukraine’s economy and finance. The country’s game plan includes fighting corruption, settling the energy sector, as well as cutting and optimizing state expenditure and increasing investment to 3 percent of the GDP, Yatsenyuk explained.
“Stabilization of the banking system and the exchange rate are also the goals of the program,” Yatsenyuk said.
“Recovery in confidence in Ukraine through the adoption of the 4–year program will be a major factor in the stabilization of the exchange rate, and an objective and strong banking system of Ukraine that will give the opportunity for Ukraine’s economy to develop,” he added.
Yatsenyuk said the government is also going to provide extensive assistance to low-income households. By the end of the year he expects it to include income indexation linked to the level of price rises. He also said the IMF program will provide $500 million for low-income families to help pay for increased energy bills.
READ MORE: IMF gives green light for $17 bn Ukraine aid package
War in Ukraine: Who Wants War? And Who Doesn’t?
By William Boardman | Reader Supported News | February 10, 2015
“Russian aggression” – the bad faith mantra of dishonest brokers
Just as NATO allies Germany and France were undertaking a peace initiative with Russia and Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry turned up in Kiev at the same time, seeking to poison the talks before they started by spouting yet again the ritual U.S. accusation of “Russian aggression.” The incantation is meaningless without context. Its purpose is mesmerize a false consciousness. “Russian aggression” may or may not exist in the events of the past year, just like “Russian self-defense.” Reporting on the ground has been too unreliable to support any firm analysis, never mind the provocative “Russian aggression” the U.S. brandishes as a virtual call for war.
Western aggression, political and diplomatic more than military, is a cold reality and has been for two decades. The West, and especially the U.S., has yet to accept responsibility for 20 years of anti-Russian aggression, much less pull back from such perennial hostility. The Obama administration (parts of it at least, given the incoherence of the “administration”) has acted as if its pulling off an only-slightly-violent coup in Kiev in 2014 was a grand triumph. Worse, having grabbed a government on Russia’s borders, the Obama hawks carry on as if the only reasonable choice for Russia is to accept the success of this Western aggression.
Rarely is this context acknowledged in discussions of the natural fissures in Ukraine that feed sectarian civil war. Rather the issues are over-simplified – falsified – by the U.S. Secretary of State, consistent with a hidden agenda of provoking a military confrontation (at the very least) with Russia and eastern Ukrainians. That’s the subtext that makes sense of Kerry’s otherwise seeming blithering in Kiev on February 5:
We talked about the largest threat that Ukraine faces today, and that is Russia’s continued aggression in the east. There’s no other way to call it. We’re not seeking a conflict with Russia. No one is. … The president is reviewing all of his options. Among those options, obviously, is the possibility of providing defensive — defensive — assistance to Ukraine. And those discussions are going on. The president will make his decision, I am confident, soon.
Note the lie: “We’re not seeking a conflict with Russia. No one is.”
When Kerry said that, he was lying, he almost surely knew he was lying, and the question is whether his lie represents only the rogue war-faction in the U.S., or is part of a dicey good-cop/bad-cop routine out of Washington. The only way it’s true that “we’re not seeking a conflict” is that the U.S. is already engaged in conflict with Russia, decades-long and currently escalating. The lie of not seeking a conflict already engaged is used to mask the lie of “defensive weapons,” a military-diplomatic oxymoron of long standing. So the most obvious answer to the question of who wants war in Ukraine is elements of the U.S. government whose immediate challenge is to persuade its Kiev client that it’s a good idea to risk turning its country into more of a battlefield than it already is.
