I really love the BBC. Love to hate it, that is. They just posted an article about the fact that Russia will now demand pre-payment for the gas it will sell the Ukraine which concluded with this great sentence: There is a danger for EU nations that Ukraine will start taking the gas Russia had earmarked for its European clients, something it did when it was cut off from Russian
Two phone conversations have recently been intercepted by “parties unknown” (thank you Spetssviaz & 6th GRU!) which are truly revealing of the true nature of the folks put in power by the CIA.The first one is a conversation between Igor Kolomoisky, mega-oligarch, Mafia don, dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizen and “junta governor” of the city of Dnepropetrovsk in southeastern Ukraine and Oleg Tsarev, ex-candidate in the Presidential election (ex Party of Regions,
So they finally did meet as the OSCE had wanted. Who “they”? Well, whomever the junta invited, but not the representatives of the southwestern Ukraine, that’s for sure. The BBC made it look really “diverse” with this photo: The beauty of “diversity”- all that is missing is a Ukrainian Hare-Krishna I have found no list of participants. All I know is that the one key party to any such negotiations
There is a lot of excellent stuff in this video, but one point I came to fully endorse after a lot of research, soul searching and after having to comprehensively reject one of the key elements of my family’s education, is that all empires are bad, all empires end up hurting the nations which produce them, and all empires end more or less along a few basic models. When the
I really admire Sergei Lavrov for many things, but listening to this (otherwise interesting) interview, I marvel at his patience with this constantly interrupting “yapping-dog-style” Bloomberg journalist. I just could not have had that kind of patience. I would have smashed my fist in the face of this arrogant jerk ten minutes into the interview. Good thing I am just a blogger and not a diplomat I guess :-) Anyway,
I just wanted to mention here a topic which is not often discussed in the western press but which does pop-up with some regularity in the Russian press. Let’s set aside the current events and ask ourselves the following question:Sooner or later there will be some kind of state in what used to be the Ukraine until 2014. The Crimea is gone forever to Russia, that is certain. A “People’s
Short news highlights: Popular governor of Lugansk, Valerii Bolotov, shot by sniper, lost lots of blood but is in no danger. 7 Ukie soldiers killed by the resistance, one APC destroyed Lugansk and Donetsk are negotiating a unification The Donetsk Republic is creating its own military EU gives 1 billion to Banderastan Hungarians want a Hungarian autonomous region in southwestern Ukraine Gazprom switches to pre-payment Ukies refuse to pay to
Dear friends, I am sorry to say that I am sick yet again, this time with some Florida food poisoning. In fact, I am writing this in bed on my tablet. I have a few requests to submit to you: 1) Sobcors: please stop using the sobcor email list as a discussion list. Please ONLY use it to contact your REGION’S sobcors to get in touch and/or coordinate work.2) Please,
I often get justly criticized for using designations like “the West” or “Anglos” because they are misnomers. Frankly, I have to plead guilty to this offense because yes, I do use them, and yes, they are misnomers. Even saying “the Ukrainians” or “the Russians” is an oversimplification. My only defense is to say that I have to assume that the readers of this blog are intelligent and educated enough to
The exact results of the referendum in the Donbass are still unknown, but the following three facts are undeniable:1) Participation was extremely high.2) The yes vote won by a landslide.3) The neo-Nazi junta tried hard, but failed to disrupt the vote.We also know that the validity of this referendum will be rejected by a crushing majority of UN members. Ditto for the regime in power who has already denounced it
Dear friends,Since some of you were worried, I just wanted to let you know that all is well except for my usual problem of being one person doing too many things. The situation in the Ukraine is too fluid to say much right now anyway. I expect to write up an evaluation of the results of the referendum by tomorrow morning.For the rest of today I will try to catch
We all saw the pictures coming out of Mariupol today. I won’t re-post them here. Simple people trying to stop a gang of heavily armed thugs who fancy themselves as some kind of “special forces” but whose “specialty” seems to be in shooting unarmed – or very poorly armed – civilians.It would be wrong to compare these Ukie thugs to the SS, as some have done. For all their wrongs,
In this Victory Day I want to congratulate you all for doing your part of the struggle against Empire today. Even those of you who might think that they are doing nothing are doing something very important just by trying to find the truth and by bypassing the Empire’s propaganda machine.National-Socialism was an abomination. Not only was it a racist, genocidal, imperialistic and hateful – it was infinitely arrogant and,
If anything the past 24 hours have proved, once again, that the US and NATO are opposed to any form of negotiations, confidence-building measures or any other type of negotiations with the Donbass and with Russia. Even though Putin tried really hard to sound accommodating and available for a negotiated solution, the US/NATO policy is clearly to provoke and confront Russia and its allies in every imaginable way. The same
Earlier today, in what appears to be a risky game of “double or quits”, the leaders of the Donbass, have decided to go ahead with the referendum scheduled for May 11th. For the second time in 24 hours I am rather surprised as I had expected them to use the opportunity given by Putin’s request to postpone the referendum. Apparently they feel that they have invested too much in terms
I have to admit that today’s move by Putin caught me completely off-guard. My first impression was that by asking the folks in the Donbass to postpone the referendum, Putin was basically tossing aside a valuable bargaining chip. Even more disturbing was his apparent backing for the upcoming May 25th presidential election.Let me also say, however, that the notion of Putin “caving in” never even crossed my mind if only
I just got back home for 30 min and I found out that Putin is requested that the referendum scheduled for the 11th be postponed. There seem to be some hints that Merkel and Putin have hammered out some common position including a round-table with all the parties present. Finally, the Russians are claiming that they have withdrawn the forces along the Ukrainian border.Frankly, I am totally confused by that
