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Kiev snipers shooting from building controlled by Maidan forces – Ex-Ukraine security chief

RT | March 13, 2014

Former chief of Ukraine’s Security Service has confirmed allegations that snipers who killed dozens of people during the violent unrest in Kiev operated from a building controlled by the opposition on Maidan square.

Shots that killed both civilians and police officers were fired from the Philharmonic Hall building in Ukraine’s capital, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine Aleksandr Yakimenko told Russia 1 channel. The building was under full control of the opposition and particularly the so-called Commandant of Maidan self-defense Andrey Parubiy who after the coup was appointed as the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Yakimenko added.

Furthermore the former security chief believes that Parubiy has been in contact with US Special Forces that could have coordinated the assault.

“Shots came from the Philharmonic Hall. Maidan Commandant Parubiy was responsible for this building. Snipers and people with automatic weapons were ‘working’ from this building on February 20. They supported the assault on the Interior Ministry forces on the ground who were already demoralized and have, in fact, fled,” Yakimenko said in an interview with Russian television.

The police officers were chased by a group of rioters armed with various weapons and at that point, Yakimenko says snipers fired at pursuers themselves.

“When the first wave of shootings ended, many have witnessed 20 people leaving the building,” former chief says, noting that they were well-equipped and were carrying military style bag for carrying sniper and assault rifles with optical sights. Not only the law enforcers, but people from the opposition’s Freedom, Right Sector, Fatherland, and Klitschko’s UDAR party have also seen this, Yakimenko claims.

The former security head also said that according to the intelligence those snipers could be foreigners, including mercenaries from former Yugoslavia as well former Special Forces employees from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.

Yakimenko claims that Parubiy was part of a group that was heavily influenced by the people associated with the US secret services. “These were the forces that carried out everything that they were told by their leadership – the United States,” Yakimenko explained, claiming that Maidan leaders practically lived in the US embassy.

According to Yakimenko, during the massacre the opposition leaders contacted him and asked him to deploy special force unit to scoop out the snipers from buildings in central Kiev, but Parubiy made sure that won’t happen.

“The Right Sector and Freedom Party have requested me to use the Alpha group to cleanse these buildings, stripping them from snipers,” Yakimenko said. According to him Ukrainian troops were ready to move in and eliminate the shooters.

“I was ready to do it, but in order to go inside Maidan I had to get the sanction from Parubiy. Otherwise the ‘self-defense’ would attack me in the back. Parubiy did not give such consent,” Yakimenko said noting that the Maidan leader had full authority over the access to weapons on Maidan, and not a single gun including a sniper rifle could get in or out of the square.

Aleksandr Yakimenko’s account supports previously voiced concerns over unknown snipers shooting both protesters and the police indiscriminately – who were the topic of the recently leaked phone conversation between EU’s Catherine Ashton and Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet.

In a leaked phone conversation that took place February 26 Ashton and Paet discussed rumors that snipers were hired by some of the opposition leaders.

“There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition,” Paet said during the conversation. “I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh,” Ashton answered.

Almost 100 people were killed and another 900 injured during the violent standoff near Maidan Square in Kiev last month that forced president Yanukovich out of the country and installed a new government. Ukrainian self-proclaimed authorities maintain that the shooting was authorized by Yanukovich.

On Wednesday Moscow suggested setting up a probe to investigate the crimes perpetrated by extremist and armed elements of the opposition over the past three months. The proposal to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) also seeks to examine the legitimacy of the post-coup Ukrainian government.

Full interview with Aleksandr Yakimenko

March 13, 2014 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Making Mischief in Ukraine

The Neocons Ride Again

By Patrick Foy | CounterPunch | March 12, 2014

An important article, entitled Russia needs to defend its interests with an iron fist, appeared in the Financial Times the other day, to wit, March 5th. It is an analysis of the blowup in Ukraine from a Russian perspective.

The writer, Dr. Sergei Karaganov, makes perfect sense. He is a distinguished academic in Moscow and a leader of Global Zero, the international movement for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Sounds like a great idea and way overdue.

My own outlook is that the imbroglio in the Ukraine was orchestrated by Neoconservative elements in Washington. The Neoconservatives  as you may know, began infiltrating the U.S. Government and the American news media in earnest during the H.W. Bush Administration. They came into glory during the co-consulship of Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush.

In the present instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reacted in a predictable manner to a situation which the Neocons have brought about in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, on the southern flank of Russia. Did the NSC expect Moscow to stand by while Russia’s Black Sea fleet headquartered at Sevastopol in the Crimea was put at risk? Does Washington want a new Cold War? If so, why?

