181 people killed, 293 injured in Kiev military op in eastern Ukraine
RT | June 3, 2014
Kiev’s military operation in eastern Ukraine has left 181 people killed, including 59 of ruling regime troops, and 293 injured, according to the country’s Prosecutor General.
Oleg Makhnitsky announced the recent figures at a press conference. However, it was not clear whether the death toll included casualties among self-defense forces.
The Prosecutor General has also added that over 220 people have been abducted, including 12 foreign citizens, since the uprising started in Lugansk and Donetsk Regions.
“Six hundred and seventy-five criminal enterprises connected with subversive activities, terrorist acts, and violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine are currently being investigated,” Makhnitsky told the media.
Kiev has been conducting its “anti-terrorist operation” in eastern Ukraine since April, following a mass uprising against the coup-appointed government, demanding broader independence from the capital.
Following the May 11 referendums, in which the Lugansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic voted for the two regions’ independence and proclaimed themselves sovereign states, the military operation by Kiev troops has intensified.
The day after the presidential elections on May 25, the likely winner, billionaire Petro Poroshenko, announced that the military operation in the southeast of the country would continue, demanding “it must be more effective, and military units must be better equipped.”
Just a few hours after the early results of the elections were announced, Ukrainian troops stepped up their military activity and deployed fighter jets and helicopters at Donetsk International Airport in an attempt to win it back from self-defense forces.
More than 50 civilians and as many self-defense troops were killed in the subsequent clashes, local militia estimated.
On Wednesday, May 28, Kiev troops targeted civilian quarters of Slavyansk, for the first time shelling one of the city’s schools and a kindergarten.
All the pupils and teachers were quickly evacuated from the school as the shell hit the roof and exploded right above the hall where children played.
The shelling also damaged a block of flats and a dormitory in the city’s teachers’ college, shattering glass in the windows of the college.
Shortly afterwards, the Ukrainian military shelled a children’s hospital, also in Slavyansk.
This past weekend, over a thousand people rallied in Donetsk demanding that children be protected from Kiev’s assault.
The Kiev forces quickly blamed the violence on self-defense units, which they refer to as “terrorists.”
NATO encouraging Kiev to use force: Russian envoy
Russian envoy to NATO Alexander Grushko
Press TV – June 2, 2014
Russia’s envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) says the western military alliance is “encouraging” the Kiev authorities to use force against pro-Moscow activists in eastern Ukraine.
Alexander Grushko made the remarks in a meeting with ambassadors of NATO member states in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Monday, Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency reported.
“NATO is providing Kiev … with technical support, thus encouraging the continuation of forceful actions,” Grushko said.
The Russian official also accused NATO of adding to tensions in the eastern Ukrainian provinces by conducting “unprecedented” activities near Russia’s borders.
He further noted that the military alliance is hampering efforts to find a peaceful solution to the current turmoil in the former Soviet state.
On May 6, NATO launched military drills in Estonia with a record-breaking number of 6,000 troops from a number of allied countries, including the US, the UK, Latvia and Lithuania. The alliance has also deployed fighter jets and naval vessels to Lithuania and Poland as well as to Romania.
Tensions between Russia and the West heightened after Ukraine’s Autonomous Republic of Crimea integrated into the Russian Federation following a referendum on March 16.
The United States and its European allies accuse Moscow of destabilizing Ukraine and have slapped a number of sanctions against Russian and pro-Russia figures.
Russia, however, rejects the accusation, saying the pro-Moscow protests in Ukraine began spontaneously against the new interim government in Kiev.
Le Pen on Ukraine crisis: US pursuing own interests, not those of EU
RT | June 1, 2014
The EU is responsible for the developments in Ukraine, French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen said in an interview, stressing the bloc should have its own opinion on global events and not slavishly follow the America’s lead.
“The EU added fuel to the fire by offering the partnership to the country where half of the population is looking to the East,” Le Pen told Der Spiegel newspaper.
Le Pen said she supports federalization in crisis-torn Ukraine, where the coup-appointed government has launched a massive military operation in the country’s eastern regions. The offensive has already claimed dozens of lives, both among the militias and local civilians. Schools, a kindergarten and hospitals in several cities have come under fire.
The French leader warned the EU against falling into Washington’s steps, as those have nothing to do with Europe’s interests.
“The United States is trying to expand their influence in the world and first of all in Europe. They are pursuing their own interests, not ours,” Le Pen said.
She went as far as to call the EU “an anti-democratic monster,” where people’s right to self-determination is stolen.
“I want to stop it [the EU] getting fatter, continuing to breathe, touching everything with its paws and reaching into all areas of our legislation with its tentacles,” she said.
Earlier Le Pen repeatedly stated that Russia is being unfairly “demonized” and that the campaign against the Russian political administration has been cooked up at the highest levels of EU leadership, with the implicit support of the US.
“I am surprised a Cold War on Russia has been declared in the European Union,” she said at a meeting with Russia’s State Duma speaker Sergey Naryshkin in April. “It’s not in line with traditional, friendly relations, or with the economic interests of our country or EU countries and harms future relations.”
