US/NATO/EU and the desperate subversion of Ukraine

[John Dolva]

07:48 GMT:

The leaderships of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk Republics have started negotiations on forming a single state, the Donetsk Republic’s press service told LifeNews television. The possible unification was announced earlier on Monday by the co-chair of the government of the Donetsk Republic, Denis Pushilin.

[John Dolva]

10:22 GMT:

Self-proclaimed #Donetsk People's Republic bans Obama, Merkel, Ashton, Cameron from entry http://t.co/VEWkRrxJ8e pic.twitter.com/ziES1sMAWC

— RT (@RT_com) May 13, 2014

[John Dolva]

12:59 GMT:

The Donetsk self-defense forces are clashing with Ukraine’s armed units under Kramatorsk, RIA Novosti said, relaying information from the commander in chief at the self-defense headquarters. So far, an armored personnel carrier belonging to Kiev has been hit. No casualties to report at this point.

[John Dolva]

RT :

"...The LifeNews reporter said that local residents were shocked, stating that some of them hid in basements. Many still cannot return home. Sidyakin said that phone communication was cut off, which “as self-defense forces told us, is a sign of an 'active phase' of the military operation” conducted by Kiev forces.

Fighting between Kiev’s army and local self-defense groups broke out in the afternoon near Oktyabrskoe.

“It was around noon. The Ukrainian army was taking ammunitions to the city of Kramatorsk,” local resident Vladimir told RT, citing his friend Aleksandr, who lives nearby. “There is the village of Oktyabrskoe, where there is a bridge [on the way]. Our self-defense blew up a vehicle with ammunition and set Kiev’s APC on fire,” he said.

According to Kiev’s Defense Ministry, a group of around 30 self-defense troops “ambushed a convoy of armored vehicles of one of the military units.”

The ministry said the self-defense group came to the scene beforehand and hid in bushes along the river.

“The first shot from a grenade launcher targeted the engine of an APC, which came up to the bridge. There was an explosion. Another APC tried to pull away the damaged machine that caught fire further away from the village. The soldiers engaged in the fight," the ministry’s statement read.

Kiev says that six of its army fighters were killed and another eight injured, with one in critical condition.

Hours after the fight, self-defense units confirmed that they “destroyed two of the enemy’s APCs.” They also reported that one of their militiamen died.

"It is true that there was an armed clash,” the Kramatorsk self-defense unit told Interfax. “The enemy retreated.”

The fight near Kramatorsk is the latest in a string of local fights as Kiev continues to conduct its “punitive operation” against anti-government activists in southeastern Ukraine, which began May 2."

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Edited May 14, 2014 by John Dolva

[John Dolva]

MOSCOW, May 13 (RIA Novosti) - The People's Governor of Luhansk Region in eastern Ukraine was injured Tuesday in an assassination attempt, two days after an independence referendum in the region, Southeastern Army spokesman Vasiliy Nikitin told RIA Novosti.

"Yes, he [Valeriy Bolotov] is injured, and he is currently in a private hospital," Nikitin said.

The assassination attempt occurred in the Luhansk Region at around 11:00 a.m. local time, he said, without specifying the perpetrator or the weapon used in the attack. Bolotov's life is not currently in danger, Nikitin added.

Bolotov earlier declared the independence of the Luhansk People's Republic, where most citizens supported the act of self-determination on May 11 during a referendum, along with a similar one in the neighboring Donetsk People's Republic.

Donetsk announced it plans to ask Moscow to join Russia, while the Luhansk leadership also said it did not rule out the possibility of a referendum on becoming part of Russia.

"We chose our own way of independence from arbitrary rule and dictatorship of the Kiev junta, fascism and nationalism," Nikitin said, adding that the region instead opted for "the way of freedom and rule of law."

The Luhansk people's governor is the second southeastern Ukrainian representative to be recently targeted in a violent attack. In late April, Gennady Kernes, the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, was injured in an assassination attempt. He is currently undergoing treatment in Israel. Doctors have said he is expected to recover.

[John Dolva]

A video of a UN-marked Mil Mi-24 strike helicopter was published on Tuesday by LifeNews television. It said its correspondents covering Kiev’s military operation in the Donetsk Region took the video near Kramatorsk. LifeNews said at least three combat Mi-24 and one transport Mi-8 helicopters carrying UN colors were spotted in the area.

[John Dolva]

DONETSK, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Oleg Tsarev will prepare a federal agreement for the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, according toa resolution of the coordinating council of the South-East association that was published on Tuesday.

