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| A protesters road-block on the outskirts of Sloviansk today. |
UKRAINE CRISIS AS
REVOLT SPREADS
IN EASTERN REGIONS:
The crisis in Ukraine reached a new level of seriousness this weekend as revolts against the illegal Junta regime spread to more cities and towns in the Eastern, mainly Russian-speaking areas of the country.
The Junta response has been threats of violence and war against the protesters holding Government buildings and police stations in several major towns.
Tensions are at their highest in Sloviansk, where armed men
seized a police station and other government buildings on Saturday. A Ukrainian
security officer was killed and several more injured on Sunday, reportedly in
an armed confrontation just outside the town, on the road to nearby Artemivsk.
Russian media also reported the death of a pro-Russia
activist in clashes somewhere in the city, and eyewitnesses also described a
possibly fatal shooting, although it is not known if that is a separate
incident. Despite Ukraine's interior minister declaring an "anti-terrorist
operation" against the police station occupiers, there are reports
security forces refused to retake the building without more significant military
support.
Artemivsk
Privately-owned Ukrainian news website Levyy Bereg reported
that activists congregated at the Artemivsk police station on Saturday but
dispersed, before some of them headed to the city council building, where they
raised the flag of the recently proclaimed "Donetsk Republic" in front of
and on top of the building, and read out its "declaration of
independence".
Donetsk
The seizure of the Donetsk regional government building and
subsequent declaration of independence from Kiev, earlier last week, was one of
the first of the latest round of direct actions in the east. That occupation
continues, with high barricades and large crowds of supporters still
surrounding the building. A regional police station was also seized in Donetsk
on Saturday.
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| People's Republic is proclaimed in Donetsk |
On February 28, the deputy governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region,
Boris Filatov, posted an explanation on his Facebook page of how to
"properly handle" members of the pro-Russian movement who are dissatisfied with
the Junta in Kiev: “offer those dirtbags any promises, guarantees,
or concessions they want. And… we’ll hang them all later.”
On March 5, Andrei Purgin, one of the leaders of
the pro-Russian organization, the Donetsk Republic, was captured in
Donetsk and taken to an unknown destination. The kidnapped man’s friends
claim that he had received a visit the previous day, during which he was
warned, “if he stays home today, his wife won’t become a widow,” but because
others were expecting him, he went on to the public square anyway.
Andrei’s fate is now unknown.
Kharkiv
Kramatorsk
"The United States have their share of responsibility for the outbreak of civil war in Ukraine," he said.
Today only in Kharkiv at least 70 activists have been arrested during the so-called “anti-terrorist operation”.
According to the reports, foreign mercenaries most likely from the US Greystone
Ltd private military contractor firm were participating in the operation along
with the National Guard (mostlyly consisting of the ultranationalist Pravy
(Right) Sector fighters) and some loyal Interior Ministry units.
Kramatorsk
A group of camouflaged men armed with automatic weapons
stormed a police headquarters in the city late on Saturday. On Sunday they continued
their occupation and built a barricade try prevent attempts to recapture the
building. NATO sources, as usual, said the military appearance and organisation
of the armed men indicated Russian military involvement.
Makiyivka
Local website KID reported that the town council building in
Makiyivka was also seized by pro-Russian activists, who raised a Russian flag
above it and prepared to build barricades. It said more than a thousand people
were rallying outside the building.
Luhansk
Armed pro-Russia activists continued their occupation of the
regional security service headquarters in Luhansk, originally taken over on
Tuesday along with other administrative buildings.
Druzhkivka
Pro-Russia activists seized a local administration building
in Druzhkivka on Saturday evening, RBK-Ukraine reported, citing sources in
nearby Sloviansk.
There were also reports of attacks on administrative
buildings in Khartsyzsk and Ilovaysk, although a Donetsk regional official told
the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Sunday that the situation in those cities
was now calm. Rallies and possible attempts to seize government buildings were
also reported in Dobropillya, Kostiantynivka and Snizhne. But there were
conflicting reports on whether an attempt to seize a police building Krasnyi
Liman was successful or repelled.
Yenakiyevo
Regional news website OstroV said armed men seized the
prosecutor's office, city police department and the city council building in
the city, although later left the prosecutors office. "The Russian flag
and the flag of the Donetsk Republic are
flying over the city council building," it said. However, it also reported
that an expected assault in neighbouring Horlivka did not occur, when
pro-Russian local residents were left without support from the armed men in
military-style uniforms who had helped seizures in other cities.
Zaporizhya
Scuffles broke out between rival demonstrators in
Zaporizhya. Local media reports said pro-Russia activists were booed by
thousands of rival demonstrators, who chanted "shame," "glory to
Ukraine" and "separatism will not pass" while pelting them with
eggs, flour and milk during the tense stand off.
More and more police stations and government buildings have
been falling to the protesters and unidentified militants.
However, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Kiev
was "demonstrating its inability to take responsibility for the fate of
the country" and warned that any use of force against Russian speakers
"would undermine the potential for cooperation", including talks due
to be held on Thursday between Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the
European Union.
Meanwhile, exiled former Ukrainian president Viktor
Yanukovych, overthrown by the Kiev Junta in February, warned Ukraine stood on
the brink of "civil war."