Le Pen’s National Front far-right party in France has been steadily gaining popularity and scored a triumphant success in the latest EU elections by gaining around 25 percent of the votes.
Who was Maidan snipers’ mastermind?
Andriy Parubiy
By Adam Larson | Oriental Review | May 29, 2014
The probe into the Maidan “snipers problem” – by the new Ukrainian government underwritten by it – continues. On May 13, the fascinating interim findings were partly revealed, at a press conference called by parliamentary investigation head Gennady Moskal. Bullet forensics exonerated the previously blamed Berkut security force. Something in the findings also placed the unidentified shooters somewhere – unspecified – among “the ranks of the protesters.” It could even have been the EuroMaidan militants, he admitted, but MP Moskal thought infiltrators from the government’s security service SBU made more sense.
He predicted decades of debate with no resolution, and a week later he announced that a number of key documents were destroyed, complicating the search. But whatever led the investigators to this apparently dead-end admission, it seemed like a break in the script that put the snipers in areas secured by the government of then-president Viktor Yanukovych. For those following the details, the May 13 revelation seemed like a bit of realism creeping in.
But then the current Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council – Andriy Parubiy – stepped forward, hinting at a divergent probe delving further into fantasy. His investigation blames Russia and Vladimir Putin for the snipers, even though it was Parubiy – not Putin – who was supposed to secure the “EuroMaidan” where, the evidence increasingly says, the problem snipers operated.
Sniper Commandant?
While he insists he’s not a fascist, Andriy Parubiy co-founded the Nazi-inspired Social National party, now Svoboda, in the 1990s. Outwardly, he went mainstream early on, and joined Yulia Tymoshenko’s Fatherland party, running security operations on the Maidan for the 2004 “Orange Revolution.”
In 2013-14’s more violent regime-change “protests,” he was given the same responsibility. As Euromaidan Commandant and head of the Self-Defense Committee, he was in charge of security for areas where the mob’s authority had overridden the government’s.
We now know (partly from MP Moskal) that – on the pivotal day of February 20, which will remain the main focus of this report – sniper shots first hit police forces, and came from buildings Parubiy controlled. Ukraine’s previous head of the Security Service (SBU) Alexander Yakimenko said so in March, after fleeing to Russia. When the Commandant proved unable to stop the sniping, which everyone claimed to be against, Yakimenko says he offered to send in a unit to help. He only needed a guarantee his men wouldn’t be shot by Parubiy’s, but he says that was denied. From all this, the SBU chief deduced the snipers were under Parubiy’s command and protection.
In truth, this failure to stop the killing could be due to malice, or incompetence, or some mix. Whatever the case, the resulting bloodshed was all but necessary for the Kiev Cabal to finally take over. And considering his eminent competence, they made Parubiy security chief for all of Ukraine as soon as they could.
Sniper Investigator?
Reports from early March, before the Yakimenko accusations, spoke of a parliamentary investigation Parubiy himself was selected to lead. The apparent conflict of interest may, or may not, be why MP Moskal now seems to be in charge of that.
But in a May 21 interview for Euractiv, Parubiy speaks of a probe that sounds different, a probe blaming Russian Special forces – Spetsnaz – for penetrating his security cordon. Asked about the snipers, with the note “you must have first-hand information,” he sidestepped his own direct knowledge and told Euractiv:
“Now that we are conducting investigations, we have found that 18 Spetsnaz, including snipers, were in Maidan. The investigation will reveal from which points they were shooting, but I can already say that they did everything they could to spill blood and provoke civil unrest.”
…
“We have a working hypothesis which would be confirmed or rejected by the investigation, that in the most difficult days they shot equally – at Berkut and at the Maidan activists. Their aim was to instigate a more violent civic unrest … that Russia could warm its hands at this fire.”
…
“We know that Russian snipers shot at both sides.”
As Washington’s Blog noted in March, “everyone agrees that the snipers were false flag terrorists sowing chaos and confusion. … they only disagree about who the responsible party is.” This is another example, and (as we’ll see) the worst theory yet. And just look at who is trying to feed it to us.
Master Thug
From February 18-20, security forces and civilians were, as Parubiy says, killed somewhat “equally” by these snipers to create “violent civic unrest.” But there was a telling pattern to how different parts of that were timed.
First, consider how ten unarmed policemen were shot dead the night of February 18th, forcing a decision to bring in armed security forces. That allowed later killings to be realistically blamed on them, as happened. (Were these the same provocateurs present a day and a half later, or a different shift?)
By the 20th, a force was assembled on the Maidan adequate to stomp the police out by noon and shoot the Berkut out of their nearest posts by 12:45. They even blocked the train bringing in the Army support, and readied to march up to the central government’s buildings and stomp whomever they wished. This force was under Parubiy’s leadership no later than his announcement early on the 21st that “all the leaders of the hundreds are declaring their consent to coordinated action, including the hundreds of the Right Sector … We’re in control of Kiev. We have seized control of the government quarter.”
It was only at that shift in power that the Parubiy “Spetsnaz snipers” unleashed their main killing spree. On video and within bare minutes, they picked off at least 30 unarmed civilians sent in behind the Hotel Ukraine, to top off “Heaven’s Hundred.” That is, this un-ambiguous, unforgivable “Yanukovych crime” was delivered as soon as the natural punishment for it had been placed.
