The Saker

Full text of the appeal of the commander of the militia of Donetsk People`s Republic Igor Strelkov (UPDATED WITH 2nd translation!) (Huge thanks to "CG" who found this text here. Translation by "E.K". - The Saker)

Citizens of the People's Republic of Donetsk, I appeal to you. With a request to rise in defense of your Motherland, your homes, your families, your people. It falls on me to ask you to do the thing that shouldn't need asking. After all, to rise for the Motherland and for the freedom in Russia always was an honourable thing. It is an honourable thing to answer the call, to which people that count themselves real men always willingly responded. Nevertheless, I should tell you the truth. Straight in your eyes. To tell harsh and, perhaps, even offensive for your dignity words.

For more than a month now, we, a small group of volunteers of Russia and Ukraine, having listened to the calls for help from the lips of leaders of the protest elected by you , arrived here and in the armed fight we resist all the Ukrainian army and the hired scum.

For the past month we heard many times a desperate appeal – give us the weapons! Give us the weapons so we could battle for the freedom, for the right to read and speak native Russian, for the right to honor our ancestors and heroes of the Great Patriotic War – not the henchmen of Nazi criminals. Having heard this appeal, we got the weapons. We took them from warehouses, took them away from the Ukrainian military and militia, bought them from underground dealers for unthinkable money. And now we have the weapons. They are not in the rear – they are not in Donetsk, Lugansk or Makeyevka, not in Shakhtyorsk or Anthracite. They are at the lines of defense - in the besieged city of Slavyansk, in Kramatorsk, in Konstantinovka. They are where they are needed most. They are where volunteers defend all of Donbass, and Donetsk, and Lugansk.

And here, around the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, Krasniy Liman and Konstantinovka – where our garrisons are located – the Kiev junta gathered the most capable and numerous forces. There are two thirds of castigators and the headquarters of so-called anti-terrorist operation.

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David North

"In the writings of Timothy Snyder we are confronted with an intellectually unhealthy and dangerous tendency: the obliteration of the distinction between the writing of history and the manufacturing of propaganda in the service of the state." ~ David North

A group of right-wing academics, journalists, pro-war human-rights activists, and specialists in “discourse” is gathering in Kiev this coming weekend (May 16–19). The purpose of the meeting—headed by Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University and Leon Wieseltier, the neo-con literary editor of the New Republic, is to bestow political and moral respectability on the Ukrainian regime that came to power in February, through a putsch financed and directed by the United States and Germany.

Promoting themselves as an “international group of intellectuals,” the organizers have issued a publicity handout—excuse me, a “Manifesto”—in which the meeting is described as “an encounter between those who care about freedom and a country where freedom is dearly won.” There is some truth in this statement, as the overthrow of the Yanukovych government did, in fact, cost the United States a great deal of money.

The meeting is an exercise in imperialist propaganda. Its sponsors include the embassies of Canada, France, Germany, Poland and the United States. Other sponsors include the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the European Endowment for Democracy, and Eurozine. On the Eurozine web site, which is heavily promoting the Kiev meeting, there are numerous postings relating to the geostrategic implications of the Ukrainian coup. Prominently featured are articles such as “How to Win Cold War II.” Its author, Vladislav Inozemtsev, is presently a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.

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Stephen Lendman

Ukraine is Obama's latest imperial trophy. Holding it is another matter entirely.

Fascist regimes run America and Ukraine. Democracy is pure fantasy. Monied interests control things. People have no say. Fundamental freedoms don't matter. They're trampled on. They're crushed.

In Ukraine, democracy was systematically quashed. Washington elevated fascist putschists to power. They're unelected. They're radicalized ultranationalists. They're overt anti-Semites. They're militant thugs. They have no legitimacy whatever. They're convenient US stooges. They're puppets. They take orders from Washington. They masquerade as politicians. They represent mob rule. They make mafia bosses look saintly by comparison.

Growing thousands of Eastern Ukrainians resist. They reject Kiev fascists. They do so for good reason. Maybe their Western counterparts will join them. Maybe a national convulsion will erupt. Freedom is too precious to lose. Nothing remains without it. Ordinary people are putting their bodies on the line to save it. They're doing so courageously. They deserve worldwide support. They represent model resistance for others to emulate.

