One more thing about the ceasefire (last post of the day)

Greg Schofield,

Your thoughts are very interesting, especially as regards the IMF: are you suggesting that if more countries simply refuse to pay, the whole house of cards collapses — the financial equivalent of the emperor having no clothes? Because of course if the dollar crashes then NATO goes belly-up too, right? Not only would the US not be able to fund it but certainly not Europe either, especially if Russia hits back as wisely as she did with the food embargo. So maybe Putin — while necessarily improvising — is also buying time for us to weaken and the pieces (BRICS, SCO, de-dollarization, etc.) he is assembling to fit together a bit more bc that is truly the way to end all of this with the least amount of damage. Plus, of course, winter is coming…

Paul II,

Do you have a URL for that Zacharchenko quote? (I don’t know whether I want it to be true, or not!)

Now we see how Putin has put the EU between a rock and a hard place.

The longer the ceasefire continues the greater the pressure on Poroshenko and the Anglo-Zionist faction to desist from the course of war.

In the meantime the global finincial and economic war, like the war on the ground, will continue indefinately. Bankers worldwide are united in a common interest so they will continue to fund the military security information industrial complex. It is they who own it after all.

In the meantime the EU will be torn between joining AZ sanctions and pursuing a more Eurasianist strategy. The cost of being occupied territories of the Empire will continue to mount.

I try not to think of myself as a Putin groupie but I must confess his shrewdness never fails to impress.

This is excellent news. Forward to Mariupol – and then on to Kiev. Godspeed.

Saker, do not let the criticism get to you, even if they come from well-meaning people who’ve contributed to this blog like Gleb Bazov or Mark Sleboda.

Mercouris piece I thought was very good at establishing that the Ukies have been forced to acknowledge the Novorossiya resistance and start negotiating with it. Whatever is going to happen militarily will happen regardless of this piece of paper, the fact that the Ukies were able to reinforce Mariupol does not concern me too much because the NAF were not rushing to storm it in the first place and the more troops they keep bottled up there on the coast uselessly the less the Ukies will have to resist the counteroffensive after their latest attack gets smashed. Yes the Ukies will probably attack in smarter ways having learned from their mistakes and they may even forward deploy drones and use US satellite or SIGINT data to try to avoid driving into a GRAD kill box. But in the end it won’t matter, the forces they’ve massed are but a fraction of their former strength, even with some shiny ‘new’ used armor from Poland, Hungary and Romania everything they could scrape out of the old Eastern Bloc storehouses being thrown into the battle. It’s like the Wehrmacht thinking at Kursk they’re really ready to win this time when the forces aren’t nearly what they were in 1941 or early 42.

I will be trying to contribute maybe a couple of pieces a month, focused as usual on my specialty European politics and the media/propaganda wars.

R,
AK

Nora, the Real Evil Empire is dying of its own moral and spiritual corruption. A state that savagely neglects tens of millions of its own people, that imprisons more in the vilest conditions, than any other state, that has caused more suffering through its relentless aggressions around the planet over many decades, and whose ruling caste is so deranged as to see itself as the supreme beings in all history, cannot persist. It is a cancer on humanity, with metastases in the so-called ‘allies’ in Western Europe, in the parasite castes everywhere, whose defender it is and in the numerous gangs of psychopaths they have created, trained and financed to terrorise one state after another. If the USA wins the battle to destroy Russia and China, the world will enter a New Dark Age of neo-feudal inequality and savage repression to keep that boot grinding into the face of humanity forever, that Orwell spoke of. Unfortunately nothing will stop them short of defeat, by one means or another, and like Israel, its controller in all things these days, it will follow the ‘Samson Option’ of destroying the world if it looks like breaking free from its God ordained rule. I am exceedingly pessimistic as to how this will turn out.

OT – but interesting piece of the pickle (if they can find any pickles of course) the pickle the Kiev junta is in economically….

http://slavyangrad.org/2014/09/08/statistics-tell-the-tale-irreplaceable-losses-for-the-ukrainian-economy/

…
The inherent nature of the events in Ukraine is difficult to understand without an analysis of the alignment of its class forces. It must first of all be noted that as a result of the 1990 – 2000 wild, destructive privatization of the economy of Ukraine in the interests of the oligarchs and the newly-minted deindustrialization in the interests of Western competitors, the industrial proletariat numbers declined sharply. Accordingly, the level of its organization was reduced. With the destruction of collective and state farms the rural proletariat was virtually eradicated. This changed the balance of class forces.