Meddling by Washington in the internal affairs of other nations is certainly nothing new. Such activity must be seen in historical context. It has been the hallmark of U.S. foreign policy since the days of the Spanish-American war in 1898. The immediate consequences have rarely been salubrious for the people on the ground. Under Presidents from both political parties, America became a busybody nation, either looking for trouble or deliberately stirring it up.

Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt are the prime exemplars of outsized trouble-making. Both deliberately lied America into war, while loudly proclaiming that they were trying to keep the country out of war. It is clear in retrospect that Wilson and Roosevelt had serious psychological problems, not the least of which was grandiosity.

In April 1917 Wilson came to the rescue of the gigantic, far-flung British Empire and of its obtuse, myopic leadership in Whitehall. American intervention in the Great War collaterally paved the way for the Soviet Union and handed Palestine, thanks to the Balfour Declaration, over to the Zionists. The outcome of World War I and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 is a Pandora’s box that does not quit. The box continues to disgorge its contents to this day.

As for Roosevelt, he was uniquely responsible for the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939. I’m referring to FDR’s rule-or-ruin, sub rosa foreign policy from 1937 onward with respect to the internal borders of Europe, which borders were none of Washington’s business. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, France and Poland became pawns of White House intrigue. The result was a trumped-up crisis involving the German port city of Danzig in the summer of 1939, and the outbreak of war in September.

It took a few more years of machinations for FDR to provoke and maneuver the hapless Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. Using this “back door to war”  America was officially railroaded into the ongoing bloodbath in Europe.

In our own time, post Cold War, outbreaks of chaos, ruination and bedlam, in which Washington has had a hand, have been on a minor scale, when compared to the two colossal world wars of the 20th century. At least so far. For example, at the present moment both Iraq and Syria are self-destructing simultaneously, as a direct consequence of ill-advised U.S. foreign policy decisions.

For Iraq, putting aside the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, it all began with Saddam Hussein’s oil production dispute with the fake state of Kuwait in 1990. In the aftermath of crippling U.S. sanctions and a “shock and awe” invasion, the enterprise of Iraq is ending today in a gruesome, internecine war, waged by car and truck bombings. Oh, the fruits and the joys of Operation Iraqi Freedom!

As for Syria, that beautiful country has long been targeted by the Tel Aviv-Washington axis, because President Assad is an ally of Hezbollah in Lebanon and is on good terms with Iran. Assad also wants a return of the Golan Heights, which Tel Aviv annexed from Syria years ago. Assad has accordingly been placed at the top of Israel’s strategic hit list. Ironically, the project to destroy Syria has been outsourced to crazed Sunni Jihadists.

Tehran is also on the same list. The elaborate economic and financial sanctions now in place against Iran are designed to destroy the Iranian economy. The goal is regime change, pure and simple. Iran’s nuclear program is nothing more than a cover story to justify the sanctions.

There is no Persian Bomb and no Iranian nuclear weapons program. Obama knows this, but he allows the charade to go forward unabated for the simple reason that, being a front man, he has little choice. Were Obama to unmask the charade now, he would call into question U.S. foreign policy going back to 1990, not to mention exposing himself as a charlatan.

Vladimir Putin is also on the hit list, because, among other reasons, he is on good terms with Syria and Iran, and he does not play the game of geopolitics according to the same playbook as Washington and Tel Aviv. He has refused to drink their Kool-Aid.

Moreover, Putin and Russia have been on a roll recently. I am referring to the Sochi Olympics,  to Russia’s second presidency of the G8  and to Putin’s pivotal role (and that of Russia’s able foreign minister Sergey Lavrov) in persuading Obama and Kerry to abandon a cruise missile attack on Syria, which was being justified by a crude false-flag operation. Such an attack would have been madness.

In truth, the know-it-all Neoconservatives and their dupes, camp followers and assorted busybodies in Washington have been stymied by Putin, and almost sidelined. They didn’t like it one bit. But now, thanks to the upheaval they have engineered in the Ukraine with U.S. taxpayers’ money, they are attempting a comeback.

They would love to slap some serious economic sanctions on Russia, just like they have done to Iran, damn the consequences to Europe, the Russian people, or anybody else. Sanctions, like Drones, are in. First destabilize, then destroy. There seems to be little downside. So far, Vladimir Putin has outsmarted the mischief-makers and warmongers, and not lost his cool. Let’s see if he can do it again.

Patrick Foy’s work can be found at www.PatrickFoyDossier.com.

March 12, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Crimean parliament guarantees broader rights to Tatar minority

RT | March 11, 2014

A resolution passed by the Crimean parliament guarantees proportional representation in the republic’s legislative and executive bodies for the Crimean Tatar ethnic minority and grants their language official status, among other things.

The resolution provides for constitutional reform that would amend several key provisions of Crimea’s basic law. Under the amended constitution, the Crimean Tatar language would be granted official status, on a par with Russian and Ukrainian in Crimea.

