The Situation in the Ukraine. #18

I am surprised he didn't just say "Javelins are defensive so ship me a few container loads please". They are certainly expensive tho'

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is apparently so desperate that he has tried to defend the delivery of lethal-aid to Kiev as "absolutely fair" by asserting that the country is fighting to save what he referred to as the free world from an overhyped, yet non-existent Russian threat. This tune has become popular with the Ukrainian leadership following the outbreak of a civil war after a US-sponsored coup in February 2014 removed elected president from power. Instead of finding a peaceful solution to the crisis, Ukrainian authorities have urged the West to send Kiev lethal aid in order to suppress independence supporters in the east of the country.

This time Poroshenko has tried to make the case for the delivery of US-made FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile systems. "We're looking for just 1,240 Javelin missiles and this is absolutely fair," Poroshenko told the Wall Street Journal.

The Javelin is a US-made man-portable anti-tank missile unit capable of automatic self-guidance. The system, costing nearly $250,000 apiece, is most often carried by a two man team and has been in service since 1996.

According to Poroshenko, Ukraine gave up exactly 1,240 nuclear warheads after the end of the Cold War. In return the United States and Great Britain should secure Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Although delivering on this alleged promise would actually mean saving Ukraine from itself and not Russia. Despite widespread claims, Moscow is not a party to the conflict. Moreover, Russia has made every effort to help Ukraine reach lasting peace through the full implementation of the Minsk accords. Kiev is yet to meet its obligations under the deal.

In addition, Russia, the majority of European countries, particularly Germany, and the Obama administration have been against lethal aid delivery, saying it will unleash more violence in the war-torn region. However, many in the US, including Senator John McCain, are pressuring Obama to reconsider.

The US has already delivered Humvees, lightweight counter-mortar radar units, as well as medical kits, night-vision goggles and Kevlar vests to Ukraine. Washington is also providing training assistance to Kiev forces.

Increasing military aid goes against the spirit of the Minsk agreements, seen by Russia, Germany, France and many high-ranking US officials as the only way to lasting peace in the country.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150729/1025172829.html#ixzz3hIHEgLat

Looks like the French have started a trend amongst those not too happy with Kiev's actions.

KIEV, July 29. /TASS/. Kiev government will definitely come up with a reaction if Italian and Hungarian parliament members visit Crimea, the press secretary of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Maryana Betsa, told a news briefing on Wednesday. If the visit does take place, "the reaction to it and the consequences will be guaranteed," Betsa said.

Manlio di Stefano, a member of the foreign policy committee at the Italian parliament's Chamber of Deputies told Kommersant Daily earlier the deputies had decided to make a visit to Crimea. "We've decided to go to Crimea and to Moscow along with members of a delegation of the Cinque Stelle (Five Star) Movement," he said." "I'm going to contact the Russian embassy in Rome so as to get down to preparing the visit," Di Stefano said.

The delegation plans to arrive in Crimea via Russia and the objective of the tour will be to find out how people in Crimea are faring after the March 2014 referendum, which led to Crimea's reunification with Russia. Readiness to join the deputies on their trip to Russia has been expressed by Senator Gergio Divina, who represents Lega Nord political party.

Kommersant also said the head of the foreign affairs committee at the Hungarian parliament, Marton Gyongyosi had made public his readiness to go to Crimea. Last week, the peninsular region and the federal city of Sevastopol located on its territory were visited by French deputies. Their trip, too, provoked an irritated reaction from Kiev.

Chechen caught an ethnic Russian Maidan soldier. Can't end well.

Former Ukrainian PM is going to Moscow at Ukrainia hotel and start a new Ukrainian political party with many former MP's from Ukraine

Good PR move by Kiev, one day someone in the West may notice! Basurin makes a valid point tho', the UA had to be firing at OSCE.

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/. The Urkainian forces shelled the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) near Shirokino with the aim of hiding the build-up of armed forces in the region, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) defense ministry spokesperson Eduard Basurin said on Wednesday. "Under the guise of rotating Ukrainian Armed Forces units, the anti-terrorist operation command pulls forces to the settlement of Shirokino and carries out a deterrent mortar shelling at OSCS observers to hide it," the Donetsk News Agency quoted Basurin as saying.

The OSCE mission patrol that arrived in Shirokino for an inspection on July 27, came under fire from small arms and grenade launchers. The head of the patrol was injured in the incident. DPR defense ministry reminded that there are no self-defense positions in Shirokino. "It is obvious who could fire at OSCE observers," the ministry stressed.

Shirokino remains one of hot spots at the contact line in Donbas. On June 16, DPR authorities evacuated all residents from the settlement. ON July 1, DPR unilaterally announced demilitarization and withdrew all troops and weaponry from their positions there. On July 4, OSCE SMM deputy head Alexander Hug confirmed the withdrawal of all DPR units from Shirokino. DPR claims that the Ukrainian forces still remain at their positions in the region.

Is this for real

What is the patch on his shoulder??

