Backtracking From the Brink in Ukraine | Stratfor

By Jay Ogilvy

If ever there were a flashpoint — to invoke the title of George Friedman's new book — Ukraine is it. The fragile cease-fire now in place in eastern Ukraine is the pilot light to a new Cold War between the United States and Russia as their proxies poise to reload.

At this critical moment, American media have been fanning the flames of this flashpoint. While Russia has hardly been innocent of violating international law in its annexation of Crimea, it is worth taking stock of some history, near and distant, to temper the narratives that could escalate into a shooting war that should be entirely avoidable.

Ever since the lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the American media have been filled with Vladimir Putin bashing. For Americans, Putin is an easy target with his KGB background, bare-chested bravado and anti-gay policies. But this obsessive focus on Putin's personality obscures much more important geopolitical realities.

False Parallels

The dominant U.S. narrative for Ukraine is that Ukraine is simply one more Eastern European country trying to pry itself out from under seven decades of Soviet oppression. This narrative is profoundly misleading. Ukraine is not Poland and it is not Latvia or Romania. These countries are each largely united by a shared language and culture. They are also further fused through suffering from prior Russian incursions.

Ukraine is different from most of its neighbors in Eastern Europe. It is both deeply divided, culturally and politically, and its eastern half is strongly bound to Russia.

Just look at the maps of the presidential elections of 2004, 2010 and 2014.


Note the similarity between these electoral maps and the distribution of Russian speakers:

Complete story at - Backtracking From the Brink in Ukraine | Stratfor

Pepe Escobar in eastern Ukraine: Howling in Donetsk | Asia Times

Asia Times’ roving correspondent Pepe Escobar just returned from a reporting trip to the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the pro-Russian enclave in the Donetsk Oblast province of eastern Ukraine. The area’s been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military.

I’ve just been to the struggling Donetsk People’s Republic. Now I’m back in the splendid arrogance and insolence of NATOstan.

Quite a few people – in Donbass, in Moscow, and now in Europe – have asked me what struck me most about this visit.

I could start by paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg in Howl – “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”.

But these were the Cold War mid-1950s. Now we’re in early 21st century Cold War 2.0 .
Thus what I saw were the ghastly side effects of the worst minds of my – and a subsequent – generation corroded by (war) madness.

I saw refugees on the Russian side of the border, mostly your average middle-class European family whose kids, when they first came to the shelter, would duck under tables when they heard a plane in the sky.

Complete story at - Pepe Escobar in eastern Ukraine: Howling in Donetsk | Asia Times

Beyond Left and Right, Beyond Red and White: Framing the Liberation War in Donbass | Nina Kouprianova

by Nina Kouprianova

“There are no separate Russia or Ukraine, but one Holy Rus” – Elder Iona of Odessa

The year 2014 saw an unprecedented surge of patriotism in contemporary Russia, which resulted in popularizing the notion of the Russian World. One reason for increased patriotic sentiment was Crimea’s return to the home port after the overwhelmingly positive vote by its majority-Russian residents in a referendum one year ago. The onset of the liberation war in Donbass from the West-backed Kiev regime was the other. This war truly delineated the stakes for the existence of the Russian World. The latter is not an ethnic, but a civilizational concept that encompasses shared culture, history, and language in the Eurasian space within a traditionalist framework. To a certain extent and despite the obvious ideological differences, the Russian Empire and the USSR embodied the same geopolitical entity. A particularly noteworthy aspect of the ongoing crisis in Donbass is the symbolism—religious and historic—that surpasses the commonly used, but outdated Left-Right political spectrum. In the Russian context, this also means overcoming the Red-White divide of the Communist Revolution. That this war pushed Russians to examine their country’s raison d’être is somewhat remarkable: for two decades its citizens did not have an official ideology, prohibited by the Constitution that is based on Western models. The emergence of a new way of thinking in Russia will become clearer once we refer to the meaning of religious insignia, wars—Russian Civil and Great Patriotic, as well as the question of ideology in the Postmodern world.

Background to the Ukrainian Conflict

Prior to examining these factors, let us recap the recent historic events that led up to them. Since 1991, NATO has been moving closer to Russia’s borders despite its promises otherwise at the time of the Soviet collapse. Western officialdom used project Ukraine—not without its oligarchic elites’ own volition—as project anti-Russia, based upon the negative identity of the Western Ukrainian minority. Large sums of money were invested into establishing aggressively anti-Russian cadres in the media and opinion-making in places like Kiev, where none existed before. Internally, post-Soviet Ukraine was a historically problematic entity from the onset. Indeed, it attempted to house two conflicting identities without much effort at reasonable cohesion: Russians left behind across the newly instituted border as well as eastern and central Ukrainians sharing roots with today’s Russia (historically, eastern Orthodox Novorossia and Malorossia) on the one hand, and Western Ukrainians, such as Galicians (Greek Catholics in the Austro-Hungarian Empire) seeking greater ties with Europe, on the other.