It stipulates proportional representation in future parliaments and provides for at least 20 percent of seats in the republic’s executive for Crimean Tatars. They would have guaranteed representation in the lower levels of government as well.

The parliament also wants to recognize as official the self-governance bodies of the Crimean Tatars, starting with the Kurultai, a general assembly of the Tatars.

Crimean MPs pledged to fund programs for support of the Tatar community in Crimea and repatriation of Crimean Tatars, who were deported from the peninsula by Joseph Stalin’s Soviet government in the 1940s.

There will also be recognition of the Tatars’ cultural impact on Crimea through the return of the original names of some geographical features such as mountains or rivers that were changed at the time of the deportation.

Parliament Speaker Vladimir Konstantinov called the bill “historic” and said Crimean Tatars have been waiting for the reform for 70 years.

“The Crimean Tatar people have not been offered anything like this from either the Soviet Union or independent Ukraine. They have been hoping for this for decades, and it will allow Crimeans of all nationalities to develop and feel safe and comfortable on Crimean soil,” he said.

The Crimean authorities have denounced the self-proclaimed government in Kiev. Crimeans began protesting after the new Kiev authorities introduced a law abolishing the use of other languages for official purposes in Ukraine. More than half the Crimean population is Russian and uses only this language for their communication.

On Tuesday, the Crimean parliament adopted a declaration of independence from Ukraine, which is required to hold a March 16 referendum. On Saturday, Crimean residents will cast their ballots to decide whether the region wants to remain part of Ukraine with broader autonomy rights, or to join Russia.

Related article

March 11, 2014 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Witnesses at Crimea base: ‘No fighting or shooting like reported on TV’

RT | March 11, 2014

Recent reports from Western media say Russian troops have allegedly seized control of the naval base near the Crimean city of Bakhchisaray on Monday, with “shots being fired in the air.” However, the sailors at the base deny all these reports.

“We were never ambushed or beaten. That’s just nonsense,” Aleksandr Gubenko, a seaman at the Crimean naval base, told Crimea-based journalist Ryan O’Neill.

According to Gubenko, the sailors at the base were told to come to the security checkpoints because “someone was trying to get in.”

“When we got there, these men asked us who we want to align ourselves with,” said Gubenko, “I am leaning towards Crimea because that’s where I’m from, same as 80 percent of other people at this base, and they all know they won’t go fighting their own people.”

It’s not only sailors that have denied the reports of an ambush. The members of the Crimean self-defense squads also say there was “no fighting or shooting” at the Bakhchisaray base “like they are reporting it on TV.”

“A group of Crimean self-defense forces just came in,” Sergey Yurchenko, from the Crimean self-defense squad, told O’Neill, “Their leader is currently negotiating with the commander of the base.”

“I don’t know what exactly they’re talking about there. There is definitely no fighting and no conflict,” he adds.

On Monday many Western media outlets have run reports that “masked troops of unidentified armed men fired in the air at the base near Bakhchisaray.” Some said that it was “Russian forces” which “took over a military hospital and a missile unit” in the naval base.

According to some reports these “masked pro-Russian troops” on Sunday kidnapped the base commander Vladimir Sadovnik. However, later it turned out that Sadovnik had never been kidnapped. On Monday he arrived at the Bakhchisaray base along with self-defense squads.

The Autonomous Republic of Crimea will hold a referendum for March 16 where its people – about 60 percent of whom are ethnic Russians – will decide whether they want the Crimea to remain part of Ukraine, or join Russia.

The situation on the Crimean Peninsula is tense and the authorities fear possible provocations from the coup-imposed Kiev government. On Monday radicals backed by the Kiev authorities made provocations in the village of Chinghar in northern Crimea, said a source from the Crimean self-defense squads. Over 30 cars with nearly 70 people, apparently intending to organize a coup, demanded the self-defense groups let them pass into the territory of Crimea.

Despite all these attempts to disrupt the upcoming the referendum, the Crimean government is controlling the situation on the peninsula, according to the speaker of the Supreme Council of Crimea, Vladimir Konstantinov. He added that “No provocations will be staged before or during the referendum as the region has enough self-defense forces to protect itself.”

The US and EU authorities do not recognize the legitimacy of the Crimean authorities, nor the March 16 referendum, despite the Crimean parliament welcoming a mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe the ballot.

Meanwhile, Crimean authorities are preparing for the Sunday poll. The government of the autonomous republic will issue up to US$2 million for ballot printing and providing technical support. Overall 1,550,000 ballots will be printed.

Over 1,500 Crimean troops will be deployed at polling stations, according to Crimean Prime Minister Aksyonov.

