Ukraine – Westbound and Down . . . .
31 Wednesday May 2017
Category Archives: Eurasia
Ukraine – The American March, Washington, D.C., May 20, 2017
22 Monday May 2017
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Over there?
BackChannels readers have enjoyed a glimpse of the relationship between Moscow and terrorism.
The same have witnessed the destruction of Syria by Bashar al-Assad as flanked by Vladimir Putin and Ali Khamenei and how the casualty, IDP, and refugee figures have mounted on the chaos and mass destruction of warfare overseen by Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran.
The ambitious in research have figured out that the three dictatorships would rather fight the west than “The Terrorists” and then use the terrorists — al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and others — in their own interest in sustaining feudalism far into the 21st Century. They should also know of the former Iraqi Baathist officers, those who once served Saddam Hussein, and their role in the creation and “handling” of ISIS.
If you think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a separate issue . . . think again.
The organizer of the march for Ukraine in Washington, D.C., Ed Skibicki reports that the Ukrainian-language version of the march has pulled more than 120,000 views.
In BackChannels’ opinion, these videos and related material should be pulling hundreds of thousands of viewers worldwide as Ukraine serves — and as it has many times in history and too much in modern or “post-medieval” history — as a front line state standing against the barbarism, iron rule, greed, malign narcissism, and ruthlessness put on full display in Syria and Crimea by the once “Red-Green” phantoms of the Cold War.
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Moscow’s Crimean Military and Nuclear Shell Game
21 Sunday May 2017
Tags
brief web pared listing, Crimea, Moscow, nuclear blackmail, nuclear threat, Russia, Scandinavian defense, Ukraine
Today:
http://uaposition.com/latest-news/russia-deploys-nuclear-warheads-crimea/ – 5/21/2017
Note and update 5/22/2017: BackChannels has trusted UA Position but hasn’t seen second source corroboration on the Crimea story. Source seems to be Crimean Tatar via
http://news.liga.net/news/politics/14754659-dzhemilev_rossiya_razmestila_v_krymu_shest_yadernykh_boegolovok.htm – 5/20/2017.
Related by Euromaidan Press and published in April 2017:
An alarmist announcement in one publication associated with the justifiable want of sympathy in the maw of an invading force encourages doubt; however, as noted immediately below and in patched-in sections, open source headlines and reports suggest Russia has been revitalizing once abandoned Cold War Era assets in Crimea.
Within the past year:
June 2016: http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-threatens-deploy-nuclear-weapons-crimea-13013
June 2016: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-europe-shield-idUSKCN0Z90WT
November 2016: http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/727788/Russia-Vladimir-Putin-Crimea-missile-bunkers-Soviet-Cold-War-global-attack-Nato-Ukraine – “Putin renovates Cold War Missile Bunkers in Crimea as Russia prepares for global assault.”
April 29, 2017: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/russia-weighs-heavily-in-americas-nuclear-plans/article/2621340
May 1, 2017: http://www.newsweek.com/stephen-blank-europeans-should-wake-russia-war-them-590408
May 5, 2017: http://www.newsweek.com/why-russia-nuclear-capable-bombers-flight-near-alaska-595256
Again: has Moscow really planted nuclear missiles in Crimea?
This note comes from the Federation of American Scientists and comments on similar web claims dating back to 2014:
The news media and private web sites are full of rumors that Russia has deployed nuclear weapons to Crimea after it invaded the region earlier this year. Many of these rumors are dubious and overly alarmist and ignore that a nuclear-capable weapon is not the same as a nuclear warhead.
Several U.S. lawmakers who oppose nuclear arms control use the Crimean deployment to argue against further reductions of nuclear weapons. NATO’s top commander, U.S. General Philip Breedlove, has confirmed that Russian forces “capable of being nuclear” are being moved to the Crimean Peninsula, but also acknowledged that NATO doesn’t know if nuclear warheads are actually in place.
Kristensen, Hans M. “Rumors About Nuclear Weapons in Crimea.” FAS, December 18, 2014.
Nuclear arms agreements may have comfort the public of an earlier day, but ambiguity would seem to bedevil the field.
From BackChannels’ open source perspective, there are no authoritative or official sources or statements. What appears in the chronologically ordered headlines, however, suggests a course in the redevelopment of Cold War Era military facilities.
Additional reference:
A few twists and turns further and the driver pulled over to the side of the road. He was saying something about a monastery, and pointing to a series of blue roofs that rose up above the trees ahead of us. Presumably, it was the only viable tourist destination that he could think of in this vicinity. He seemed friendly enough, so I risked blowing our cover – leaning forward to say, “Objekt Dva-Dva-Adin.”
Our driver laughed, repeated the name of the colossal ruin, once a well kept military secret, and turned the car around.