However, the pro-western top authorities of Ukraine failed to completely destroy the working class, especially in the most industrialized south-east regions. It is therefore no accident that the Bandera-style junta received the most powerful rebuff in those regions. The industrial proletarians of Novorossiya are well aware of the fact that the cut of historical ties with Russia, to which products of their enterprises were oriented, must inevitably lead to mass unemployment and poverty. Not only the national feelings, but also the class consciousness of millions of people in Novorossiya, though not expressed in relief, formed the basis for resistance to oligarchic usurpation of power.

An important feature of the popular revolutionary actions in south-east Ukraine, and earlier in Crimea, is that they were directed against the neo-fascist usurpers of power in Kiev, who were closely related to the global transnational capital, and against the “Donetsk” oligarchic clan, which established their political and economic dictatorship in these regions. Incidentally, the “early” independence Maidan (November – December 2013) was, in this sense, not so much anti-Russia as anti-oligarchy in character.

However, as the protest sentiments of the masses had not got the class character, they were used in the battle of the two clans of the big-time bourgeoisie. That clash was won by the group which had brought together the pro-Western, nationalist and extreme right-wing forces, who benefited from the people’s discontent in the coup.

Usually the big-time capital controls countries through their hired servants – state officials. In Russia in the 1990s, oligarchs initially dominated the bureaucrats. Then the top government officials took precedence, but later the higher bureaucracy and oligarchy merged.

In Ukraine, too, there was a struggle between two related class groups – the state bureaucracy and oligarchy. And there, as in Russia, there emerged a symbiosis of these two class groups. But after the February 2014 revolution, the oligarchs effected the subjugation of the bureaucrats. Faced with tough resistance of the people in Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Kharkov, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and other cities, the ruling elite in Kiev went straight to the introduction of the big-time capital dictatorship.

Oligarchs, previously hiding in the shadow of hired politicians from various bat’kivshchinas, udars and regions were appointed governors of several regions. Then the direct roguish dictatorship of the oligarchy not cloaked with any “democratic” trinkets came to reign supreme in Ukraine.

The billionaires Poroshenko, Kolomoysky and their ilk did not only immediately take over the governing functions, but also created their own private armies and secret police forces engaged in kidnapping and torturing people. Ukraine was becoming an “in war as in war” banana republic, ruled not by law but by complete arbitrariness of a politically temporary “president” relying on “death squads”, as well as on the political and military support from the United States. The peoples of Latin America shed their banana republic labels as a result of persistent struggle. Unfortunately, that kind of “state governance” came to reign in Ukraine.

Western media surely have already written their articles and filmed their interviews about how the “separatists” (Terrorists) have broken the ceasefire. The EU has new sanctions at the ready and who know what other nasty things they have prepared.
So… things will not get boring.

It may be that the ‘cease-fire’ was a clever move afterall. Allowed the NAF to let off some pressure, and showed-up how the Ukrainians are not in control of themselves, and do not respect the efforts toward any peace.

To be fair it seems to me that the Kiev Regime (and by extent the hole edifice of it’s Empire-of-Chaos backers) are not able to work toward their own long term interests. Like a fire that must burn everything and rush on the day when it will finally run out of fuel.

The ceasefire has been a catastrophe for Novorossiia.
But the real catastrophe was the signature of the Minsk protocol, a document of surrender to the Kiev junta, signed by Zakharchenko & Plotnitskii. Such a document shd _never_ have been signed; it represents Putin’s Munich, since he apparently pushed its conclusion. To borrow a phrase from WSC: Putin had a choice between shame and war. He chose shame but he will get war too.