According to the document, Tsarev will lead a working group that will be tasked to word a draft agreement for a “unification of the self-proclaimed Luganks and Donetsk People’s Republics into a single entity - the Federal Republic of Novorossia.”

[John Dolva]

Wednesday, May 14

00:17 GMT:

Ukraine’s Water Resource Agency acknowledged that it cut the water supply to Crimea through the North Crimean Canal, Crimean news agency Kryminform reported. The canal is currently only being used to supply water to Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine.

00:16 GMT:

The co-chair of the interim government of the People's Republic of Donetsk, Denis Pushilin, told Kommersant FM that pro-autonomy activists are willing to put down their arms if Kiev authorities withdraw their troops from the region. He also noted that Ukrainian troops have no jurisdiction to be in the Donetsk region following the referendum.

[John Dolva]

11:05 GMT:

Donetsk region militia may change their tactic from fending off attacks of Kiev loyalist troops to launching their own massive offensive, RIA Novosti reported, citing Stella Khorosheva the spokesperson for Slavyansk’s “people’s mayor”.

“We’ve had enough of waiting for their attacks,” she said.

Slavyansk militia have previously launched occasional incursions out of their stronghold, attacking a nearby TV tower and positions in the hills, from which Kiev’s troops have shelled militia positions near the city.

But starting a massive offensive instead of hit-and-run raids would require many more troops than the militia is believed to have in their ranks. Kiev sent several thousand troops armed with heavy weapons, armor and aviation against Slavyansk, while the number of militiamen is estimated at several hundred.

10:56 GMT:

Kiev will host OSCE-backed talks aimed at defusing the violence in the country. Representatives of the defiant Donetsk and Lugansk regions, whom the Ukrainian officials call terrorists, were not invited.

The negotiation is chaired by acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk and is expected to be the first in a series of discussions of the political crisis in Ukraine. They are part of an OSCE roadmap to stop the bloodshed.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on Tuesday for Ukraine to invite the rebel provinces to the talks, but Kiev refused.

10:49 GMT:

Forty victims of the May-2 clashes are still being treated in Odessa hospitals, the city government reported. One of the patients remains in serious condition. The death toll from the tragic events stands at 48, after another victim died in hospital last week.

10:36 GMT:

Military base in #Donetsk in control of anti Kiev forces wearing Ukrainian uniforms pic.twitter.com/DpAXeGcrAc

— Lizzie Phelan (@LizziePhelan) May 14, 2014

[John Dolva]

There is no forensic evidence linking the victims of mass killings in Kiev on February 20 with officers from the Berkut police unit, the head of the parliamentary commission investigating the murders told journalists.

"This will be yet another case, like the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, which is still being investigated today,” Gennady Moskal reported.

The MP made the statements at a media conference on Tuesday gathered to announce preliminary results of his commission’s probe. He assured that despite the Ukrainian General Prosecutor’s office having arrested 12 Berkut officers on allegations of committing the mass killings, forensic evidence suggests their innocence.

He said the bullets that killed people in Kiev on the bloodies day of confrontation between protesters seeking to oust President Viktor Yanukovich and riot police didn’t match any of the firearms issued to Berkut’s special unit, which, unlike the majority of riot police, was allowed to carry lethal weapons.

Moskal added that the first shot was fired at police, not the protesters. He alleged that the shooters were agents of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) acting from the ranks of the protesters, but admitted that genuine protesters could have been the culprits.

Earlier Moskal said that the investigation of the high-profile case was being stalled by the SBU and the Interior Ministry because the post-coup heads of the law enforcement don’t want to face the scandal which would ensue if the real perpetrators were exposed.

[Steven Gaal]

Ethnic Russians Are People, Too

May 13, 2014

=========================

Exclusive: There’s an odor of prejudice in how the mainstream U.S. news media treats the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, as if they are mindless beings, easily duped “minions” of Vladimir Putin. But this bias reflects more negatively on the U.S. press than on the people who are being insulted, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

So what does the New York Times have against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians? While the newspaper has fallen over itself insisting on the “legitimacy” of the coup regime in Kiev, despite its collaboration with neo-Nazis who spearheaded the Feb. 22 ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the Times editors can’t hurl enough insults at the ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the regime’s authority.

For weeks, the Times has called the eastern Ukrainian rebel leaders “self-declared” and ridiculed the idea that there was any significant backing for the rejection of the Kiev-appointed regional leaders; all the trouble was simply stirred up by Vladimir Putin. Now, however, the referenda in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk have demonstrated what even a Times reporter acknowledged was “substantial popular support for the pro-Russian separatists in some areas.”