Ukrainian Nazis of the punitive battalion "Azov" burned Orthodox icons, the Bible and the history books.

sepheronx wrote:Former Ukrainian PM is going to Moscow at Ukrainia hotel and start a new Ukrainian political party with many former MP's from Ukraine

Rebel alliance is born

It looks like Russia to the rescue, again. But still the evil aggressor!!!

July 28, 2015 Ukraine requests emergency help from "the aggressor" By eugenpr Translated from Russian by J.Hawk

Ukraine requested 900 MW of emergency help due to the shortage of generating power in its electrical system. TASS was informed of this request by a source in Ukrenergo. "There's an agreement covering such transfers. We were forced to make the request in order to avoid emergency black-outs," the source said.

It was reported earlier that Ukriane's most powerful power station in Uglegorsk (Donetsk Region, property of the state firm Tsentrenergo) halted power generation last night. Repairs are also being conducted on a number of other power stations. In addition, one of the 1000 MW generators at the Zaporozhye power station has suffered damage and is undergoing emergency repairs. According to Yurasumy, these problems which nearly caused the collapse of Ukraine's power grid have a number of causes. One of them is the effort to convert Ukrainian nuclear power plants to US fuel.

Here's what yurasumy writes: "Tonight, as if on command, the 2nd block of the Ladyzinsk power station (250 MW) and the 1st block of Zaporozhye power station (300 MW) were shut down. One of the emergency power transfer central transit points between Western Ukraine and the rest of the country located in Vinnitsa broke down a bit earlier. Automatic safeguards shut it down.

These were "spontaneous" events. But there were also 100% man-made factors behind them. In the morning of 27 July SOMEONE (we won't say who) fired ten shells at the main Uglegorsk substation which immediately deprived the grid of 880 MW, which led to an overall deficit of 2.8 gigawatts.

Fortunately it was early morning and the energy use was still below peak. But only 2-3 hours separated Ukraine from rolling blackouts. Therefore the decrepit Ukrainian power grid STARTED PUTTING EVERYTHING ON LINE. They even fired up the Slavyansk station which has enough coal for 1.5 days, and even that for only one of its blocks. It seemed that an embarrassing collapse was unavoidable. But then a neighbor came to help. The northern neighbor. Nobody called it that for a long time--usually it's "Rashka,", "aggressor", etc., but not a neighbor. But that's how the Energy Minister Vladimir Demchishin called it today--"northern neighbor". It provided the critically needed 900 MW without asking any questions."

So now what? Glory to the Aggressor?

http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/ukraine-requests-emergency-help-from.html

When I see this, I think this war isn't going anywhere. It will be here for a while, & anyone who thinks the rebels/whomever in the East, will give up is mistaken. It looks like ppl are volunteering, being trained, and outfitted. Pretty fancy.


Drones - winged "eyes"

This is beyond brilliant, fancy forgetting to put 'Ukrainian' in front of 'politician' in the question. They are now perhaps being interviewed by the SBU. Talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences.

July 28, 2015 84% of Ukrainians would entrust Putin with Ukraine By Dina Simonyan Translated from Russian by J.Hawk

A new information tragedy in Ukraine. It started so innocently: the nationally conscious patriotic website Nedelya.ua organized a survey. The question was: which politician would you entrust with governing your country?

41664 votes were cast. The results were a knock-out blow for the organizers--a full and crushing victory for Vladimir Putin. Treason!

Let's look at the results:
Putin: 84% (34,905 votes)

The rest at http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/84-of-ukrainians-would-entrust-putin.html

Who are these people and where? Are they who where they claim?

Unique footage! Diving-engineering group Brigade "East".

It says:

Military training ground # DNI:

Cowboy's daughter wrote:Is this for real

What is the patch on his shoulder??

Ukrainian Nazis of the punitive battalion "Azov" burned Orthodox icons, the Bible and the history books.

"Wherever they burn books, sooner or later they will burn people." This is not the first time they've done this by far.

auslander wrote:

Cowboy's daughter wrote:Is this for real

What is the patch on his shoulder??

Ukrainian Nazis of the punitive battalion "Azov" burned Orthodox icons, the Bible and the history books.

"Wherever they burn books, sooner or later they will burn people." This is not the first time they've done this by far.

They started burning people first. I am least concerned about books.

Regular wrote:

auslander wrote:

Cowboy's daughter wrote:Is this for real

What is the patch on his shoulder??

Ukrainian Nazis of the punitive battalion "Azov" burned Orthodox icons, the Bible and the history books.

"Wherever they burn books, sooner or later they will burn people." This is not the first time they've done this by far.

They started burning people first. I am least concerned about books.

Agreed, actually Kiev first, when the Labor Union Hall was burned on Maidan the Berkut prisoners in the building on the top floor were handcuffed to the batteries and burned alive. Odessa was second, Mariupol was third, a number of Militsiya were burned alive in the Militsiya HQ building in Mariupol. These acts will never be forgotten.

Mortar and artillery squads in the Border Service?

KIEV, July 29. /TASS/. Ukraine's State Border Service has begun to train mortar detachments for protection of the border, the service said in a report on Wednesday. "Training of mortar detachments has begun at the training centers of the State Border Service," it said. "They will be assigned to the border commanders’ offices of rapid reaction."

