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Ukraine crisis: Moscow catches the world off guard

Oliver Poole
The Independent
Sun, 02 Mar 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images
After the shock, the response. For two days Western governments clung to the illusion that Vladimir Putin would not ignore their concerns, despite the hour-by-hour escalation of events in Crimea. The Russian parliament's vote to send in the tanks snapped them out of that illusion.

The European Union, which at lunchtime yesterday was vaguely saying that foreign ministers would meet "early next week", announced this would now happen tomorrow. The UN Security Council went into emergency session last night.

"We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine," President Obama said. John McCain, the former presidential candidate who in recent days has insisted threat be met by threat, went further. He wrote on Twitter: "Russian Senate backs Putin request to send troops to #Ukraine - straight out of Soviet playbook. Don't want Cold War back, but Putin seems to."

Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, said last night: "This is an unwarranted escalation of tensions. I therefore call upon the Russian Federation not to dispatch such troops, but to promote its views through peaceful means."

Yet, as the howls of protest grow, what can actually be done? The international community has looked impotent, condemning the actions but remaining a considerable way away from putting boots on the ground.
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Pirates

Neo-Nazi takeover: Ultra-nationalists take center stage amid political chaos in Ukraine


RT
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 12:46 UTC
Image

"Fascists of the world, unite!" Yes, they're clearly interested in democracy.
The threat of neo-nazi ideology is causing alarm in Ukraine. The country, home to over 13 ethnicities, is now rocked on a daily basis by shocking videos - uploaded to Youtube by some of those who came to power following the ousting of President Yanukovich. Maria Finoshina reports.

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Bullseye

Getting closer to the truth: Estonian Foreign Ministry confirms authenticity of leaked call on Kiev snipers


RT
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 11:57 UTC
Estonian foreign ministry has confirmed the recording of his conversation with EU foreign policy chief is authentic. Urmas Paet said that snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were hired by Maidan leaders.

Paet told RIA-Novosti news agency that he talked to Catherine Ashton last week right after retiring from Kiev, but refrained from further comments, saying that he has to "listen to the tape first."
Urmas Paet
© AFP Photo / Vasily Maximov
Urmas Paet
"It's very disappointing that such surveillance took place altogether. It's not a coincidence that this conversation was uploaded [to the web] today," he stressed.

"My conversation with Ashton took place last week right after I returned from Kiev. At that time I was already in Estonia," Paet added.

Paet also gave a press conference about the leaked tape on Wednesday, saying that the dramatic events in Kiev, which resulted in people being killed, must become the subject of an independent investigation.

The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also issued a statement on its website, saying that the recording of the leaked telephone conversation between Paet and Ashton is "authentic."


Comment: So all Ms. Ashton could muster up was a "Well, yeah...that's, that's terrible," comment and do diddly squat about it. Instead she and the European Commission have chastised Putin and Russia, while giving high fives to the new regime of thugs along with 15 billion euros of taxpayers money.

It is well pointing out that the EU had no money to give 3 months ago, when they wanted the elected president Yanukovych to sign on the dotted line for an agreement with the EU. They were playing hard ball, knowing that the lack of an agreement would arouse the tensions between the pro-EU and the pro-Russian people of Ukraine. It served the purpose, being helped along with some well-nurtured neo-fascist groups and some snipers.

The EU and the US got their prize: A bunch of servile neo-nazi idiots with Nuland's chosen man Yatsenyuk as leader. Now comes the time for austerity measures in Ukraine along with the opening Ukraine up even more for vulture capitalism.

The new regime in Kiev and it's foreign backers have a lot to answer for.

