Crisis in the Ukraine

[blake 3:17]

Restarting this thread: http://www.revleft.com/vb/ukraine-eu-protests-t185505/index.html


As the Ukraine debate rages, both sides are getting it wrong
It's possible to condemn Vladimir Putin's invasion – and to believe that Kiev's new government is no place for fascists


Jonathan Freedland



In debates about affairs far away, "both" seems to be the hardest word. Ukraine has been a case in point, the discussion reduced to a slanging match of binaries, each side hurling false dichotomies at the other – insisting that every aspect of this unfolding crisis can be reduced to an either/or choice, when in fact the truth very often comes down to both.

So one side loudly condemns Russia for its armed incursion into Crimea, thereby violating Ukrainian sovereignty. What hypocrisy, cry their opponents. How dare the west criticise Russia when the US, Britain and its allies invaded Iraq 11 years ago. That's the choice. Either Russia is in the wrong or the west is in the wrong. You can't have it both ways.

Except you can. It's perfectly possible for a westerner to oppose both Russia's action in Crimea and the invasion of Iraq – indeed, to oppose both for the same reason: as unmerited violations of sovereignty. Admittedly, that might be tricky for John Kerry, given his Senate vote in 2002 giving George W Bush the authority to use military force against Saddam Hussein – a record that should have given him pause before denouncing Vladimir Putin for acting "in a 19th-century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext".

But it's silly to throw the Iraq precedent back at Barack Obama. He is president of the United States, in part, because he opposed the 2003 invasion. It was his stance on Iraq that helped him defeat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. You can condemn Obama if you like over Libya or the continuing US drone warfare, but the specific example of Iraq does not make his position on Crimea hypocritical. It makes it consistent. To ignore that fact, to hold the current administration responsible for the sins of its predecessor – as if Obama and Bush are simply the interchangeable faces of permanent US power – is to ignore the cardinal principle that in democratic societies governments change. Perhaps not in Russia, where Putin has been in charge since Bill Clinton was in the White House – but in the democratic world, that's how it works.

That's far from the only empty choice offered up in the Ukraine debate. One camp slams the crudity of Putin's lies and deceits – his press conference this week recasting him as a Kremlin version of "Comical Ali", hilariously defying the facts as he insisted that the Russian troops everyone could see with their own eyes in Crimea were in fact Ukrainian civilians who had popped to the local fancy dress shop to stock up on Russian military uniforms. His charmingly retro claim that Russian forces had been invited into Ukraine by the latter's ousted president – just as Soviet troops were invited into Hungary in 1956 and invited again into Czechoslovakia in 1968 – had one commentator suggesting Putin had lost his mind.

Standing against them is the opposing camp, which urges you to look instead at the new forces ruling Ukraine. This camp notes the influence of far rightist groups Svoboda (which traded originally under the historically resonant name of the Social-National party of Ukraine) and the Right Sector, now rewarded with seats in Ukraine's government, and of the fascistic paramilitaries patrolling the streets of Kiev wearing swastika armbands and parroting anti-Jewish slogans. They alert you to the torch-lit parade of ultra-nationalists commemorating Stepan Bandera, hailed a hero of Ukrainian independence despite his wartime collaboration with the Nazis.

Yet it should be possible to face the truth of both these situations, to condemn Putin's de facto dictatorship in Moscow and to be appalled by the presence of fascists in a 21st-century European government in Kiev. Yet too often the warring camps close their eyes to one even as they denounce the other. This goes not only for commentators and pundits, slugging it out online and on air; John Kerry and European Union foreign ministers should realise that it would not undermine their stance against Russian interference in Ukraine if they were to condemn the racist thugs who played a role in the Maidan uprising and have won a slice of power. It is possible to hold both positions at once.

Indeed, to do otherwise is to deny that reality is always stubbornly, maddeningly complex. Take the question of antisemitism, which has become a battleground in the war of words over Ukraine – with Putin casting himself as the defender of the besieged Jews of that country. It is quite true that Svoboda's leaders once claimed Ukraine was ruled by a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" – quite something, given that Jews make up an estimated 0.15% of the country's population – or that they lambasted the Ukrainian-born actress Mila Kunis as a "dirty Jewess". True too that synagogues have been on the receiving end of Molotov cocktails and that one communal leader was frightened enough to suggest that Jews get out of Ukraine for their own safety.

Yet it's also true that young Jews were themselves active in the Maidan protests, even forming their own combat group against the now-ousted government. True too that when Jewish leaders asked Kiev's new authorities for protection for key community buildings, they got it instantly. Nor can one ignore the Jewish leaders who believe some of these antisemitic attacks were performed by pro-Russian provocateurs, bent on discrediting Kiev's new masters, just as one cannot dismiss Thursday's letter to Putin from the Ukrainian Jewish leadership, telling the Russian president to back off and accusing him of both exploiting the issue of antisemitism and hypocrisy, given his country's own record.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/07/ukraine-debate-both-sides-wrong

[blake 3:17]