In February of 2014, these two identities came to a clash, when the country saw a West-backed coup d’état under the banner of European integration. A siren song, the latter was essentially meant to transform Ukraine into a large market for dumping European goods, economically, NATO bases, militarily, with a slew of other negative possibilities that surface whenever IMF credits are involved. The coup channeled a certain level of popular discontent with the Yanukovich government, expressed at the Maidan, to bring about the logical conclusion to project Ukraine. This was an ideologically anti-Russian state—based on the ethnic fundamentalist views of its Western minority—that ignored the wishes of eastern Ukrainian residents. Its violent inception led to another logical conclusion. When the Kiev government denied that region its basic rights of language and popular representation through federalization, and attempted to crush them by force, a liberation war in Donbass—historic Novorossia since the time of Catherine the Great—began as a response. Those that Maidan attendees called “slaves” sought to be free after all.

A year and 50,000 deaths later—if the German secret service is to be believed—this conflict remains on the lips of political analysts. Donbass infrastructure is destroyed, 2.5 million refugees fled into Russia (including previous guest workers), Ukraine’s economy is collapsing, and half of its best farm lands had already been purchased by the oligarchs and foreign companies. There is even growing disagreement within Europe—over the questions of Ukraine and the consequent Russian sanctions—the atomization of which would benefit Washington’s ability to exert even greater influence in the region over increasingly un-sovereign states.

Complete story at - Beyond Left and Right, Beyond Red and White: Framing the Liberation War in Donbass | Nina Kouprianova

10 Major accomplishments of the age of Putin - Fort Russ

March 26, 2015
Alexey Zernakov/(Nightly Moscow) Vm.ru
Translated by Kristina Rus

Fifteen years ago, on March 26, 2000 Vladimir Putin was first elected to the post of the President of Russia. After coming to power in difficult times, he not only managed to keep the country united. 15 years later we can say: we have again become a superpower with a developed economy, industry, a powerful army and navy. And may be not everything is smooth today. But then, 15 years ago, many people actually thought that the country was finished. However, Putin has managed to prove to the Russians and the whole world that we can not be easily defeated.

In fifteen years, thanks to the "swift tiger," as President Vladimir Putin is called by Chinese journalists, our country is once again referred to with respect.

We have decided to make our own rating of achievements of Vladimir Putin and his team in the last 15 years, helped by experts from "Nightly Moscow":

1. THE SALVATION OF RUSSIA FROM DISINTEGRATION

Alexei Mukhin, political scientist, Director of the Center for Political Information:

- Putin's role in preserving the unity of Russian Federation is primary. The change in the territorial-administrative division of Russia, the creation of seven federal districts allowed to first slow down and then reverse the processes that were leading to a direct collapse of Russia into several pseudo-state entities. Fortunately, Boris Yeltsin timely sensed what was happening, and resigned as President. And Vladimir Putin in time identified existing threats and took a number of preventive measures.
. . . . .
4. THE CREATION OF A SOCIALLY ORIENTED BUDGET

Maxim Safonov, Doctor of Economic Sciences, professor:

Over the past 15 years serious steps were made and the budget of our country has become truly socially oriented. But there is no limit for improvement, and I think we should not stop there. A good example is the joy of the inhabitants of Crimea after becoming a part of Russia. Because the level of pensions and social benefits there instantly rose to nationwide levels. Yesterday I was at a general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was speaking. And he clearly said that the social obligations will be fulfilled, despite the economic difficulties.

5. EARLY PAYMENT OF STATE DEBTS

Vladislav Ginko, economist, Professor of the Russian Academy of National Economy and State Service:

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has managed to significantly reduce the arrears to international financial institutions. Currently Russia, of course borrows in the foreign market, but in relation to the gross domestic product, this amount is small. First of all, it gives us the opportunity to pursue an independent policy.

Because loans from international organizations are very often accompanied by certain encumbrances. Which are often hidden behind vague wording. But often, after such "reforms" the standard of living of the population drops - we see it today in Ukraine. And, of course, if our debts were higher, the sanctions would hurt us more.

Complete story at - 10 Major accomplishments of the age of Putin - Fort Russ

Information war between Russia and the West intensifies -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

War is raging between the West and Russia, with a key battlefield being the "war for public opinion" and control over information, narratives and perspectives. The Ukrainian crisis has again reiterated the polar opposite narratives between Western and Russian media as the information war intensifies. Western news outlets have been incessantly attempting to portray Russia as the belligerent power over the past year, even though many of the facts contradict this perspective. In order to justify an illegal coup in Kiev - which is part of a grander strategy of destabilising, encircling and antagonising the Russian Federation - the presstitutes are hard at work manufacturing narratives and preparing "Americans for conflict with Russia", as Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote in his article: 'CNN is Beating the Drums of War'. Considering the majority of conflicts in recent years have been initiated by Western intervention or meddling - including the Ukrainian crisis of course - Russian propaganda relies far more on facts, as there is often no need to invert truth to support Moscow's position.