Kiev putschists have no legitimacy. They're waging war on their own people. They're doing it no-holds-barred. They're murdering people in cold blood. They're doing it at Washington's urging.

Gangsterism reflects official US policy. Accountability is absent. Permanent war is longstanding. Peace is pure illusion. Governance is secretive, ruthless and lawless. It's dressed up to look respectable in legal mumbo jumbo. Monied interests run things. Duopoly power represents it. Checks and balances don't exist. Nor separation of powers. Nor government of, by and for everyone equitably. Claiming otherwise is fantasy.

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Chris Marsden

Swedish politician Carl Bildt, a member of the Bilderberg group for 20
years plus (l), Ukranian steel and mining oligarch Rinat Akhmetov (c)
and Nomen Nescio (probably just as evil as the two we've mentioned).

The New York Times has led efforts to portray the setting up of patrols employing “steelworkers” and “miners” in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol as proof of a rising wave of opposition to all those presently engaged in conflict with the Kiev regime and its thugs.

In its front-page lead article Friday, the Times described the move as “a body blow,” asserting that “the pro-Russian protesters have melted away, as has any sign of the Donetsk People’s Republic or its representatives.”

The Times claimed that by late Thursday, “miners and steelworkers had deployed in at least five cities, including the regional capital, Donetsk.” But the Wall Street Journal reported patrols being mounted in only “four smaller towns” where the steel and mining oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s company owns facilities, and cited a spokesman stating that “it wasn’t clear yet whether similar patrols could be introduced in Donetsk….”

Once again, the New York Times —the so-called “newspaper of record”—has distinguished itself only as a useful conduit for the crudest propaganda in the service of US imperialism. In reality, the launching of the patrols has nothing to do with a movement in the working class. Along with their promotion by the Times and other sources, the patrols are part of a concerted effort by the United States and Germany to stifle resistance to Kiev’s coup regime and ensure that presidential elections planned for May 25 go ahead.

To this end, the Western powers are seeking to use the wealth and influence of Ukraine’s oligarchs to bring things under control. The various reports citing a number of patrols, made up of six workers and two police officers, as having taken control of Mariupol all acknowledge that those involved are employees of Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man, with a fortune estimated at $11.8 billion. It is Akhmetov who is behind the patrols, and there is no doubt that he acted in consultation with the Western powers.

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Tony Gosling

Democracy had another near-fatal stroke, and the military industrial complex further tightened UK defense spending with the appointment of ex-army officer and Tory hothead Rory Stewart MP as the new chairman of Westminster’s Defence Select Committee.

Last week the Home Affairs Select Committee delivered a damning verdict on Britain's defense and secret service oversight, on taxpayer accountability. It said the refusal of the director general of MI5, Andrew Parker, to appear before them and lack of any effective supervision was "undermining the credibility of the intelligence agencies and parliament itself."

Surely nothing could surpass the ‘Dodgy Dossier', the criminal conspiracy that led to the US and Britain, as the Arab League put it in 2003, to 'Opening the Gates of Hell in Iraq'? But with Stuart's appointment to oversee public scrutiny of UK military spending just two weeks before NATO's political cabal of which he's a member, the Bilderberg conference, meets in Copenhagen later this month, it is clear to those who still have eyes to see that those bloody lessons have not been learned and the worse could be yet to come.

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John W. Whitehead

“The Google services and apps that we interact with on a daily basis aren’t the company’s main product: They are the harvesting machines that dig up and process the stuff that Google really sells: for-profit intelligence.”
— Journalist Yasha Levine

“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
— former Google CEO Eric Schmidt

What would happen if the most powerful technology company in the world and the largest clandestine spying agency in the world joined forces?

No need to wonder. Just look around you. It’s happened already. Thanks to an insidious partnership between Google and the National Security Agency (NSA) that grows more invasive and more subtle with every passing day, “we the people” have become little more than data consumer commodities to be bought, sold and paid for over and over again.

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Stefan Molyneux

"Unfortunately the American public has little or no sense of the geopolitical stakes at play in here. They hear a story about girls being kidnapped, they see a catchy hashtag, and they run with it. They would never even think for a moment that their outrage might be playing into the hands of the very people who created the problem in the first place."