Another version of what Saker said about the quality of troops suddenly increasing by an impressive amount. But recruits can not be trained in a few months and show the kind of tactical execution we saw in the last month, They already needed to have been trained and only needed an upgrade in tactical operations. It takes quite a bit of experience to fire artillery or rockets accurately as we can see the Israeli’s even after years of training miss half the time.

varvara said:

Recently, there’s been all sort of brouhaha in the Western media about a notional Russian invasion of Novorossiya. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was units made up of ex-Ukrainian Army personnel who rallied to Russia in the Crimea.

Now, what happened to those guys? Well, Admiral Berezovsky, the former commander of the Ukrainian Navy is now a deputy commander of the ChF-MF… many of the Berkutovtsy are now in the OMON… it’s apparent that Russians formed up the army soldiers into units under their own ex-Ukrainian officers, intensively trained them to bring them up to Russian standards, and the Russians sent them back home to finish off the junta.

All of the equipment sent was from former Ukrainian Army stocks…

The former Ukrainian Army personnel now serving in the VSN are superior to the ragtag junta forces… they’re long-service troops.

There’s no notional “Russian invasion”… there are professional troops waxing the asses of half-assed volunteers. After all, there’s been two purges of the officer corps by the junta (another fact not reported in the Western media)… no army does well after such an exercise.

http://02varvara.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/9-september-2014-the-russian-invasion-why-thats-crank-bs-and-the-real-deal-behind-the-vsn-offensive/

Mulga,

Have you ever been passed by a drunk driver on the highway and watched what happened next?

He’s way up ahead of you now, having careened through a whole bunch of cars strewn all over the place and you’re up on a rise watching him cross the median and head right into the head of a line going the other way. It’s like it’s in slow motion but you damned well know they’ll hit head on; they can’t not.

And all you can do is watch from a distance and pray that as many innocents as possible will come out of it okay.

Anonymous 09:07,

It would be so wonderful if things only were boring right about now! But in line with what you said, someone yesterday (I forget whom and can’t find the URL) mentioned that the NAF are now being accused of harboring Russian Neo-Nazis. Another one of those lovely phrases like Islamofascism that work so well on the brainwashed masses — yay war! They’re sure falling for it here.

Re “Are you suggesting that if more countries simply refuse to pay, the whole house of cards collapses — the financial equivalent of the emperor having no clothes? Because of course if the dollar crashes then NATO goes belly-up too, right? … So maybe Putin — while necessarily improvising — is also buying time for us to weaken and the pieces …”

Basically this has had the effect accelerating the de-dollarization of the world economy and actually strengthened the alternative BRIC multi-polarism. Putin has been a stickler for international law for this reason, I believe, it also happens to be the practical path to Russia making a place in a new Eurasian trading bloc. Being the crossroad national bloc (+ Kazakhstan).

Putin does not have to be a genius or a saint, he just has to read history’s script.

NATO and the IMF are way overstretched. The US economy has already collapsed along with the UK (both are now beyond self-recovery). Once the USD goes international debts dissolves, the US money printing becomes useless overnight and the petro-dollar dissolves.

NATO is expensive and a security liability. The Baltic states are economically unsustainable in fact bankrupt (they have to trade with Russia just to survive it is a geographical necessity). Europe needs Russian energy, sheap without incurring USD debts, it also needs to sell into Russia, Asia and the Middle East and it needs to use its own capital reserves (by state deficits) to get back to strength (virtually banned in order to force Europe to borrow from the US to expand its economy rather then flow to Wall Street).

In this sense they all go at once a chronic failure happens any of the parts; military power (a NATO crisis,a serious military setback), IMF lending (a serious default), Political prestige (US get blindsided by Russia and China — ie the Shanghai Cooperation Organization), or Europe grows a set, maybe on the streets or even in the coming EU parliamentary session.
‘
And strangely Novorussia has become something of the Paris Commune of the age, national liberation writ small, but with a little peace perhaps producing an economy that is healthy pointer to what we all should be doing.

Sorry for the long missive. It is a kind of step back approach, away from the crisis geographically and temporally, where an eye on the past and future makes the immediate more understandable — of course it may not end well, the USD will go, but just how and exactly when makes fools of any oracle.

