The Situation in the Ukraine. #2

medo wrote:Whose this S-300 unit is? I don't know, if Russia could bring it in Crimea by train, which have to drive through Ukraine and train is Russian (RZhD)? If this train on video is Russian, is it in Crimea or in Russia?

As Sa'iqa wrote:How come nobody on this board noticed the absurdity of the referendum? It will have only two options either you vote for annexation or for returning to the rules of the 1992 constitution regarding the autonomy of Crimea.

This is ridiculous. Saddam Hussein used to hold such elections. The voting cards had a single question "do you vote for Saddam?" And of course 99% of Iraqis voted for him.

Yatsenyuk takes Scythian gold to US as money-back guarantee

Verkhovna Rada-appointed Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk secretly took Scythian gold to the US. This sensational news was circulated through social networks by Director of Moscow’s Lev Gumilev Centre Pavel Zarifullin.

Zarifullin is convinced that during his recent visit to the US, acting Ukrainian prime minister took along $20bln worth of national cultural values.
Referring to sources that he does not reveal, the author writes that these values might become guarantees for an International Monetary Fund’s loan.
To check the authenticity of this information, historians are urging the new Ukrainian authorities to draw up an open inventory in Kiev museums’ depots. The Scythian gold is not so much valued as a precious metal as a historical relic.
Crimea declares Klitschko, Yatsenyuk and Tyagnybok personae non grata
Authorities of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea may declare the leaders of the Maidan revolution in Kiev Vitaly Klitschko, Arseny Yatsenyuk and Oleg Tyagnybok personae non grata as carriers of far-right extremist nationalistic ideology, the speaker of the Crimean legislature, the Supreme Council, said Thursday.
Crimean prosecutors to probe into 'Right Sector' Chief's activities – media

The Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has launched a criminal inquiry into the activities of Dmitry Yarosh, the 'Right Sector' radical organization leader, and of Dmitry Korchinsky, the chief of the 'Brotherhood' group, which forms part of the 'Right Sector', according to Saturday's report by the Crimean news agency.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Council of Crimea banned the activities of the 'Freedom' nationalist party and the 'Right Sector' group in Crimea, since these are known for active involvement in the recent riots in Kiev.

The ban also extends to the organizations that form part of the 'Right Sector', namely 'Trizub', or Trident, which is the so-called "revived UNA-UNSO", the 'Patriot of Ukraine', the 'Carpathian Host', the Korchinsky-led 'Brotherhood' and other groups.

The investigation was prompted by the effort of the organizations in question to spread war propaganda, as well as by the calls for killing people and destroying their property in Crimea.

Russia earlier charged Yarosh in absentia with calling for terrorism and put him on the international wanted list after he asked the Chechen terrorist chief Doku Umarov for support via a social networking service.

On February 22nd Ukraine saw a change of power with signs of a state coup. The Supreme Rada removed President Yanukovych from power, changed the constitution, made speaker Alexander Turhinov acting President and set the next presidential election for May 25.

Some regions in the east and south of Ukraine, as well as Crimea refused to recognize the legitimacy of Rada decisions and decided, for their part, to hold referendums on the future of their own regions. The referendum in Crimea is due on March 16.

Ukraine's Tyagnybok, Yarosh prosecuted for fighting Russian soldiers - Moscow

Russia has launched criminal case against the leader of Ukraine's Svoboda party, Oleh Tyagnybok, and some members of Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian People's Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO), accusing them of organizing an armed gang, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin has said on Friday.

Markin said Tyagnybok supported Chechen separatists in the 1990s.

"Depending on the role of each of them, they are suspected of crimes punishable under Article 209 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - 'formation of a stable armed group (gang) with the objective of assaults, leadership of such a group (gang), and participation in assaults committed by it,'" Markin said.

He said investigators of a battle in Chechnya between the 76th Pskov Airborne Division and Chechen separatist forces led by Shamil Basayev and Khattab had obtained evidence that the separatists who fought Russian troops in 1994-1995 included a unit made up of UNA-UNSO members.