The Nigerian terrorist group's connections with the rebels that Washington is funding and arming in Syria open up some very serious questions.

Somebody has been routing large sums of cash and/or weapons to the Nigerian terrorist Boko Haram. Most experts agree that the money itself is difficult to trace, but we do know a few things about their organization. You won't hear U.S. politicians or the corporate media going into detail about the group's leadership structure or alliances because doing so would open up some very uncomfortable questions, questions such as: are some of the weapons and money that the U.S. is sending to the Syrian rebels being routed to the Nigerian terrorist group? How would an honest look at Boko Haram's organization lead us to ask such an extreme question? Well, let's take a look at what we know:

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

"15 School Girls Escape Boko Haram Kidnappings – 185 Still Missing. One of the trucks that was carting the girls away reportedly broke down after it departed from the school premises. As the militants busied themselves with fixing the truck, 15 of the girls jumped out of the truck and ran into the nearby bushes. They were able to escape without being noticed because the terrorists were distracted by the broken down vehicle." (Caption: BellaNaija.com)

We are told that a radical Islamic group called Boko Haram has kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. This classic good-vs.-evil tale pits crazed Muslim extremists against adorable innocent children. The whole world demands the rescue of the girls, and deplores the evils of "radical Islam." - It is a terrific story - the stuff Hollywood films are made of. But is it true?

Though the story is hogging the global media spotlight, it is full of gaping holes and wildly inconsistent official pronouncements. The Christian Science Monitor, hardly a bible of conspiracy theorists, points out:

"For all the urgent headlines and advocacy, however, what is still missing are basic facts. It is unclear how many girls were abducted, who they are, who did it, at what time, and exactly how."

A story featuring unknown heroines and unknown villains performing unknown actions at an unknown time does not even qualify as a myth. The word "rumor" might even be an exaggeration.

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Wayne Madsen

«Mein Führer! Mein President!»

In Stanley Kubrick’s 1954 madcap dark comedy «Dr. Strangelove», the clearly demented main character is a former scientist for Adolf Hitler who ends up as a military adviser to a fictional American president involved in a nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union. The Strangelove character was not merely a figment of Kubrick’s otherwise brilliant imagination. Dr. Strangelove, who urges a massive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, is based on two immigrant Cold Warriors from Europe possessing doctoral degrees: Dr. Henry Kissinger, the Machiavellian National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon and Russian Affairs Advisor to President Barack Obama, and Dr. Edward Teller, the father of America’s hydrogen bomb. In real life, Kissinger, a German and a Jew, and Teller, a Hungarian Jew, brought their anti-Russian European political «baggage» to bear on America’s policy toward Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Kissinger and Teller, like the revenge-seeking Nazi, Strangelove, wanted Russia punished for personal political reasons.

Today, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Europe and chief of the U.S. European Command, four-star Air Force General Philip Breedlove, is attempting to reprise the movie role of Dr. Strangelove, his almost namesake. Just as Dr. Strangelove cited a «mine shaft» gap with the Soviets arising from a lack of underground facilities for the protection of American men and women who would repopulate the world through proper «breeding techniques», Breedlove has stated that NATO must match Russian troop deployments in western Russia with a commensurate buildup of NATO troops in its east.

Breedlove has stated that NATO’s military presence in Eastern Europe will continue with air, land and sea deployments until at least December 31 and possibly beyond. Sounding a lot like Dr. Strangelove in his analysis of the perceived Russian «threat» to Ukraine and NATO, Breedlove pulled out the best taling points from the RAND Corporation. Breedlove in a news conference held this month with Canada’s top military commander, Chief of the Defense Staff Tom Lawson. Breedlove said, «Based on the new paradigm that we see Russia has presented . . . we are all going to have to re-evaluate some of the decisions that we have made for structure, for positioning, for readiness, and . . . even more important in the short term, our force responsiveness will need to be re-evaluated.»

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Pepe Escobar

Everything one needs to know about mediocre political elites allegedly representing the "values" of Western civilization has been laid bare by their reaction to the referendums in Donetsk and Lugansk.

