Hungary's outspoken prime minister says billionaire 'activist' George Soros is using the current refugee crisis to attack the 'traditional European lifestyle'

Billionaire "democracy promoter" and certified slimebag George Soros uses every opportunity to accuse Putin of (magically) creating the Syrian refugee crisis, as part of his so-called master scheme to "destabilize Europe". But not everyone is on board with George's claptrap.

Hungary's prime minister, Victor Orban, blames Soros for the crisis:

The Hungarian Prime Minister has lashed out at billionaire George Soros, criticizing the support he has expressed towards refugees from the Middle East heading to Europe, saying that he undermines stability on the continent.

Ukraine is training a special unit to help Kiev retake Crimea, the country's Interior Minister said, as President Poroshenko mulls building up its military along the peninsula's borders. In Crimea, officials warn the "unlawful" invasion would be repelled.

"We have nothing. We need a new army, a new National Guard, a new police force. This is what the government of Ukraine is working on right now. We must restore all of this, and then, with enough will, Crimea will be ours," Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's Interior Minister, told the Ukrainian 1+1 TV Channel, asserting, "I have no doubt of that."

Kurdish authorities say that, with the help of the US - led coalition, they are investigating yet another supposed chemical attack conducted by Islamic State militants (IS, former ISIS,ISIL) against Kurdish militia fighters in Iraq. Dozens of civilians and fighters in the Sinjar area suffered from nausea and vomiting after self-made missiles were fired at them on February 25, the Kurdistan Region Security Council claimed on its Twitter account. The shells supposedly contained a chemical substance that caused the symptoms, it added. The council is working on an investigation in cooperation with the US-led International Coalition for Operation Inherent Resolve, it said.

The substance used in the rockets is suspected to be chlorine, a lethal agent dating back to World War I, secretary general of the Peshmerga, Jabbar Yawar, told Reuters. The use of poison and poisonous weapons in warfare was prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997. "If confirmed this will be eighth ISIL weaponized chemical attack against Peshmerga. ISIL tactics continue to become more sophisticated," the Kurdish authority said. This is not the first time Kurdish authorities have blamed IS for resorting to the use of chemical weapons, such as chlorine and mustard gas.

The news comes as the Iraqi militia discovered two sites with substantial stocks of plastic canisters containing Vinyltrichlorosilane (designated as "Corrosive" UN 1305) in central Iraq, not far from the city of Ramadi - a territory which was controlled by IS a short while ago. Some of the canisters were empty, meaning that they had probably already been used by the jihadists.

The Syria truce coordinating center has detected shelling of residential areas in Damascus carried out by terror groups, said Sergey Kuralenko, the head of the center launched by Moscow at Khemim airbase earlier in the week.

Over 20 blasts were registered earlier Saturday over a period of five hours, Kuralenko said.

The information on the shelling was immediately passed to the US coordination center in Amman, the military said, RIA Novosti reported.

Russia Defense Report - Feb. 27, 2016: Russian Military Advisers in Syria

It is no secret that Saudi Arabia, along with its Gulf and Western allies, has played a direct role in fueling the fires of grinding sectarian conflict that has kept Syria burning for the past five years. It is also no secret that Russian intervention has radically altered the kingdom's "regime change" calculus in effect since at least 2011. But an internal Saudi government cable sheds new light on the kingdom's current threats of military escalation in Syria.

Overthrow the Regime "by all means available"

A WikiLeaks cable released as part of "The Saudi Cables" in the summer of 2015, now fully translated here for the first time, reveals what the Saudis feared most in the early years of the war: Russian military intervention and Syrian retaliation. These fears were such that the kingdom directed its media "not to oppose Russian figures and to avoid insulting them" at the time.

Russia's military have stopped all airstrikes on those areas and armed groups which joined the ceasefire in Syria, the General Staff has said at a briefing.

"Russia has fully stopped carrying out airstrikes in "the green zone" - those areas and armed units that have sent us requests for a ceasefire," the chief of the main operations department of the Russian General Staff, Sergey Rudskoy, has told reporters.