Boris Kagarlitsky: ‘Polite intervention’ and the Ukrainian uprising

By Boris Kagarlitsky, Moscow; translated by Renfrey Clarke
March 4, 2014 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Why, do you suppose, war has not yet broken out between Russia and Ukraine? The answer is very simple: no one plans to go to war, and no one can. Kiev for practical purposes does not have an army, while the government that has appeared in Kiev has no control over half of Ukraine, and cannot even exercise particular control over its own supporters. If the Ukrainian authorities make any serious attempt to mobilise their forces, this will merely provoke new protests. Even rumours of such a possibility have been enough to provoke anti-government demonstrations in Odessa.
Moscow, meanwhile, is rattling its sabres, but very cautiously. If the Kremlin were really serious about sending troops onto Ukrainian territory, it would not have asked permission from the Council of the Federation, but would simply have issued the order. Instead of real action we saw PR action, with a “unanimous vote by the senators”. A war broke out in the virtual space of the internet, backed by hysterical commentaries from liberals and malevolent howls from conservative propagandists. In essence, this was enough to fulfil the tasks faced by the authorities at present.
‘Neither peace nor war’
The psychological effect was almost as if we were waging a serious war somewhere near Kharkov. Meanwhile, there were no victims and there was no destruction. Unless, that is, we count the collapse of the ruble. Here too, however, things were not so simple; for several months, the Russian government and the Central Bank had been seeking a devaluation of the national currency. At least since September analysts had been forecasting figures of 37 rubles to the dollar and 50 to the euro. The Ukrainian events merely accelerated this process, and helped the financial authorities carry out their plan while evading responsibility for devaluing the savings of our citizens.
When a certain number of leftists, repeating century-old slogans, speak of “a war unleashed in the interests of large-scale capital”, they once again get things wrong. Instead of repeating clichés from old text books, what is needed is a little economic analysis. The truth is that large-scale capital, both private and bureaucratic, has no need at present for a war.
Human vices often rebound to the advantage of society. If our government and military leadership were made up of intelligent, principled and decisive people, we could indeed expect far more unpleasant developments. The Russian economy is highly dependent on the gas pipeline that passes through Ukraine. The economies of many European Union countries, not to speak of Ukraine, also depend on this pipeline operating without interruption. Of course, the investments made by “our” oligarchs in Ukrainian enterprises need defending, but military action would sooner exacerbate the problems here than solve them. The cynicism and avarice of our present-day rulers are the best guarantee that there will not be a major war.
The authorities in Kiev are also satisfied. They are able to employ the “Russian threat” to consolidate the new regime, to explain away economic difficulties as the result of external pressure, and in retrospect, to justify their own steps that have brought Ukraine to collapse. The present situation of “neither peace nor war” thus suits both governments perfectly, at least for the moment. The only significant cause for unease is Moscow’s aim of preserving the fugitive Viktor Yanukovich as the “real president”, while hinting at the possibility of restoring him to the Kievan throne.
But this should not be taken too seriously; as stated earlier, the people in the Kremlin are cynical, will not make any serious undertakings to the Ukrainian fugitive, and if they do, will break them. Of course, it is very convenient for the Kremlin authorities to have a “lawful president” on hand, but if an opportunity fails to present itself, the former legitimate ruler will be transformed in the space of five minutes into an unwelcome foreigner.
Crimea
In Crimea, Russian forces have restricted themselves to “polite intervention”. Of course, this was a violation of sovereignty, but let’s be honest: in an analogous situation the French, Americans and British would have done the same. When the French held off from intervening in Rwanda and allowed a bloodbath to go ahead, progressive opinion condemned them wrathfully for their inertia. When the same French state intervened in Mali and prevented a full-scale civil war, the same progressive opinion angrily denounced the intervention. An analogous situation has emerged with Crimea. Both possible decisions were associated with the prospect of serious political and moral losses, with the risk of coming under fire from domestic and international criticism. In Moscow the choice was in favour of a local intervention, but an effort was made to carry it out as cautiously as possible.
So far, Russian forces have acted in a far more restrained fashion than the French and Americans in similar situations. Perhaps this is not because of the government but despite it; on both sides, it may simply be that the good sense of the lower ranks has prevailed in conditions where the hierarchy of command has been weakened.
The Russian special forces have not stormed the bases of the Ukrainian troops, but march around them and squabble half-heartedly with the Ukrainian commanders trying to persuade the latter to hand over their weapons. The Ukrainians refuse, referring not to the oath they have taken and to their loyalty to their homeland, but to the fact that the weapons are state property, for which the commanders of the base are responsible. The Russians respond to these arguments with understanding; if they were in the place of their Ukrainian colleagues, they would do the same.
It is a new form of war, without gunfire or casualties. No one wants to start shooting, and no one particularly cares what happens to the obsolete armoured personnel carriers or to the firearms stored in the barracks. At any rate, neither side is prepared to risk life and limb and this provides cause for hope.
‘The sheepskin is not worth dividing up’
The Russian elites are mortally afraid of seriously angering the West, but in the West too people have realised that they will not achieve their goals in Ukraine without Russian help. The European Union does not need a zone of chaos on its eastern frontier, a new Somalia or Congo on its very doorstep. Nor is it possible for the EU to send its own troops or police onto Ukrainian territory, as in Bosnia or Kosovo, or at any rate without Russian assent.
The US press criticises Moscow fiercely, but indicates plainly that the US will not help Kiev, since there are no appropriate treaties and Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has already refused money to Kiev, in particularly blunt fashion. IMF head Christine Largarde has declared that Ukraine does not need immediate financial assistance:
We do not see anything critical that would be worth panicking about at the moment. We definitely hope that no-one rushes in with large sums, which would in fact be pointless if these contributions were not evaluated in the proper manner.
In Brussels and Washington, the decision evidently has already been made that the sheepskin, as we Russians say, is not worth dividing up, that with the prospects uncertain the risk is just too great. If anyone has to bear the moral, material and financial costs of restoring order, the thinking goes, then let it be the Russians.
In principle, the strategy of confining the conflict to Crimea alone suits both the Kremlin and the West – and perhaps even the new authorities in Kiev too. In recent times the German press has been urging Ukraine to sacrifice Crimea for the sake of integration into Europe. The problem, however, is that the process is developing spontaneously, and that it is no longer controlled by a few politicians. Both in Moscow and in Kiev the governments in the recent period have shown plainly that they are incapable of working out any long-term strategy. It is thus quite obvious that the crisis will grow and deepen, but not according to the scenario promised by the people who are terrifying themselves and others with the spectre of a Russo-Ukrainian war.
More than likely, the present authorities in Kiev will not hold out for long in any case. Commentators in Moscow who are sympathetic to them remind us constantly that most of the ministries in the new government are not held by radicals from Svoboda or the Right Sector, but by more moderate politicians. Meanwhile, the commentators neglect to mention that these “moderates” are hostages of the radicals. As Mao said, power comes from the barrel of a gun. In circumstances where the army has fallen to pieces, and the organs of law enforcement have either been smashed, or are demoralised, or have been placed under the control of the Right Sector, it is the radical nationalists who control the situation. The “moderates” in the government are only tolerated because they have promised to stop the eastern provinces splitting away. Now that they are failing to cope with this task, they will be purged. Either western Ukraine will move against Kiev as well, seeking the formation of a more resolute and “national” government as a “response to Russian aggression”, or the same impulse will come from within the capital itself. In either case, right-wing pressure will result in such a government being formed that Kiev itself will rise in revolt.

full article: http://links.org.au/node/3752

[aristos]

Anonymous have started a campaign against the Kiev Junta.
A group calling themselves cyber-berkut have blocked many Ukrainian government sites and claim to be responsible for the Catherine Ashton leak. They promise more unpleasant surprises for the fascists in the near future.

Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/%D0%9A%D0%B8%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%91%D0%B5%D1%80%D 0%BA%D1%83%D1%82/201577673385053)

https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/?p=17585

At the same time the Ukrainian government has blocked access to Ukrainians to many Russian sites as well as youtube (this I believe only for select areas in the Southern and Eastern regions). Websites belonging to the Ukrainian government will delete all Russian language content before 10th March. Russian TV reception has also been disconnected in Ukraine.

[aristos]

A Ukrainian newspaper has published a draft with the list of economic reforms (http://www.globalresearch.ca/austerity-and-imf-economic-medicine-the-looting-of-ukraine-has-begun/5372274?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=austerity-and-imf-economic-medicine-the-looting-of-ukraine-has-begun) the Junta will undertake in order to pay back EU/IMF debts. Among these are:
- cancellation of practically all subsidies for science and research as well education.
- Severe cuts to the salaries of medical personnel as well as to subsidized healthcare
- price hikes of utilities (increase predicted to be around 300%) and state subsidies for public transport.
- All pensions will be cut in half.
- Eligibility for unemployment benefits only after 6 months continuous employment.
- cancellation of subsidies to practically all sport-clubs and sport related schools for children and youths.
- Price increase for school lunches.
- Raising of college tuition fees.
- Privatization of state owned mass media including printing presses.

Additionally it is rumored that the Power stations will be sold off (at discount prices naturally) to the German energy conglomerate RWE. This is a potentially hazardous turn of events. There are 7 active nuclear power stations in Ukraine providing around 50% of all electricity. During the Yushenko presidency they temporarily stopped buying Russian nuclear fuel and started using German nuclear fuel instead. The problem is - it turned out to be incompatible, resulting in frequently taking the power plants offline for lengthy maintainance repairs. At last they resumed using Russian nuclear fuel again. However with the looming sanctions against Russia and the takeover of the power plants by RWE the problem is likely to arise again. Let's hope that German capitalists do not create a second (or several) Chernobyl incidents.

Russian officials are now looking into constitutional measures they can take, in order to confiscate EU/US assets in Russia in case of sanctions. There are a lot of factories there built by many huge US/EU based international corporations.

[Anti-Traditional]

A Ukrainian newspaper has published a draft with the list of economic reforms (http://www.globalresearch.ca/austerity-and-imf-economic-medicine-the-looting-of-ukraine-has-begun/5372274?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=austerity-and-imf-economic-medicine-the-looting-of-ukraine-has-begun) the Junta will undertake in order to pay back EU/IMF debts. Among these are:
- cancellation of practically all subsidies for science and research as well education.
- Severe cuts to the salaries of medical personnel as well as to subsidized healthcare
- price hikes of utilities (increase predicted to be around 300%) and state subsidies for public transport.
- All pensions will be cut in half.
- Eligibility for unemployment benefits only after 6 months continuous employment.
- cancellation of subsidies to practically all sport-clubs and sport related schools for children and youths.
- Price increase for school lunches.
- Raising of college tuition fees.
- Privatization of state owned mass media including printing presses.