Kiev’s desire is more obscure, and likely divided. Having taken power in something of a slow-motion coup d’etat last spring, the government faced a restive-to-defiant population in eastern Ukraine. Rather than seeking to negotiate legitimate grievances with the eastern region, the Kiev government chose instead to escalate quickly, from political hostilities into civil war. When that didn’t work out militarily, when Kiev started losing what it started, it agreed on September 5 to terms of a ceasefire that it then failed to honor with consistency (as did the separatists). Now the Ukrainian president has been to Moscow for early peace talks, but only after he staked out a preposterous public position seeking to win with a losing negotiating hand what Kiev has already lost on the ground.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande in Kiev on February 5 (when Kerry was in town but not part of the meeting). In his public statement, Poroshenko referred self-servingly to September’s Minsk Agreement signed by Ukraine, Russia, and the break-away Ukrainian states that call themselves the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk. The only other Minsk signatory was the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), giving the agreement the tacit endorsement of Europe without any individual European nation signing on. The United States was not directly involved in the Minsk Agreement, but a week later expressed its support for finding a peaceful solution by sending American troops to take part in NATO military exercises in Ukraine’s western provinces.
Understood in its actual context, Poroshenko’s February 5 statement is ludicrously disingenuous:
The Minsk plan is very simple: immediate ceasefire; releasing all the hostages; closing the border, or renew the internationally recognized border on Ukrainian (side); withdrawal all of the foreign troops from the Ukrainian territory; launching very important process of the political regulation by the election on the municipal election, local election, under Ukrainian legislation in the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk.
All signatories must take Minsk accord seriously to avoid war
It’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t urge compliance with the Minsk Agreement, even if that means different things to different people. Neither side in Ukraine has come close to significant compliance for any length of time. Poroshenko calls for the ceasefire, but omits the international monitoring called for in the agreement. He calls for closing the border with Russia, which is NOT part of the agreement. When he calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops, he omits mention of NATO. When he refers to elections, he omits Kiev’s failure to pass the legislation it promised, and he omits the elections that have already been held in the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk [see “Election Note” at the end of this article]. Poroshenko also omits amnesty for separatists, improving humanitarian conditions in the region, and the recovery program, all of which are part of the Minsk Agreement.
Nevertheless, Poroshenko went to Moscow with his German and French colleagues to take part in peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin there on February 6, at Russia’s initiative. When similar talks had been proposed for mid-January, Chancellor Merkel had been instrumental in making sure they didn’t happen. This time her public posture going in was appropriately statesmanlike:
It is a question of peace and preserving the European peace order. It is a question of free self-determination of the people as part of this European peace order. And we are doing what we believe to be our duty at this time, namely trying to do everything in our power to end the bloodshed.
Merkel’s reference to “free self-determination” is diplomatically murky and allows for a wide range of possible solutions for the self-proclaimed Republics in eastern Ukraine, and even hints at a resolution for Crimea. Her focus on peace serves all the parties’ best interest, seeking to avoid a war that would, inevitably, cause much more suffering for Europe than the United States.
U.S. policy seems designed to turn Ukraine into the “European Iraq”
Presumably none of the parties meeting in Moscow on February 6 wants to see Ukraine become “another Iraq,” even if Ukraine is already part way there. Where Iraq had been a coherent, modern state with cultural cohesion despite its dictatorship, Ukraine has a long history of quasi-chaos, internal squabbling, and corruption. Where it took an American invasion and occupation to reduce Iraq to a near-failed state, the U.S. sees an opportunity now to manipulate proxies into destroying Ukraine (and even Russia) for the next generation or so.
Germany, France, Russia, and especially Ukraine must be acutely tuned to the potential horrors they face. After meeting for four hours, the parties were generally low key and discreet in what they said about the substance discussed. This reality produced European coverage by the BBC and others characterized by cautious hopefulness. U.S. media more typically characterized uncertainty as failure, offering the talismans of magical thinking and instant gratification in place of accuracy or analysis.