Commandant Parubiy, who oversaw the distribution and timing of much of that violence, couldn’t deny its pattern helped them, as he said to Euractiv, “oust Yanukovich.” That prompted the question:
Q: So you recognize that you ousted Yanukovich?
A: Yes. He ran away.
Q: But he ran away because he was afraid for his life?
A: Yes of course. After so many deaths and such national tension, he understood that if he didn’t run away, the personal consequences could be very bad.
Under this plausible threat, the president fled. An 1:36 pm announcement from the Maidan ordered members of Parliament to meet at 3:00 to vote him out for good. They were given “a guarantee that the Parliament would not be stormed during the session.” The “hundreds” just snatched that option, but promised not to use it – unless maybe they were provoked by a wrong vote. In the end most of Parliament was willing to show up on the 22nd instead, and those agreed unanimously to impeach Yanukovych – and not be stomped. After all, Parubiy’s Maidan machine still controlled Kiev.
Confirming Yakimenko’s Charges
When he spoke on May 13, investigation head Gennady Moskal did not specify any sniper perches, just implied that they were behind the lines Parubiy was in charge of. By noon on the 20th, this had expanded to include at least the Maidan at large, the Trade Unions Hall (Maidan HQ), the Conservatory, and Hotel Ukraine. The October Palace and unknown other buildings fell into his hands just after noon.
Former SBU chief Yakimenko said in March the first shots “came from the Philharmonic Hall,” probably meaning the (musical) Conservatory. After that, “many have witnessed 20 people leaving the building” with their sniper gear in bags. These “split into two groups – 10 men each.” One of these “took a position at the Ukraine hotel,” right next-door, and “the Security Service lost track” of the other sniper team.
Parubiy must know by now where the snipers were, but he doesn’t want to tell us yet. The probe “will reveal from which points they were shooting,” he promises.
Yakimenko said “no weapons could be brought to Maidan without Parubiy’s permission. Hand guns, rifles, scopes – he had to agree to all of that.”
In one report, Parubiy gave a rough count of those armed with handguns – about 100. But he said “those people are not ours, they are unorganized,” just like the snipers. “This is kind of a problem.” This when he also said “we created a headquarters in the Maidan and we will not tolerate any action without coordinating with it.”
As mentioned above, Yakimenko says he offered to help Parubiy flush out the gunmen, but was rebuffed. If true, that suggests either a criminal denial of his incompetence, or the commandant’s active approval of the killing.
The SBU chief has a 20-man sniper team in Parubiy’s turf. The man who would know might refer to the same group when he speaks of “18 Spetsnaz, including snipers.” Maybe 20 was a visual estimate, and the “Russians” split up into groups of nine?
One might expect Parubiy to be embarrassed that his own secured buildings were so infiltrated, but he puts the villains “in Maidan.” The original claims of February had the snipers in or on government-held buildings further southeast. Why can’t he just say that now? Why openly claim such a humiliating security breach unless the alternative is even worse?
Parubiy even claims he failed to stop the snipers on the way back out. After sneaking in and unleashing this mayhem, they walked away from the Maidan undetected, and “I think they escaped from Ukraine,” he told Euractiv.
But it was reported at the time that two snipers were caught by his teams, one at least in the Hotel Ukraine. At mid-day on the 20th, an official tweet said, “members of Maidan Self-Defense captured one of the snipers. He is currently in Maidan headquarters.” But a different “Maidan commandant” – Stepan Kubiv – said he was just there and didn’t hear any such thing. A message of the 21st said a “sniper was caught on the 10th floor of the Hotel Ukraina … Personality to be identified,” but it never was. A later one heard that “maidan activists caught two snipers” total, but the source said nothing about their fate or identities.
If they were caught red-handed, why doesn’t Parubiy mention these snipers now? Did they even exist, outside these vague reports? Were they real, but managed to escape? Or did Parubiy order them released? The balance of reasons suggests the killers were under his command and protection, as Yakimenko said, and as the evidence always suggested.
Clearly Commandant Parubiy, of the February “Failures,” is not the best one to be speaking about the Maidan snipers. Expect the May interview to be his last word on that bloodshed.
Postscript: “Ensuring Peace and Safety”
In more promising areas, Andriy Parubiy remains the go-to guy. As the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, he’s now tasked with the brutal and confusing “anti–terrorist” operation in eastern Ukraine, and apparently in Odessa. This he wages with a “National Guard” that grew out of his murky Maidan machine, against those Ukrainians who dare to vote against the Kiev Cabal, pushing Ukraine deeper into civil war territory with violence he always blames on “Russian terrorists.”
Helping overturn two popular votes for Yanukovych, ensuring a third overthrow will never be needed, plus his new “security” work, has earned Parubiy friends in the “Democratic” West. He spoke to Euractiv while in Brussels, he said, “to participate in a session of the Ukraine-NATO working group” regarding the Russian “hybrid war” against Ukraine. As he explained it:
“When we speak about fighting terrorists, the best way is to find their centre of coordination, of financing. In this case, this centre is one person, it is Putin. That’s why I say – we have no crisis in Slavyansk, in Donetsk, in Luhansk. We have a crisis in Putin’s head. … if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, nobody can tell where his tanks will be tomorrow. … To stop Putin is not only Ukraine’s major goal. It should be the goal of the entire civilized world.”