"War for Public Opinion"

"It's a war for public opinion because whatever the case may be on the ground Western leaders, specifically NATO-countries, they really need public opinion to be backing whatever moves they are making around the world," was how investigative journalist and founder of 21st Century Wire, Patrick Henningsen, described the Western media landscape in an interview with RT. In an attempt to win the "war for public opinion", the West has launched multiple initiatives recently in a bid to successfully influence and shape public perception on current affairs. The European Union (EU) has launched a 3-month project to prepare a "strategic communication" plan to counter what the EU believes to be Russian "disinformation campaigns", according to draft conclusions of an EU summit obtained by Reuters. The project will be led by Federica Mogherini, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs, who will present her strategy to EU leaders in June.

A key area of this project will be an attempt to build popular media initiatives for Russian speaking audiences. One organisation that has been involved in initial discussions on this matter is the EU-funded European Endowment for Democracy (EED), which shares a remarkably similar name to the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED) - the pre-eminent regime change organisation of Western intelligence agencies. A press release from an EED consultation on the "feasibility [of] Russian-language media" projects states: "Around 90 media experts and organisations examined ways of setting up new media initiatives for Russian-language audiences and strengthening cooperation between existing media actors in the Eastern Partnership countries and beyond." There is no doubt that these 'media initiatives' will be nothing more than Western intelligence operations aimed at subjugating the Russian state and reducing support for Moscow's stance on Ukraine and other issues.

Complete story at - Information war between Russia and the West intensifies -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

Trademark Jaw-Dropping US Hypocrisy on Display re Saudi Aggression - Washington's Blog

Washington has for months been screaming about Russian “aggression” against post-US-backed coup Ukraine. The screams are never accompanied by any clear evidence (perhaps highlighting why the screaming is so important), which the governments of Germany and other European countries recently announced is for good reason: the claims are merely more of Washington’s characteristic, self-serving distortions.

Condemnation of Russian “aggression” was already a case study in US-American hypocrisy, as the US is the country that has carried out, and is continuing, the worst case of aggression of the century, the invasion of Iraq, which, as part of its ongoing, wider war for hegemony over the Middle East, has slaughtered somewhere on the order of 1 to 2 or more million people in the last ten years, according to a new study by the Nobel-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility. (This is in addition to the approximately ten thousand of its “own” people the US has slaughtered domestically in the last ten or so years.)

Really?

Adding to this, the US is now openly coordinating another act of naked aggression committed by a tandem force of two US-collaborator countries competing for the title of world’s worst domestic dictatorship: Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Amazingly (though typically), the US and its media partners, such as NBC, are trying to spin the Saudi invasion as a Saudi “proxy” war… It isn’t. The Saudis are not using proxies. They themselves are doing it… openly, as terrorist states backed by the US are often wont to do. If it is a proxy war in any way, it is a US proxy war, since the Saudis are using US planes and being coordinated by the United States, making them, arguably, US proxies.

Complete story at - Trademark Jaw-Dropping US Hypocrisy on Display re Saudi Aggression Washington's Blog

Schroeder slams Merkel’s Russia policy

Former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, has lashed out at his successor, Angela Merkel over her policies towards Russia, saying he understands Moscow’s foreign policy concerns.
Schroeder made the remarks in an interview with the German daily Der Spiegel published on Saturday.

The former chancellor who ruled Germany from 1998-2005 said he fully recognizes Moscow’s concerns as since the Eastern European defense alliance, the Warsaw Pact, ceased to exist with the end of the Soviet Union, the Western military alliance “NATO not only survived, but also has extensively expanded to the East.”

Schroeder added that he sees no grounds to fear a possible Russian threat in Eastern Europe and Russia would not “consider placing in question the territorial integrity of Poland or the Baltic states.”
In addition, Schroeder insisted that attempts by the United States and the European Union (EU) to internationally isolate Russia over the crisis in Ukraine are “wrong,” arguing, “It is during a crisis that dialogue should be maintained.”

Western governments, including Germany have imposed sanctions on Russia, accusing Moscow of interfering in neighboring Ukraine. However, the Kremlin denies the accusation.

According to Schroeder, Berlin should have prevented the European Commission (EC) from “holding talks on Ukraine’s association with the EU solely with Kiev without involvement of Moscow.”

A political crisis erupted in Ukraine in November 2013 when the country’s then president, Viktor Yanukovych, refrained from signing an Association Agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow.

The move sparked pro-EU protests, with its center in Kiev’s Maidan Square, and in February 2014, Yanukovych was ousted by Western-backed groups. The ouster triggered in its turn pro-Russian protests in the country’s southern and eastern regions.

Complete story at - PressTV-Schroeder slams Merkel’s Russia policy

Land Destroyer: Russian Crimea: One Year Later

NATO calls Crimea "invaded" and "occupied." NATO has taught the world well what invasion and occupation really looks like, and Crimea isn't it.

March 22, 2015 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - In 2001, NATO invaded and began the occupation of the South-Central Asian country of Afghanistan. The invasion and occupation has left tens of thousands dead, many more displaced, and has resulted in continued chaos and violence up until and including present day. Throughout the conflict, revelations of abuses, mass murder, and other atrocities including systematic torture have been exposed, perpetrated by invading NATO forces and their Afghan collaborators.