Whatever they were, the four-way talks in Moscow were not a failure. All sides called them “constructive,” which is diplo-speak for: there’s still a chance for a settlement. The parties are continuing the negotiations with apparent openness to a range of solutions. Hollande called this process “one of the last chances” to settle eastern Ukraine peacefully. Poroshenko has expressed hope for an early agreement to an “unconditional ceasefire” and one step toward reducing tensions. An unconditional ceasefire is beyond what was agreed to at Minsk in September, but creates no barrier to implementing the agreement later. Moscow’s tactful obliqueness leaving room for the parties to maneuver was in sharp contrast to the bloviating cries for war coming mostly from U.S. Senators and the vice-president at the simultaneous regional security gathering in Munich.
The lesson of Munich for 2015: “War in our time”?
Meeting for the 51st year in Munich during February 6-8, the Munich Security Conference (MSC) provided a setting for mostly U.S. hawks to try to undermine the chances for peace in Ukraine. Founded in 1963, the Munich conference identifies itself as
… a key annual gathering for the international ‘strategic community’… an independent forum dedicated to promoting peaceful conflict resolution and international cooperation and dialogue in dealing with today’s and future security challenges.
What the Munich conference seems to be is something of a foreign policy free-for-all to which almost anyone from anywhere can come and pontificate regardless of whether they hold any actual decision-making authority. The American delegation, including a dozen war-minded congress members, seems not to have gotten the memo about “promoting peaceful conflict resolution,” like the British lapdog also barking loudly for war.
Like any good multinational circus, the Munich show offered a variety of clown acts and sideshows to distract from the U.S. rush to war. The Turks decided not to take part rather than share a panel with Israelis. Non-office-holder Arnold Schwarzeneggar stumped to action on climate change. Some European Union members ganged up on Greece (again), this time for opposing some sanctions on Russia, while support for Greece (and peace) came from Cyprus, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic – most of which are closer to the likely war zone than those brave distant states ready to start a fight. In the Munich streets, some 2,000 peaceful protestors demonstrated against NATO, otherwise known as an American sphere of influence (if not a Trojan horse).
Joe Biden toes the official line, smoothly riffing on official lies
Other members of the American delegation included Kiev coup supporters Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Kerry, and assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, none of whom showed any public willingness to look at the realities of the present or the past 20 years. Like a good apparatchik of the American war party, Biden’s address to the conference included a subtle version of the requisite “Russian aggression” trope, along with 45 minutes of neo-Cold-War boilerplate propaganda. In one of the more hilarious highlights of this taken-very-seriously by the media speech, Biden quoted himself from the same conference in 2009:
Six years ago at this podium, I said and I quote, ‘To paraphrase President Obama, it is time to press the reset button and reinvest in the many areas where we can and should be working together with Russia.’
That’s what everybody remembers. But they don’t often repeat what I then said.
I said, ‘We will also not recognize any nation having a sphere of influence. We will remain — it will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their decisions and choose their own alliances.’
I meant it when I said it then, and America means it as I repeat it now.
The “reset button” rhetoric did not include changing U.S. support for the relentless push for NATO to include countries on Russia’s border, a form of blatant – and mindless – political aggression. NATO, the European Union, Europe itself are all U.S. spheres of influence, no matter what the Biden-shills of the world may say. Even as he lied sanctimoniously about spheres of influence in 2009, his country was engaging in its half-century of punishing Cuba for not being a loyal and subservient of the American hemisphere of influence.
And when Biden claimed, “it will remain our view that sovereign states have the right to make their decisions and choose their own alliances,” an honest audience would have laughed as derisively at that as the same audience laughed at perceived absurdity from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during his address to the Munich conference.
Having destabilized Ukraine, the U.S. blames Russia for piling on
Remember how the present Ukraine crisis came about? In the fall of 2013, Ukraine was weighing a political, economic choice between a European proposal requiring exclusivity (and implying future NATO membership) and a somewhat more open Russian proposal (with no military alliance component). In Ukraine, as politically divided as ever, the western population yearned for Europe, the eastern population was content with Russia. When the legitimate, democratically-elected Ukraine government rejected the European offer, protesters mostly from western Ukraine launched the months-long Euro-Maidan demonstrations in Kiev (presumably with the connivance of the U.S. and others). In time, including on the scene visits from Biden (whose son reportedly has significant economic interests in Ukraine) and Nuland (with her cookies for the mob), the Maidan evolved into the coup d’etat that produced the current Ukraine government.