See also: BREAKING! Kiev snipers hired by new coalition, not Yanukovych - Estonian FM to EU chief Ashton
Ukrainian MP calls for investigation into why same snipers were shooting both protesters and Ukrainian police

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Pistol

Ukrainian MP calls for investigation into why same snipers were shooting both protesters and Ukrainian police

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Fri, 28 Feb 2014 10:59 UTC
Image

According to Estonia's Foreign Minister, most in Kiev believe these snipers disguised as police were hired by the new government to shoot at both protesters and real police.
Watch as senior Ukrainian Member of Parliament Inna Bohoslovska pleads with fellow deputies in Kiev last week for an investigation into who the mystery snipers were. She claims in the following video that she saw the snipers murder both protesters and the Berkut security forces. Note that she made this plea before the leaked tapes of a phone conversation between the EU's Cathy Ashton and Estonia's Foreign Minister on 5 March 2014, suggesting that it's being widely discussed in Kiev.

The new putsch government has said it will not investigate who was behind the shootings. Does it have something to hide?


Translation:
"100 people were shot dead in cold blood by snipers. I saw Berkut members (Ukrainian security force) who clearly weren't from Berkut with automatic kalashnikovs shooting at people in the crowd, one after the other, at Maidan Square, and then they turned back and started shooting at Berkuts... we must investigate this."

~ Inna Bohoslovska
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Newspaper

U.S. pushing Israel to stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists

Dan Raviv
CBS News
Sat, 01 Mar 2014 18:23 UTC
Image
© Alalam.ir
As Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flies to Washington - due to arrive on Sunday (March 2), to prepare for talks with President Barack Obama at the White House on Monday - it's clear that there are several points of friction between Israel and the United States.

The two countries are allies, but their leaders often differ on the details of key issues: Israel's peace talks with the Palestinians, America's nuclear talks with Iran, how to approach political turmoil in Egypt, what might be done to limit Syria's horrible civil war, and a broader issue of whether the Middle East sees President Obama as a powerful, influential leader.

Recently, as I sought to update a book I co-wrote about the history of Israel's intelligence agencies, sources close to them revealed that they felt pressure from the Obama Administration - more than a hint - to stop carrying out assassinations inside Iran.
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Control Panel

Jawdropping double standards from Western Pundits: "Putin's Crimea aim is to make the West look weak"

Thomas Tugendhat
The Independent
Sat, 01 Mar 2014 14:24 UTC
Image
© Baz Ratner/Reuters
Men are seen near a military truck on the runway of Belbek Airport in the Crimea region.
The real purpose of Russian troops in Ukraine is to undermine the credibility of Nato

If you want to invade a country, it's important to call it a liberation. Over the coming weeks and months, that's what we're going to see in Ukraine. In fact it has started already. Just look at the Crimea.


Comment: Notice the absolutely gobsmacking first paragraph! That's exactly what the US, UK and others did to Iran, Libya, tried to do to Syria, Yugoslavia, Central America, and the list goes on.


Troops in unmarked uniforms have started guarding the region's main airport. They're being assisted by some local people. After all, they're just there to help.

Ukraine's President Yanukovych, who was ousted only a week ago, is defining himself as a leader deposed in a coup, and the regional government of Crimea, home of a majority ethnic Russian population, is rejecting the new government in Kiev as illegitimate.

At the same time, Russian troops are flying in to help resist what Moscow is calling the 'Nazis' who have taken over the government of Ukraine.

This is tragic for Ukraine, for the near-abroad and for Nato not because it is taking us by surprise but because we have expected it for so long and seen it before and yet remain incapable of acting. This is the salami-tactics that Yes, Prime Minister joked about decades ago. Slice by slice, Russia is invading Ukraine and weakening the alliance that has kept the peace in Europe for almost 70 years.
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Stormtrooper

BREAKING! Kiev snipers hired by new coalition, not Yanukovych - Estonian FM to EU chief Ashton


Voice of Russia
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:29 UTC
Sniper
© RIA

The snipers who shot at protesters and police in Kiev were allegedly hired by Maidan leaders, according to a leaked phone conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign affairs minister, which has emerged online.

"There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition," Paet said during the conversation.

"I think we do want to investigate. I mean, I didn't pick that up, that's interesting. Gosh," Ashton answered.