I take it as proven that Zakharchenko, Antiufeev, Plotnitsky and the staffs they brought with them are traitors. They were appointed by Surkov (if we want to leave Putin himself out of this, so that his greatest sin is his inexplicable negligence). Their job is to liquidate the Novorossian armed forces. Obviously they can’t do this head-on. So how do they do it? They orchestrate a great defeat, that smashes and cripples the armies. The main target is the army of the DNR. The strategy is divide and conquer. It’s obvious, really. All they have to do is let the junta forces break through at Telmanova, where the Novorossians are stretched thinnest:

http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/

A must read: When is a debt an “Odious Debt”?

There is this gem from Prof. Michael Hudson’s piece:

The IMF’s New [Cold] War Loan to Ukraine

In April 2014, fresh from riots in Maidan Square and the February 22 coup, and less than a month before the May 2 massacre in Odessa, the IMF approved a $17 billion loan program to Ukraine’s junta. Normal IMF practice is to lend only up to twice a country’s quote in one year. This was eight times as high.

Four months later, on August 29, just as Kiev began losing its attempt at ethnic cleansing against the eastern Donbas region, the IMF signed off on the first loan ever to a side engaged in a civil war, not to mention rife with insider capital flight and a collapsing balance of payments. Based on fictitiously trouble-free projections of the ability to pay, the loan supported Ukraine’s hernia currency long enough to enable the oligarchs’ banks to move their money quickly into Western hard-currency accounts before the hernia plunged further and was worth even fewer euros and dollars.[.]

[.]The IMF’s Articles of Agreement forbid it to make loans to countries that clearly cannot pay, prompting its economists to complain at last year’s October 2013 annual meeting in Washington that their institution was violating its rules[.]

[John] Helmer’s Dances with Bears calculates that “of the $3.2 billion disbursed to the Ukrainian treasury by the IMF at the start of May, $3.1 billion had disappeared offshore by the middle of August.”[4] This raises the question of whether the IMF’s loan is legally an “odious debt,” being made to a military junta and stolen by government insiders. The IMF acknowledged that the central bank was simply turning money over to the kleptocrats who run the country’s banks as part of their conglomerates (as well as funding the government’s military attack on the East, largely on behalf of the leading kleptocrats behind the Maidan coup).[.]

A defeat in war frequently leads to regime change. The spectre of a coup is once again roaming the streets and squares of Kyiv. Surviving National Guard fighters are threatening to turn their weapons on Poroshenko. A third Maydan [Independence Square protest movement] is taking shape, which is to sweep aside the present regime. The instigators of this Maydan are militants from the punitive battalions created with Kolomoyskyy’s money.

(highlights added)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

do read the full article as Prof Hudson cites those promoting that the UK parliament should pass a law negating Kiev’s bonds that are due Russia as they can be classified as an odious debt —

and its likely repercussions.!!?!!

Epochal.

We 99%-ers, the great unwashed, may take up the precedent: declare our mortgages; car loans, credit card balances at 20% as just odious debts.

Enjoy
AM

Saker, Heads Up!

Gleb’s blog has a serious mocking challenger ripping your analysis of the Minsk Protocols situ.

Saker Challenged

Gleb was apoplectic when it went down. Now, he’s offering this weak mockery of your position.

Hope your friendship isn’t strained by this.
He does great work, but lost his mind to his heart over the Protocols.