So when Biden says “that sovereign states have the right to make their decisions and choose their own alliances,” he lying. He’s lying about Ukraine and he’s lying about U.S. behavior in the present and the recent past (and the not so recent past as well, to be sure).
Somewhat measured language from the White House
On February 5, as the flurry of events in Kiev, Moscow, and Munich was beginning, the White House expressed some awareness that military escalation might only make matters worse in Ukraine. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said, in part:
… the United States has been saying for some time that it’s a diplomatic negotiation that is required to bring this conflict in Ukraine to an end, that this is not something that’s going to be solved or resolved militarily, but rather through diplomatic negotiations. So we certainly are encouraging and supportive of ongoing efforts to try to find a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Ukraine…. [But] we need serious engagement from the Russians and the separatists, the likes of which we’ve not seen before….
… the President is going to make a decision [on weapons to Ukraine] that he believes is in the broader national security interests of the United States…. But certainly the President takes very seriously the views of our allies and is going to consult very closely as we evaluate any needed strategic changes ahead…. [But] this conflict was not going to rise to the level of a military confrontation between the United States and Russia. The President has been very clear about that. So there are things that we are going to continue to avoid.
But one of the concerns that we have about providing military assistance is it does contain the possibility of actually expanding bloodshed, and that’s actually what we’re trying to avoid. The whole reason that we are trying to encourage both sides to sit down and hammer out a diplomatic agreement is to end the bloodshed and end the escalating conflict in that country.
The press secretary made no effort to offer a balanced analysis of the Minsk Agreement, blaming the separatist Republics and Russia for virtually all the problems. He did allow that Ukraine had not lived up to all its commitments under the agreement.
Who actually speaks for the United States?
The same day the White House offered this view, NATO ministers in Brussels adopted a plan to ring Russia’s European perimeter with a network of command centers and rapid reaction forces. According to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, this plan is NATO’s biggest reinforcement of collective defense since the end of the Cold War. He added that the first six multinational command and control units would be established immediately in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. Estonia and Latvia border on Russia. Poland and Romania border on Ukraine.
The Secretary of State is carrying on as if he believes that this might be his legacy moment. He’s acting as if he’s thinking: Hillary Clinton led the charge on Libya and made magnificent regional chaos there, so why shouldn’t I be able to top that, and make a mess of Ukraine, and possibly create global chaos?
But what if “Russian aggression” is real? As matters stand now, U.S. policy aggression for two decades has served as a self-fulfilling prophecy that creates “aggression” in response. What would happen if the U.S. especially, and the West in general, sent a clear signal that western aggression was over? How long would it take for Russia (or China) to trust that as reality? And would that persuade the Russians to relax what we now call their aggression? (We don’t hear much about “Chinese aggression” these days, but chances are that Kerry or Biden or someone already has that speech written.)
The course the U.S. has been on since 1990 has no good ending, unless one assumes that the Russians (or the Chinese) will fold under pressure. That seems unlikely. Nor does the result seem worth the risk. But also unlikely is a U.S. course change as long as we remain enamored of our own exceptional face in the magic mirror that keeps telling us we’re indispensable and can do no wrong. In Ukraine, today, probably the most dispensable nation is the U.S.
As this is written February 9, President Obama and Chancellor Merkel have met at the White House and offered vague public assurances that diplomatic efforts will continue to try to settle Ukraine issues peacefully. It’s not reassuring that Obama’s companions in his meeting with Merkel were committed aggressors: Biden, Kerry, and national security advisor Susan Rice. We don’t know if this President is strong enough to be in control of his administration as it speaks with conflicting voices. What we know pretty surely is that this is a moment when President Obama could actually earn his Nobel Peace Prize by calling off “American aggression.”