Additionally it is rumored that the Power stations will be sold off (at discount prices naturally) to the German energy conglomerate RWE. This is a potentially hazardous turn of events. There are 7 active nuclear power stations in Ukraine providing around 50% of all electricity. During the Yushenko presidency they temporarily stopped buying Russian nuclear fuel and started using German nuclear fuel instead. The problem is - it turned out to be incompatible, resulting in frequently taking the power plants offline for lengthy maintainance repairs. At last they resumed using Russian nuclear fuel again. However with the looming sanctions against Russia and the takeover of the power plants by RWE the problem is likely to arise again. Let's hope that German capitalists do not create a second (or several) Chernobyl incidents.

Russian officials are now looking into constitutional measures they can take, in order to confiscate EU/US assets in Russia in case of sanctions. There are a lot of factories there built by many huge US/EU based international corporations.

Fuckkk! The IMF don't hang about, do they? bloody hell...

[Red Commissar]

Does anyone know more about this?

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/two-choices-in-crimean-referendum-yes-and-yes-338745.html


Voters in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea who vote in the March 16 referendum have two choices – join Russia immediately or declare independence and then join Russia.

So the choices are “yes, now” or “yes, later.”

Voting “no” is not an option.

The lack of choice wouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with how Soviet or Russian elections are run.

The Crimean parliament released (http://www.rada.crimea.ua/textdoc/ru/6/act/1702pr.pdf) the design of the ballot that will be used for the referendum, which will be taking place as thousands of Russian soldiers are in control and – it appears – Russian President Vladimir Putin is calling the shots.

Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov has annulled the referendum as illegal and unconstitutional, but the pro-Kremlin Crimean authorities who took power on Feb. 27 do not recognize the legitimacy of central government and have said they will proceed with the vote.

The ballot asks two questions and leaves no option for a “no” vote. Voters are simply asked to check one of two boxes:

Do you support joining Crimea with the Russian Federation as a subject of Russian Federation?

And:
Do you support restoration of 1992 Crimean Constitution and Crimea's status as a part of Ukraine?

That Constitution declares that Crimea is an independent state.

The questions are written in Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar, the three most widely spoken languages on the peninsula, and the paper carries a warning in all three languages that marking both options will invalidate the ballot.

Volodymyr Yavorkiy, a member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, says that not only is the referendum completely illegal, the ballot for it doesn't stand up to any criticism.

“There is no option for ‘no,’ they are not counting the number of votes, but rather which one of the options gets more votes,” says Yavorskiy. “Moreover, the first question is about Crimea joining Russia, the second – about it declaring independence and joining Russia. In other words, there is no difference.”

He says with no choice available, “it's clear what the result will be.”

Mykhailo Malyshev, head of the Crimean parliament's commission on referendum, said the election will have 1,250 polling stations equipped with web cameras for the vote.

“We have a desire and preparations for installing web cameras at polling stations.

They can play a great role during the vote, and if technically it is possible, the web cameras will be installed,” UNIAN news agency quoted him as saying.

Malyshev also said that 2.5 million ballots will be printed. However, according to the Central Election Commission data, as of Feb. 28, 2014 there were only just over 1.5 million voters in Crimea (https://www.drv.gov.ua/portal/%21cm_core.cm_index?option=ext_num_voters&pdt=1&pmn_id=127).

The Central Election Commission, which has also said that the Crimean referendum is illegitimate, took an emergency decision on March 6 to close off the state register to all authorities of the autonomy. In its ruling, the commission said it was doing it “to protect the database of the State register of voters from unsanctioned use of personal data and unsanctioned access and abuse of access.”

Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected]

[Rurkel]

Does anyone know more about this? The second question is about Crimea formally remaining a part of Ukraine, while becoming de-facto independent.

I don't think that Russian or Ukrainian elites actually want a war so far, but nationalistic propaganda and rhetoric gone on for too long can, unhappily, have certain unintended consequences. Hope they won't come to pass.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Swedish nazis are reported to be travelling to Ukraine to learn from and assist their Svoboda friends. :glare:

[aristos]

Swedish nazis are reported to be travelling to Ukraine to learn from and assist their Svoboda friends. :glare:

There is now reliable information from the workers at the Borispol airport that many mercenaries are being flown in from all over the world. The number being mentioned is 30 planes per day. It is suspected they will be used in attacks on Crimea and to repel Russian forces, should these cross the border to protect ethnic Russians in case of mass ethnic cleansing. They are estimated to number from 3,5 to 4 thousand and growing. Moreover, some Ukrainian army detachments have began moving out to take positions. Yesterday I posted a video documenting a huge artillery column moving towards the border with Crimea.
Today there is info that a regiment from Sumsk Oblast together with the tank division from Desna are taking positions along the north-eastern border in preparations to repel any possible attacks by the Russian army from that direction.
Moreover in addition to Right Sector political commissars having formally taken charge of all military units an accelerated rotation of soldiers and officers serving all over the country has been enacted. Normally the soldiers in Ukraine serve where they come from, but fearing that their loyalty does not lie with the Kiev authorities (understandably so - the soldiers will not shoot their relatives) this enables the authorities to exchange the soldiers in the unruly regions with loyal ones from the West, who due to russophobic indoctrination will have less qualms to follow orders.

In Crimea itself a group of Right Sector fighters was arrested. There is info they are being sent in in order to execute terrorist attacks and stop the referendum.

[aristos]

In Donetsk where there are increasing clashes between the ever increasing anti-Kiev movement and authorities. The local Berkut forces have openly stated that they are on the side of the local populace and therefore will not follow orders to disperse the crowds, on the contrary they seem to have taken arms against the Oligarch appointed as Governor by Kiev and his cronies. At the same time more and more police from other regions are being sent to Donetsk to suppress the resistance. The lower ranking police officers themselves are supposed to have spilled the beans about how their own families have been practically taken hostage back home in Western Ukraine, so that either they put down the unrest using any means necessary or their families will suffer.

Also leaders of the more militant resistance movements in other parts of the country have begun disappearing.

[aristos]

In Kiev itself the situation is rapidly getting worse and worse for the inhabitants. The armed thugs, be they Right Sector gangs, ordinary criminals, or those who feel they can use the lawlessness to their personal advantage have been terrorizing the city ever since Yanukovich fled and cops disappeared from the streets. The inhabitants of Kiev are requested (ordered) to help out with restoration works (the entire area of the Maidan protest has been severely damaged) and if they refuse will have 10% deducted from their salaries to pay for the repairs. Needless to say, in such a chaotic situation those 10% will quietly disappear into certain private pockets.
Abductions, rape and disappearances are the order of the day. Armed men occupy offices and houses. They force the owners of the offices to pay for all the utilities the thugs are using threatening violence in case of refusals. Kiev is also now being overwhelmed by the poor inhabitants from other parts of the country, mostly from decrepit villages, who have set their eyes on the relative splendour of the capital. Since no one is taking responsibility for public order, if you are armed you can take what you want. Violent redistribution of wealth, in other words. Most Kievans are now in shock at what has come out of the protests they so passionately supported a mere week or two ago. Anyone who still can is trying to sell off all their real estate and flee (and with each day this veering more and more towards the impossible). Naturally, the vast majority most don't have the means to escape.