Related article

March 11, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Russia says US proposals on Ukraine crisis ‘not suitable’

Press TV – March 11, 2014

Russia says proposals by the United States on finding a solution to the crisis in Ukraine are “not suitable.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a televised briefing with President Vladimir Putin on Monday that the proposals made by US Secretary of State John Kerry are inappropriate as they take the “situation created by the coup as a starting point”, in an apparent reference to the ouster of Ukraine president, Viktor Yanukovich by the parliament on February 23.

The Russian foreign minister said the document he received from Kerry on Washington’s recommendations to end the crisis in Ukraine “raises many questions.”

“Everything was stated in terms of allegedly having a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and in terms of accepting the fait accompli,” Lavrov said.

He also commented on Kerry’s delay in a visit to Moscow for talks on the Ukraine crisis. Lavrov said the Kremlin had decided to draft counter proposals to resolve the situation on the basis of international law.

“We suggested that he (Kerry) come today… And we were prepared to receive him. He gave his preliminary consent. He then called me on Saturday (March 8) and said he would like to postpone it for a while,” the Russian foreign minister stated.

Russia has sent forces to Ukraine’s southern region of Crimea after the Russian parliament authorized President Putin to use armed forces to “protect Russia’s interests in that region.”

Yanukovych refrained from signing an Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia in November 2013. The move triggered weeks of anti-government protests in the country.

The local Crimean administration is expected to hold a referendum on March 16 in order to decide whether the Black Sea peninsula should become part of Russia or remain part of Ukraine.

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March 11, 2014 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Crimea invites OSCE mission to observe referendum on region’s future

RT | March 10, 2014

The parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has sent an official invitation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to send a mission to observe the referendum on the region’s future, slated for March 16.

The Supreme Council has handed over the invitation to Switzerland, the country that holds the rotating presidency of the OSCE. Crimean authorities invited observers from both individual OSCE member-countries and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to come to Crimea.

“I am confident that the parliament of Crimea will make it possible for them to be present at polling stations. This process is underway now and the referendum itself will be as transparent as possible,” Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksyonov said, as quoted by Itar-Tass.

On Saturday, Crimean residents – about 60 percent of whom are ethnic Russians – will cast ballots to decide whether the region will “become part of the Russian Federation as its constituent territory.”

They will also decide whether Crimea’s 1992 constitution, under which the autonomous republic is part of Ukraine but has relations with Kiev defined on the basis of mutual agreements, should be restored.

Preparations for holding the referendum are in full swing.

Crimea will allocate up to US$2 million for printing ballots and providing technical support. A total of 1,550,000 ballots will be printed.

Some 1,500 Crimean troops will guard polling stations during the referendum, Prime Minister Aksyonov said.

“We will have about 1,500 armed troops by the time the referendum is held. They will be placed on duty at all polling stations,” he said. “The referendum will be guarded by armed people, primarily the autonomy’s self-defense units and Armed Forces.”

While Crimean authorities prepare for holding the referendum, radical groups plan provocations on the republic’s administrative border, according to unconfirmed reports from a Ukrainian Special Forces source, cited by RIA Novosti news agency.

“We are receiving information that Ukrainian radical groups are preparing provocations at the Crimean administrative boarder on the day of referendum, March, 16,” the source told the news agency.

The referendum has been brought forward twice from its original date of May 30 since it was appointed by local lawmakers last month.

The US has said it will not recognize the results of any referendum about the autonomous republic’s future, as Washington continues to consider Crimea a part of Ukraine, US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt stated.

Earlier, President Obama said that a referendum in Crimea would “violate the Ukrainian constitution and international law.”

This stance has been echoed by British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who also stated that “any attempt by Russia to legitimize the results could bring more consequences.”

Speaking to Cameron and Merkel over the phone, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed confidence that Crimea’s upcoming referendum will reflect the legitimate interests of its people.

Related article

March 10, 2014 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU responsible for Crimea situation: Ex-German chancellor

Press TV – March 10, 2014

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says the European Union (EU) is responsible for the situation in Ukraine’s Crimea as its policy toward the Eastern European country was erroneous in the first place.

Schroeder made the comments on Sunday in Hamburg during a press event, in which he said that Brussels made a mistake in the outset when it offered Ukraine an association agreement on “either/or” terms.

The former chancellor wondered if it was right to offer Ukraine, which is a culturally divided country, an alternative of either signing the deal with the EU or a customs agreement with Russia.

Schroeder said it would have instead been more reasonable to offer Ukraine a “both/and” alternative.

He was referring to the ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych refraining from signing the association agreement with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia in November 2013 that triggered the political crisis in the country.

The remarks come amid the standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine’s autonomous territory of Crimea.