Or he could just follow the lead of the mindless, bi-partisan weapons-gaggle in Congress and elsewhere. The president could do the bidding of all those shrill demagogues who cry for escalating bloodshed, those grandstanding testosterone puffs who will never accept responsibility for the death and dismemberment they advocate. In that event, the President would once again ignore his own earlier wisdom when he once said: “Don’t do stupid stuff.”
Election Note [see above]: The Donetsk and Luhansk elections held November 2 were supported by Russia and rejected as illegitimate by Ukraine, as well as spokespersons for the European Union, Germany and others in the west. The election results mostly confirmed the local authority already in place, including the chief executive and parliamentary majorities in both Republics, which were popularly approved in referendums in May. An OSCE spokesperson called the November elections a violation of the spirit and letter of the Minsk Agreement, which seemed to contemplate such elections taking place on December 7, under Ukrainian law. Ukraine had excluded Donetsk and Luhansk from its presidential election in May and its parliamentary election in October. The last apparently legitimate presidential election held in Ukraine chose Viktor Yanukovych president in February 2010. Yanukovych, whose support reached 90% of the vote in some districts of Donetsk and Luhansk, was forced from office in February 2014 by the coup that emerged from the Maidan protest. Ukraine has almost 34 million voters in all, of which more than 5 million are (or were) in Luhansk and Donetsk. Another 1.8 million voters in Crimea have not taken part in the 2014 elections outside Crimea.
BBC airs Maidan fighter admitting he fired on police before Kiev massacre
RT | February 12, 2015
Nearly a year after the massacre on Kiev’s Maidan left over 50 dead, the BBC has aired footage of an opposition fighter who says he fired at police in the early morning that day, bringing into question the popular narrative that riot police fired first.
“I was shooting downward at their feet,” says a man the broadcaster decided to identify as Sergei.
“Of course, I could have hit them in the arm or anywhere. But I didn’t shoot to kill.”
According to Sergei, he took up a position in the Kiev Conservatory, a music academy located on the southwest corner of Kiev’s Independence Square, on February 20.
One day prior, he had met up with a man who offered him two guns. The first was a 12-gauge shotgun, while the other was a hunting rifle – a Saiga that fired high-velocity rounds.
He chose the Saiga and hid it at a post office that, along with the conservatory, was under the protesters’ control. Sergei told the BBC he was later escorted to the Conservatory, where, with a second gunman, he spent 20 minutes before 7:00 am firing on police.
Other witness testimony has corroborated his account.
Ukraine peace deal: Ceasefire starting February 15, removal of heavy weapons
RT | February 12, 2015
An agreement has been brokered in Minsk to stop hostilities in Ukraine from Sunday. The deal was reached after marathon talks between the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, and signed by the Ukrainian rebels.
“I believe we agreed on a big deal. We agreed to a ceasefire starting at 00:00 on February 15,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told the media after the talks were finished.
“The main thing achieved is that from Saturday into Sunday there should be declared – without any conditions at all – a general ceasefire,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told journalists in a separate statement.
Pullout compromise
A compromise decision was taken over the disengagement line, which was the biggest stumbling block in the negotiation. According to the document, Kiev’s troops would pull back heavy weapons from the current frontline. The rebels would pull back from the line as it existed in September, when the previous ceasefire agreement was signed.
The security zone separating the warring parties must be at least 50km wide for artillery over 100mm caliber, 70km for regular multiple rocket launchers and 100km for heavier weapons with a longer range, such as Tochka-U ballistic missiles, the document states.
The weapons pullout must start on Sunday and be completed in no longer than 14 days. The OSCE is charged with implementing the ceasefire on the ground and will use its drone fleet and monitors to verify that both parties are sticking to the deal.
The ceasefire deal provides for withdrawal of all “foreign troops, heavy weapons and mercenaries” from Ukraine under an OSCE monitoring. “Illegal armed groups” would be disarmed, but local authorities in the future would be allowed to have legal militia units.