Because there is a lot of talk and misunderstanding about the actual reasons of the Ukraine civil war, therefore let’s put a few things clear about what has been happening.
1. There is not such thing as bad oligarchs (USA) dumb oligarchs (EU) and good and clever oligarchs (Russia) and their public face (Obama, Hollande, Putin). All of them are in the same game, squeeze peoples works in their own benefit.
2. Why the Ukraine oligarchs have been taking side with the western oligarchs?
Very easy, the western oligarchs rule the system, they own the IMF, Financial system (SWIFT, VISA….), Internet, Sea lines, Food industry…..
Russia oligarchs and Russia state is just collateral to the system. They don’t have any weight in the real centers of power IMF, World Bank. Russia by any advance capitalist standards (USA, Germany, japan and even China) is a backward country with backward infrastructure and technology, production system. The space program and military hardware are just a drop in the ocean.
3. Why the oligarchs use fascist gangs to take the power?
The EU Oligarchs need them to squeeze the working population after they take Ukraine assets for free (Steel mills, shipyards, coal mines, crops…..) to have profits in world market with shrinking profits. The USA oligarchs need them for the same and to have a cheap militar control over the population for the future military installations.
4. What happened just after the oligarch and fascist cup?
A huge popular rebellion against this complot, Odessa, Jarkov and Donbass have been witness of a huge popular uprising against such plan, this was a rebellion of the people for the people. Due the lack of political and military leadership the rebellion was suppress in most of the country but not in Lugansk and Donets.
Together with this rebellion, Russia took advantage of the anarchical situation in Ukraine post cup to take back Crimea with the support of the Crimean population.
5. Even though the bravery and military skills of the Eastern Ukraine people, the lack of political leadership in Lugansk and Donets with clear economic and political goals persists and is a drag in their struggle, what makes this regions and their people a very easy target for Russia oligarch’s opportunism and Ukraine oligarch deceived tactics.
6. Now the Ukraine army, fascist gangs, EU, USA and Ukraine oligarchs have learn their lesson, they smell the danger of what a defeat can means for them. They are more united and willing to achieve victory than ever, of course the army and fascist gangs want more money in exchange for their sacrifices.
7. The EU and USA will resupply the Ukraine army and fascist gangs with new and better weapons, training and advisors. This is a civil war not a weekend picnic and they are willing to destroy and kill everything that is in front of their goals. Probably soldiers from Poland, Croatia, and Baltic states…. will fill the ranks of the Ukraine army, besides tanks and equipment and a new air force with planes from this countries will be created to achieve air superiority.
8. Ukraine oligarchs leadership (Poroshenko or other) will not fall no matter what hardships the Ukraine people has to support this winter whit or without Russian gas. It has to be overthrow.
9. The question is, What the Donbass rebellion leadership will do?

Just a quickie update. It would seem as if the false narrative has been lost here in Canuckistan to a great degree and the absolute silence re: Ukraine in almost deafening on-air and online It’s almost like “someone” needs this epic fail to drop from the radar while “they” desperately seek to rewrite the next chapters. There have been pretty much zero mentions about anything, save a few short spins related to the MH17 debacle. This mornings CBC has zero “articles” thus far and zero can be found within the “headline” feeds and no mentions via the Network broadcast. The spin piece re: MH17 did not make a dent in supporting the “official” false narrative, nor did the “article” about the RF buzzing the CDN warship in the Black Sea. If one were to review the comment threads, with the exception of the trolls that stick out like a sore thumb now, the general sentiment is shifting further away from the Harper Regime’s war-mongering rhetoric vs the RF.

Since the cease fire was broke by the Ukies so quickly, it would seem as if the focus is desperate to shift all-balls-in towards the IS/ISIS/ISIL “threat” bs. Yesterday there was a poll about CDN forces engaging in Iraq yesterday and it was 75%+ opposed. Oddly the Harper Regime and the controlled Opposition are synchronizing towards further engagement anyway.

It is noteworthy that Parliament has been off all summer and set to resume next week so all actions re: Ukraine and IS have been hammered through by the Regime without the consulting of the Opposition or populous. One it reconvenes we may see some fireworks begin to explode against the Regime from some wicks that were lit before the summer recess was called. Things shall get very interesting this fall for the war party, their Loyalists and apologists, especially since their utterly failed domestic, economic and foreign policies are coming to light and can no longer be concealed or spun. In much the same way as the rest of the failing Empire appendages, they desperately need their war to cover their corruption and looting of our economy and Treasury that only favours the shorts and foreign speculative investors. What remains to be seen is if the, thus far controlled, Opposition will continue playing along with the 5-Eyes/NATO games or actually push back as most Canuckians are demanding…

Godspeed Novorossiya and Scotland!

DumpHarper!

Larchmonter,

Just scooted over there. Whoever it was sounded like he was crying over his beer mumbling something about some woman or another…

Well, okay, vodka maybe.

I figure Saker can handle it. ;~)

Yatsenyuk’s, Avakov’s and Azov battalion’s new “National Front” political party excludes Poroshenko as well as Tymoshenko. New war party, brought to you by an oligarch named K.