The war has also resulted in the use of armed drone aircraft which regularly kill men, women, and children indiscriminately along the Afghan-Pakistani border - a campaign of mass murder ongoing for nearly as long as the conflict has raged.

In 2003, NATO-members joined the United States in the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. An estimated 1 million people would lose their lives, including thousands of Western troops. For nearly a decade the United State occupied Iraq, and during its attempts to prop up a suitable client regime, laid waste to the nation. American forces in their bid to exercise control over the Iraqi population would conduct sweeping assaults on entire cities. The city of Fallujah would be leveled nearly to the ground, twice.


Complete story at - Land Destroyer: Russian Crimea: One Year Later

Colonel Cassad (in English) - Destabilizing the old world order

Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond gave a speech in London in which he again spoke about the destabilizing role of Russia in the Ukrainian crisis.

"President Putin's actions — illegally annexing Crimea and now using Russian troops to destabilize eastern Ukraine – fundamentally undermine the security of sovereign nations of Eastern Europe," — said Hammond, speaking in the Royal United Services Institute in London.

According to Hammond, Putin is not going to follow the rules accepted in the international community, the goal of which is to keep peace between nations. Quite the opposite he is bent on "subverting it", due to which Russia is potentially the "single greatest threat to Britain's security."
Earlier in his BBC interview the head of the British Foreign Office said that there are no signs of changing the Moscow's policy towards the Ukrainian conflict.

He added that additional sanctions against Russia may be passed in the case of the worsening situation in Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities and the western countries accuse Russia of giving military aid to the separatists in the east of Ukraine and of sending military force to participate in the conflict.

Moscow consistently denies direct participation in the armed conflict in Donbass and accuses the west of not having the desire to settle the crisis peacefully.

Merkel convinced Obama.

On Monday evening it became known that the US president Barack Obama decided not to ship lethal weapons to Ukraine for now.

As the Associated Press agency was told by the ambassador of Germany in Washington Peter Wittig, Obama made this decision in February after the talks in the White House with Chancellor Angela Merkel. According to Wittig, the American president agreed with Merkel that more room needs to be given to diplomacy in the situation of the cease-fire that started.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/uk/2015/03/150310_hammond_speech_russia_threat_europe (in Russian) — link

The only thing in which it is possible to agree with Hammond is that the current Russian line is destroying the existing world order, willingly or unwillingly, which its current masters naturally don't like. Few can be deceived by hypocritical lamentations that the existing world order served the goal of keeping peace, because it is precisely the masters of the existing world order who lead in the number of aggressive wars and foreign-inspired coups, which violate the sovereignty of independent and formally independent countries. It is hard to say that Russia consciously sought actions that destroy this world order. For many years Russia tried to integrate into this system, but no matter how our westernizers tried, they were regularly shown the door. In the end, Russia was forced to throw monkey wrenches into the works of the wheels of the existing world order, first in Georgia, then in Syria, and now in Ukraine. Not in any single one of these crucial events Russia wasn't the initiator of the process. Rather, it stood in defense, in some cases successfully, in other cases not so much. But this is unacceptable for those who benefit the most from the fact that our world works in this specific way and not in some other way.

Russia is currently unable to offer some kind of global project or a paradigm of development to the world. The rejection of superpower status is fixed at the level of the basic ideological postulates. Russia cannot replace the USA, even if she strongly wanted it. So there is no speaking about Russia trying to bring the USA down from their high horse and take the place of the world hegemony. Only China may entertain such ideas, and only in the long term. Russia simply wants to lock certain spheres of influence behind her and to review the rules of the game where the USA act as not the first among equals bur rather like a sovereign among vassals (perhaps, disloyal vassals). That is why the conflict based on the foundation of such postulates destroys and will continue to destroy the existing world order, both due to the natural development of the cold war between the USA and the RF and also due to the long-term consequences of wars and political and economic crises generated by this conflict.

Complete story at - Colonel Cassad (in English) - Destabilizing the old world order

Russia Rebounds, Despite Sanctions - Bloomberg View

By Matthew A. Winkler

Sanctions meant to punish Russia for snatching Crimea from Ukraine one year ago were supposed to hurt Russian business. And they did. Russian stocks, bonds and commodities had the worst performance in 2014 of those in any emerging market.

That was then. Now the picture is changing, with investors starting to favor Russia in 2015. The ruble, which became the world's most volatile currency last year after President Vladimir Putin's land grab, is stabilizing. The swings in its value narrowed this year more than any of the other 30 most-traded currencies.

Investors in Russian government securities denominated in rubles have earned the equivalent of 7 cents on the dollar so far this year, as measured by the Bloomberg Russia Local Sovereign Bond Index. In contrast, anyone holding similar government debt in emerging markets across-the-board has lost 1.1 percent in 2015.

The picture is even rosier for Russia's corporate bondholders; they've had a 7.3 percent total return in 2015, leading the gains in the index for emerging market corporate bonds compiled by Bloomberg. And while shareholders in the global emerging market stocks measured by the MSCI Emerging Market Index gained 1.7 percent this year, the 50 Russian stocks in the Micex index are up 11.9 percent -- better than the Standard & Poor's 500 or any other North American market.