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Blackbox

Baiting the bear: Russia mulls seizing foreign assets over sanctions threat


RIA Novosti
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 08:04 UTC
Federation council
© RIA Novosti/Vladimir Fedorenko
The Federation Council session
The upper house of Russia's parliament is mulling measures allowing property and assets of European and US companies to be confiscated in the event of sanctions being adopted against Russia over its threatened military intervention in Ukraine.

The bill's author, Federation Council constitutional legislation committee head Andrei Klishas, said Wednesday that lawyers are currently studying whether the proposed confiscations would be constitutional.

"But we have no doubts that it clearly corresponds to European standards," Klishas told RIA Novosti. "The recent events in Cyprus spring to mind, where the confiscation of assets was the main demand made by the European Union in return for economic aid."

An adviser to President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that authorities would issue general advice to dump US government bonds if Russian companies and individuals were targeted by sanctions over events in Ukraine.

Comment: The more the EU and the US support the usurpation of power in Ukraine and international law, the worse it will be for them. The one who sets a trap for another is likely to fall in it himself.

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Evil Rays

Regime change part 2: EU offers Ukraine $15Bln in aid for Reform program


RIA Novosti
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 07:46 UTC
EU
© Falco
The European Commission announced Wednesday that it will provide Ukraine with 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in financial assistance to Ukraine, which is struggling to keep its crisis-hit economy afloat amid mounting debt.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the aid package was designed to enable "a committed, inclusive and reforms-oriented government in rebuilding a stable and prosperous future for Ukraine."

The European Commission said in a statement that financial support would be provided over a two-year period from the EU budget and EU-based international financial institutions.

"The most immediate priority for the EU is to contribute to a peaceful solution to the current crisis, in full respect of international law," Barroso said.

The statement said some aspects of the reform program would be carried out quickly, while others would require longer-term planning and preparation.

"Underpinning this approach is the ambition to help Ukraine fulfill the aspirations which have been clearly demonstrated by citizens and civil society in recent weeks in the unprecedented events in Kiev and throughout the country," the statement said.

Comment: They mention international law as though they know what it is and yet recognises an illegitimate government where the neo-nazi party has 6 ministerial posts. The money will be extracted from the EU citizens through more austerity measures and will be lent to the Ukranian government on condition that they impose austerity measures on their own people and that they allow the vulture capitalists free room to predate.

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Horse

The Neo-con regime change paper, Washington Post uses biased experts to promote propaganda on Venezuela

Murtaza Hussain
The Intercept
Wed, 05 Mar 2014 06:43 UTC
Venezuela
© EFE
The Washington Post's Feb. 19 article about the recent spate of unrest in Venezuela took a breathlessly laudatory stance towards the opposition against President Nicolás Maduro. The opening paragraphs offer a good indication of its tenor:

Leopoldo López, the defiant Venezuelan opposition leader taken into custody Tuesday in front of thousands of anti-government protesters, spent last night in a prison on a military base.

But even there, the government couldn't shut him up....

It was the kind of passionate, personal appeal and call to action that showed exactly why the Harvard-educated López has been at the center of the most serious challenge yet to the struggling Maduro, successor to the late Hugo Chávez.

The piece continues in a similarly effusive manner throughout; but what's most interesting about it are the sources which the authors choose to cite as impartial experts. Not only do they appear hostile to the Venezuelan government and supportive of the opposition, they also appear to have serious, unstated conflicts of interest that cast doubt on the integrity of the Washington Post's entire reportage on this issue.

Comment: The same people who were behind the coup in Ukraine are also behind the riots and demonstrations in Venezuela. Once again USAID is busy sponsoring the unrest. Leopoldo Lopez, the darling of the Washington Post, belongs to the oligarch elite in Venezuela and was actively involved in the coup against Chavez in 2002.
USAID involved in getting Ukraine coup up and running
Russian Government Shows USAID the Door
US funded regime change: 9 things you need to know about Venezuela and the recent violence
Venezuela: It's the opposition that's anti-democratic
Venezuela: Regime change, destabilization and the hidden hands of U.S. capitalism

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