The agreement involves exchange of all prisoners, which is to be completed within 19 days. A general amnesty for the rebels would be declared by Kiev.
The national government’s control over the borders between Donetsk and Lugansk Regions would be fully restored a day after municipal elections, which would be held in the regions as part of a profound constitutional reform.
Decentralization reform
The agreement requires a political reform in Ukraine to ensure decentralization and a special status for its rebel provinces. It requires Ukraine to adopt legislation which would provide permanent privileges to the Lugansk and Donetsk Regions, currently self-declared republics, by the end of 2015.
The legislation would include the right for language self-determination and trans-border ties with Russia, as well as the authority of the local governments to appoint local prosecutors and judges, the document states.
Humanitarian and economic issues are also mentioned in the deal. Kiev would restore economic ties and social payments, which it cut in rebel-held areas, the document says. An international monitoring mechanism may be established for these payments.
During the transition period an internationally-monitored mechanism for humanitarian aid to the regions affected by the war would be implemented, the document sates.
Direct talks needed
Putin said that Kiev’s unwillingness to hold direct talks with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics was among the reasons it took so much time to reach an agreement.
“They may be unrecognized, but we have to deal with real life here, and if everyone wants to agree and have sustainable relations, direct contacts are needed,” Putin said.
He added that the ‘Normandy Four’ expect the parties involved in the conflict to show restraint even in the days before the ceasefire takes effect.
The terms of the ceasefire are spelled out in a document signed by members of the so-called contact group, which includes representatives from the rebel forces, Kiev, Moscow and the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, Putin said.
The members of the ‘Normandy Four’ – Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande – supported a joint declaration describing the results of their work.
The declaration was not meant to be signed by the leaders, Germany FM Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.
If broken, no new memorandum possible
Head of the Donetsk People’s Republic Aleksandr Zakharchenko, who signed the Minsk document, said it required additional consultation and warned that “if these terms are broken, there will be no new meetings or memoranda.”
He added that he and Igor Plotnitsky, the head of Lugansk People’s Republic, agreed to sign the document “due to guarantees from the president of Russia, chancellor of Germany and president of France,” with the hope that it would allow their people to “achieve peaceful development.”
The new Minsk accord gives hope for de-escalation of the Ukrainian conflict, although it would require a major effort to build trust between the parties involved. The previous deal collapsed as neither Kiev nor the rebels implemented it fully, which means the threat of renewed hostilities in Ukraine continue to loom.
READ MORE:
German sociologists on Crimea’s choice
By Konstantin KOSARETSKY | Oriental Review | February 10, 2015
A few days ago an interesting study, “The Socio-Political Sentiments in Crimea,” was released by the Ukrainian branch of GfK, the well-known German social research organization, as part of the Free Crimea initiative. Intriguingly, the primary objectives of this project, launched with the support of the governmental Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, were to “debunk aggressive Russian propaganda” and to “reintegrate Crimea into Ukraine.” Thus the researchers can hardly be suspected of being Russian sympathizers. So let’s take a look at the results.
The attitudes of Crimeans were studied in January 2015. This representative sample included 800 respondents living on the peninsula, from all age and social categories. The poll had an error margin of 3.5%.
In answer to the most important question: “Do you endorse Russia’s annexation of Crimea?” 82% of the respondents answered “yes, definitely,” and another 11% – “yes, for the most part.” Only 2% gave an unambiguously negative response, and another 2% offered a relatively negative assessment. Three percent did not specify their position.
We feel that this study fully validates the results of the referendum on reunification with Russia that was held on March 16, 2014. At that time 83% of Crimeans went to the polling stations and almost 97% expressed support for reunification.
Ukrainians continue to question whether this was a credible outcome, but it is now backed up by the data obtained by the Germans. The 82% of the respondents who expressed their full confidence in the results of the Russian election make up the core of the electorate who turned up at the ballot boxes on March 16, 2014.