The ruble's relative value helps explain why there are some signs of confidence in Russia. Although the ruble remains the most volatile of the 31 most-traded currencies this year, its swings are narrowing. This is visible in implied volatility, a measure of traders' bets on how much the currency's value will change day-to-day. After surging in late 2014 amid the widening Ukraine crisis, the ruble now is fluctuating the way it did in 2009.

Complete story at - Russia Rebounds, Despite Sanctions - Bloomberg View

Crimea's Growth Fastest in 20 Years Thanks to Russia, Sanctions - Minister / Sputnik International

In an interviw with Sputnik, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea Dmitry Polonsky explained how the republic won after rejoining Russia, how Western sanctions contributed to its economic development and what the West should focus on.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Crimea has been experiencing an upsurge in development following its reunification with Russia thanks to the country’s investment in the republic, Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Crimea Dmitry Polonsky told Sputnik on Wednesday.

“Crimea has not developed at such a pace as it has in the past year over the past twenty years,” Polonsky said, adding that the Russian government plans to invest almost 700 billion rubles ($12.1 billion) in the republic’s economy under the current social-economic development program, which will run until 2020.

Polonsky, who is Crimea's Internal Policy, Information and Mass Communications Minister, stressed that during the 23 years prior to the March 2014 independence referendum, Crimea experienced “regression” due to the Ukrainian authorities lack of investment.

“Unfortunately, the 23-year-long tenure in Ukraine has been the time of regression for Crimea. The Ukrainian government did not invest a single penny into Crimea, at the same time it sucked out all possible resources from here," Polonsky told Sputnik, stressing that Russia “is taking an entirely different route” which is making a “drastic” difference on the peninsula. But even if Crimea residents were told not to expect any investment from the Russian government a year ago, they would have "still made the choice of becoming part of Russia," the minister stressed.

Complete story at - Crimea's Growth Fastest in 20 Years Thanks to Russia, Sanctions - Minister / Sputnik International

U.S.-v.-Russia: Even Stephen Cohen Is Starting to Speak the Truth - Washington's Blog

Eric Zuesse

An alarming development is that Stephen F. Cohen, the internationally prominent scholar of Russia, is acknowledging that (1:35 on the video) “for the first time in my long life (I began in this field in the 1960s), I think the possibility of war with Russia is real,” and he clearly and unequivocally places all of the blame for it on the U.S. leadership. He calls this “possibly a fateful turning-point in history.” He also says “it could be the beginning of the end of the so-called trans-Atlantic alliance.”

He goes on to say (2:20): “This problem began in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration adopted a winner-take-all policy toward post-Soviet Russia … Russia gives, we take. … This policy was adopted by the Clinton Administration but is pursued by every [meaning both] political party, every President, every American Congress, since President Clinton, to President Obama. This meant that the United States was entitled to a sphere or zone of influence as large as it wished, right up to Russia’s borders, and Russia was entitled to no sphere of influence, at all, not even in Georgia, … or in Ukraine (with which Russia had been intermarried for centuries).”

He also speaks clearly about the misrepresentations of Putin by the American Government, and he clearly states (5:25): “He’s more European than 99% of other Russians.”

Regarding Ukraine (5:45): “Since November of 2013, Putin has been not aggressive, but reactive, at every stage.”

Regarding, in America, the effective unanimity of allowed scholarly and media opinions to the contrary of the actual facts, (and this is the most startling thing of all, so you might want to go straight to it, at 7:05): “This is an unprecedented situation in American politics. … This is exceedingly dangerous, and this is a failure of American democracy. Why it happened, I am not sure.”

He condemns (7:30) “this extraordinarily irrational [non] factual demonization of Putin … and this too is hard to explain.”

Complete story at - U.S.-v.-Russia: Even Stephen Cohen Is Starting to Speak the Truth Washington's Blog

Polish Foreign Minister Says New Russia Sanctions Not Necessary; More Deaths Recorded In Eastern Ukraine

According to Poland’s foreign minister, the world does not need to discuss increasing sanctions against Russia, because the Ukrainian conflict that sparked the sanctions is essentially stalled. Grzegorz Schetyna, who made the comments while in Brussels on Monday, said that nothing has happened in recent weeks that would warrant an increase in the U.S.- and European Union-imposed sanctions.

"Now it seems that the conflict is frozen, and we have to respond flexibly to this situation. It is not necessary to radicalize it," Schetyna said. "For today, the EU countries have faced an issue of extending the existing sanctions, which is to be considered at the summit of the EU leaders this week."

Schetyna said that new solutions must be found if the conflict is to reach a peaceful conclusion.
"The thing is that we must use the most effective means for the resolution of the conflict,” Schetyna said. “The implementation of the Minsk agreements is important, but we need to look for another format ... and it is a challenge for those who are currently engaged in talks with Russia for a peaceful resolution of the Donbas conflict." The Minsk agreements are the February deal that led to a ceasefire between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine. That ceasefire, however, is being violated with skirmishes almost every day.