The referendums may have been a last-minute affair; organized in a rush; in the middle of a de facto civil war; and on top of it at gunpoint - supplied by the Kiev NATO neo-liberal neo-fascist junta, which even managed to kill some voters in Mariupol. An imperfect process? Yes. But absolutely perfect in terms of graphically depicting a mass movement in favor of self-rule and political independence from Kiev.

This was direct democracy in action; no wonder the US State Department hated it with a vengeance.[1]

Turnout was huge. The landslide victory for independence was out of the question. Same for transparency; a public vote, in glass ballot boxes, with monitoring provided by Western journalists - mostly from major German media but also from the Kyodo News Agency or the Washington Post.

What should come after the Donetsk People's Republic proclaimed itself a sovereign state, and asked Moscow to consider its accession into Russia, is not secession, nor outright civil war, but a negotiation. That's clear by the Kremlin's measured official reaction: "Moscow respects the will of the people in Donetsk and Lugansk and hopes that the practical realization of the outcome of the referendums will be carried out in a civilized manner."

The cautious tone is also reflected by the Kremlin urging the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to help broker the negotiation. Yet once again, there's concrete proof that the NATO neo-liberal neo-fascist junta does not want to negotiate anything. Farcical "acting" President Oleksandr Turchynov labeled the exercise in direct democracy a "farce, which terrorists call the referendum"; and Washington and Brussels branded it "illegal".

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John Pilger

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening".

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world's most advanced communications and nominally freest journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism - "our" terrorism - are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11[*], was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the US state department noted that, following Nato's campaign in 2011, "Libya has become a terrorist safe haven".

The name of "our" enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory. The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of caricature and vilification - think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.

Washington's role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last "buffer state" bordering Russia is being torn apart. We in the west are backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler. Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington's planned seizure of Russia's historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century. But Nato's military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained "pariah" role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.

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Stephen Lendman

Donbass residents vote in the referendum on the status of the self-
proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic. (RIA Novosti / M. Blinov)

On Sunday, Donetsk and Lugansk residents voted. Democracy triumphed overwhelmingly. Both regions declared independence. Self-determination is inviolable. It's a universal right.

Not according to Washington. Reaction was as expected. It didn't surprise. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki lied calling both referendums "illegal." They reflect real democracy in action. "We do not recognize the illegal referendum that took place in portions of Donetsk and Luhansk over the weekend," she said. "It was illegal under Ukrainian law and an attempt to create further division and disorder in the country." "Its methodology was also highly suspect with reports of carousel voting, pre-marked ballots, children voting, voting for people who were absent, and even voting in Moscow and St. Petersburg."

Fact: Donetsk and Lugansk referendums were legal.
Fact: UN Charter provisions affirm self-determination.
Fact: Kiev's putschist government has no legitimacy.
Fact: Rule by coup d'état reflects lawlessness.
Fact: Sunday's electoral process was scrupulously open, free and fair.
Fact: Verifiable passports identified eligible voters.
Fact: Ukrainian ex-pat voting is commonplace.
Fact: In 2004, this writer personally witnessed Chicago Ukrainians queued in front of the city's consulate waiting to vote at the time.

Don't expect Psaki to explain. Her job is suppressing truth. It's lying for wealth, power and privilege. It's twisting facts to fit policy. It's supporting US lawlessness. It's endorsing what demands condemnation. Psaki ignored Kiev forces attacking Eastern Ukrainian cities. Waging lawless aggression. Murdering civilians in cold blood.

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Jerry White

The Michigan legislature is debating a series of bills to impose a financial authority on Detroit that would remain in place long after the city emerges from bankruptcy. An unelected financial “oversight” committee, known as the Michigan Settlement Administration Authority (MSAA), would run the city for two decades, effectively usurping the local government.

When the governor of Michigan installed Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr in Detroit last March, it was presented as a temporary measure, lasting 18 months at most. Now, according to the restructuring plan submitted by Orr, a bankruptcy lawyer with close ties to Wall Street, a new body “composed of individuals with recognized financial competence and experience” will have the authority to limit city borrowing and expenditures and tear up labor agreements.

The authority is to be charged with ensuring that the city “continues to implement financial and operational reforms” outlined in the restructuring plan. This includes an effective 30 percent cut in pensions and health care benefits for more than 30,000 current and retired public employees. The “robust governance structure” outlined in Orr’s plan will promote “long-term public confidence in the fiscal health and stability of Detroit, in particular with financial markets.”