Amid increasingly violent protests, Yanukovych left Ukraine for Russia and a new pro-EU government was formed in Kiev.

Subsequently, and as the protests inside mainland Ukraine lost momentum with the departure of Yanukovych, a crisis began to emerge in Ukraine’s Crimea, where a large majority of ethnic Russians reside and where Russia has a naval base.

Troops, who wear military apparel that bears no insignia but who are largely believed to be Russian, were deployed to several locations in Crimea, taking control of key points in the region.

Last week, lawmakers in Crimea unanimously declared they wanted to join Russia and would put the decision to a referendum on March 16.

The new Ukrainian government, however, has declared the planned vote illegal.

March 10, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

US will not recognize the annexation of Crimea by Russia

Press TV – March 9, 2014

The US says it will not recognize “the annexation of Crimea by Russia” even if residents of the autonomous region vote to separate from Ukraine in a planned referendum next week.

The Crimean parliament has already voted to join Russia. They also voted to hold a referendum on 16 March to validate the decision. A Yes-vote would most likely further heighten the existing tensions in the already divided nation. The region has an ethnic Russian majority.

A top US national security official Tony Blinken said on Sunday that “First, if there is an annexation of Crimea, a referendum that moves Crimea from Ukraine to Russia, we won’t recognize it, nor will most of the world.”

Blinken, who is US President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, told CNN that “Second, the pressure that we’ve already exerted in coordination with our partners and allies will go up. The president made it very clear in announcing our sanctions, as did the Europeans the other day that this is the first step and we’ve put in place a very flexible and very tough mechanism to increase the pressure, to increase the sanctions.”

Blinken was echoing a similar position made by Obama on Thursday that the US would not accept any referendum on the future status of Crimea unless passed with the approval of the interim government in Kiev adding that the proposed referendum would be “unconstitutional” and in violation of “international law.”

Obama is set to meet with Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in Washington on Wednesday. The meeting is seen as a show of support amid a tense stand-off with Russia over the status of Crimea.

Russia has declared its support for Ukraine’s secession movement. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Crimea has the right to self-determination while the Speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Valentina Matvienko, said on Friday that Crimea would be welcomed as “an absolutely equal subject of the Russian Federation if a referendum on March 16 was in favor of the move.”

Moscow has also warned against “hasty and reckless steps” that could harm Russian-American relations.

March 9, 2014 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US warship in Black Sea as Ukraine’s Crimea readies for referendum

RT | March 8, 2014

US Navy destroyer, the USS Truxtun, has crossed Turkey’s Bosphorus and entered the Black Sea. With the Crimea Peninsula getting ready to hold a referendum on independence from Ukraine in a week, the US is ramping up its military presence in the region.

USS Truxton is heading to “previously planned” training exercises with the Bulgarian and Romanian navies, AFP reported earlier. At the same time, Fox News declared that NATO’s bolstering presence in the Black Sea is a “defensive” measure to counter “Russian military aggression” in Ukraine.

The situation in Ukraine is close to financial and humanitarian catastrophe, urging mass protests in eastern regional centers against self-proclaimed government in Kiev. The autonomous Crimea region is preparing to hold a March-16 referendum on whether it wants to remain part of Ukraine or join Russia, after ousted President Viktor Yanukovich fled the country and the opposition imposed a central government.

Subsequently, Russia’s upper chamber of the parliament approved the possibility of Moscow deploying troops to Ukraine and particularly to Crimea – but only to protect ethnic Russians in Crimea.

On Friday night, Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, warned of possible ethnic cleansing of the Russians in Crimea if the people who seized power in Kiev also grasp autonomy.

Peskov stressed that Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine are “scared and are asking for help from Russia”.

“We fully understand the fears that now prevail in the East [of Ukraine,” Peskov acknowledged.

However, the US State Department doesn’t see any possible danger to millions of ethnic Russians.

Russians make up well over 17 percent of Ukraine’s 45 million population, whereas in Crimea Russians are over 58 percent of the autonomy’s nearly two million population.

“There are no confirmed reports of threats to ethnic Russians,” Eric Rubin said, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr Rubin is a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.

USS Truxton, with a crew of about 300, is an Arleigh Burke class destroyer equipped with the Aegis combat system, which integrates the ship’s radar, sensors and missile weapons to engage anti-ship missile threats. The warship is part of the USS George W. Bush Carrier Strike Group currently stationed in Greece. The carrier is not expected to move into the Black Sea in respect of the Montreux Convention of 1936, which closed Turkish Bosphorus and Dardanelles for ships with deadweight over 45,000 tons. With its 97,000 tons, the USS George W. Bush is the world’s largest warship.