Schetyna’s comments came as the government in Kiev reports that the pro-Russian rebels fired on Ukrainian military positions 30 times in 24 hours, and that three soldiers have been killed. According to Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the National Security and Defense Council, the men were killed after driving over a land mine. “Another five were injured as a result of military clashes," Lysenko said.

While the government offered no details of where the land mine exploded, clashes took place near the city of Donetsk, the de facto capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Complete story at - Polish Foreign Minister Says New Russia Sanctions Not Necessary; More Deaths Recorded In Eastern Ukraine

A beautiful place caught in geopolitical games: Expats give their views on Crimea | Russia Beyond The Headlines

It has been a year since Crimea became part of Russia. RBTH asked several Western expats in Russia about Crimea and if the geopolitical tensions between Moscow and the West have affected their lives. Several people declined to answer the questions, citing the complex nature of the situation, but three people responded. They are:

Elizabeth Bagot, 27, is an American from Kansas who works as a professional translator. She has lived in Russia for 4.5 years and is based in Moscow.

Bryan McDonald, 35, is an Irish journalist. He has lived in Russia for five years and is based in Sochi.

Richard Winterbottom, 31, lived in Russia for eight years teaching English before recently moving to London.

RBTH: In your opinion, have attitudes towards foreigners in Russia changed in the year since Crimea's absorption by Russia?

Elizabeth Bagot: Yes, attitudes towards foreigners appear to have changed since the annexation, not so much on a person-to-person level as on a rhetorical and abstract level.

I have heard a lot of anti-American rhetoric on social media and in discussions with Russians, but the same holds true for anti-Russianism from my American friends. Never once have I been treated differently on a personal level in Russia. This is probably because I speak Russian fluently and don't loudly express political opinions.

Bryan MacDonald: Yes, definitely. The usual Russian warmth and curiosity towards west Europeans is gone. However, it isn't nasty yet in any way.

That said, I believe it's pretty bad for Americans. I've also noticed that Russians are less interested in the EU Europe as a palace to visit/work.

Complete story at - A beautiful place caught in geopolitical games: Expats give their views on Crimea | Russia Beyond The Headlines

Russia Won't Return Crimea To Ukraine Despite Threat Of Continued Sanctions, Kremlin Says

Russia reiterated Tuesday it will not return Crimea to Ukraine, one year after its much-criticized annexation of the region despite objections from Western leaders. The United States and European Union have each said they will not lift economic sanctions against Russia unless Crimea was returned to Ukrainian control.

“There is no occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a region of the Russian Federation and of course the subject of our regions is not up for discussion,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 following the disputed results of a referendum and one month after Russian soldiers entered the peninsula to quell unrest that forced pro-Russia former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to resign. Russian President Vladimir Putin said 97 percent of Crimean citizens had voted to join Russia, though many in the international community disputed the referendum’s alleged results.

The annexation of Crimea led to an ongoing conflict between pro-Russian separatist rebels and pro-government Ukrainian forces, resulting in the deaths of more than 5,800 people since last summer. Western leaders have accused Russia of providing the rebels with direct and logistical support, and both the United States and the European Union instituted economic sanctions as punishment. A U.S. State Department spokeswoman and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini each reiterated this week that sanctions will remain intact so long as Russia continues to control Crimea.

Despite international outrage, support for Putin has increased since Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Recent polls found Putin’s approval rating at between 80 percent and 90 percent.

Putin said in a documentary that aired Sunday that he was “ready” to place Russia’s nuclear weapons on standby if other nations attempted to interfere in Crimea’s annexation. He added the military intervention was enacted in part to save Yanukovich’s life, according to Reuters.

Complete story at - Russia Won't Return Crimea To Ukraine Despite Threat Of Continued Sanctions, Kremlin Says

John Helmer: IMF Makes Ukraine War-Fighting Loan, Allows US to Fund Military Operations Against Russia, May Repay Gazprom Bill | naked capitalism

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed on a scheme of war financing for Ukraine. For the first time, according to Fund sources, the IMF is not only violating its loan repayment conditions, but also the purposes and safeguards of the IMF’s original charter.

IMF lending is barred for a member state in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes, according to Article I of the Fund’s 1944-45 Articles of Agreement. This provides “confidence to members by making the general resources of the Fund temporarily available to them under adequate safeguards, thus providing them with opportunity to correct maladjustments in their balance of payments without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity.”

To deter Russian and other country directors from voting last week against the IMF’s loan, and releasing their reasons in public, the IMF board has offered Russia the possibility of, though not the commitment to repayment for Gazprom’s gas deliveries, and the $3 billion Russian state bond which falls due in December.

On March 11 the IMF board agreed to approve an Extended Loan Facility (EFF) for Ukraine for a total of 13.4 billion Special Drawing Rights (SDR), currently equivalent to $17.5 billion. Here are the IMF papers spelling out the details.

The first tranche agreed for payment amounts to $4.6 billion, and was paid on Friday. According to the IMF, another $4.6 billion may be released in three instalments later in the year – in June, September, and December. At the same time, the Ukrainian government is obliged to repay the IMF $840.1 million in past-due loan amounts and charges.