It could hardly be stated more clearly: the proposed body will be accountable solely to Wall Street. It will remain in power indefinitely and will not be subject to a popular vote or recall.

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Alex Lantier

Hundreds of US mercenaries are directing the repression of pro-Russian protesters in eastern Ukraine by the fascist forces of the NATO puppet regime in Kiev, according to German media reports.

They are employed by the firm previously known as Blackwater, a massive private military contracting firm founded by former US Navy SEAL Erik Prince. The firm was renamed Xe in 2009 and then Academi in 2011, trying to evade the infamy attached to its original name due to its massacres of civilians in US-occupied Iraq.

They are now coordinating the attacks by the fascist Right Sector militia, the Kiev regime’s National Guard, and groups of football hooligans that have led to hundreds of casualties across east Ukraine.

This information was communicated to the office of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top German officials on April 29. Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) said that 400 Blackwater troops are supporting Kiev’s security forces in eastern Ukraine, including in Slavyansk. Der Spiegel wrote, “This information reportedly comes from US intelligence services and was communicated during a so-called Intelligence Situation meeting, a regular discussion chaired by Chancellery Chief of Staff Peter Altmaier (CDU). The Presidents of the intelligence services and of the Federal Criminal Office and the intelligence coordinator of the Chancellery as well as high-ranking government officials attended the meeting.”

Though the BND apparently did not say who had hired the Blackwater mercenaries now fighting in Ukraine, they are undoubtedly working closely with US intelligence. Prince himself said last year that after the US invasion of Iraq, his firm “became a virtual extension of the CIA.”

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Kevin Barrett
PressTV

Anti-American poster in Beijing following the U.S.
bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade

“They must really think we're stupid.” That is what people all over the world are saying about the American government and media's portrayal of world events.

Several weeks ago, an interviewer said to Russian President Putin: "NATO claims the missile shield was not built against you but against Iran." Putin broke out laughing. When the laughter finally subsided, Putin said: "You really make me laugh. God bless you because it’s almost time to finish the day… indeed it’s already time to go to sleep. At least I get home in good humor."

No sane person could seriously assert that NATO's missile shield circling Russia is intended to protect the West from Iran. Yet, that is exactly what NATO - the imperial American occupation army in Europe - tells the world. How stupid do they think we are?

Governments lie. Imperial governments construct vast empires of lies. But in the past, most official lies carried at least a thin veneer of plausibility. Today, the US government and its media echo chamber do not seem to care whether their lies are even slightly credible.

The Ukraine crisis has been a non-stop festival of American lies, each one more ridiculous than the last.

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Finian Cunningham

This week sees commemorations that mark the end 69 years ago of World War II. In reality, the war never ended. It continues to this day.

That may seem an oxymoron to many. Of course, it will be said, the Second World War ended in May 1945. Nazi Germany was defeated, as were other European fascist forces. Was peace not brought to Europe and henceforth decades of harmony and prosperity reigned, under the benign auspices of Pax Americana?

Well, yes, in a narrow sense the war was formally closed. But the underlying forces that engendered that war are still active today, discernible only if we debunk Western media propaganda.

This ongoing reality of conflict is because the Second World War, as with the First World War, was not merely about belligerents confined in time and space. These conflagrations were really about imperialist power conflict and hegemony whose dynamics still persist to the present day.

The Western public, inculcated with decades of brainwashing versions of history, have a particular disadvantage in coming to a proper understanding of the world wars. It is popularly understood that the Western powers, the US and Britain in particular, fought "good wars" and took a victorious stand against despotism.

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Chris Marsden

Members of a local election commission empty a ballot box as
they start counting votes from a referendum on the status of
Donetsk region, in Donetsk, May 11, 2014. (Photo: Reuters)

Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s two eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have declared a victory for “self-rule” in referenda held yesterday. The votes took place in the face of condemnation by the regime in Kiev and its Western backers and an appeal for the referenda to be postponed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The reign of terror unleashed by Kiev with the full support of Washington, Berlin and Brussels against anti-government protesters in the east continued on Sunday. Dozens of members of Kiev’s National Guard, recruited largely from neo-Nazis aligned with the Right Sector and the Svoboda party, forcibly shut down voting in the town of Krasnoarmeisk and fired on a crowd outside the town hall, killing a number of unarmed civilians.