USS Truxton has taken up the baton of American military presence in the region from frigate USS Taylor, which ran aground in the Turkish port of Samsun in the Black Sea last month, with a broken propeller hub and blades. On Friday, a tugboat began to tow the damaged warship to Greece’s island of Crete, where it will be repaired at the US Navy base in Souda Bay.

USS Truxton will reportedly stay in the Black Sea till mid-March. The Montreux Convention allows a warship of any non-Black Sea country to stay in the region for 21 days only.

During the military conflict between Russia and Georgia in August 2008, an American ship was also present in the Black Sea with reconnaissance and an officially proclaimed humanitarian mission. In September 2008, the US costal guard ship, Dallas, docked at Sevastopol harbor with a secret mission and had to leave in haste because of mass local protest.

Given the present conditions, an American battleship is highly unlikely to get anywhere near the Crimea shores, let alone Sevastopol, without a risk of repeating a hasty exit from the past.

On February 12, 1988, a Ticonderoga-class cruiser, the USS Yorktown, and a Spruance-class destroyer, the USS Caron, had to flee from Soviet territorial waters off the Crimean Peninsula. After the two American warships ignored the Soviet Navy’s demands to leave country’s territorial waters immediately, the Soviet frigate, Bezzavetny, simply rammed both American ships, forcing them to comply with international maritime rules.

March 8, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Washington’s Hysteria Towards Russia Hides US Regime Change

By Finian Cunningham  |  Strategic Culture Foundation | March 6, 2014

Legally, Washington and its European allies haven’t a leg to stand on. Both can be rightly accused of violating international law from their gross interference in Ukrainian sovereign affairs – from the instigation of violent street protests that led to the sacking of an elected president and government, to the subsequent climate of lawlessness and fear sweeping across Ukraine and felt in particular by the majority Russian ethnic population in the east and south of the country.

The latest revelations that killings in Kiev’s Maidan Square among protesters and police were covertly carried out by snipers working for the Western-backed agitators are further proof that a coup d’état was orchestrated. A leaked phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister, Urmas Paet, dated February 25, indicates that snipers were used as provocateurs during the demonstrations, with the intention of heightening violence and blaming it on the government of President Viktor Yanukovych.

In the phone call, reported by Russia Today, Paet is heard to say: «There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new [Western-backed] coalition».

Ashton replied: «I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn’t pick that up, that’s interesting. Gosh».

The evidence for Western-sponsored subversion in Ukraine is so glaring – from the parade of American and European politicians over the past four months whipping up protesters in Kiev, to documented infiltration of civic organizations by the CIA, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Adenauer Foundation, among others, to their own words of admission from the likes of State Department official Victoria Nuland on the desired formation of a new governing administration in Kiev – that in order to distract from this mountain of damning evidence, the Western governments and their servile media are trying to shift the terrain of discourse away from the panoramic obvious.

The latest revelation of snipers used as provocateurs adds a new sinister twist.

However, against all the evidence, it is not the West that is in violation over Ukraine; it is Russia – so they claim.

More than this, the Western leaders and media have gone into hysterical mode, accusing Russia of «brazen aggression» and «bringing the region to the brink of war». Ironically, given the astounding denial of reality by the West, it is now turning around and accusing Russia of peddling propaganda over recent events in Ukraine. One France 24 headline read: «The fanciful claims of Russian propaganda».

Never mind fanciful claims, how about just some hard facts – facts that Western media are in abject denial of?

Apart from the above litany of outrageous Western interference in Ukrainian politics, the fact is that President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent putsch at the end of last month.

Yanukovych was elected in 2010; and in a constitutional democracy his removal from office requires a vote by the electorate, not the diktats of a bunch of gun-wielding paramilitaries. We may not have liked Yanukovych’s alleged authoritarian style of governance or accusations of cronyism, but the only legal way to correct that would have been for an orderly constitutional process of elections or some other form of due process.

Yanukovych signed a national unity deal with political opponents on February 21, which European Union ministers had been involved in brokering. But his opponents immediately trashed the deal with threats of violence unless Yanukovych stood down.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is therefore correct when he told a press conference this week that what has happened in Kiev is «an unconstitutional coup» and «an armed seizure of power».

Legally speaking, and even under the terms of the EU-brokered national unity accord signed on February 21, Viktor Yanukovych is still the lawful president of Ukraine. When Yanukovych subsequently sent a formal letter to Putin requesting military assistance in the light of unconstitutional and violent upheaval, the Russian Federation had a legal and moral mandate to enter into Ukrainian territory.

The differing responses to the February 21 «event» are instructive. Both Washington and Brussels immediately recognized the new office holders in Kiev as the «legitimate government» of Ukraine with its self-declared president Oleksandr Torchynov and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The new cabinet, comprising members of the fascist Svoboda party who had been previously waging street war, was also conferred with official Western recognition. The Western media have since gone on to use euphemisms like Kiev’s «fledgling government».