Speaking at a press conference in Rostov-on-Don in southern
Russia, Mr Yanukovych echoed statements from the Russian Foreign Ministry
calling Kiev's threat use the army against armed separatists a "criminal
order" and called on the security services to refuse such instructions.
"The United States have their share of responsibility for the outbreak of civil war in Ukraine," he said.
According to local media reports, Ukraine’s elite Alpha unit
refused to obey an order to besiege protester-held buildings in Donetsk. A
commander reportedly told officials that his men were a force intended for
rescuing hostages and fighting terrorism and would act only in accordance with
the law. Similarly, in Kharkiv, a local police chief quit, saying he had been
deceived by the Kiev authorities into besieging a building held by protesters
and arresting dozens of occupants on the pretext that it was held by dangerous
armed bandits.
Despite this evidence of a groundswell of popular
resistance, Washington has ratcheted up its drumbeat of threats against Russia,
accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of stage-managing the protests and
preparing to annex eastern Ukraine.
Claiming, without any substantiation, that there was
“overwhelming evidence” of Moscow’s involvement, US Assistant Secretary of
State Victoria Nuland told a congressional panel on Wednesday that the building
seizures in eastern Ukraine were “very carefully orchestrated, well-planned,
well-targeted” moves. She warned of consequences if the “aggressive actions”
went unchecked. Nuland is remberered for her "Doughnut Dolly" appearances during the protests in Kiev handing out "cookies" to the protesters.
What US officials are accusing the Kremlin of
doing—intervening to politically manipulate protests in Ukraine—is precisely
what the Western powers boast of having done. European Union and American
officials joined anti-Yanukovych demonstrators on Kiev’s Independence Square
and met with leaders of the neo-fascist Svoboda party. The Obama administration
and its European allies have, according to US Undersecretary of State for
Europe and Eurasia, "Doughnut Dolly" Nuland, spent some $5 billion to promote
pro-Western regime-change in Ukraine since the 1990s.
On Thursday, NATO’s supreme commander, General Philip
Breedlove, published a set of commercial satellite photos purporting to show an
estimated 40,000 Russian troops and long lines of tanks, armoured vehicles,
artillery and aircraft massed along Russia’s border with Ukraine. On his
Twitter feed he wrote: “Russian forces around Ukraine fully equipped/capable to
invade. Public denial undermines progress. Images tell story.”
These images were later revealed by other sources as photos of Russian military exercises in August, 2013, not last week.
While accusing Russia of mobilising its military, US-led
NATO forces are continuing a buildup in the region. In the latest move, on
Friday the USS Donald Cook, a destroyer equipped with Aegis missiles, entered
the Black Sea, the home of a key Russian naval base. Within the next week, it
will be joined by the French reconnaissance ship Dupuy de Lome and the
destroyer Dupleix.
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| USS Donald Cook sails through the Bosporus, April 10, 2014. |
Far from having “carefully orchestrated” the protests in
eastern Ukraine, the Putin government has responded to the upsurge by urging
the demonstrators to drop demands for secession and accept stronger regional authority.
Samantha Power, Obama's paid liar at the UN, told American television that the
"outrageous" attacks which the Kiev Junta has blamed on "provocative
activities of Russian special services" were similar to those which took
place in the Crimea earlier this year, leading to Russia's acceptance of the
region's application to join the Russian Federation.
Asked about the latest events, she said: "It has all
the tell-tale signs of what we saw in Crimea. It's professional, it's
coordinated.
"There's nothing grass roots seeming about it. Forces
are doing in each of the six or seven cities that they've been active in
exactly the same thing, so certainly it bears the tell-tale signs of Moscow's
involvement."
"I think the actions that he is undertaking certainly
give credence to that idea," she said. "But I will say in the
conversations that we have, of course, they keep insisting, no, that's not what
we want, that's not what we want.
"But everything they're doing suggests the
opposite."
Mrs Power said that US President Barack Obama would consider
further sanctions against Russia if Moscow's aggression continued, including
taking measures against the energy, banking and mining sectors.
This is the same one who told the world that she searched thousands of videos on the war in Syria but couldn't find any evidence of the Jihadi's using weapons capable of firing chemical weapons shells:
see here:
see here:
The Kiev Junta's reckless and hysterical calls for a bloody crackdown
on pro-Russian forces in regions of Ukraine with large Russian populations
threaten not only to tip Ukraine into civil war, but to lead to a direct clash
between Ukraine and Russia. Last month, describing precisely a scenario of a
crackdown in eastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he reserved
the right to intervene militarily to defend Russians in the region:
“If we see such uncontrolled crime spreading to the eastern
regions of the country, and if the people ask us for help, while we already
have the official request from the legitimate president [Yanukovych], we retain
the right to use all available means to protect those people. We believe this
would be absolutely legitimate,” he said.
Under these explosive conditions, the NATO powers
backing the Kiev Junta and signaling their own military escalation, are directly posing the
risk of war with Russia, a disaster for the people of Ukraine and the whole of Europe.
WHY THE KIEV JUNTA IS ILLEGAL:
see here:
see here:
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