In Parubiy’s dangerously unhinged thinking, even the massacre at the Trade Unions building in Odessa on May 2 “was a classic provocation in which pro-Russian groups had to seize the administration buildings in the same way it happened in Donetsk and Luhansk.” But this time, the anti-Putsch activists were clearly chased in, and followed in, by an ultra-nationalist lynch mob. He also contradicts himself by claiming the building was already “a kind of headquarters for the separatists,” where “the substance that provoked the blaze” was brought in by them “a long time ago.”
That’s why, he says, “when Molotov cocktails were thrown from the fourth floor at the participants of the Ukrainian rally, the substance inflamed” and an “explosion happened.”
Of course, on-site video and photos prove this was terrorism, and it seems the mob torched the building largely to hide their brutal murder of perhaps 272 citizens. That Parubiy was there to help coordinate it, after attending a top-level April 24 meeting to plan the Odessa “counter-terrorist” operation, makes it seem like state-sponsored terrorism. A former deputy head of the Odessa police, now fled to Donetsk, blames Parubiy for personally organizing the massacre. He was seen there on April 29th, delivering bulletproof vests to one Mykola Volkov – a criminal deputized as a “sotnik” (the term used for commanders of “hundreds” on the Maidan). Volkov was later seen shooting a pistol at the Trade Unions building, wearing a bulletproof vest, and phoning in a false story – possibly to Parubiy himself.
With Ukrainians all united but Moscow’s agents everywhere, the “security” chief told Euractiv, they needed an “overhaul” of “the entire security and defense sector,” and maybe civil society too, including “criminal groups” and “ethnic groups.”
The NATO allies had just heard the same and understood, promising “extensive support to the Ukrainian delegation” – including this false-flagging fascist thug – considering their “crucial role in ensuring peace and safety in Europe and the world.” Further, they “expressed readiness” to help in “reform” of the Parubiy’s defense and security sectors.
Events in Odessa, Maruipol, and elsewhere might have convinced the Cabal’s double-speaking Western allies that civil society “overhauls” are best left to Parubiy and his “Ukrainian rally” types.
Shells hit school, kindergarten in Slavyansk amid Ukraine military op
RT | May 28, 2014
A school and a kindergarten have been shelled in Slavyansk as the city becomes increasingly unsafe in the intensified Kiev military campaign. At least 9 civilians were injured in Wednesday’s shelling incidents, including a child.
Ukrainian mortar shells have for weeks been raining down on the checkpoints and positions of the Slavyansk self-defense, but much of the shelling occurred outside the city. Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli and his Russian interpreter, veteran human rights activist Andrey Mironov, were almost “torn to pieces” in one such shelling.
However, this week the battleground apparently moved right into civilian quarters of Slavyansk, as shells started hitting residential blocks and nearby buildings, killing three people on Monday.
On Wednesday, there was a shocking reminder of how the situation might unfold if the new president-elect Petro Poroshenko pushes on with the military operation in the region, as shells struck the city’s streets, yards, a school and a kindergarten.
RT talked to a male schoolteacher from Slavyansk school number 13, who asked not to be named.
“Around midday there was a loud explosion in the school, and I fell to the floor, taking cover,” the teacher told RT over the phone.
The man said that he rushed to the corridor to assemble all the teachers and children in the school and take them to a safe place. Clouds of dust were billowing on one side of the building.
According to the teacher, it turned out that the shell exploded right above the school hall, where children are usually gathered for festive events, and part of the roof “was simply blown away.”
Luckily, no children were in the hall at the time. All the pupils and teachers were quickly evacuated to the basement.
It was not immediately clear, if there were any casualties in the kindergarten or other places shelled in Slavyansk, but the Rossiya-24 channel reported that 9 people were injured in total, including a 4-year-old boy. The channel’s crew narrowly escaped a direct hit by a mortar shell, as it fell “literally next to our car.”
Photos of the sites of Wednesday’s mortar attacks emerged on social media, showing partially destroyed buildings, craters in the roads, and what appeared to be blood.
The Kiev forces quickly laid the blame on self-defense units, which they refer to as “terrorists.”
“Currently, we are confirming the information on the terrorists’ shelling of the residential quarters and the territory of the school in Slavyansk,” the commander of Kiev’s military operation in southeastern Ukraine, Vladislav Seleznyov, wrote on his Facebook page.
Meanwhile, several funerals of those killed in Monday’s shelling were held in Slavyansk on Wednesday. According to the latest reports, four people have died from shrapnel wounds since then.
The shelling damaged a block of flats and a dormitory in the city’s teachers’ college, shattering glass in the windows of the college. Power lines and, reportedly, a city water pipeline were damaged and disrupted by the blasts.
Putin to Kiev: End violence against people
Press TV – May 27, 2014
Russia has called on Ukraine to put an end to violence against people after dozens of civilians were killed in clashes in the main airport of the self-proclaimed Republic of Donetsk.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called for an immediate end to military operations in eastern Ukraine, accusing Kiev of carrying out “punitive” operations against the citizens.