Entire Cherkassy Punitive Battalion refuses to go to Donetsk, and deserts:
Бойцы батальона украинской армии «Черкассы» практически в полном составе покинули боевые позиции, об этом сообщает телеканал «Украина». С передовой под Донецком ушли около 400 бойцов. Они написали рапорты о том, что отказываются выполнять приказ высшего командования под Волновахой, поскольку не имеют соответствующего вооружения для отражения возможного наступления. Действия бойцов комндир батальона назвал «акцией неповиновения».

«Батальон получил нелепый и преступный приказ от командования, не имея другого вооружения, кроме стрелкового оружия и нескольких зенитных установок, выдвинуться в направлении Донецка и занять оборону впереди 72-й бригады ВСУ. Фактически безоружных черкашан, которые имеют вместо БТРов автобусы ПАЗ и грузовики ГАЗ производства тридцати-пятидесятилетней давности, выставляют в качестве живого щита впереди регулярных кадровых и хорошо вооруженных частей ВСУ», — сообщают родственники военнослужащих в Facebook.

«Техники у нас нет. Наша техника дана колхозами. Старая, никому не нужная, вся поломанная, ремонтируем за свой счет», – рассказал один из бойцов батальона «Черкассы». На
вооружении у бойцов находится лишь один БТР, несколько зениток и РПГ, передает телеканал «Украина». По словам самих солдат, при их вооружении «выступать против профессионально подготовленных российских войск – это верная смерть». Как говорится в рапортах, члены батальона не отказываются «защищать Украину», но требуют предоставить им соответствующее вооружение.

To my mind the big question at the moment is what happens when the Ukraine people realize they’ve been lied to about the casualties and their sons aren’t coming back.

This would explain the reluctance of Kiev on prisoner swaps.

As soon as NR gives back all their prisoners then Kiev has to say what really happened to all those thousands who are currently listed as missing.

Neutral observer here. I think I may have the lowdown on what’s really going on. If it’s true, it’s brilliant and both Gleb and Saker can finally take their chill pills.

When Putin and Poroshenko spoke last night, it was agreed that Poroshenko would, in accord with Amnesty International, start to arrest and prosecute volunteer Bn members who can be proven to have committed war crimes.

This is big.

It means that those units may have weakened enough by now for true Ukrainian democrats to fight them.

It seemed about to happen anyway because of all the reports that these people were “heading to Kiev to confront Poroshenko for bad wartime leadership”.

This would flip that script and give Poroshenko the initiative.

It would also put the Ukrainian Army in a position of being quasi-allied with the “Novorussian Army” and the Russians; if Right Sector declares war on Poroshenko, they will be declaring war on the Ukrainian Army. The latter will want help and get it.

In such a 3-way civil war, Poroshenko will have the advantage of knowing that his internal enemies won’t want to give up the Kharkov to Odessa band of land where rebels and would-be rebels are in large supply. Most will not want to leave the Donbass.

The official Ukraine media would, however, not report on fighting between the NAR and right sector. We see this already today and yesterday. Today the official Ukrainian media said that most of the Russian Army has left Donbass.

That is big.

It means cooperation with Russia against neo-nazis. We can be sure that the EU is going along with this as well.

And, because Obama simply won’t even deliver night vision goggles to Ukraine, not to mention Javelins, it’s possible that the USA wants Poroshenko to neutralize the nazi movement even if it means federalization in the end (local rebels will take the brunt of fighting anti-Poroshenko volunteer Bns).

What will Kolomoisky do? Does he represent Israel? Did he really capture the two titanium mines in Donbass?

Meanwhile Semen Semenchenko is confidently announcing that he will be running for office in the new parliament (as if he has a chance of getting a seat from the Donbass electorate in October).

Think about it. The only force that can guarantee Poroshenko’s survival is – the Russian Federation. Therefore, we may see CSTO peacekeepers enter Ukraine this winter. Something like that. Because coups and countercoups are being set up both in Kiev and Donetsk. And that’s not even including the real people’s revolution and always imminent NATO false flags.