I wrote earlier that the Right Sector have taken control of the Kiev morgue and crematorium.
The crematorium, as seen by the emanating smoke, is currently working non-stop. Kievans are saying among themselves that this is an action geared towards hiding evidence of the constant terror by criminal gangs associated with the Maidan "self-defence"-committees operating all around Kiev.
A source working just across the street from the morgue reports that trucks are unloading long, seemingly heavy, bulky objects wrapped in plastic garbage bags. Before, usually the morgue received a couple of bodies frequently throughout the day. Now the deliveries are done once every 24 hours at night and in large bulk.
A Kiev woman has reported that her son-in-law was stopped in the street a couple of days ago, stuffed into a car and taken away. He was one of the leaders of anti-maidan activists who demanded back in January and February that the city centre be cleared of the barricades and was advised several times beforehand to leave the city. The despairing woman was able to persuade one of the "nicer" "self-defence"-officers to find out what happened. After making inquiries he told her that it was too late for him, but that the woman should accept this and move on, and instead "think about her daughter and grandchildren and not do anything stupid".

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Not that I don't believe this but without sources you might as well be making all of this shit up. Can you link to wherever you're reading this stuff?

[aristos]

At the Borispol airport, tonight at 2 a.m. arrived 4 CIT vans and two Volkswagen cargo trucks. In very short order, 15 armed masked men in body armour, dressed in black, unloaded 40+ strongboxes from the CIT vans onto a chartered jet and took off. It is speculated they have flown out the Ukrainian gold reserves. The troubled airport personnel informed the airport administration about this, after which they were firmly told to mind their own business.
Later today a source in the Ministry for Taxes and Income told that according to his information on the order of the leaders of the provisional government the entire gold reserves of Ukraine were flown out to the United States.

[aristos]

Not that I don't believe this but without sources you might as well be making all of this shit up. Can you link to wherever you're reading this stuff?

For anyone who speaks Russian here are some blogs with different info, you can find the original sources there:

http://hippy-end.livejournal.com/239976.html

http://putnik1.livejournal.com

http://colonelcassad.livejournal.com

http://ai-zhilin.livejournal.com

http://gleb1368.livejournal.com

http://eduard-456.livejournal.com

http://ivakin-alexey.livejournal.com

http://grey-croco.livejournal.com

http://ukrnovosti.net

http://ukrainefacedchoice.odnako.org

[PhoenixAsh]

This is going to be interesting:


Ukraine has missed its payment deadline for gas supplies. As its debt is increasing, Gazprom does not rule out it may cut gas supplies to the country, the Russian energy giant’s head Aleksey Miller has said.

“Today, March 7, is the deadline for making a payment for the February gas supplies to Ukraine,” Miller told journalists on Friday, adding that Gazprom has not received payment on account.

“Given the discount for the first quarter the outstanding debt has increased to $1.89 billion,” Miller added.

“Factually it means that Ukraine has stopped paying for gas. This contravenes the contract terms and international trade practice. But we can’t deliver gas for free”.

If Ukraine doesn’t pay its bills it risks plunging into a crisis similar to the one in 2009, Miller warned.

During the transit crisis five years ago supplies of Russian gas to Europe were cut off for 20 days because of the tension between Russia and Ukraine.

Earlier this week President Putin said that starting from April 1 Gazprom would no longer offer Ukraine the lower price agreed in December. The aid package to Kiev included $15 billion in bonds purchases and a 33 percent gas discount, that reduced the price to $268.50 per 1,000 cubic meters down from $400.

Currently Ukraine buys more than 50 percent of its gas from Russia, but aims to become energy independent by 2020. Before the protest kicked off in Ukraine, the country signed a $10 billion shale gas exploration deal with Chevron.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

the country signed a $10 billion shale gas exploration deal with Chevron.

That's fracking wonderful, too. Mmm the Russian and Euroamerican imperialist struggling over who controls the gas supplies. Though I think that the dubious underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea is operational, right? So it wouldn't throttle supplies to Germany totally.

[Sentinel]

Swedish nazis are reported to be travelling to Ukraine to learn from and assist their Svoboda friends. :glare:

One of these vermin - from the nazi Party of the Swedes - was also given at least 5 minutes on national radio a few days ago, to pretty much unchallengedly propagate his views and why he wants to help create a Ukraine for 'genetical ukrainians'. Totally incredible.

***

But yeah, this really is a crisis with a big C. Imo the soundest position really is to condemn the fascist junta in Kiev, support national self-determination for the russian minority, with rights for majority russian regions to decide which country to belong to and restored minority rights for others.

That said, the motives of Putin to invade are obviously questionable as well, and frankly his regime is only marginally better when it comes to minority rights. The natural thing is to call for workers self-organisation as a solution here.

But I'm pessimistic that is realistic to expect before the clash of conflicting nationalist and imperialist interests we seem to be moving towards fast, happens and workers from all nationalities suffer again.

[aristos]

That's fracking wonderful, too. Mmm the Russian and Euroamerican imperialist struggling over who controls the gas supplies. Though I think that the dubious underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany via the Baltic Sea is operational, right? So it wouldn't throttle supplies to Germany totally.

NordStream is operational but in 2013 was working at 40% of maximum capacity.
However, Russian gas is also fed to Europe via two other pipelines (not counting Ukraine).

[Red Commissar]

The "Olga" in the conversation between Estonian FM Paet and EU's Asthon has for her part said that she never recalled having that conversation and that she was not qualified to make autopsies of any kind

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/03/07/the_fog_of_war_russianstyle.html



One especially explosive conspiracy theory emerged Wednesday in a leaked phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and her Estonian counterpart, Urmas Paet. The tape, which the Estonian foreign ministry confirmed was accurate, features Paet outlining a conversation with a woman named Olga, who told of evidence showing that the victims in Kyiv, police and demonstrators alike, were killed by the same bullets.

“So there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition,” Paet says.

Russia Today feasted on the story, presenting it as evidence to back President Vladimir Putin’s allegation that the deaths on Kyiv came at the hands of opposition provocateurs.

The Olga in question was identified by Russian media as Olga Bogomolets, a Ukrainian doctor who worked throughout the clashes to treat wounded.

Told of the tape, however, Bogomolets denied having any such conversation. She said she has no such evidence as she was never in a position to compare wounds.

“During the entire confrontation in Kyiv, I did not have access to law enforcement officers who died, and therefore I could not give any information on the nature of the injuries,” she told Ukrainska Pravda.

“I’m a doctor, not a forensic medical examiner to give this kind of assessment.”


I'm guessing the source they're referring to is this pravda (http://www.pravda.com.ua/) but I can't read it...

[aristos]

The "Olga" in the conversation between Estonian FM Paet and EU's Asthon has for her part said that she never recalled having that conversation and that she was not qualified to make autopsies of any kind

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/03/07/the_fog_of_war_russianstyle.html




I'm guessing the source they're referring to is this pravda (http://www.pravda.com.ua/) but I can't read it...

The "Olga" in question is Olga Bogomolets - a Ukrainian multi-millionaire medical entrepreneur and owner of a chain of medical clinics, who was featured in the news in Ukraine last summer, because a rights activist accused her of sending thugs after him, who knocked out his teeth and brutally beat him (he suffered damage to internal organs) on the day of the court hearing, where he accused her of illegally appropriating the land and river surrounding her castle.

For those speaking Russian here are the links:

http://ru.tsn.ua/ukrayina/izvestnogo-vracha-olgu-bogomolec-podozrevayut-v-zakaze-izbieniya-pravozaschitnika-315906.html

http://www.ua-pravda.com/slabiy-pol/zhenschini-idut.-millionershi-ukraini.html

[Sasha]

Dispatch From Crimea

Posted by Brendan Kiley (http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/brendan-kiley/Author?oid=1124) on Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 11:16 AM

http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2014/03/08/1394305873-colonel.png

Chris Collison
Flowers for the colonel for not abandoning his post.