Putin “underlined the need for an immediate end to the military’s punitive operation in southeastern regions and the establishment of peaceful dialogue between Kiev and regional representatives,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
This is while Kiev said it has regained control of the main airport in Donetsk.
Ukraine Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the airport is now under full government control following a day of fierce clashes.
Meanwhile, Donetsk Mayor Oleksandr Lukyanchenko said 40 people, including two civilians, have been killed in the airport clashes.
On Monday, pro-Russia protesters moved to seize the airport.
The Ukrainian army used combat jets and helicopter gunships to repel the move.
The government in Kiev has been staging military operations since mid-April in the eastern and southern regions in a bid to root out pro-Moscow demonstrations.
Ukraine’s President-elect Petro Poroshenko pledged on Monday to put an end to the war and bring peace to the former Soviet state. The 48-year-old chocolate tycoon has also ruled out negotiations with pro-Russian activists, vowing to continue military operations in the country’s southeastern provinces.
The business behind Ukraine’s new billionaire president
RT | May 26, 2014
One of Ukraine’s richest men, newly elected President Pyotr Poroshenko, has a long history of mixing business with politics. The tycoon has vowed to give up his business interests, and campaigned to align closer to Europe.
In 1991, the Odessa native took over an old state-run sweet factory shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed, and now the ‘Roshen’ candy company has made the 48-year old one of the country’s richest men, with his fortune estimated at $1.3 billion by Forbes.
He will be in charge of reviving Ukraine’s moribund economy, which has been in free-fall for the better part of a year. Poroshenko will have to juggle huge debts, a nearly empty treasury, and a sinking investment climate.
Primarily Poroshenko will be tasked with helping Ukraine manage its $17 billion International Monetary Fund aid program, which will likely include unpopular austerity measures like gas subsidy cuts. Ukraine has been promised over $27 billion in economic aid from various sources, including the European Commission, World Bank, and the United States government.
The chocolate tycoon has expressed his willingness to mend ties with Russia, even after it imposed a ban on the sale of his chocolate, as well as shut down one of his warehouses in southern Russia on criminal charges.
However, Poroshenko has vowed to unite the unruly east, which has deep business and cultural ties to Russia. His company, Rosen, though it wants to focus on the European market, is deeply rooted in the east. Rosen operates confectionery factories in Kiev, Vinnytsia, Mariupol, and Kremenchuk, the Bershadmoloko dairy producer, a stud farm in Ukraine and confectionary facilities in Klaipeda, Lithuania and Lipetsk, Russia
“I assure you, as soon as we’ll achieve stability in the east and these problems in Ukraine will be solved, the investment boom will immediately begin,” Poroshenko declared at a press conference in Zaporozhye on May 18.
Poroshenko has worked across the political spectrum. Originally, he served in pro-Russian governments, and then he played a big role in the 2004-2005 ‘Orange Revolution’ along with Yulia Tymoshenko, which ended up bringing Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency. Later, in 2012, he served as an economics minister to Viktor Yanukovich, but when Yanukovich was ousted, he sided with the Maidan.
The expert’s opinion “Petro Poroshenko is a bright representative of the Ukrainian oligarchy. He was actively participating in the financing of Maidan and he has a certain support abroad,” Andrey Pilko, the director of the Eurasian communication center told RT by phone.
Poroshenko’s program is aimed “to provide Ukrainian production access to the world markets. To sign the economic part of the free trade agreement with EU, and to implement its provisions in a short time…The agrarian side may become a breakout point for the Ukrainian economy”.
Poroshenko described relations with Russia as “the most difficult”.
“I don’t remember such a crisis between our countries for the last 200 years. Nevertheless, the negotiations are progressing it is the Geneva format. I think that today we can conduct negotiations with Russia involving the US, EU and in other formats,” the billionaire said.
He also promised to sell-off his business if he won the presidency.
“I would like to put an example to others when the elected president publicly sells business assets belonging to him in order to achieve a complete concentration on state service,” Poroshenko said.
However, he remarked that he does not see any problems when a successful businessman begins making policy, “when he is the person who has experience in the real economy, who has created jobs. Who is the largest taxpayer and is able to build factories and plants and applies the experience to lift the economy and the country”.
‘Ukraine must pay gas debts’ – EU Energy Commissioner
RT | May 26, 2014
EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said Ukraine needs to begin repaying its $3.5 billion gas debt to Russia and proposed a fair ‘market price’ of between $200-$400 per 1,000 cubic meters to resolve the dispute.
“The bills are on the table, and they must be paid,” Oettinger said on German radio station SWR on Monday after holding talks in Berlin with Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Gazprom Deputy CEO Aleksandr Medvedev.
Oettinger suggests Ukraine use some of the $3.2 billion from its first IMF aid tranche and other EU assistance programs to start paying off its debt to Gazprom.
Ukraine owes Russian state-owned Gazprom more than $3.5 billion, as it has not paid its gas bills in full since July 2013. Russia has even given Ukraine 10 billion cubic meters of gas free of charge, as much as Russia delivers to Poland in a year.