The Syrian army and 17 armed units have pledged to abide by the ceasefire, he added.

"On February 23, the Syrian army declared that they have agreed to stop military action, in accordance with the US-Russia deal. Seventeen armed units addressed the command of the Hmeimim air base, and signed the application sheets, also pledging to respect the ceasefire," Rudskoy said.

Seventy Russian drones will be monitoring the ceasefire, it's been announced.

Militant groups in alliance with al-Nusra Front, which is excluded from the ceasefire agreement in force in Syria, have opened fire in civilian areas of Aleppo and Homs, a militia source told RIA Novosti on Saturday. The ceasefire took effect at midnight on Saturday, Damascus time (22:00 GMT on Friday). It does not apply to terrorist groups operating in the country, such as Islamic State (ISIL) and Nusra Front.

"The militants opened mortar fire in the Sheikh, Ashrafiyeh and Kurdish neighbourhoods of Aleppo. The shelling was conducted from the Bin Ziyad area, which is where groups that do not agree with the truce are located. Shelling from their side started right after midnight," the source said, adding that in Homs "militants opened fire on [Syrian] army positions."

According to the source, the militants are from the Liwa al-Sultan Murad group which has refused to comply with the ceasefire because of its alliance with al-Nusra Front. Liwa al-Sultan Murad controls one of Aleppo's central areas called Bustan al-Pasha.

Russia and the United States reached an agreement on the ceasefire in Syria on February 22. The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing the Russia-US agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria on Friday. According to UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, 97 armed groups in Syria, plus the government and all the major regional and international stakeholders have expressed willingness to accept the framework of the cessation of hostilities.

As of this Saturday February 27th a peace proposal brokered by Russia and the United States is scheduled to take effect in Syria for one week. But if last Monday both the US and Russian presidents expressed hopeful optimism that the war in Syria might be coming to an end this Saturday, then why on Tuesday would Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain issue warnings to all its citizens in Lebanon to immediately evacuate as well as impose a travel ban to Lebanon. Beirut, Lebanon is located only 54 miles from Syria's capital Damascus. Hence, an invasion force through Lebanon seems a most plausible avenue given this scant piece of turf separating invading forces from their eyed prize - an overthrow of Assad.

To add weight to the high probability that neither US ally Turkey nor Saudi Arabia has any intention of complying with the truce, on Thursday Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated:

For us, the (Kurdish) YPG (militia) is a terror organization just like Daesh. The deal did not designate the YPG as a terrorist organization. That should have been done. But it should be known that this ceasefire deal is valid for Syria.

The Turkish leader in so many words is telling the world that the ceasefire only applies to Syria, not other nations like Turkey, Saudi Arabia or for that matter their 34-nation Sunni Arab coalition supplying 350,000 soldiers currently prepping in northern Saudi Arabia for the already declared Syrian invasion. The Machiavellian strategy of pure deception and attempted stealth deployed by a litany of US Empire lies and false flags would cunningly sign a truce just as its Arab allies pre-position themselves to move forward with a massive invasion by the Saudi-led Arab Antiterrorism Coalition (a misnomer if there ever was one) to invade Syria from all directions. This presentation examines the realistic and probable underlying plans still in place yet transparently masked by America's so called truce starting Saturday that the US will likely still permit its proxy nation allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia to spearhead their invasion of Syria already announced two week ago. It's the old "good cop-bad cop" strategy. While Empire signs agreements for peace, its bloodthirsty allies are lustfully preparing for war.

Despite a tentative ceasefire and truce negotiations being discussed by groups across Syria, terrorist groups not party to the ceasefire continued their attacks on Saturday, primarily aimed at civilians.

Although the Russian-US negotiated ceasefire largely held on its first day, a series of blasts occurred across Syria by terrorist groups not party to the negotiations.

In Damascus, the Jaysh al-Islam group, linked to al-Nusra Front and not subject to the ceasefire, shelled residential areas. Another group not subject to the ceasefire, Ahrar al-Sham, is also active in the area.