A more accurate definition of the new administration in Kiev is an unelected, self-imposed junta. But the violent, unconstitutional means of taking political power has not stopped British foreign secretary William Hague coming to Kiev this week, followed by US secretary of state John Kerry, to shake hands with the junta. Brussels also invited the mob rulers in Kiev to a ministerial summit this week.

By contrast, Russia is calling for a return to the national unity deal signed on February 21 – a deal which recognizes Yanukovych as the president in office until mutually agreed constitutional reforms are worked out and mandated by the entire electorate of Ukraine – as the legal starting point for any future political settlement. This is the most reasonable and constitutionally legal way forward. Let the people decide whom they want in government by voting, that is by democracy, which, pointedly, Western leaders do not seem able or willing to countenance. The latter prefer imposing governance by force according to their diktat because the real agenda is the economic pillaging of Ukraine by Western capital, an outcome that the Ukrainian people would not vote for if they truly had a democratic choice in the matter.

Given the self-publicized threats of aggression towards ethnic Russians in Ukraine and other perceived political opponents issued by Svoboda and its Right Sector paramilitaries, together with documented acts of recent violence in Kiev, it is was eminently legal and appropriate that Moscow embarked on defensive security measures in Ukraine. Securing military bases and a majority Russian-speaking population in the autonomous southern republic of Crimea this week – at the written requests of President Yanukovych and the Crimean regional prime minister Sergei Aksyonov, as well as under the legal terms of a long-standing bilateral agreement with Ukraine – all that gives Moscow an irrefutable mandate to do so.

Yet, with frothing hysteria, the Western governments and their media have turned reality upside down. There is not a mention of the unlawful Western interference and subversion in the Ukraine or of its hand-in-fist association with neo-Nazi street mobs in executing a violent putsch in Kiev. US ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power brazenly denied reality earlier this week when she accused Moscow of citing «imaginary threats» in Ukraine. The bitter irony of that is that Samantha Power is one of the cheerleaders for the so-called «responsibility to protect» which has given her country the fictitious cover to illegally intervene and militarily overthrow governments in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and anywhere else the US deems desirable for regime change.

In a feat of sheer doublethink, the West has accused Russia of «illegal invasion» in Ukraine and of using «pretexts for acts of aggression». This hysterical rhetoric is being used to cover up the West’s own glaring transgressions in Ukraine and to shift the blame for the turmoil.

Unabashed by its unequivocal involvement in engineering regime change in Ukraine, American and European leaders are demanding that Russia withdraw troops from Crimea or face sanctions. Washington’s top diplomat John Kerry said the US would isolate Russia «economically, politically and diplomatically» if it did not reverse security measures, or as Kerry put it «aggression».

Meanwhile, there is not a scintilla of indication that the Americans and Europeans have any intention of reversing their unlawful interference in Ukraine. Far from it, Kerry on his visit to the junta in Kiev this week said that the US was offering $1 billion in loan guarantees. The New York Times explained: «The purpose of the loan guarantees is to support Ukraine’s efforts to integrate with the West».

European Union ministers this week somehow found reserves of €11 billion for the new «Western friendly» administration in Kiev – against the backdrop of millions of EU citizens suffering from unemployment and deprivation. The International Monetary Fund is also drawing up a lure (loan) of $2 billion.

With pro-Western, pro-capitalist Yatsenyuk now at the helm in Kiev (as Nuland prescribed), Ukraine is being steered inexorably into debt bondage by the West. This bondage, facilitated by an unelected junta, will entail an austerity assault on Ukrainian workers, beginning with swingeing cuts in public spending, wages and subsidies on fuel. It will also lead to privatization of Ukrainian oil and gas industries and the full take over of other prodigious Ukrainian natural resources, such as its wheat agriculture, by Western capital. Yatsenyuk, who talks with pride about being willing to commit political suicide for the sake of pro-Western reforms, that is Western subjugation, is exactly the kind of ideologue the West want and need in Kiev, as Nuland duly recognized.

Interestingly, this week the new Ukrainian ambassador to Belarus, Mykhailo Yeshel, admitted in a media interview that loans (lures) from Washington were being offered on condition of the Ukraine permitting the deployment of American missile systems on its territory – right on the border with Russia.

The emerging picture is clear. Despite all the hysterical nonsense being spouted by Western leaders and their media propaganda machine, demanding Russia to «back off» from Ukraine, the Western regime-change operation in that country is not just being consolidated – it is being ramped up.