This morning, Chris Collison (https://twitter.com/chriscollison) sent a quick text message with some phone-photos from the Crimean peninsula where he's reporting for JN1 TV. (http://jn1.tv/)
Russian-occupied Crimea is not a friendly place for journalists at the moment. Chris says authorities are blocking all Ukrainian TV channels so the residents hear nothing but Russian news—we've seen how baldfaced Russian authorities have been (diplomats in Britain, for example, denying Russian troops were in Ukraine via Twitter (http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/03/03/crimea-is-the-sudetenland-all-over-again)).
Russian legislators have also proposed a bill (http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/freedom-of-speech-under-siege-in-crimea-338728.html) criminalizing "the publication of false, anti-Russian information that provides information in support of extremist and separatist, anti-Russian forces, including portrayals of events beyond Russian borders." And journalists in Crimea are being roughed up and threatened at gunpoint in the area: (http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/242551/freelance-journalist-held-at-gunpoint-in-crimea/)
With that as a backdrop, take it away Chris:

We arrived this morning in Simferopol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simferopol), the regional capital of Crimea. As soon as we got off the train, we were met by a line of "self-defense" forces guarding the entrance to the city. These guys are all over Crimea at the moment. They seem to have taken over for much of the security operations since the Russians came. They are guarding the parliament building, where nearby they have a sign-up booth for new recruits. There's also a tent for United Russia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Russia) (Putin's political party).
Pro-Ukrainian activists held a rally near the city center where they argued with supporters of Russian integration. Many on the pro-Ukraine side were Crimean Tatars and students. A little boy offered a flower to an elderly woman who had been arguing with the crowd. She turned to him and said, "I'm not Ukrainian. I'm Russian." After some persistence she relented and took it.
http://www.thestranger.com/binary/bc35/1394303712-oldlady.png

Chris Collison




The demonstration started small, but swelled as more people from both sides arrived. A big group of pro-Russian protesters marched down the street, and then everyone began moving toward the parliament. Both sides seemed to be about the same size. Interestingly, the police walked with the pro-Ukrainian group to guard them, while the "self-protection" squads joined the pro-Russian march.
We marched with the Ukrainian side to a regional military point, where protesters gave flowers to the soldiers stationed there and called them as heroes for not leaving their post. We spoke with a colonel who told us that troops there have been under pressure by Russian forces to pack up and leave.
http://www.thestranger.com/binary/eebd/1394304076-statue.png

Chris Collison




Authorities have been blocking Ukrainian channels here, so people are pretty much only getting Russian news and local channels on TV. I did a standup in front of the cabinet of ministers, and a group of guys gathered around to try and intimidate us. One asked me condescendingly, "What is the English news lying about today?" They stood to the side while I did my report and made cracks about the Ukrainian and western media lying about what is going on. They were quite hostile, but they eventually got bored and left after we finished.
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2014/03/08/1394304251-demonstr.png

Chris Collison




We are taking a bus to Feodosia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feodosia_municipality) in a few minutes. My colleague says Ukrainians are guarding a military base there from Russian forces.
More to come...
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2014/03/08/1394304357-defforc.png

Chris Collison



http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2014/03/08/1394304477-tanbk.png

Chris Collison



http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2014/03/08/1394305976-hyart.png

Chris Collison






source: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/03/08/dispatch-from-crimea#more

[Krasnyy]

So who so the lesser of evils in this situation,which side better serves the interests of impoverished and working class people?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Red Commissar]

The "Olga" in question is Olga Bogomolets - a Ukrainian multi-millionaire medical entrepreneur and owner of a chain of medical clinics, who was featured in the news in Ukraine last summer, because a rights activist accused her of sending thugs after him, who knocked out his teeth and brutally beat him (he suffered damage to internal organs) on the day of the court hearing, where he accused her of illegally appropriating the land and river surrounding her castle.

For those speaking Russian here are the links:

http://ru.tsn.ua/ukrayina/izvestnogo-vracha-olgu-bogomolec-podozrevayut-v-zakaze-izbieniya-pravozaschitnika-315906.html

http://www.ua-pravda.com/slabiy-pol/zhenschini-idut.-millionershi-ukraini.html

I see, but what I'm wondering is the comments on the tape that Paet attributed to her. Paet says that this Olga told him about the autopsies being inconsistent, and she says she never said anything of the sort. Was this Olga, with the background you've described, not wanting to mess up her own plans? (then again, why relate this in the first place if that was the case?) Did Paet mishear? It's already bad news for a government that the EU will be supporting, so I can't see why Paet would've made up the comments intentionally, unless it was some really hamfisted bizarre scheme to set up for this to explode in the Russian's faces later.

Problem is where I'm standing is that if there is doubt to these comments, then there is going to be difficulty in pursuing the angle that the snipers were not from the government.

[aristos]

Some or many/most of them could have been paid shills. We know a huge amount were at many other similar rallies. That's what the initial USD 5 billion were for, and there
have been new financial infusions since then.
This is not a conspiracy but flows naturally from the fact that the quality of life in Ukraine is so catastrophically low that people are willing to do anything (even explicitly go against their own long term interests) in order to earn cash.
The bit about the Tatars is misleading. As far as I know the Majlis is against the referendum, but by far not all Tatars are part of it and the Majlis is the only source newspapers like this get their info on Tatar opinions from.

Anyway. HERE (http://fractal-vortex.narod.ru/2014/survey.htm)is a highly interesting report by the revleft user fractal-vortex who allegedly lives in Kiev. During Maidan he conducted a small survey (37 people in all) among the people manning the barricades during the riots. There is an English version inside so everyone should be able to read it.

Let's see, what main complaints we get:

1) Corruption, politicians can do whatever they want with impunity.
2) Yanukovich should go.
3) Yanukovich should die.
3) Yanukovich is a dictator (how is he more of a dictator than any other president?)
4) Plotitcians make things difficult for small and medium business.
4) Hope to become a successful petit-bourgeois.
5) Hope to marry and raise a family.
4) Down with the communists (communists? where?)
4) Split the party of regions (what about other bourgeois parties)
5) Absence of faith and moral values(!)
7) National identity(!!)
8) Want to get out of Ukraine and live abroad (!!!)

Even if we ignore the alarming absence of any female/trans voices, no socialist content in sight.

OK, people want to better their lot. This is perfectly understandable. Well, let's see now what solutions these betterers of society have come up with.

- They put the same corrupt politicians in charge that reigned before Yanukovich, this time with an overwhelming Nazi component to boot.
- They started (though still thankfully only sporadic) pogroms and intimidation campaigns against ethnic Russians and anyone who might criticize the current power in the slightest.
- Repression of the rights of minorities.
- The corrupt politicians and outright Nazis gave the reigns to Oligarchs to "get rid of corruption and restore order" - in other words the same thieves are tasked with making sure no theft is done - what a brilliant idea.
- The right to protest, unless the protests are FOR those in power, have been severely curtailed and outright repressed.
- Austerity measures, so more impoverishment and now you can really forget that boutique you always wanted to open.
- Additional taxes.
- No more cheap gas.
- Highly probable no more cheap electricity either, if the soon to be take-over of the power stations by RWE is to be believed.
No more lucrative Russian market - and certainly no one in EU needs or wants Ukrainian produce (say bye-bye to agriculture).
Spiraling unemployment as companies start to fold and lay off workers in an unstoppable chain reaction.
Open borders with EU obviously out of the question in such a situation.
Robberies and murder in broad daylight rule the day (or so people report).
Theft of military weapons from armouries which can then be used for terrorist attacks all over the world.
Possible war with Russia (and maybe even NATO bombardment)
The country is on its way to becoming second Kosovo. Main source of income trafficking and organ trade.

Well done guys, standing ovations!

[PhoenixAsh]

totally more fun:


Videos have sprung on YouTube alleging that the US private security service formerly known as Blackwater is operating in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Western press is hitting back, accusing Russia of fabricating reports to justify “aggression.”