The referendum papers asked in both Ukrainian and Russian: “Do you support the act of state self-rule of the Donetsk People’s Republic/Luhansk People’s Republic?”

There were 3.2 million ballots printed, less than half the seven million people living in the two provinces. But long queues formed from the early hours, reportedly registering overwhelming support.

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Stephen Lendman

Blackwater's rap sheet reveals a record too deplorable to conceal. It became Xe. It's now Academi. Putting lipstick on this pig doesn't help. It's no different than before. Jeremy Scahill's book titled "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army" called it: A "shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the most feared professional killers in the world accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences (and) largely off the congressional radar." It has "remarkable power and protection (within) the US war apparatus." It's well funded. It operates extrajudicially. It's unaccountable. It's licensed to kill, terrorize, destroy and destabilize. It takes full advantage. It does so wherever it's deployed.

On May 11, Voice of Russia (VOR) headlined "400 US commandos help Kiev in its military offensive in east Ukraine - reports." They arrived to commit mayhem. They're from the "notorious US private security firm Academi..." They're involved "in a punitive operation mounted by (Kiev) against federalization supporters in Eastern Ukraine…"

Bild am Sonntag is Germany's largest Sunday circulation broadsheet. It reported Academi operatives near Slavyansk. It's uncertain who hired them, it said. It's clear Washington's dirty hands are involved.

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Eric Draitser

A rebel checkpoint Saturday as Ukrainian troops pressed their
assault on separatists in the east. (Photo: Sergey Ponomarev/NYT)

The Kiev regime’s deadly assault on cities in the East and South of Ukraine in recent days has opened a new chapter in the ongoing conflict in that country. The scores of dead and injured provide a sad testament to the fact that what was a united country little more than three months ago has now become a nation tearing apart at the seams.

As the Ukrainian military launches assaults on key cities in the East and South, the danger of civil war, which once seemed possible but unlikely, is now becoming an all too real threat. However, the threat does not end there. A full blown civil war in Ukraine would necessarily require intervention from Moscow as the security of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russian nationals in Ukraine, as well as Russia itself would be threatened. With a neoliberal-fascist alliance supported by, and subservient to, the West, ruling the day in Kiev, Moscow would be forced to respond if only as a defensive measure. In such a scenario, events and outcomes often become unpredictable, precisely the recipe for a military conflict of terrifying global proportions.

The Changing Complexion of the Crisis — In order to understand where the situation in Ukraine is heading, it is critical to examine how the nature of the conflict, specifically in the East, has transformed from one of political grievances and calls for regional autonomy, to a military and paramilitary campaign to crush opposition. In doing so, it becomes clear that this fundamental transformation has severely limited the political and diplomatic options of the various sides, making a civil war and regional instability a very real possibility.

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Nikolai Bobkin

While the flames of a civil war are beginning to burn in Ukraine and the blood is beginning to flow, it is becoming clear that Europe does not know how to react to a crisis it has played such a prominent role in initiating. The Kiev regime’s counterinsurgency operations against the population of southeast Ukraine are gaining momentum, the number of victims is growing, there is fighting in many populated areas, and the Council of Europe, having turned a blind eye to the crimes of the junta, is discussing new sanctions against Russia. The versions of events being put forward by Kiev regarding Russia’s involvement in what is happening are becoming increasingly absurd. In an interview with the BBC, Arseniy Yatsenyuk stated that the riots in Odessa were triggered by «pro-Russian separatists». This lie suits the West, which is currently establishing an information blockade around events in Ukraine.

Neither the US nor Europe wants to admit that the Kiev regime is using military weapons, tanks and aircraft to suppress those opposing its dictatorship. Dozens of protesters have been killed, while hundreds have been maimed, abducted and imprisoned. This is now the new face of the European Union’s eastern neighbour. There has been virtually no reaction from the Western media or human rights organisations to the tragic events in Odessa. The fact that people were burned alive in the Odessa trade union building was reported briefly, with the lie that Russia is to blame for everything once again being reiterated.

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