March 6, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Pensions in Ukraine to be halved – sequestration draft

RT | March 6, 2014

The self-proclaimed government in Kiev is reportedly planning to cut pensions by 50 percent as part of unprecedented austerity measures to save Ukraine from default. With an “empty treasury”, reduction of payments might take place in March.

According to the draft document obtained by Kommersant-Ukraine, social payments will be the first to be reduced.

“The Finance Ministry has prepared a plan for optimizing budget expenditures, which implies budget sequestration is to be in force before the end of March. For this purpose, in particular, it has been proposed to reduce capital costs, eliminate tax schemes and preferences and to cut social benefits, for example, 50 percent of pensions to working pensioners,” Kommersant-Ukraine reported.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy reported on December 1, 2013, that an average pension in Ukraine is $160.
Right after the formation, the self-proclaimed government in Kiev announced that the “treasury is empty”.

Ukraine’s new prime minister, Arseny Yatsenyuk, promised the government would do its best to avoid a default, adding that he expects an EU/IMF economic stabilization package soon. The plan has been formulated in record time, with the government’s strategy ratified in the Ukrainian parliament on February 27, and the document being sent for evaluation to the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade on March 3.

The European Commission offered Ukraine an 11 billion euro loan if Kiev agrees a deal with the IMF, European Commission President Jose Barroso announced on Wednesday. As a rule, help from financial organizations such as the IMF or the World Bank normally includes drastic austerity measures.

Accepting IMF money will mean many sacrifices for Ukraine’s economy, which are likely to include increased gas bills, frozen government salaries, and all around budget cuts.

The government in Kiev has already announced sequestration plans from $6.8 to $8.4 billion in 2014.

Related article

March 6, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Policy of Isolating Russia and Expanding NATO Is a Dismal Failure

By Rodrigue Tremblay | The People’s Voice | March 5, 2014

[NATO’s goal is] to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
— Hastings Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
— James Madison (1751-1836), fourth American President

The hazards associated with American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should appear obvious to all, because it is precisely this policy that has caused the crisis in Ukraine with all its negative consequences for the coming months and years.

President Barack Obama was candid in admitting it on March 3, 2014: “we are indicating to the Russians [that] if in fact they continue on the current trajectory they’re on, then we are examining a whole series of steps — economic, diplomatic— that will isolate Russia.”

Well, it is precisely this desire to expand NATO and to isolate Russia by incorporating all the countries bordering Russia into NATO;  i.e., a strategy of geopolitical and military encirclement of Russia, which has provoked that country when it felt threatened in its national security.

This is easy to understand.

For example, what would the United States do if a hypothetical Russian Empire were to incorporate Mexico or Canada into a military alliance? To ask the question is to answer it. Why is it so difficult to understand that the best way to start a war is to threaten a country’s vital interests?

The truth is that NATO should have been disbanded after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, and especially after the Warsaw Pact was itself dismantled. Europe should have then moved to build an expanded Europe of nations, large, democratic and peaceful, within a framework of economic and political cooperation and peace. But no! The United States wanted to take advantage of the situation and demanded that everything fell into the military-financial U.S. empire.

That is the source of many problems.

In my book The New American Empire, originally published in 2003, just before the onset of the Iraq war, I pointed out the dangers of the American global imperial ambition and explained the reasons. The Middle East was the first to suffer under this global policy of interventionism. And now, Europe as a whole, most unfortunately, may have to pay the price for this unbridled American hubris, under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, although that policy goes back to George H. Bush and Bill Clinton.

This is why President Obama and his neocon advisers do not think beyond their nose, as was the case for the not-too-bright George W. Bush, when they adopted such a global imperialist ideology.

In 2008, it just happened that I wrote an article in which I advanced the idea that Europe had a vital interest in disbanding that relic of another age: NATO. Indeed, we must blame European leaders not to have understood that the fundamental interest of Europe was not to blend into the American Empire but rather to build an independent and united Europe. Because that reality has not been well understood, Europe is now running the risk of falling prey to a new Cold War with divisive and ruinous conflicts, while the United States will try to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, with the U.K. as its convenient ally from within Europe.

It may be not too late for European leaders to rectify the situation. This would, however, require wisdom and the courage to tell the American neo-cons who have designed American foreign policy for a quarter of a century that they are not masters of the world and that the European Union has no intention to pursue an aggressive policy of military encirclement of Russia. Point to the line.

Rather, on the contrary, Russia should be invited to join an expanded Europe of nations, large, democratic and peaceful within a framework of economic cooperation and peace.

What is needed of them is vision, insight, and a spirit of independence, which currently seems to be lacking badly in many current European governments.

Carelessness and the current European abdication in letting Washington decide European foreign policy may serve the interests of the American empire, but this could lead Europe to disaster.

The author can be reach at: rodrigue.tremblay1@gmail.com

March 6, 2014 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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