President Vladimir Putin said that Russia is only ready to discuss a new gas discount for Ukraine once it starts paying off its debt.
Oettinger said that a “fair and suitable market price” to resolve the dispute would be between $200-$400, which the commissioner considers “common for the European market.”
Kiev has said it is ready to pay Russia as long as Gazprom lowers its current rate of $485 per 1,0000 cubic meters. The price climbed when Gazprom canceled two gas discounts from the $268.50 per 1,000 cubic meters rate it paid in the first three months of 2014.
After June 1, Ukraine will have to prepay for any gas deliveries, as Gazprom said it won’t let any more debt accumulate.
“There are some barriers to indulgence, some things we cannot afford,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said speaking at the 18th annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum on Saturday.
Europe sources about one third of its total energy supply from Russia, 50 percent of which flows through Ukraine. Any possible disruption therefore not only affects the pipeline host country, but all of Europe.
“We all know who is to blame – the transit country, Ukraine has abused its position. Ukraine insists on benefits it is not entitled to,” Putin said at the forum on Saturday.
Oettinger has been a major player in brokering a deal between the two embittered nations, but so far no concrete negotiation has been reached.
Three foreign journalists caught in violence near Slavyansk, two possibly dead – reports
RT | May 24, 2014
An Italian reporter and his interpreter may have been shot dead and a French photographer has been wounded near the city of Slavyansk, in eastern Ukraine, as their car came under fire, Russian media report.
The injured French journalist identified as William Roguelon has been taken to a local hospital where he received treatment and managed to leave the facility on his own.
Roguelon, from the hospital reached Agence France Presse (AFP) and described how out of nowhere their vehicle was bombarded with mortar shells.
“Before that we heard Kalashnikov shots,” Roguelon was quoted by the Italian tgcom24. “Then the mortar shells rained down all around,” he said claiming to have heard up 60 explosions as they tried to hide in the “middle of a ditch.”
The man, who works as a freelance photographer, has told Russian media that after the shooting he saw his Italian colleagues lying on the ground not moving, Rossiya 24 channel reported.
“In the village of Andreyevka, not far from Slavyansk, an Italian journalist and his interpreter have been shot dead and a French correspondent wounded. Their car came under fire,” a source from the self-defense forces has told RIA Novosti.
The area around the city of Slavyansk has been gripped by violence on Saturday, a day before the scheduled presidential election. Shooting was reported in the village of Semyonovka, where a psychiatric hospital has been partly ruined in a fight between Kiev troops and self-defense forces. Witnesses said a shell hit the roof of the hospital.
According to reports, shooting, artillery and machine-gun fire have been heard in the outskirts of Semyonovka starting Friday night.
Shell-holes can be seen in the ground all around the village. Smoke was reportedly seen billowing from at least three locations in Slavyansk on Saturday.
Update May 25th:
Fascism or the Bankruptcy of the Left?
The anti-EU movement spreads all over Europe… apart from Ukraine*
By TAKIS FOTOPOULOS | The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 9, Nos. 1/2 (2013)
The events in Ukraine have been instructive, even though the mass media of the Transnational Elite (TE) have created the false impression that there has been a popular “revolution” there by cretins fighting for their right to become the TE’s slaves within the EU, so that they may starve like the Greek people! But I will not dwell here on the orange “revolution” that has just been staged in this country by the pro-western bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie of Kiev, with the decisive assistance of the provocateurs of the TE’s intelligence services who organized it[1], but rather on the two main lessons to be learned from it, which are especially important for all European peoples and, in particular, for the Greek people.
Firstly, social struggle in the era of neoliberal globalization can no longer be just a struggle for social liberation, as obsolete Marxists still believe today and some Trotskyites have always believed even during the Nazi occupation when they called upon German workers in the Nazi army to fraternize with occupied workers, while some “Marxists” and “anarchists” today still call for similar fraternization between the Zionist occupiers in Israel and the occupied Palestinians! The struggle for social liberation today must, first and foremost, be a struggle for national liberation. This becomes obvious when one considers the fact that, when a country (not belonging to the TE, i.e. mainly the “G7”) is incorporated into neoliberal globalization, it loses every trace of economic and, consequently, national sovereignty. This is why the struggle for social liberation today is inconceivable unless it has already gone through national liberation. The occupying troops that are now destroying and plundering Greece (or Portugal, Spain and Italy) and its weakest social strata (with the full cooperation of a small, local privileged elite which controls the media, the political parties, the “Left” intelligentsia etc.) are not a regular army in uniform and with lethal weapons of physical violence at their disposal, but an economic army in suits, possessing equally lethal instruments of economic violence, as well as the means to justify it.
Secondly, the target of social struggle today can only be neoliberal globalization, which is managed by a TE ensuring that only its own bogus revolutions succeed (the orange “revolutions” in Eastern Europe in the past[2] and today, or the pseudo-uprisings in Libya,[3] Syria, etc.) while even the attempted uprisings of the TE’s victims in Greece and elsewhere are suppressed in the most brutal way as soon as they occur – and yet Baroness Ashton finds nothing wrong with this, nor does she detect any violation of human rights occurring. Similarly, the peoples who resist being integrated into neoliberal globalization are condemned to remorseless slaughter, as the Libyan and Syrian people have been. Nevertheless, the impudent Barroso did not hesitate to declare that human rights had been violated in Ukraine when the police dared to beat “protesters” who attacked government buildings with bulldozers, “forgetting” that such conduct in any other “democratic” EU country would have sent many to the morgue!