Markin said the unit had been led by brothers Oleh and Andriy Tyagnybok, Ihor Mazur, Valery Bobrovych, Dmytro Korchynsky, Dmytry Yarosh, Volodymyr Mamalyha, and others who had not been identified. The spokesman said the Investigative Committee's North Caucasus branch had collected enough evidence to charge them and issue arrest warrants for them.

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_16/Yatsenyuk-takes-Scythian-gold-to-US-as-money-back-guarantee-8858/

arpakola wrote:
Ukranian tanks on the move

AlfaT8 wrote:To where??

Crimean leaders blame Kiev for selling Ukraine off for IMF loans

Crimea's deputy prime minister, Olga Kovitidi, described as predatory the terms of an agreement Kiev is ready to accept from the International Monetary Fund.

The tentative agreement with the IMF which the Ukrainian authorities signed with the IMF on March 2, says that the country's entire gas pipeline system will be handed over for free in the American company Chevron's ownership the moment the basic agreement is signed, while the owners of the Mariupol, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk steel mills will be obliged to surrender their 50% stakes to Germany's Ruhr.
The Donbass coal industry will be handed over to Ruhr's subsidiary in Finland, she told Interfax on Sunday, citing media reports.
It emerged recently that Kyiv has pledged to make territory available near Kharkiv to host US missile defense systems and a wing of American fighter jets to provide cover for the missile defense installations, she also said.
Ukraine's interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has assured the West that Kiev will fulfill all of the IMF's terms in order to secure a loan, Kovitidi said.
The Crimean leaders have also learned that Kyiv promised the West to take a package of unpopular measures in order to fill gaps in the Ukrainian budget, she said. Gas prices for municipal companies will have to be increased by 50% and for private will double.
Electricity tariffs will be raised by 40%, housing utility tariffs will be raised, too, gasoline excises will go up 60% and transportation tariffs 50%, while state support for childbirth will be cancelled, the free distribution of textbooks will be annulled at schools and the VAT relief will be scrapped in rural regions, she said.
Concurrently, VAT will be introduced on medications, which will push up prices and bring citizens' living standards down," Kovitidi said.
"The planned annulment of the moratorium on the sale of farmland looks appalling. The selloff of Ukraine's black soil zone, including to foreign countries, may have disastrous economic and social consequences," she said.
Kovitidi said that the Crimean legislature's decision to hold a referendum on March 16 was correct.
"The recent developments in Ukraine and the decisions being made have a direct bearing on the people of Crimea, who must know the truth and decide their own and their children's future in a referendum," she said.
Voice of Russia, Interfax

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_09/Crimean-leaders-blame-Kiev-for-selling-Ukraine-off-for-IMF-loans-1082/

Crimean military and self-defense forces have prevented an attempt to sabotage and cripple the gas distribution center that feeds a number of socially critical facilities in the peninsula, including schools and medical centers, Crimean authorities said.

Around 11:00 GMT on Saturday the gas supply to Crimea was halted at one of the distribution centers near Strelkovaya, effectively cutting gas delivery to a number of areas in the eastern part of the Crimean peninsula. As a result a number of hospitals, medical centers, schools and apartment buildings were cut off from the gas supply.

A group of gas technicians, escorted by the Crimea’s newly created military, comprised of former Ukrainian troops who have sworn their allegiance to the republic, responded to the supply disturbance and set out to check the gas station.

“There they encountered a group of at least 20 armed men in camouflage,” the Cabinet of Ministers of Crimea announced. “These people were planting explosives at the facility in order to knock it out of action completely.”

Upon seeing the Crimean forces, they quickly fled towards the village of Strelkovaya, authorities explained. According to Crimean Prime Minister Sergey Aksenov, the men sabotaging the facility introduced themselves as the member of the Border Troops of Ukraine, but retreated without any further explanation of what they were doing at the gas plant.

The gas supply has been restored, Crimean authorities said, adding that the “distribution station was taken under control by self-defense forces of Crimea in order to halt similar provocations in the near future.”

Aksenov says such measures are needed to “ensure the energy security of the Republic of Crimea and the smooth functioning of critical infrastructure,” as cited by Crimean news agency.

Ukraine in the meantime has a completely different view on the situation and has yet again accused the third party, namely Russia, of military aggression. Ukrainian media in the meantime reported nothing about the diversion at the gas plant.