The authenticity of videos allegedly made in downtown Donetsk on March 5 is hard to verify. In the footage, unidentified armed men in military outfits equipped with Russian AK assault rifles and American М4А1 carbines are securing the protection of some pro-Kiev activists amidst anti-government popular protests.



The regional administration building in Donetsk has changed hands many times, with either pro-Russian protesters or pro-Kiev forces declaring capture of the authority headquarters. In the logic of the tape, at some point the new officials appointed by revolutionary Kiev managed to occupy the administration, but then – as the building was surrounded by angry protesters – demanded to secure a safe evacuation.



This is where the armed professionals come in. The protesters, after several moments of shock, start shouting, “Blackwater!,” and “Mercenaries!,” as well as “Faggots!,” and “Who are you going to shoot at?!” But the armed men drive off in the blink of an eye without saying a word.

Surely these men were not Blackwater – simply because such a company does not exist anymore. It has changed its name twice in recent years and is now called Academi.

The latest article on the case, published by the Daily Mail, claims that though these people did look like professional mercenaries, they conducted the operation too openly.

“On the face of it, the uniforms of the people in the videos are consistent with US mercs - they don't look like Russian soldiers mercs. On the other hand, why run around in public making a show of it?” said DM Dr Nafeez Ahmed, a security expert with the Institute for Policy Research & Development.

“I think the question is whether the evidence available warrants at least reasonable speculation.”

Ahmed also added that “Of course the other possibility is it's all Russian propaganda.”

Why would Russia need to make such provocation? The Daily Mail explained that “any suggestion that a US mercenary outfit like Blackwater, known now as Academi, had begun operating in east Ukraine could give Russian President Vladimir Putin the pretext for a military invasion.”

Other western media outlets are maintaining that a “Russian invasion” has already began, because the heavily armed military personnel now controlling all major infrastructure in Crimea are “obviously” Russians.

Armed men march outside an Ukrainian military base in the village of Perevalnoye near the Crimean city of Simferopol March 9, 2014.(Reuters / Thomas Peter )Armed men march outside an Ukrainian military base in the village of Perevalnoye near the Crimean city of Simferopol March 9, 2014.(Reuters / Thomas Peter )

The Daily Beast media outlet went even further. On the last day of February, it published an article alleging that “polite Russians” in Crimea are actually...employees of Russian security service providers.

While there are indeed several military-oriented security service providers in Russia, it however appears highly unlikely that all of them combined could provide personnel for such a wide-scale operation.

At the beginning of the week, Russian state TV reported that several hundred armed men with military-looking bags arrived to the international airport of Kiev.

It was reported that the tough guys are employees of Greystone Limited, a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC belonging to Blackwater/XE/Academi.

Greystone Limited mercenaries are part of what is called ‘America’s Secret Army,’ providing non-state military support not constrained by any interstate agreements, The Voice of Russia reported.

But they are not the only ones. A Russian national that took part in clashes in Kiev was arrested in Russia’s Bryansk region this week. He made a statement on record that he met a large number of foreigners taking active part in the fighting with police.

He claimed he saw dozens of military-clad people from Germany, Poland, and Turkey, as well as English speakers who were possibly from the US, Russkaya Gazeta reported earlier this week.

Ivan Fursov, RT

[aristos]

Fresh info indicates that Ukrainian Army units have taken positions at the border to Crimea and have finished setting up their anti-aircraft systems. People predict there are two scenarios possible.

Either this is a diversion and the real target are the other regions to the East like Donetsk and Lugansk where they intend to destroy the anti-maidan resistance once and for all.

Or, and this is a very, very dangerous situation, they actually intend to storm Crimea.
Since it is impossible for the Ukranian Army to take Crimea in their current state (they will be anihilated) the aim is more cynical. They will stage a false flag operation in which fighters pretending to be Russians (the foreign mercenaries that Ukraine is full of now will most probably play this role) will attack Ukrainian troops inflicting brutal carnage. This will then be shown to the international community as a blatant act of aggression on the part of the Russians. NATO involvement follows.

I really hope that none of this takes place. It would be really shitty for a WWIII to break out.
Some say that the attack may happen either today or at the latest in 2 days time (if it happens).

Here are also a couple of interesting interviews with Paul Craig Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Craig_Roberts)

http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts070314.htm

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/3/9_Paul_Craig_Roberts_-_The_World_Is_On_The_Edge_Of_Nuclear_War.html

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wf7LoBSClT8

AeESBK1xDXQ

[Sasha]

A Kiev Question: What Became of the Missing?



KIEV, Ukraine — Volodymyr Danyluk was a Soviet Army veteran who joined demonstrations against Ukraine’s government last year. He was 55 years old, separated from his wife and mostly out of contact with his family, who saw him on live television during a winter of protests.Then came the authorities’ crackdown last month in Kiev, the capital. The riot police and demonstrators clashed, scores of people were killed and the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych fell. Mr. Danyluk disappeared from sight.
In the weeks since, Ukraine’s interim authorities have allowed opposition members to search prisons, morgues and hospitals for their missing. There has been no sign of Mr. Danyluk — or of more than 250 other missing Ukrainians.
After a season of political upheaval here, a gnawing worry persists: What happened to Ukrainians who seemingly vanished in their revolution’s fast-moving tides? Were Mr. Danyluk and the others victims of state repression and criminal activity by the police, or had some of them just drifted back to quiet lives?
“Our mom is worried and calling me all the time,” said Mr. Danyluk’s sister, Galyna Onyshchuk, crying.
In all, 661 people have been reported missing since protests began last December, according to Euromaidan S O S, a volunteer group leading efforts to find the disappeared. The fates of 272 of them remained unknown late last week.
Many people were found in prison cells or hospitals, or resurfaced on their own, said Vitaliy Selyk, a Euromaidan S O S coordinator. Some cases were caused by breakdowns in communications, including people who lost cellphones or ran out of credit on SIM cards, he said.
A few of the missing were people estranged from families and whose recent silence was by choice. Mr. Selyk said he expected that most of the remaining cases would be solved and that the missing would turn up.
But beneath that hope lies the grim concern that many Ukrainians may have disappeared after being seized by the Berkut riot police unit, by pro-Russian provocateurs or by unofficial forces that worked to keep Mr. Yanukovych in power.
This fear, cited almost universally by the opposition, is rooted in two particular cases.
The first was the killing of Yuriy Verbytskyi, a seismologist and an opposition activist, who was found dead in January in the forest near Boryspil after being abducted from a Kiev hospital.
A fellow abductee who survived, Igor Lutsenko, told journalists that their captors spoke Russian, beat them, interrogated them about their activities in the opposition and generally behaved like police officers.
The second case was the abduction of Dmytro Bulatov, an organizer of AutoMaidan, a mobile opposition movement that includes drivers who ferried demonstrators to protests.
Mr. Bulatov disappeared in late January. He turned up a week later, bloodied and bearing signs of torture that he said he received at the hands of people he believed were members of Russia’s special services.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, then under the control of Mr. Yanukovych, suggested that Mr. Bulatov had faked his own kidnapping as an antigovernment provocation.
That assertion undercut the public’s confidence that the authorities would dedicate themselves to solving missing-person cases that might point to a government role or official complicity.
Abuses by the ministry’s riot police have been well established, including the taunting humiliation of Mihailo Gavryluk, a farmer from western Ukraine who, upon being arrested last month, was forced to stand outside naked in the wintry cold while masked and hooded police officers posed for photographs with him.
Part of this episode was posted in a video on YouTube. In it, one officer slaps him and gives him a stern kick.
Mr. Gavryluk said the Berkut officers who arrested him tore off his clothes. “They had fun,” he said, darkly.
But he noted that his luck soon turned better. The Berkut police were busy, and often left detainees at police stations or hospitals scattered around the city. Mr. Gavryluk said he was taken to a hospital where veterans who fought in the Soviet war in Afghanistan and were loyal to the opposition were active.
The veterans quickly spirited him back to the square, he said. When the police returned to pick him up for prosecution, he was gone.
Another former detainee, Andriy Babyn, described a law enforcement system overwhelmed by the large number of people arrested as Ukrainians turned out to fight. “There was practically a war going on,” he said.
One result, Mr. Babyn said, was that some detainees ended up at police stations or jails where officers were either neutral or sympathetic to the opposition.
But the same characteristics of an overburdened prisoner-intake system meant that detainees were scattered across the region, opening the possibility for police abuse. That has also made a full accounting of the detainees difficult.
Mr. Selyk, of Euromaidan S O S, also noted that many bloodstains had been found at areas where detainees were handled — possible evidence of police crime.
“Although we can find blood traces everywhere, we need DNA tests to find which people were where,” he said. “This is a huge amount of work, and there is some chance that the police will not do it.”
More than two weeks since the last clashes, many people remain missing, even after thorough checks at hospitals and prisons. Rumors are rampant.
One macabre story, common in Independence Square, is that 50 opposition members being treated in a hastily organized medical aid station in the Trade Union building were killed and burned beyond recognition by the fire that gutted the building.
This tale is largely false, people involved in the searches said. A few people did die in the blaze, they said, but the number of victims was six or fewer.
Among those lost in the fire was Volodymyr Topij, 59, from Vyshnya, for whom at least one missing-person circular was still posted in the opposition encampment. Mr. Topij’s remains were identified last week. His body was escorted home for burial.
A more sinister whisper on the street is that the authorities, to mask widespread police crimes, arranged for the cremation of more than 100 bodies of those they killed.
Euromaidan S O S has investigated these claims, and Mr. Selyk said they also appear false. “We know people who work in the crematorium,” he said, “and they say it is not true.”
In the absence of clear information, the cases linger, unsolved, including that of Volodymyr Tsarenko, who left his home on Feb. 19.
Mr. Tsarenko, an elderly pensioner with strong nationalist sentiments, was last seen walking along a highway in the countryside south of Kiev.
At the time, the confrontation between the government and opposition was at a fierce pitch, and pro-government thugs were roaming roads, intimidating people they suspected of trying to reach the demonstrations in the capital.
Mr. Tsarenko’s son, Oleksandr, said he had searched the woods along the road, looking for his father’s body. After reporting his father missing, he was summoned to a morgue to view the body of an unidentified man. That man was not his father.
He said he suspected that his father had been taken by pro-Yanukovych gangs or police officers trying to prevent opposition supporters from reaching the capital.
“Lots of buses with anti-Maidan people were roaming around,” he said, “and they could have grabbed him.”