On Sep 6 in 3 major cities in Poland (Warszawa, Kraków, Lublin) about 100 people held a demo in support of Novorossiya

Fresh exclusive interview of Igor Strelkov’s aid Igor Druz for Neyromir TV on his recent meeting with Igor Strelkov:
1. The “ceasefire” has been salvation to the junta.
2. Mariupol was on the verge of liberation, but the “ceasefire” snatched it back for the junta.
3. The provisions of the Minsk Protocol are disgraceful.
4. The Protocol was co-signed by Kuchma, a private person whose signature means nothing. It has no binding power for the junta.
5. The Protocol does not recognize the people’s republics for they are not even mentioned under their names.
6. This also means that even the leaders of the people’s republics which signed the Protocol also signed it as private persons for their authority as leaders of the people’s republics was not recognized.
7. Strelkov would never consent to signing anything of this kind.
8. The Protocol was signed mainly under Russia’s pressure.
9. The Protocol reflects approach to the conflict as business—oligarchic business.
10. The Protocol is undermining Putin’s own position.
11. Patriots don’t have the luxury to lie.
12. Ukraine under the junta has been designed as chaos meant to break Russia apart. This chaos has not been overcome.
[13. The Russian government seems to be so far very far away from uderstanding what the nation already knows in its heart and soul–that this is for Russia a patriotic war. An ostrich cannot win a war against hyenas.]
14. Russian Maidan is in the pipeline on the part of the same forces that brought Maidan in Kiev. Perhaps as early as in the next sixth months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUZWyPvgOq0

Porky gets miltary aid from West including Israeli and Spanish missiles (flown in by the US).

http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=85189

I wonder how much of Suchan’s anger at the Saker and AK is simply the professional academic’s offense at a non-academic daring to do his job without a PhD.

Saker, hi. Wondering. With regard to the BBC “witnesses” who heard soldiers speaking with “Moscow” accents, I have a question. It’s my understanding that while there may be some slight regional differences, the Russian language is extraordinarily uniform across all regions, much more so than is English. The BBC “report” of the MH17 “witnesses” doesn’t say anything about how close these “witnesses” were to the soldiers they “saw”. I believe that they are not reliable witnesses, shall we say, but I am wondering: How close to someone would you have to be to hear a difference in accent on the pronunciation of r (geh)? I’m wondering because these “witnesses” seem sort of tailor-made for an English speaking audience and noted a different geographical accent for our benefit because an English-speaking audience is accustomed to and takes for granted VERY noticeable differences in regional dialect and regional accent, especially in places like England, where the accents differ practically from county to county, and in the USA, where we have very distinct regional accents that imprint someone’s geographical origin in their speech. I understand there is nothing like this in Russian. I’m wondering how noticeable or subtle is a Moscow accent to a Ukrainian Russian speaker and how close does one have to be to notice this accent? Aren’t there also Ukrainian Russian speakers who speak with the central Russian accent, who may be from Russia originally or who may speak with that accent simply because the language is so standardized? I’m curious as a beginner Russian speaker and as a very amateur linguist. ;) The fact that the MH17 witnesses mentioned a Moscow accent struck me as, shall we say, peculiar, because I had been given to understand that there are some slight differences in Russian accents, but overall the language is very uniform, so their comments seemed suspect to me in that regard and I’m wondering if I’m insane because their credibility fell apart for me at that point.

to Anon.
“Ukies are punching back, hard. See the link in russian about Kolomiski taking both and only titanium refineries … for free.
The is the only source or raw titanium for Russia.”

ahhh google Titanium and you will find producers and refineries in Russia.
…and the Urals are full of Titanium.

the West has more to worry about than RU. It has been stockpiling the stuff since the UE crisis, Boeing and Airbus eg.

the production facilities are in central UE. I would be very surprised if he gets any of the metal out of the country. Assuming he has the gas to refine it. :)

Dear Saker. Interesting lead item in ITAR/TASS today, http://itar-tass.com/obschestvo/1432927, about President Putin visiting the Church of the Holy Trinty (храм Живоначальной троицы) in the Sparrow Hills in Moscow (near MGU I’d guess), lighting a candle for “those that suffered defending the people of Novorossiya”. The action speaks for itself.