Security measures are high in Crimea ahead of Sunday’s referendum and following the official formation of the National Guard comprised of Maidan self-defense squads, many of whom are considered neo-fascist from the Right Sector and Svoboda Party. In addition, large quantities of weapons have been missing from Ukrainian depots, during the coup that deposed government in Kiev.

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Crimean leaders blame Kiev for selling Ukraine off for IMF loans

Crimea's deputy prime minister, Olga Kovitidi, described as predatory the terms of an agreement Kiev is ready to accept from the International Monetary Fund.

The tentative agreement with the IMF which the Ukrainian authorities signed with the IMF on March 2, says that the country's entire gas pipeline system will be handed over for free in the American company Chevron's ownership the moment the basic agreement is signed, while the owners of the Mariupol, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk steel mills will be obliged to surrender their 50% stakes to Germany's Ruhr.
The Donbass coal industry will be handed over to Ruhr's subsidiary in Finland, she told Interfax on Sunday, citing media reports.
It emerged recently that Kyiv has pledged to make territory available near Kharkiv to host US missile defense systems and a wing of American fighter jets to provide cover for the missile defense installations, she also said.
Ukraine's interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has assured the West that Kiev will fulfill all of the IMF's terms in order to secure a loan, Kovitidi said.
The Crimean leaders have also learned that Kyiv promised the West to take a package of unpopular measures in order to fill gaps in the Ukrainian budget, she said. Gas prices for municipal companies will have to be increased by 50% and for private will double.
Electricity tariffs will be raised by 40%, housing utility tariffs will be raised, too, gasoline excises will go up 60% and transportation tariffs 50%, while state support for childbirth will be cancelled, the free distribution of textbooks will be annulled at schools and the VAT relief will be scrapped in rural regions, she said.
Concurrently, VAT will be introduced on medications, which will push up prices and bring citizens' living standards down," Kovitidi said.
"The planned annulment of the moratorium on the sale of farmland looks appalling. The selloff of Ukraine's black soil zone, including to foreign countries, may have disastrous economic and social consequences," she said.
Kovitidi said that the Crimean legislature's decision to hold a referendum on March 16 was correct.
"The recent developments in Ukraine and the decisions being made have a direct bearing on the people of Crimea, who must know the truth and decide their own and their children's future in a referendum," she said.
Voice of Russia, Interfax

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_09/Crimean-leaders-blame-Kiev-for-selling-Ukraine-off-for-IMF-loans-1082/

Zivo wrote:

magnumcromagnon wrote:

Crimean leaders blame Kiev for selling Ukraine off for IMF loans

Crimea's deputy prime minister, Olga Kovitidi, described as predatory the terms of an agreement Kiev is ready to accept from the International Monetary Fund.

The tentative agreement with the IMF which the Ukrainian authorities signed with the IMF on March 2, says that the country's entire gas pipeline system will be handed over for free in the American company Chevron's ownership the moment the basic agreement is signed, while the owners of the Mariupol, Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk steel mills will be obliged to surrender their 50% stakes to Germany's Ruhr.
The Donbass coal industry will be handed over to Ruhr's subsidiary in Finland, she told Interfax on Sunday, citing media reports.
It emerged recently that Kyiv has pledged to make territory available near Kharkiv to host US missile defense systems and a wing of American fighter jets to provide cover for the missile defense installations, she also said.
Ukraine's interim prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has assured the West that Kiev will fulfill all of the IMF's terms in order to secure a loan, Kovitidi said.
The Crimean leaders have also learned that Kyiv promised the West to take a package of unpopular measures in order to fill gaps in the Ukrainian budget, she said. Gas prices for municipal companies will have to be increased by 50% and for private will double.
Electricity tariffs will be raised by 40%, housing utility tariffs will be raised, too, gasoline excises will go up 60% and transportation tariffs 50%, while state support for childbirth will be cancelled, the free distribution of textbooks will be annulled at schools and the VAT relief will be scrapped in rural regions, she said.
Concurrently, VAT will be introduced on medications, which will push up prices and bring citizens' living standards down," Kovitidi said.
"The planned annulment of the moratorium on the sale of farmland looks appalling. The selloff of Ukraine's black soil zone, including to foreign countries, may have disastrous economic and social consequences," she said.
Kovitidi said that the Crimean legislature's decision to hold a referendum on March 16 was correct.
"The recent developments in Ukraine and the decisions being made have a direct bearing on the people of Crimea, who must know the truth and decide their own and their children's future in a referendum," she said.
Voice of Russia, Interfax

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_03_09/Crimean-leaders-blame-Kiev-for-selling-Ukraine-off-for-IMF-loans-1082/

Hmmm....