The Fund’s managing director Christine Lagarde (lead image) did not claim in her press release that this is new money. Instead, she said the IMF is making a “change in the IMF-supported program from Stand-By Arrangement [SBA] to Extended Arrangement under the EFF, which is consistent with the more protracted nature of Ukraine’s balance-of-payment needs.” Lagarde also claimed the loan’s purpose is to “support immediate economic stabilization in Ukraine and a set of deep and wide-ranging policy reforms aimed at restoring robust growth.”

Complete story at - John Helmer: IMF Makes Ukraine War-Fighting Loan, Allows US to Fund Military Operations Against Russia, May Repay Gazprom Bill | naked capitalism

Russian Elites but Not Russian People, Ready to Capitulate to the West, Kagarlitsky Says | Johnson's Russia List

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, March 17, 2015)

The West does not understand Russia, but it does understand very well indeed Russia’s elites; and as a result, it has seriously miscalculated in its dealings with Moscow about Ukraine, according to Boris Kagarlitsky, who argues the elites are ready to capitulate in the face of sanctions but the Russian people never will be.

In fact, the Moscow analyst says, while increasing sanctions may increase the willingness of Russian elites to find compromises, they “not only will not frighten the population of Russia but on the contrary will push” all other Russians in the opposite direction and make them more anti-Western and anti-elite as well (stoletie.ru/vzglyad/elity_gotovy_kapitulirovat_627.htm).

Although the West and the elites assume the population will always be passive, in fact, that is not the case, and popular anger at anything that ordinary Russians view as a capitulation will be something the Kremlin will have to take into account. Indeed, Kagarlitsky says, this divide between elites and masses will form the core of Russian politics in the months ahead.

The Presidential Administration understands this, he says, but the government and even more the Russian liberal elites on whose views the West relies do not. And consequently, the West’s own actions instead of pushing Moscow in the direction it hopes for are in fact pushing the regime in very different ones.

And he argues that in this conflict, Moscow’s liberal intelligentsia will find itself in an ever weaker position because its support of the West on Ukraine means that it “has isolated itself from society and even from those of its strata which a year or two ago were ready to listen to its arguments.”

Complete story at - Russian Elites but Not Russian People, Ready to Capitulate to the West, Kagarlitsky Says | Johnson's Russia List

New Feature: Even More News for You

I'm making available today a new feature on my blog. While there is still a little bit more work that I want to do with it, I'd like to make it available to everyone right now in the hope that you'll find it useful. Click on one of the links below and you'll be taken there.

The new pages each contain a scrolling news widget. The news widgets are Russia News, Ukraine News, Novorossiya News, and Elsewhere in Ukraine News. This news widgets will allow access to a greater number of news stories than I could hope to post myself. Here's some basic information on each widget.

1. Russia News – the latest news concerning events and developments regarding Russia.

2. Ukraine News – the latest news regarding events and developments in Ukraine. This also includes NATO news, since we know that NATO is deeply involved in events in Ukraine.

3. Novorossiya News – news regarding the events Donetsk, Luhansk, and Novorossiya.

4. Elsewhere in Ukraine News – news regarding events elsewhere in Ukraine, with specific emphasis on cities and regions that may not remain in Ukraine for whole lot longer.

• Even More News for You - All four of the above feeds together on one page.


The first two categories have a larger number of news stories than the last two categories. This is not all that surprising. Because frankly, even a lot of alternative news sources are not covering these areas in much depth. Yet.

These news scrolls, while they contain a lot of current, up to the moment, news, are not updated instantaneously as news occurs. There will likely always be a couple hours delay. This is about the best that can be expected from a free solution. Yet, it will allow this website to be updated a lot more frequently than I could ever hope to update it myself.

Some caveats.

On the initial load, sometimes 1 or more news feeds don't load.  Refresh/reload the page and it should all work.  (Fingers crossed)

If you see a story that seems interesting, click it now. Once it disappears from the news scroll, it's gone and it won't come back.

Since the selection of these stories are computerized, there will no doubt be some stories that don't fit in well with the mission of this blog. As I discover these stories, I will go back and tweak the selection process in the hope that you see a more appropriate selection of stories.

If you see anything that appears not to be working too well, or doesn't seem to fit, feel free to leave a comment on the news scrolls page and I will look into it. And the feel free to drop me a comment and let me know how you like this new feature.

- Aaron Talka

The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | NATO’s Shadow of Nazi Operation Barbarossa

NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve paced ahead this week with the latest arrival of more US military forces in the Baltic region. Under the guise of defending eastern Europe from «Russian aggression», more than 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley armoured personnel carriers rolled into Latvia. Last month, a similar motorised display of military support was deployed in Estonia – in the town of Narva – with American flags flown by the US Army’s Second Calvary Regiment just 300 metres from the Russian border.

Narva protrudes sharply eastward – like a metaphorical blade – into Russian territory. It is only some 100 kilometres from St Petersburg – Russia’s second city after Moscow, and with a searing history of military assault by Nazi Germany during 1941-44. The siege of St Petersburg, formerly Leningrad, caused over one million Russians to perish, mainly from hunger, before the German Wehrmacht was eventually pushed back and defeated by the Soviet Red Army. More on that in a moment.