A Ukrainian woman voting in the May 11, 2014 referendum on independence for sections of eastern Ukraine. (Screen shot from RT video)

=======================================================

But the Times editors still won’t give up their prejudices. For instance, Tuesday’s lead editorial begins: “If there were questions about the legitimacy of the separatist referendums in eastern Ukraine, the farcical names of the entities on which people were asked to vote — the self-declared People’s Republics of Donetsk or Luhansk — surely answered them.”

So, the votes – and the desires – of eastern Ukrainians shouldn’t matter because the Times disapproves of “the farcical names of the entities” that people voted for.

The Times then suggests that violence that marred the referenda was the fault of the rebels, not the Kiev regime’s National Guard, which includes the neo-Nazi militias that threw fire bombs at police during the Maidan protests in February and are now carrying out the most lethal attacks against protesters in cities in the east and south.

Of course, according to the Times’ narrative, these neo-Nazis from western Ukraine don’t exist, so the violence must be palmed off on others or be treated like the natural occurrence of a spring thunderstorm. In Tuesday’s editorial, the Times wrote: “But the gathering rumble of violence accompanying the votes is serious and is driving the Ukrainian crisis in a direction that before long no one — not President Vladimir Putin of Russia, not authorities in Kiev, not the West — will be able to control.”

However, even the Times’ own field reporter noted that the violence during the referenda on Sunday was provoked by those new National Guard forces that attacked some polling places. The Times’ editors must assume that most of the newspaper’s readers aren’t paying close attention to the details.

The other part of the Times’ Ukraine narrative is that Putin provoked the unrest in Ukraine so he could seize territory, although no less an authority on power politics than former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says that notion “isn’t possible,” adding that Putin simply was reacting to events that caught him off-guard as he was coming out of the Winter Olympics at Sochi.

Yet, the Times ignores this more realistic scenario – of a Western-pushed destabilization of the Yanukovych government that involved demands that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund and that spiraled into a violent “regime change” – and instead puts the blame on Putin, who – the Times says – must be told to get “his minions in southeastern Ukraine in line.”

Otherwise, the Times blusters “the European Union and the United States will impose sanctions that will cut Russia off for a long time from Western sources of technology, arms and finance.”

While the Times editorial accurately reflects the swaggering belligerence of Official Washington, the editors still refuse to see the Ukraine crisis in objective terms, in which both the western Ukrainians who favor closer ties with Europe and the eastern Ukrainians whose economy is dependent on trade with Russia have legitimate concerns.

The ethnic Russians in the east are not simply dupes who fall for clumsy propaganda and mindlessly follow the dictates of Vladimir Putin. They are human beings who have their own legitimate view of their political situation and who can make judgments about what course of action is best for their interests. As difficult as life in Ukraine is, it is sure to be worse once the IMF’s harsh austerity is imposed on the country’s population.

The Times and many others in the Western media insult these ethnic Russians with a disdainful treatment that treats them as lesser beings and assumes that only the pro-European Ukrainians in the west deserve respect for their opinions.

####################################

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Edited May 14, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[John Dolva]

20:41 GMT:

Donetsk self-defense forces have set an ultimatum for the Kiev military, warning that if troops do not withdraw from block posts in the Donetsk region within 24 hours, they will be taken by force, RIA Novosti reports.

20:10 GMT:

The blockade of the Donbas town of Slavyansk by Ukrainian forces continues, and has even intensified, a local resident named Stella told RT.

“New barricades were erected close to the city’s center, which has caused a bit of panic among the people,” she said.

“There was also a gunfight in one of the districts in the east of the town,” the woman added.

19:56 GMT:

The US understands the Ukrainian government's unwillingness to have participants who “literally have blood on their hands” at roundtable discussions on constitutional reform and national unity in the country, White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

"But those who represent the regions where there are issues that merit serious dialogue around constitutional reform and levels of autonomy for different regions as it relates to the center are certainly part of this effort, and we commend it," he added.

19:21 GMT:

The Swiss government will provide Ukraine with 20 million Swiss francs (about US$22.4 million) in financial aid, the National Bank of Ukraine said following talks with a delegation from Switzerland.

“[Head of the Swiss delegation] Beatrice Maser Mallor assured the Ukrainian side of political support for the Ukrainian government’s initiatives, concerning reforms in the financial and other sectors,” the bank's statement said.

“She also spoke about further strengthening technical assistance and additional use of financial resources, which will be allocated for the development of agricultural and energy sectors, small and medium business in Ukraine,” it continued.