source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/world/europe/a-kiev-question-what-became-of-the-missing.html

[cyu]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/10/us-imperialism-and-the-ukraine-coup/

If there is a “war” in Ukraine today, it is to determine which of the imperialist Western powers will have priority “rights” in absorbing this nation of 46 million people into its orbit to become yet another sub-colony of imperialism.

Nuland’s apology for her poor choice of words was not accompanied by any apology for U.S. moves to dominate the future neoliberal exploitation of Ukraine, as opposed to handing over this right to longstanding U.S. competitors—not to mention the wannabe imperialist Russian oligarch regime. some 20-plus years ago the USSR’s wealth and resources were stolen, with U.S. complicity, by the tiny layer of former Stalinist bureaucrats who now preside over capitalist Russia, today a minor player in the world imperialist configuration.

Assistant Secretary Nuland directed her ire not against Russia but rather Germany, France, and Poland—who brokered the deal as to the future composition of the Ukrainian government and the distribution of that nation’s industrial strength and rich and fertile agricultural resources. This was an unacceptable arrangement in the eyes of imperial America.

Nuland and Pyatt revealed their choice of United Nations “glue” to cement any Ukraine deal. the U.S.-handpicked and subservient UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would be called in to “negotiate” the nation’s future, rather than a more pro-EU assortment of capitalist plunderers.

John Kerry visited Kiev in a further attempt to shoulder aside EU competitors in a deal. Kerry offered $1 billion in loan guarantees to the Ukrainian coup-makers and promised to send in a host of U.S. “technical experts” to help re-align the country’s national bank and finance ministry.

Today’s Russian billionaires are puny compared to U.S. bankers who looted the U.S. Treasury to the tune of some $30 trillion. This was accomplished with the absolute complicity of the subservient Obama administration, which is little more than the governmental mask or façade of America’s real ruling class.

Yanukovych and his government’s original intention to resolve its virtual bankruptcy via the EU austerity plan momentarily gave way to Russian President Putin’s counter-offer of $15 billion in bail-out loans to the Ukrainian oligarchs—mostly former Stalinist bureaucrats themselves—which are peanuts in comparison to the $51 billion the Russians spent on the Sochi spectacle.

Because of the nature of the IMF-imposed economic agenda, Ukraine would find it very difficult to ever escape the debt cycle. The IMF mandates, for example that capitalist profits be only minimally taxed, the government provide generous support for capitalist ventures, public services be privatized, and restrictions on transfer of capitalist profits abroad be minimal. As a result, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for any Ukrainian government to raise funds for basic institutions people need to live a quality life.

However, Yanukovych could not say such things. during his time in power, he—like all the Ukrainian rulers since 1992—had already been pursuing measures similar to the IMF. privatizing public resources, cutting public spending, cutting subsidies for major industries—leading to stagnation, non-payment of wages, and benefit cuts—and imposing market mechanisms. while the standard of living has fallen for the majority, politicians and their cronies managed to considerably enrich themselves and acquire vast fortunes.

Ukrainian people have already tasted the effects of Western “aid.” Eighty percent of all Foreign Direct Investment in that country has been from the West, with little or no tangible results for the Ukrainian people and billions in profits for corporate investors and financial speculators.

[Hexen]

Fresh info indicates that Ukrainian Army units have taken positions at the border to Crimea and have finished setting up their anti-aircraft systems. People predict there are two scenarios possible.

Either this is a diversion and the real target are the other regions to the East like Donetsk and Lugansk where they intend to destroy the anti-maidan resistance once and for all.

Or, and this is a very, very dangerous situation, they actually intend to storm Crimea.
Since it is impossible for the Ukranian Army to take Crimea in their current state (they will be anihilated) the aim is more cynical. They will stage a false flag operation in which fighters pretending to be Russians (the foreign mercenaries that Ukraine is full of now will most probably play this role) will attack Ukrainian troops inflicting brutal carnage. This will then be shown to the international community as a blatant act of aggression on the part of the Russians. NATO involvement follows.

I really hope that none of this takes place. It would be really shitty for a WWIII to break out.
Some say that the attack may happen either today or at the latest in 2 days time (if it happens).

Here are also a couple of interesting interviews with Paul Craig Roberts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Craig_Roberts)

http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts070314.htm

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/3/9_Paul_Craig_Roberts_-_The_World_Is_On_The_Edge_Of_Nuclear_War.html

dVfcN2ekN-U

wREeueXhmnU

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First of all Paul Craig Roberts is a conspiracy theorist (He said the same thing about the Georgia incident leading up to "WW3" like he's doing here now) and plus the articles you've linked to are very sketchy as well.

[PhoenixAsh]

Republic of Crimea declared independence from the Ukraine today.



“We, the members of the parliament of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the Sevastopol City Council, with regard to the charter of the United Nations and a whole range of other international documents and taking into consideration the confirmation of the status of Kosovo by the United Nations International Court of Justice on July, 22, 2010, which says that unilateral declaration of independence by a part of the country doesn’t violate any international norms, make this decision,” says the text of the declaration, which was published by the Crimean media.


^ Which is an ultimate FU to the EU and its hypocritical stance on independence for Kosovo and Ossetia.