In other words, contrary to the misleading propaganda of the degenerate “Left”, globalization is not a chimera, or just a continuation of the internationalization of the market economy taking place at the beginning of the last century, but, rather, a systemic phenomenon which can only be neoliberal within the capitalist system, as can easily be shown. Similarly, neoliberalism is neither a doctrine (of “shock” and similar fairy tales)[4] nor the bad policy making of certain “bad” neoliberal politicians and economists. It is simply the ideology of globalization. Neoliberal globalization is, in other words, the necessary institutional framework that ensures the opening and liberalization of the markets (capital, goods and labor), which is required for the effective operation of the transnational corporations that currently control the globalized economy.
On the basis of this analytical framework it is not surprising that an unprecedented mass movement “from below” is currently spreading throughout Europe, challenging the EU directly but also neoliberal globalization indirectly. This movement is essentially comprised of the victims of globalization who are driven to mass unemployment and poverty, as well as to homelessness, starvation or even suicide. These popular strata sooner or later become aware of the fraud of the degenerate “Left”, which consciously misleads them by claiming that the current disaster could be overcome even within the EU, despite the loss of economic and national sovereignty. Then, these strata inevitably turn to nationalist movements of all kinds, since these are the only ones that raise the anti-EU flag: from patriotic to neo-Nazi movements – depending on the local conditions. But this nationalism, which both the Transnational and Zionist elites condemn with such disgust (at the very moment when the strongest nationalist state today is the Zionist one!), has little to do with the prewar aggressive nationalism that led to two World Wars. It is a new kind of nationalism which is fundamentally defensive and does not aim to conquer new “vital space” etc. like the pre-WWII nationalism. Above all, it aims to “protect” national sovereignty (national culture, domestic labor, etc.) that is under threat from the opening and liberalization of the markets imposed by globalization.
The main reason that these popular strata have been turning to nationalist movements is, therefore, not that they have suddenly become fascist (as the TE claims in an attempt to defame them); it is the bankruptcy of the degenerate “Left” which, rather than raising the anti-EU flag in place of the nationalists to promote a struggle for social and national liberation, is engaged in “antifascist” struggles together with privileged “leftists”. It is not surprising, then, that this “Left” implicitly consents to the passing of “anti-fascist” legislation, as required by the Transnational and Zionist elites, so that it may effectively ban such movements that threaten its hegemony. In Greece, for instance, a so-called “anti-racist” bill is now being passed through Parliament, which effectively bans freedom of thought (not action!). This bill means, for example, that if somebody supported the national liberation struggle of the Syrian Baathist leadership against the TE and the criminals, pretending to be rebels, who have destroyed this country, s/he might end up in jail for supporting war crimes against humanity. This is based on a very recent utterly biased report by the well known instrument of the TE, the UN Human Rights Commission, which asserted that as Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights chief, said there is “massive evidence … [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity” and that “the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state”.[5] Of course, neither this committee nor Navi Pillay who once said that “the Commissioner is the voice of the victim everywhere,”[6] nor its blood brothers among the NGOs for human rights (Amnesty International, Human Right Watch, etc.) have ever dreamed of declaring the arch-criminals Bush, Blair et al. to be guilty of war crimes, even though they are responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Presumably, the millions of people killed or maimed by war criminals like them are not victims, according to Mrs Pillay’s definition of a victim!
However, the Greek “Left”, i.e. the SYRIZA party, instead of mobilizing the people against this unashamedly fascist law, has quietly consented to it by merely abstaining from voting (only the Greek Communist Party and the ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party voted against it). It should be noted that SYRIZA, together with its leader, Alexis Tsipras – who has been heavily promoted by the media of the TE – is destined by the same elites to succeed the present parliamentary junta in implementing the same policies but under a “Left” cover. Yet the sordid professional politicians who voted in favor of this openly fascist law dare to speak of democracy and the fight against fascism. This blatant bankruptcy of the “Left” is yet another major reason why a mass popular Front is needed in Greece and in all other countries which have fallen victim to the TE that administers neoliberal globalization, as I stressed in my last article.[7]
* This is an expanded edited version of an article by Takis Fotopoulos under the same title published in the Athens daily Eleftherotypia (8/12/213).
[1] See e.g. Stephen Lendman, “Ukraine: Orange Revolution 2.0?,” Global Research (6/12/2013).
[2] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Ukrainian Crisis and the Transnational Elite,” The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.1, no.4 (July 2005).
[3] Takis Fotopoulos, “The Pseudo-Revolution in Libya and the Degenerate Left,” Part I & Part II, The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Winter-Spring 2011).
[4] See e.g. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (Penguin, 2007).
[5] Ian Black, “Assad implicated in Syrian war crimes, says UN,” The Guardian (3/12/2013).
[6] Jonah Fisher, “Profile: New UN human rights chief,” BBC News (28/7/2008).