19:16 GMT:

A gunfight between Ukrainian security forces and a group of armed men is reportedly underway in a pine forest on the outskirts of Starovarvarovka village, located some 30 kilometers from the Ukrainian town of Kramatorsk.

According to Levy Bereg (Left Coast) newspaper, there is an increased military presence, including helicopters, in the area.

The paper assumed it is an operation aimed at eliminating a self-defense unit which ambushed Ukrainian paratroopers in neighboring Slavyansk district on Tuesday.

19:15 GMT:

Ten armored vehicles of the Ukrainian military forces entered Solntsevo, not far from Kramatorsk. A representative of the Kramatorsk people's volunteer army told Itar-Tass that helicopters had also been seen flying in the town's direction, adding that intense large-caliber weapon shooting had been heard. According to the source, there were no people's volunteer army soldiers in Solntsevo, and only law enforcement officers are based there.

18:42 GMT:

The regional council in Lugansk has lacked quorum to decide on its dissolution, Ukraine's Inter TV channel reports.

Local media previously claimed that MPs had met the demands of the National Council of the Lugansk People’s Republic and handed power over to the people, who supported cutting ties with Kiev in a referendum over the weekend.

18:24 GMT:

The United Nations has expressed concern over helicopters with UN markings taking part in a military operation by coup-imposed Ukrainian authorities in the country's southeast.

Stephane Dujarric, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said he talked with representatives from the Ukrainian delegation at the UN, reminding Kiev of its responsibility regarding the unsanctioned use of UN markings.

17:14 GMT:

The regional council in Lugansk, which represented Kiev’s authority in the region, has voluntarily disbanded and handed power over to the people, UNN reports, citing local media.

After the majority of the region’s population supported cutting ties with Kiev in a referendum over the weekend, the National Council of the Lugansk People’s Republic addressed MPs, saying that the regional council must be dissolved as it has lost its legitimacy.

16:34 GMT:

The Donetsk region will not be participating in the Ukrainian presidential election on May 25, head of the Central Election Commission of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Roman Lyagin, said.

The Donetsk People’s Republic “currently controls all 22 district election commissions, which means staging the Ukrainian presidential elections in the republic is impossible both technically and in terms of security,” he told Itar-Tass news agency.

14:59 GMT:

Russia said it is ready to discuss prices and conditions for gas supplies to Ukraine, if Kiev pays at least a minimum of its gas debt, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.

"Nobody ever said: hand over $4 billion straight away, rather (we said) show that you are ready to act ... If they pay part of it, that's the minimum requirement for resuming talks," he told reporters.

14:24 GMT:

Police in the Donetsk region have completely switched allegiance to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Itar-Tass reports.

12:36 GMT:

#DPR official press also states:population of various parts of the region continue putting up checkpoints for counteracting #Kiev's '#ATO'.

— PaulaSlier_RT (@PaulaSlier_RT) May 14, 2014

[John Dolva]

ODESSA, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Unidentified persons have attacked an Odessa office of PrivatBank that belongs to pro-Kiev business tycoon Igor Kolomoisky.

[John Dolva]

DONETSK, May 14. /ITAR-TASS/. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has started forming its own army, DPR Central Electoral Commission Chair Roman Lyagin said on Wednesday, May 14.

SIMFEROPOL, May 14 (RIA Novosti) – Crimea is ready to provide humanitarian assistance to Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Crimea Vladimir Konstantinov said Wednesday.

"For our part, we, as their compatriots, will support the people [of Luhansk and Donetsk regions] and provide any assistance at the humanitarian level that will be necessary to protect the people from shortage of food and other daily necessities," Konstantinov said.

Residents of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were forced to hold independence referendums because Ukraine “turned into an aggressive establishment not willing to carry on a dialogue with its people,” he said.

“Today the regional initiative to convene referendums is a means of survival for these regions,” the politician said, underlining that Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics have to go through the complicated process of legitimation.

The Donetsk and Luhansk regions declared independence from Ukraine based on the results of referendums held on Sunday. The decision was immediately declared illegal by the interim authorities in Kiev. The self-proclaimed republics have now begun establishing governments.

The Kremlin said in a statement Monday it respected the will of the people in Ukraine’s southeast and urged the regime in Kiev to do the same. The Kremlin said it condemned “the use of force including military hardware against peaceful citizens which led to deaths” during the referendums.

Crimea and Sevastopol, which has a special status within the region, became subjects of the Russian Federation on March 21 following the referendums.

[John Dolva]

Thursday, May 15

02:28 GMT:

Shots are being fired and explosives are being heard around the compound feed plant on the outskirts of Slavyansk, RIA Novosti reported.