The training involves both officers and privates of the border troops and they are organized at the schools of the State Border Service and the Ukrainian Armed Forces. For instance, a center located in the Cherkassy region is training junior personnel for the commandants’ offices located on the border. A total of 40 servicemen have been subscribed to the program. "The current training plan also involved eleven officers of the border forces who are acquire the basics of operating the artillery units and mortar crews," the report said.

At least Poro is consistent, well after he left Minsk anyway.

KIEV, July 29. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ruled out the possibility of Ukraine’s troubled Donbas getting a special status.

The draft constitution "does not envisage a special status for Donbas," he said during a working trip to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. "There will be no federalization," he went on. "Ukraine has been and will remain a unitary state," the president said.

Constitutional reform is one of the basic demands in the Minsk Package of Measures for the settlement in Ukraine, approved by the Normandy Four leaders and signed by the parties in the conflict in Minsk on February 12. In line with the document, Ukraine must before the end of 2015 adopt a new constitution envisaging as a key element decentralization (with due regard for specific features of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, coordinated with representatives of these regions). The second important requirement is that the special status of separate districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions should be fixed permanently in Ukraine’s new constitution.

On Monday, July 27, draft amendments went to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. However, Donbas representatives said that the submitted to the Constitutional Court amendments drafted by the administration of Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko were at variance with the Minsk principles.

Kiev should include the guarantees of a special status in the main text of the Constitution, not in any transitional provisions, they say. "The political privileges of the Donbas region must be enshrined in the Constitution. This concerns, above all, the relations with Kiev on the basis of mutually-advantageous treaties and agreements. We will never agree to something less," head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) Igor Plotnitsky said.

Normandy Four leaders have repeatedly emphasized a need to comply with all points in the political section of the Package of Measures. "In particular, it is important to reach progress as to the scheduled for autumn local elections, as well as the status of the separatists-controlled regions," Christiane Wirtz, deputy spokesperson of the German government, said after their telephone conversation last week.

"The Russian president called on the Ukrainian side to follow the letter and spirit of the Minsk Complex of Measures, in particular, to agree with the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and to adopt permanent legislation on the special status of corresponding areas and an amnesty law, as well as to determine modalities and procedures for conducting local elections," the Kremlin press service said then.

JohninMK wrote:Mortar and artillery squads in the Border Service?

National Guard is taking over Border Service a border post at a time, and the smuggling business in the process.

This was written 80 years ago, it could have been last month.

"There is no human force capable of preventing Ukraine, once it is torn away from Russia and transformed into an independent country, from becoming a destination for con-men from all over the world who are unwelcome in their own countries, capitalists, capital-seekers, business organizers, technicians and merchants, speculators and schemers, thugs and pimps: Germans, French, Belgians, Italians and Americans would find assistance by local or nearby Russians, Poles, Armenians, Greeks, and the most numerous and important of all, the Jews. It would be a veritable League of Nations of sorts. This elemental force, with the participation of the cleverest and most business-savvy Ukrainians, will become the country's leadership elite. It would be a a most remarkable elite, since no other country could boast such a rich collection of international low-life.
Ukraine would become an abscess on Europe's body; and people who dream of establishing a cultured, healthy, and powerful Ukrainian nation that could mature in its own state would quickly realize that, instead of a state of their own they have gotten an international corporation and instead of healthy development only rapidly progressing rot and decay.

Those who believe that, given Ukraine's geographic location, its size, and the state of the Ukrainian element, its spiritual and material resources, and the role the Ukrainian question plays in the global economy and politics, it could be otherwise has no imagination whatsoever.

http://fortruss.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/hands-off-ukraine-warning-from-past.html

PapaDragon wrote:
Professor PapaDragon could have told them this a year ago...

''Ukraine Heading for Yugoslavia Scenario – Polish Media''

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150729/1025185527.html

In a way I feel almost sorry for the 'ordinary workers and peasants' in Ukraine. Almost. Too many of them have jumped throughout the land for me to really feel sorry for them. The steady build to anarchy and chaos has been going on for some years now and as long as this fact did not affect one personally not a one said a single word. Now they are a totally unarmed populace facing what is in effect the brown shirts and black shirts of Germany circa 1935-1938. Still and all, it would take but one veteran with a purloined automat to shoot some of these thugs down in the streets and the fight will be on to rid the country of the oligarchs and the armed thugs. Sadly, this has not happened and will not happen.

20 years from now Ukraine will again be the farm and back shop of Russia, a sleepy and generally agricultural backwater with some spots of manufacturing and mining. All the young best and brightest, if they survive, will have left long before, most to Russia proper, many to EU if EU will have them. Many will not survive the coming disasters and again the graveyards will be full. How many Pushkins, how many Einsteins, how many Rachmaninoffs, how many Tolstoys will we lose this time? It is a tragedy in the making and there's not a thing we can do about it, we can only observe as this Dance Macabre progresses to it's hideous fruition.