Chevron, you sneaky devil.

Stanislav Krasilnikov, ITAR-TASS wrote:
Two suspects detained in Sevastopol deputy abduction case

16/03/2014, 2:58 UTC+4

The Russian Block party leader is in safety


SEVASTOPOL, March 16, /ITAR-TASS/. Law enforcement officers have established masterminds in an attempted abduction of Sevastopol City Council member Gennady Basov. The deputy had not been abducted and was safe and sound, sources from the headquarters of Sevastopol’s self-defence forces told Tass.

Earlier reports said nine unidentified men abducted Basov in the city centre between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Saturday, March 15.

“In fact, self-defence forces and law enforcement agencies had information about preparations to abduct me and take me to Kiev, so we decided to ‘live-lure’ these violators,” Basov himself told reporters. “For that we had to spread the information about my abduction,” he added.

According to the self-defence forces, two men suspected of masterminding the abduction were detained in the operation. One of them has already witnessed. According to him, former defence minister of Ukraine and former deputy of the Batkivshchina Party, Anatoly Gritsenko, as well as a certain Burban, deputy transport minister of Ukraine, could have been involved in the abduction attempt.

According to available data, one of the perpetrators of the crime was identified as Vadim Televyak. He lives in Sevastopol and was also member of the Batkivshchina Party earlier.

One afternoon in September 1987, Secretary of State George Shultz settled in a chair across the table from Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze in a New York conference room. Both were in the city for the United Nations General Assembly.

As he habitually did at the start of such meetings , Shultz handed Shevardnadze a list of reported human rights abuses in the Soviet Union. Shevardnadze’s predecessor, Andrei Gromyko, had always received such lists grudgingly and would lecture us for interfering in Soviet internal affairs.

This time, though, Shevardnadze looked Shultz in the eye and said through his interpreter: “George, I will check this out, and if your information is correct, I will do what I can to correct the problem. But I want you to know one thing: I am not doing this because you ask me to; I am doing it because it is what my country needs to do.”

Shultz replied: “Eduard, that’s the only reason either of us should do something. Let me assure you that I will never ask you to do something that I believe is not in your country’s interest.”

They stood and shook hands. As I watched the scene, with as much emotion as amazement, it dawned on me that the Cold War was over. The job of American ambassador in Moscow was going to be a lot easier for me than it had been for my predecessors.

I thought back to that moment as talks between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s top diplomat this past week failed to resolve the crisis in Ukraine. It’s striking that the language being used publicly now is so much more strident than our language, public or private, was then. “It can get ugly fast if the wrong choices are made,” Kerry declared Wednesday, threatening sanctions.

I don’t believe that we are witnessing a renewal of the Cold War. The tensions between Russia and the West are based more on misunderstandings, misrepresentations and posturing for domestic audiences than on any real clash of ideologies or national interests. And the issues are far fewer and much less dangerous than those we dealt with during the Cold War.

But a failure to appreciate how the Cold War ended has had a profound impact on Russian and Western attitudes — and helps explain what we are seeing now.

The common assumption that the West forced the collapse of the Soviet Union and thus won the Cold War is wrong . The fact is that the Cold War ended by negotiation to the advantage of both sides.

At the December 1989 Malta summit, Mikhail Gorbachev and President George H.W. Bush confirmed that the ideological basis for the war was gone, stating that the two nations no longer regarded each other as enemies . Over the next two years, we worked more closely with the Soviets than with even some of our allies. Together, we halted the arms race, banned chemical weapons and agreed to drastically reduce nuclear weapons. I also witnessed the raising of the Iron Curtain, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the voluntary abandonment of communist ideology by the Soviet leader. Without an arms race ruining the Soviet economy and perpetuating totalitarianism, Gorbachev was freed to focus on internal reforms.