Back to the present: US General John O’Conner said of the latest deployment in Latvia that American troops would «deter Russian aggression», adding with Orwellian prose: «Freedom must be fought for, freedom must be defended».

The US-led Operation Atlantic Resolve has seen a surge in American military presence in the Baltic countries and other eastern European members of the NATO alliance over the past year. Technically, it is claimed that the US forces are «on tour duty» and therefore not transgressing past agreements with Russia to limit NATO permanent forces on Russia’s borders. But semantics aside, it is hard not to see that Washington has, in effect, significantly stepped up its military footprint in a geo-strategically sensitive region, in brazen contravention of erstwhile commitments made to Moscow. NATO warplane sorties have increased four-fold in the Baltic region over the past year, as have NATO warships in the Black Sea.

Complete story at - The Greanville Post • Vol. IX | NATO’s Shadow of Nazi Operation Barbarossa

ClubOrlov: The Rage of the Cultural Elites

A certain unhappy incident happened to my aunt in the summer of 1966. The Cultural Revolution—a political movement initiated by Mao Zedong—was beginning to engulf the country. That same year many American college students were protesting against the Vietnam War and Leonid Brezhnev was keeping his seat warm as the General Secretary of CPSU, having replaced the somewhat volatile Nikita Khrushchev two years earlier. My aunt was then a freshman studying literature at Fudan University in Shanghai.

It so happened that my aunt, then a sensitive and somewhat dreamy young woman, had stubbornly and haplessly clung to certain musical tastes which at that time in China came to be regarded as politically incorrect, being said, in the trendy ideological jargon of that time, to reflect “decadent bourgeois revisionist aesthetics.” To wit, my aunt had kept in her record collection a rendition of “The Urals Mountain-Ash” (Уральская Рябинушка), a Russian folk song in which a young girl meets two nice boys under a mountain-ash tree and must choose between them, performed by the National Choir of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was an old-style LP spinning at 78 RPM. It had a red emblem in the middle emblazoned with “CCCP.”

One of my aunt's roommates, who probably had always resented her for one reason or another, found out about it and reported her to the authorities. For this rather serious infraction, student members of the Red Guard made my aunt publicly smash her beloved record, then kneel upon the fragments and recite an apology to Chairman Mao while fellow-students threw trash at her face shouting “Down with Soviet revisionists!” This generation of Chinese young people, who once donned Red Guard uniforms, beat people up around the country and smashed various cultural artifacts, is now mostly living on government pensions or earning meagre profits from home businesses, but some have prospered and can be found among the upper crust of contemporary China’s business, cultural, and political elites.

This episode came to my mind when in the summer of 2014 I came upon video clips of Ukrainian student activists storming university classrooms in mid-lecture and ordering everyone to stand up and sing the Ukrainian national anthem, then forcing the professor to apologize for the lecture not being adequately patriotic. There were also ghastly spectacles of “Enemies of the People” (guilty only of having served under the overthrown president Yanukovich) being paraded around in trash bins. In Ukrainian schools, children were made to jump up and down, and told that “Whoever doesn't jump is a Moscal” (a derogatory term for “Russian”).

Add to this the destruction of public monuments to World War II and the ridiculous rewriting of history (turns out that, during World War II, Germany liberated Ukraine, but then Russia invaded and occupied Germany!) and a complete picture emerges: the Ukrainian Maidan movement is one of a species of “cultural revolution.” The new, fashionable term being thrown around is “civilizational pivot,” but it and the old “cultural revolution” can be understood as approximate synonyms, sharing the need for frenzied spectacles of mass humiliation and destruction.

In 1971 the Vietnam War began to draw toward an agonizing and, from the American government’s point of view, highly unfulfilling conclusion. That same year Dr. Henry Kissinger made a secret trip to Beijing, flying in from a military airport in Pakistan. This was followed by the joint Nixon-Kissinger summit in 1972, which culminated in Nixon's historic handshake with Mao Zedong, completing China's civilizational pivot away from the USSR and toward the west. In hindsight, this dramatic opening could only be properly characterized as a swift dagger-in-the-back against the USSR, in both geopolitical and ideological senses. The decrepitating, inflexible body of the USSR never recovered from this stab wound, leading to its final collapse, from a multitude of internal and external causes, two decades later.

In late February, 2014, just as Ukraine was attempting its civilizational pivot away from Russia and toward the west, I interviewed a senior captain of the Right Sector, a radical Ukrainian nationalist group with neo-Nazi stylings. The burly man looked aggressive in his paramilitary garb, and arrived with bodyguards, but turned out to be rather amiable. He was particularly glad to see me because I look Chinese. He spoke Russian, reluctantly, after announcing that he was ashamed of it. (This is typical; Ukrainians use Ukrainian to spout nationalist nonsense, but when they need to make sense they lapse into Russian.) He said that he had served in the Red Army and had been stationed in the Far East, on the Chinese border. He expressed hope that China would soon do something big in Siberia.

Complete story at - ClubOrlov: The Rage of the Cultural Elites