This is too funny
First, McDonald’s left Crimea. Now Burger King took its place. I would personally prefer Crimea free of crap-food joints, but I have to admit that this is one occasion when capitalism makes me smile.The Saker
First, McDonald’s left Crimea. Now Burger King took its place. I would personally prefer Crimea free of crap-food joints, but I have to admit that this is one occasion when capitalism makes me smile.The Saker
Last March Ukrainian Jewish leaders wrote an open letter criticizing Putin and denying that “anti-Semitism” was a problem in the Ukraine. Ukrainian nationalists love Jews The ADL agreed.As did the World Jewish Congress.And the New York Times. “Death to the Jews” graffiti In fact, Israeli volunteers fought to overthrow Yanukovich.However,The European Jewish Association disagrees. And there are special courses organized to train local Jews to survive possible lynchings.Israeli organizations have
From a lot of comments I am getting I feel that this is the time to repeat a few things and clarify others.First, I completely agree with A.B.’s comment who said that Russia does not want the Ukraine to rise up. The three reasons he gives are, I believe, spot on. However, I do believe that there are scenarios in which Russia will have to intervene, such as a bloody
Okay, the picture of what is going on is getting clearer. First, besides Donetsk, Kharkov and Lugansk there were also heavy clashes in Nikolaev. Second, the tactic of the authorities is now becoming clearer:1) First, cordon off the rebellious city (done in all four cities mentioned above).2) Second, cordon off as best can be the city center (also done in all four).3) Third, send in loyal cops from other cities.4)
This morning a number of links to Russian news channels are not working. Some URLs simply do not resolve. Though this might be a local problem or a technical glitch, I think that as events heat up in the eastern Ukraine such technical glitches might happen more often. Thus I would ask you all – especially those of you who live in Russia or who understand Russian – to share
From a live stream I am following on the Internet, the Kharkov local police has convinced the cops from Poltava (loyal to Kiev) to leave. The government buildings are under the control of the Russian speakers. Earlier the Poltava cops attacked the demonstrators with flashbang and teargas grenades but failed to push them back.There are several wounded people reported though no deaths. Government buildings have suffered, some stories have burned.
According to RT, police forces loyal to the revolutionary regime in Kiev have attacked the Russian speakers in Kharkov: According to the Regnum news agency the insurgents have moved “special units” to deal with the situation in Lugansk, Kharkov and Donetsk.It appears that a full-scale crackdown will happen in the eastern Ukraine overnight. A lot will depend on the outcome of these clashes.Stay tuned.The Saker
RT reports: Activists in second-largest Ukrainian city of Kharkov have proclaimed the creation of a People’s Republic independent from the coup-imposed Kiev authorities, Itar-Tass reports. A group of local “deputies” have proclaimed they have taken all the responsibility for government activity in the eastern Ukrainian city, the agency said. The move was proclaimed near the building of Kharkov regional administration, where massive pro-Russian rallies have been held. All the further
by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for The GuardianThe west has been needlessly whipping up tension – if we don’t co-operate soon, chaos may take hold The profound and pervasive crisis in Ukraine is a matter of grave concern for Russia. We understand perfectly well the position of a country which became independent just over 20 years ago and still faces complex tasks in constructing a sovereign state. Among them
It is hard to get a good picture of what is happening in the eastern Ukraine, but looking at various sources it appears to me that large protests have occurred in the cities of Lugansk, Kharkov and Donetsk. From the video footage some rather large crowds, including a lot of women, have assembled in the city centers. In Donetsk and Lugansk the demonstrators have seized the governmental buildings including the
Today I want to do something which I have not done in a long while: interview somebody by email and give that person the space to fully answer. For those interested, in the past I did that with Mizgin (Kurdistan), Roger Tucker (One Democratic State), Taimur (Indian Kashmir), Gilad Atzmon (Palestine), Joel Bainerman (Israel), Uri Avnery (Israel), Jonathan Cook (Palestine), Joel S. Hirschhorn (USA), Anticapitalista (Greece) and Scott Horton (USA).
Dear friends,Today I am posting a video of what I think is an extremely important interview of Andrei Kostin, the resident and Chairman of the Management Board of powerful Russian VTB Bank (who basically speaks for Russian banking). At a recent meeting of Russian banker Kostin made the official proposal for Russia to switch from the US Dollar to the Russian Ruble as payment currency for Russian exports. This proposal
I have decided to take some time off two articles which I am working on today to reassure many of you about some rumors which are being spread by the western corporate media. I will go this bullet-style. Here we go:1) “Russia has massed forces on the Ukrainian border and is about to invade“NATO and western media corporations are in a panic mode due to what they claim in a
Okay, I admit it, when I first saw this one I thought that this might be an April’s Fool. Not because I disagree with the results, oh no, but because I am amazed that so many people in the UK (of all places!!!) would feel likewise. But this is for real. See for yourself:The Independent posted a piece about Nigel Farage saying that Putin’s was the world leader he most
Reason.com reports: Poll: 58 Percent of Americans Want the US to Stay Out of Ukraine Emily Ekins|April 4, 2014 6:56 pm As tensions rise between Ukraine and Russia, America’s foreign policy hawks argue the US needs to do more. However, Reason-Rupe finds war-weary Americans are reluctant to get involved in yet another conflict abroad. My college Zenon Evans writes more about this here. Conservative hawks like Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol
RT reports:Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded Ukraine’s government bond rating one notch from Caa2 to Caa3, citing the current political crisis and deepening economic instability as reasons for its negative outlook. The Caa rating is a credit risk grading pertaining to investments that are both very poor quality and entail a high credit risk. The current downgrade drops Ukraine from Moody’s “extremely speculative” rating to “default imminent with little prospect
After the weird service interruption today, I have decided to take some precautionary emergency measures. Should something really bad suddenly happen to this blog, for whatever reasons, I will continue blogging at the following address:http://thesaker.ucoz.com/blog (please write this down somewhere)also,I cannot imagine having both my blog and my email address shot at the same time but, just in case, I have this backup email address now:vineyardsaker@mail.ru (please write this down
Several of you have reported to me that this blog has been taken off-line. I had no access to it for about 15 minutes. I have just removed links to the movie I mentioned in my previous post to make sure they are not the cause of this. From my end everything appears to be in order now. Can you please confirm to me that this blog is visible to