Because the collapse of the Soviet Union happened so soon afterward, people often confuse it with the end of the Cold War. But they were separate events, and the former was not an inevitable outcome of the latter.

Moreover, the breakup of the U.S.S.R. into 15 separate countries was not something the United States caused or wanted. We hoped that Gorbachev would forge a voluntary union of Soviet republics, minus the three Baltic countries. Bush made this clear in August 1991 when he urged the non-Russian Soviet republics to adopt the union treaty Gorbachev had proposed and warned against “suicidal nationalism.” Russians who regret the collapse of the Soviet Union should remember that it was the elected leader of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, who conspired with his Ukrainian and Belarusian counterparts to replace the U.S.S.R. with a loose and powerless “commonwealth.”

Even after the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist, Gorbachev maintained that “the end of the Cold War is our common victory.” Yet the United States insisted on treating Russia as the loser.

“By the grace of God, America won the Cold War,” Bush said during his 1992 State of the Union address. That rhetoric would not have been particularly damaging on its own. But it was reinforced by actions taken under the next three presidents.

President Bill Clinton supported NATO’s bombing of Serbia without U.N. Security Council approval and the expansion of NATO to include former Warsaw Pact countries. Those moves seemed to violate the understanding that the United States would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat from Eastern Europe. The effect on Russians’ trust in the United States was devastating. In 1991, polls indicated that about 80 percent of Russian citizens had a favorable view of the United States; in 1999, nearly the same percentage had an unfavorable view.

Vladi­mir Putin was elected in 2000 and initially followed a pro-Western orientation. When terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, he was the first foreign leader to call and offer support. He cooperated with the United States when it invaded Afghanistan, and he voluntarily removed Russian bases from Cuba and Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

What did he get in return? Some meaningless praise from President George W. Bush, who then delivered the diplomatic equivalent of swift kicks to the groin: further expansion of NATO in the Baltics and the Balkans, and plans for American bases there; withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; invasion of Iraq without U.N. Security Council approval; overt participation in the “color revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan; and then, probing some of the firmest red lines any Russian leader would draw, talk of taking Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. Americans, heritors of the Monroe Doctrine, should have understood that Russia would be hypersensitive to foreign-dominated military alliances approaching or touching its borders.

President Obama famously attempted a “reset” of relations with Russia, with some success: The New START treaty was an important achievement, and there was increased quiet cooperation on a number of regional issues. But then Congress’s penchant for minding other people’s business when it cannot cope with its own began to take its toll. The Magnitsky Act , which singled out Russia for human rights violations as if there were none of comparable gravity elsewhere, infuriated Russia’s rulers and confirmed with the broader public the image of the United States as an implacable enemy.

The sad fact is that the cycle of dismissive actions by the United States met by overreactions by Russia has so poisoned the relationship that the sort of quiet diplomacy used to end the Cold War was impossible when the crisis in Ukraine burst upon the world’s consciousness. It’s why 43 percent of Russians are ready to believe that Western actions are behind the crisis and that Russia is under siege.

Putin’s military occupation of Crimea has exacerbated the situation. If it leads to the incorporation of Crimea in the Russian Federation , it may well result in a period of mutual recrimination and economic sanctions reminiscent of the Cold War. In that scenario, there would be no winners, only losers: most of all Ukraine itself, which may not survive in its present form, and Russia, which would become more isolated. Russia may also see a rise in terrorist acts from anti-Russian extremists on its periphery and more resistance from neighboring governments to membership in the economic union it is promoting.

Meanwhile, the United States and Europe would lose to the extent that a resentful Russia would make it even more difficult to address global and regional issues such as the Iranian nuclear program, North Korea and the Syrian civil war, to name a few. Russian policy in these areas has not always been all the United States desired, but it has been more helpful than many Americans realize. And encouraging a more obstructive Russia is not in anyone’s interest.

Austin wrote:Can some one tell me what is the reaction of CIS country over the Take over in Ukraine and Crimea referendum.

arpakola wrote:www,ustream,tv/channel/artem77
Donetsk LIVE