[7] Takis Fotopoulos, “Globalization and the End of the Left-Right Divide” (Part I), The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, Vol. 8, Nos. 3/4 (Fall 2012-Winter 2013).
The Chinese-Russian ‘Power of Siberia’ … thanks to EU, US foot-in-mouth
By Dmitry Babich | The BRICS Post | May 22, 2014
The Russian press is rarely unanimous in its opinions, but there are two points in today’s coverage of the Russia-China gas deal where all the experts agree.
First, it is not yet clear whether the new deal is a boon for Russia.
But it is certainly a huge failure for the US and the European Union, who lose out on Eastern Siberia’s gas.
Second, in light of the sharp deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West because of the mishandled Western-supported “revolution” in Ukraine, the deal with China now becomes a strategic necessity for Moscow.
The West’s hostile attitudes toward both Russia and China (during his Asia tour last month, US President Barack Obama sided 100 per cent with Japan and the Philippines in their maritime disputes with China), pushed Beijing and Moscow closer together.
The Russo-Chinese contract, which had been in the works for 10 years, was finalized at 4 O’clock in the morning on Wednesday, on the second day of the visit to Beijing by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
It became a dramatic ending to several months of marathon negotiations.
The new contract is supposed to determine the next 30 years of Russo-Chinese cooperation in developing the Russian natural gas fields in Siberia (the eastern part of Russia) and the Russian Far East.
According to the words of Alexei Miller, the head of Russia’s largest gas company, Gazprom, the total cost of the contract is $400 billion.
The volume of gas to be delivered is estimated at a gargantuan amount of over 1 trillion cubic metres. Mr. Miller refused to reveal the price tag, as it is usually done after signing these sorts of deals.
He simply said it was a “commercial secret” for the moment.
“The Force of Siberia”
Nevertheless, most experts agree that Russia has been lucky to sign the deal.
The competition among countries willing to supply energy to China is very intense.
In the ten years that have passed since the start of Russo-Chinese negotiations on the deal, Beijing managed to sign contracts with several Central Asian states, including Turkmenistan, a country boasting gas deposits second only to Russia’s in the former Soviet Union.
Experts estimate an average price of $387 per thousand cubic metres for the 38 billion cubic meters of gas Russia is going to supply to China in the first years of deliveries beginning in 2018.
The deliveries will start once the construction of the pipeline nicknamed “The Force of Siberia” has been completed.
The pipeline is supposed to connect the Russian gas reserves in Eastern and possibly (in future) Western Siberia with the Chinese border.
The project will require investments, which both Russia and China agreed to provide.
The Russian participation is estimated at $55 billion and the Chinese are expected to add $22 billion.
Alexander Birman, a journalist specializing in energy issues, writes in the respected Russian daily Izvestia that the Chinese leader Xi Jinping showed a certain nicety to his Russian counterpart, since he did not pressure Moscow given its deteriorated ties with the EU and US.
“If the West had started applying the so called “sector-geared” economic sanctions, targeting Russia’s energy companies – if such sanctions had been applied, even the price of $350 [per thousand cubic metres of gas] would look good to Gazprom [Russia’s leading energy provider],” he writes of the gas deal.
However, Birman notes that the current standoff between Russia and the West is hurting first and foremost the West’s long-term interests.
(This standoff was made possible by the coup d’etat in Ukraine at the end of February when the legally elected president Viktor Yanukovich was toppled by crowds of pro-Western protesters in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.)
“Having assured for itself the supply of cheap energy, China will reaffirm its position as the world’s most competitive cost-cutting workshop,” Birman writes.
Obama, the pro-Russian lobbyist?
For Russia, diversifying the directions of its gas supplies has become a vital necessity.
The gas deal opens a market corridor for Gazprom to potentially access Asian super guzzlers Japan and South Korea, and allow it to become a player in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) sector.
This is particularly poignant when considering that EU ministers day and night publicize how they want to decrease their “energy dependence” on Russia.
The Soviet Union and Russia have maintained a good reputation with the West since they began supplying gas to Western Europe in the 1960s.
There was a ‘pause’ only once in the winter of 2008-2009, when the Ukrainian authorities stole the Russian gas destined for Western Europe.
Despite this reputation, however, EU member countries make no secret of their preference for gas from Qatar, Algeria, Norway or even the US, where fracking technology has led to a surplus of gas at the domestic market.
“Politically, the Russo-Chinese contract is a success,” says Grigory Vygon, the Director of the Energy Center of the prestigious Skolkovo Business School, near Moscow.
“The Ukrainian risks and the position of Europe make diversification a vital necessity.”
One could add that Obama revealed himself (inadvertently) to be the best lobbyist for Russo-Chinese rapprochement during his recent visits to countries having territorial disputes with China.
By directly supporting the “revolution” in Kiev and by lending support to all of China’s challengers in the South China Sea and East China Sea, Obama helped Moscow and Beijing to bridge during their intense negotiations the gap in desired prices for their mammoth deal.
~
Dmitry Babich is a senior journalist based in Moscow who has worked with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Moscow News and Ria Novosti. He is currently a political analyst for Voice of Russia.
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