The Bohemian Blog. “Inside Objekt 221: An Abandoned Soviet Stronghold in the Crimea.” June 4, 2015.
It is a functioning military base with an anti-ship missile system,” the villager told a Reuters reporter who visited the area in July.
The bunkers are just one small part of a new Russian programme to militarise the Crimean peninsula. Based on recent site observations by Reuters, accounts from locals, media reports and official Russian data, Moscow has reanimated multiple Soviet-built facilities in the region, built new bases and stationed soldiers there
Reuters. “In Crimea, Russia signals military resolve with new and revamped bases.” November 1, 2016.
Related: Scandinavian Defense
I had started this separate post last night, but as things may move fast in Crimea and Syria — readers may wish also to take a look at Russia’s cash position as regards funding its aggression and barbarism against the autonomous, democratic, or western-leaning states of its surrounding world — this brief referencing may as well ride along on the same because, essentially, the material is about the same thing: Moscow’s brandishing its biggest gun, i.e., the threat of nuclear exchange and all that may follow it.
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/10/washington-quietly-reinforcing-europes-northern-flank/132656/ – 10/26/2016
https://www.newsbytesapp.com/timeline/World/6909/41038/russia-threat-us-plans-additional-deployments-in-baltic – 5/12/2017.
http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-norway-sweden-b-52-air-force-russia-ace-17-2017-5 – 5/19/2017.
Related: Libya: Moscow Naval Launch Exercises
https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2017/05/18/what-is-russia-planning-to-do-off-libyas-eastern-coast-next-week/ – 5/18/2017.
https://www.rbth.com/defence/2017/05/19/russia-set-to-test-its-cruise-missiles-near-libyas-coasts_765511 – 5/19/2017.
Chess pieces, demonstrations, exercises, sales, and threats — there’s a mix of prudence and evil that seeps down into the economies of all Big Defense Production states, but Moscow has placed itself in the desperate position of wanting to produce a primary defense industry even while Russians suffer from the funds siphoned away for its foreign ambitions and apparently natural kleptocratic tendencies.
Related: General Russian Defense Industry
Putin is allocating unprecedented amounts of secret funds to accelerate Russia’s largest military buildup since the Cold War, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The part of the federal budget that is so-called black — authorized but not itemized — has doubled since 2010 to 21 percent and now totals 3.2 trillion rubles ($60 billion), the Gaidar Institute, an independent think tank in Moscow, estimates.
Stung by sanctions over Ukraine and oil’s plunge, Putin is turning to defense spending to revive a shrinking economy. The outlays on new tanks, missiles and uniforms highlight the growing militarization that is swelling the deficit and crowding out services such as health care. Thousands of army conscripts will be moved into commercial enterprises for the first time to aid in the rearmament effort.
http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/05/03/assessing-russia-s-reorganized-and-rearmed-military-pub-69853 – 5/3/2017.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_industry_of_Russia
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Ukraine – War Every Day
17 Wednesday May 2017
The above were posted today, May 17, 2017, on YouTube. The “feed” from Ukraine’s war with Russia is continuous, but all seems to quiet at the desktop as the drama becomes familiar and outside anger dissipates into other breaking news.
https://www.unian.info/war/1926419-ato-hq-russian-proxies-attack-ukraine-43-times-in-last-day.html – 5/17/2017
http://uaposition.com/latest-news/500-homes-avdiyivka-damaged-militants-years-start/ – 5/17/2017
http://uaposition.com/latest-news/ukraine-adds-more-russian-crimean-transport-enterprises-sanction-list/ – 5/17/2017
Every hour, all 24, every day, the global public may not see the “blast and battle” taking place in Crimea, but what is happening appears in the government’s response to exigencies as well as reports from the front lines.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/11/15/ukraine-conflict-resources-short-list/
BackChannels hopes it will “scrape” less and interview now and then as the post-Cold War conflicts move through time and, God willing, resolve against the feudal past and for the more favorable modern democratic future with the strength to support rule of law in service to liberal ideals.
For this post, the blog may only encourage looking at the struggle of a state leaning westward and putting distance between itself and a demonstratively barbaric, corrupt, criminal, cruel, disingenuous, and kleptocratic feudal society that adorns itself on the spoils of malign narcissistic thieving under the guise of “protection”.
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Ukraine – A Litmus on the Further Ejection of Medieval Practices
17 Wednesday May 2017
Posted in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Anti-Semitism, Ukraine
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BackChannels snipped the contact data and boilerplate from the press release. The original may be found here: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=8776547&ct=14995945¬oc=1
On the same topic, there’s an ages old Russian story:
Scaptegoating and targeting Jews, among others, seems ever more a part of feudal control and not the modern world.
To his credit, Putin maintains a stance best described as anti- anti-Semitism. However, the same would seem belied by Moscow’s continuing relationships with Tehran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and PFLP.