These figures are also relevant in terms of another important question. The former chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, Mustafa Dzhemilev, has repeatedly stated that all Tatars on the peninsula are opposed to reunification with Russia. Dzhemilev’s statements have been widely quoted by the media, which present them as entirely authoritative and undisputed.
But let’s think about that – Crimean Tatars make up 12% of the Crimean population, yet only 4% of those polled conveyed disapproval of Crimea’s reunification with Russia. And that 4% very likely includes not only Tatars, but also Ukrainians and citizens of other ethnicities. There’s an inconsistency here. Of course further study is needed on this issue, but the results obtained by GFK cast doubt on whether Mustafa Dzhemilev or the entire Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars is an accurate barometer of the feelings of the Crimean Tatar community.
Those few respondents who disapproved reunification were then asked “Why do you fully or mostly disapprove annexation?” Only 20% of them (i.e., less than 1% of the total sample) claimed that they preferred to live in the state of Ukraine. The most common response, offered by 55% of those who opposed reunification, was “Annexations was not fully legitimate, it should be brought into accord with the international law.” Which means that, in theory, they do not object to the idea of living in Russia, but rather question the legitimacy of the transition.
No doubt it would be a good idea to hold such a referendum under the auspices of international legislation and in accordance with Ukrainian law. But would laws ever be passed that would grant Ukrainian regions the right to secede? Back in the totalitarian Soviet Union, Ukraine exercised its right to a referendum without a single shot being fired, while in “democratic Ukraine,” separatists are either burned alive as in Odessa, or are shot along with the elderly and children as is happening in the Donbass.
In answer to a question about their financial circumstances, 21% of Crimeans said that in the last year their position had “improved significantly,” while another 30% claimed it had “somewhat improved.” Only 13% of that population has experienced a setback, to a greater or lesser extent. This suggests that, despite EU sanctions on the peninsula’s economy, and despite Ukraine’s partial blockade on communication from Crimea, the reunification with Russia has provided most Crimeans with material gains. But even among those who have not reaped those sorts of benefits, there are few signs of nostalgia for their old Ukrainian citizenship: although 13% of citizens have seen their financial well-being decline, only 4% disapprove of the reunification with Russia. These figures suggest that economic sanctions are an ineffective means of persuading the residents of the Crimea to view Ukraine more favorably.
The results of the survey indicate that 28% of the residents of the peninsula regularly watch Ukrainian TV, and another 20% regularly consult Ukrainian news websites. This proves that no steps have been taken in Crimea to restrict access to Ukrainian sources of information, such as Ukraine has done in relation to Russian media.
And now the moment of truth: “What is your opinion of what is being written by the Ukrainian media about Crimea?” Who could be a more objective judge on this issue than the residents of the peninsula themselves? Who else but they – who have been fated to experience all the pros and cons of both Ukrainian and Russian citizenship – could better evaluate the accuracy of the information being published? Perhaps no one.
However, only 1% of those surveyed reported that the Ukrainian media “provides entirely truthful information” and 4% said it was “more often truthful than deceitful.” But 45% of respondents see “completely untrue information” on Ukrainian TV, and another 35% claim those broadcasts are “more often deceitful than truthful.” The rest either do not watch Ukrainian news programs or do not pay attention to information in those programs about Crimea.
This is the verdict on the contemporary Ukrainian press, as handed down by an impartial panel of eight hundred jurors.
But if those who shape the media coverage in Ukraine today are so biased in regard to Crimea, how can we expect them to report objectively on other critical problems associated with this country? Can we trust Kiev’s official stance on the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17? Or on the causes of the humanitarian crisis in the Donbass? Or on the presence of Russian troops inside Ukraine? Or on the human fatalities in Odessa or the victims of the “Heavenly Hundred”?
GfK’s study demands a clear answer to these questions.
Konstantin Kosaretsky is the Ukrainian freelance journalist and writer.





Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.