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PSA: Ukrainian Freedom Marches, May 20, 2017
15 Monday May 2017
Tags
2017, democracy, Freedom Marches, May 20, mobilizations, pro-democracy, protests, Russian nationalist fascism, Ukraine, Ukraine conflict, Ukrainian Freedom Marches
It’s been 3 years and over 10,000 people dead, 23,000 wounded and over 1.5 million displaced people in Donbas region. We all know that this bloody conflict is a covert Russian war against Ukraine, and its objective is to destabilize Ukraine and to prevent it from ever having a chance to be a part of Europe and exist independently from Russian influence.
But many Americans don’t realize that the war in Eastern Ukraine is far from being over.
This is why we will march and rally on May 20th to raise the awareness about an on going Russian aggression and to ask the US for support.
We demand that the Russian assisted militia immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine ASAP.
If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government sticking to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by all means necessary, in order to restore territorial integrity of the Ukrainian nation. American Government needs to be tough on Russia.
Above: BackChannels edited (re-paragraphed) excerpt from the San Francisco promotion for the May 20, 2017 march.
Primary Sources
http://zvamy.org/ (Calendar Section)
&
https://www.facebook.com/pg/ukrainianfreedommarch/events/
Individual Pages
http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-in-naples-fl/?instance_id=12776301
http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-washington-dc-may-20th/?instance_id=12776296 – https://www.facebook.com/events/1772468566416946/ –
http://zvamy.org/ai1ec_event/ukrainian-freedom-march-phoenix/?instance_id=12776291
https://www.facebook.com/events/293951561048912/ (San Francisco)
“Hot Russian Aggression”
Field Documentary, RFE/RL, 2/7/2017
For democracy, for classical liberalism, for dignity and freedom, for rule of law (as opposed to the rule of thugs), fight back. Attend or publicize the above-listed marches.
BackChannels finds its unbelievable how so active a war as that taking place in Ukraine — and brought to Ukraine by invading Russian forces — has been so off the headlines in major media. To catch up with events, BackChannels has a portal page, “Ukraine Conflict Resources – Short List“.
Choose your Ukrainian conflict reporting or news outlet and get acquainted.
Russia has launched an unprecedented active measures / disinformation campaign across the web in association with its feudal aggression in Ukraine, and if you have been well informed, you may take measure of that yourself by having a look at the “alternative media” and “alternative news” outlets or the propaganda listings appearing to the right of the videos displayed here. You will find plenty evidence of “reflection in the mirror” or what BackChannels refers to as the “Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation” in Moscow / Moscow-Tehran’s portion of the “information warfare space”.
The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances refers to three identical political agreements signed at the OSCE conference in Budapest, Hungary on 5 December 1994, providing security assurances by its signatories relating to Belarus’s, Kazakhstan’s and Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Memorandum was originally signed by three nuclear powers, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents.[1]
The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances
Russia has deployed as many as 10,000 troops in eastern Ukraine for more than a year and has actively sought to hide the deaths of its soldiers, according to a new report that provides a comprehensive assessment of the Kremlin’s invasion of its neighbor.
The report was published Thursday by the Interpreter, a daily online journal that translates Russian media and reports on Russian affairs, also detailed the Kremlin’s provision of increasingly sophisticated weaponry and vehicles to separatists in Ukraine. Nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the Ukrainian conflict since April 2014.
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/how-russia-invaded-ukraine/ – 9/18/2015.
As Ukraine marked Armed Forces Day today, Poroshenko said that more than 2,500 Ukrainian servicemen and 7,500 civilians had been killed since the outbreak of the war in the spring of 2014.
In an interview with Holos Ukrainy, the official journal of the Ukrainian parliament, the defense minister, Viktor Muzhenko, specified today that 3,064 members of the security forces had been killed in the east since the start of what the Ukrainian government calls the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in April, 2014.
Of this number, Muzhenko said, 2,636 were soldiers in the Ukrainian armed forces (VSU), the others presumably being volunteer fighters or servicemen in the National Guard, police or State Border Service. 2,148 of the VSU casualties were combat losses.
http://www.interpretermag.com/day-1023/ – 12/6/2016.
Related from 2015:
http://www.interpretermag.com/an-invasion-by-any-other-name-the-kremlins-dirty-war-in-ukraine/
8 December 2016 – A new United Nations report out today has confirmed that Ukrainians living close to the “contact line” – the area between Government-controlled and armed group-controlled territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – not only suffer due to fighting near their homes but also face the threat of landmines and unexploded ordinance as well as have to contend with severe restrictions on movement.
According to the Report on the human rights situation in Ukraine launched today by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between mid-August and mid-November, at least 32 civilians were killed in conflict-related incidents and another 132 injured. Between mid-April 2014 and 1 December this year, more than 2,000 civilians are estimated to have dined while an additional 298 were killed in the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17.
Conflict-related civilian injures are estimated between 6,000 and 7,000.
“It is of deep concern that Government forces and armed groups operating in civilian areas do not take all feasible precautions against the effects of fighting, resulting in damage to schools, kindergartens, and medical facilities,” noted the report.
It added that it was worrying that Ukrainian military forces and armed groups continued to be positioned in civilian homes and buildings in villages and towns adjacent to the contact line.
The report also raised concern that armed groups in the self-proclaimed “Donetsk people’s republic” and “Luhansk people’s republic” continue to deprive people of their fundamental rights as well as of effective mechanism for redress.
Hundreds of individuals also remain missing.
Excerpt – http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=55750#.WRngwtQrJlY – 12/8/2016
Highlights
- The total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Crimea and eastern Ukraine is 1,590,056 as of 3 April 2017, according to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine.
- IOM assisted over 137,000 vulnerable IDPs and conflict affected people in 24 regions of Ukraine.
- Lack of funds made 40% of vulnerable IDPs IOM assisted with cash in Ukraine refuse medical treatment, according to the post-distribution monitoring of IOM’s project in 13 regions of Ukraine.
http://reliefweb.int/report/ukraine/iom-s-assistance-conflict-afflicted-people-ukraine-march-2017 – 3/31/2017
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Also in Media: “Ukraine Freedom March set for May 20 in Washington” | The Ukrainian Weekly | May 14, 2017
14 Sunday May 2017
Posted in Also in Media, American Domestic Affairs, Politics, Ukraine
Tags
D.C., democracy, freedom, pro-Ukraine, protest, rule of law, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine Freedom March, Washington
The march – with a full police escort – is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. at the Washington Monument and conclude at the Holodomor Memorial, near Union Station, where a vigil is to be held, concluding at approximately 5:30 p.m.
Among the invited guest speakers are analyst Paul Goble, Peter Borisow, president of the Hollywood Trident Foundation; other noted Ukraine advocates are expected and, at the time of writing, were still being confirmed, among them Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. Valeriy Chaly. Clergy from the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic Churches, as well as leaders of the Jewish and Muslim faiths in Ukraine have been invited to properly represent the people of Ukraine.
As stated by Mr. Skibicki: “We demand that the Russian-backed terrorists immediately vacate the Donbas region and that Crimea be returned to Ukraine. If these demands are not met, we insist on the American government to stick to its promise made in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which is to provide the full and immediate defense of Ukraine by providing modern defensive weapons in order to help the Ukrainian people restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We are NOT calling for American troops to be deployed to Ukraine.”
Read More: Ukraine Freedom March set for May 20 in Washington | The Ukrainian Weekly
Notice on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ukrainianfreedommarch/
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Syrian Protesting Chemical Attacks, Lauding Trump’s Countermeasure, Shouted Down – Links to Soviet Era Antecedents
09 Sunday Apr 2017
Tags
British Left, contemporary active measures, contemporary feudalism, fascism on the left, Great Britain, Orwellian politics
https://twitter.com/hassan_akkad/status/850798781473882112
Greater awareness of the Soviet Era history of the Far Left may help make greater sense of Hassan Akkad’s recent experience.
In relation to yesteryear:
According to Stanislav Lunev, GRU alone spent more than $1 billion for the peace movements against the Vietnam War, which was a “hugely successful campaign and well worth the cost”.[3] Lunev claimed that “the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad”.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
Lunev, Stanislav and Ira Winkler. Through the Eyes of the Enemy: Russia’s highest ranking military defector reveals why Russia is more dangerous than ever. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1998.
In relation to now:
Perhaps Great Britain’s version of America’s New Old Now Old Far Out and Lost Left should wish to recover the memory of it’s being played by Moscow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Great_Britain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
Vladimir Putin’s fascist nationalist revanche — that thing once again anchored by secret police, the adulation of a Great Leader, and the reappearance of deeply patronized (and compromised) aristocracy — appears to have proven George Orwell as relevant today as back when.
Have another look at the silencing of the one lone protester for Syrian lives at the British “Stop the War UK” event:
https://twitter.com/TehmoorKhalid/status/850388943422070784
After a video of the encounter video was shared widely online, Mr Akkad told the BBC: “I didn’t see them protesting against the chemical attacks, I didn’t see them protesting against Putin bombing Syria for the last two years.
“I wanted to go to that protest and I wanted to observe.
“I went to the protest and I saw a group of 30 people with placards, not a single mention of Assad.
“All the placards are against Donald Trump and they’re repeating baseless slogans with their megaphones.”
Fisher, Megan. “Syrian refugee ‘felt oppressed’ by Stop the War protest.” BBC, April 9, 2017.
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