[Bala Perdida]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWkfpGCAAuw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Nothing we didn't already know, but this is a good analysis. The author is a little weird at times, but I think he gives a good analysis of U.S. foreign policy.

[Sasha]

armed fascist volunteers are infiltrating the Crimea, serbian chetnic and cossack fascists on the side of the "anti-fascist" russians that is; http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/wolves-descend-crimea.html and http://news.yahoo.com/serbian-paramilitaries-join-pro-russian-forces-crimea-080011724.html

[cyu]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2014/03/israel-and-russia

officials privately and commentators publicly are rallying to Mr Putin’s cause, contrasting his donning of a yarmulka at the Jewish holy site of Jerusalem’s Western (“Wailing”) Wall with the alleged fascist and anti-Semitic tendencies of his Ukrainian adversaries. “It is in our national interest, without being under any idealistic illusions, to nurture ties with a Russia whose leader seems to have dramatically broken with centuries of Tsarist and Bolshevik anti-Semitism and now displays friendship towards the Jewish people,” wrote a right-wing Australian-born activist in the country’s most widely read newspaper. Israel’s wooing of Russia is not mere flirtation. Israel’s upwardly-mobile 1m-strong citizens of Soviet background further cement ties. Several key ministries, including foreign affairs, are headed by Russian-speakers who left the Soviet Union.

[SHORAS]

The Israeli state is simply looking out for its interests, instead of switching allegiances from the USA which it receives billions in 'aid' from it will play one imperialism off another much like other countries do from time to time. PR from any quarter is usually good too.

[GerrardWinstanley]

The laughable Zionist logic in that puff piece is that Russia may one day come to replace America as Israel's chief lapdog —presumably donating billions in aid every year and attacking any country that stands in Israel's their way?— because, obviously, not to do so would be anti-Semitic, like the thugs in Kiev... and Putin, don't forget, visited Israel. :laugh:

There is a difference, you know, between friendship between countries —even when cynical and unwarranted— (Russia-Israel) and anilingus (US-Israel).

[cyu]

Maybe some officials in Israel have also thought all along that the US would be their "lapdog" but have had their illusions shattered by the American regime's tolerance / support for fascists in Ukraine. Not everyone in American foreign policy circles think alike, and if some are willing to support fascists to achieve their geopolitical goals, and if those people are now able to largely determine American foreign policy, well, it would probably be like finding out your best friend was trying to seduce your wife.

Dumb move on the part of the American regime though, but it's not like fascism was ever an ideology that was meant to survive for long xD

[Craig_J]

OK, so I'm going to admit I am ashamed of myself but I don't know anywhere near as much as I should about this.

Are the fascists already in power in Ukraine???

If not, who are?

If you could get me any sort of brief information on this that would be helpful (I would look myself but I'm quite busy with uni work)

Is this one off those all to common situations where no good can come off it no matter which way it goes?

[Sasha]

OK, so I'm going to admit I am ashamed of myself but I don't know anywhere near as much as I should about this.

Are the fascists already in power in Ukraine???

If not, who are?

If you could get me any sort of brief information on this that would be helpful (I would look myself but I'm quite busy with uni work)

Is this one off those all to common situations where no good can come off it no matter which way it goes?

There are two extreme-right/fascist parties in the broad (but rightwing/liberal) coalition that governs in a "caretaker" government Ukraine until the elections in may, so while having power, they dont have THE power in the fascist sense yet.
The "anti-fascist" invasion and capture of the Crimean dis ofcourse essentially guarantee a massive extreme-right/fascist election victory

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-24/ukraine-leader-new-leaked-recording-8-million-russians-ukraine-must-be-killed-nuclea

"someone" has just leaked another phone conversation between parliamentarian Nestor Shufrych and former PM and ideological leader of the Ukraine "revolution" Yulia Tymoshenko and most probable future president of West Ukraine.

Tymoshenko, after asked, "what should we do now with the 8 million Russians that stayed in Ukraine. They are outcasts"... to which she replies: "They must be killed with nuclear weapons."

[tallguy]

There are two extreme-right/fascist parties in the broad (but rightwing/liberal) coalition that governs in a "caretaker" government Ukraine until the elections in may, so while having power, they dont have THE power in the fascist sense yet.
The "anti-fascist" invasion and capture of the Crimean dis ofcourse essentially guarantee a massive extreme-right/fascist election victory
I think it's too early to say that Sasha. I have seen no credible footage of a mass of ordinary Ukrainians who support the right-wing/fascist coup in Kiev. The only reports I am seeing to that effect are Western media allegations and folks like yourself asserting it on forums like this. If wider support for the current incumbents running the show in Kiev was so ubiquitous and unanimous in greater Ukraine, then why are we not seeing it splashed all over our media here in the West since it would be a propaganda goldmine for the USA and its cronies would it not?

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-29/russias-military-begins-massive-nuclear-war-drill

on Thursday Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces began a massive three-day exercise involving 10,000 soldiers and 1,000 pieces of equipment from more than 30 units. The major purpose of the drill is to ensure Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces have sufficient readiness to conduct offensive operations involving the massive and simultaneous use of nuclear missiles.

Russia’s 1997 national security concept stated that Russia would use its nuclear arsenal “in case of a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation,” whether that threat came in the form of nuclear weapons or from a conventionally superior military power.

[RedAnarchist]

A "People's Republic of Donetsk" has been declared - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26919928.

[sosolo]

A "People's Republic of Donetsk" has been declared - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26919928.

The use of "People's Republic" is interesting. Is there anything vaguely socialist about it?

[PhoenixAsh]

No. Nothing at all. The term is used here as a way to indicate that it is by popular support from yhe inhabitants . At least that is the rationale behind it.

[sosolo]

No. Nothing at all. The term is used here as a way to indicate that it is by popular support from yhe inhabitants . At least that is the rationale behind it.

It seems that Putin's Russia, for all their anti-Soviet rhetoric, uses the terminology whenever it suits them.

-sosolo

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-07/and-another-region-seeks-join-russia

Moldova's Transnistira region, in a 2006 referendum some 97% of the population voted to become part of Russia.

this appears to have been confirmed after the president of the territory said the following:

•TRANSNISTRIA SEEKING TO JOIN RUSSIA AFTER WINNING INDEPENDENCE
•TRANSNISTRIA PRESIDENT SHEVCHUK SPEAKING TO REPORTERS ON RUSSIA

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-10/donetsk-creates-peoples-army

the anti-government (pro-Russia) movement in Donetsk has taken dramatic steps to bolster itself by creating a "people's army," or National Army of Donetsk. mostly civil volunteers, but also police and army defectors, say they “defend their motherland from the fascist army that’s going to kill them.” They demand “a referendum to be independent from Kiev”

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-14/blowback-protesters-kiev-demand-resignation-ukraine-president


http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/04/20140411_costs_0.png

[Nakidana]

Pro-Russian separatists seize Ukrainian armoured vehicles

About 100 armed men ride on top of seized vehicles in central Kramatorsk as Ukrainian military helicopters hover above




Luke Harding (http://www.theguardian.com/profile/lukeharding) and Alec Luhn (http://www.theguardian.com/profile/alec-luhn) in Slavyansk
theguardian.com (http://www.theguardian.com/), Wednesday 16 April 2014 10.13 BST

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/16/1397634068300/Pro-Russian-forces-on-rid-009.jpg Pro-Russian forces on ride on an armoured vehicle seized from the Ukrainian army. Photograph: Luke Harding

Pro-Russian armed separatists have seized five armoured personnel carriers and a tank from the Ukrainian army, which they then drove in a victory lap through the centre of Kramatorsk in Ukraine (http://www.theguardian.com/world/ukraine)'s east, where government forces are attempting to wrest back control of the city.
About 100 heavily armed men, some in balaclavas and wearing military fatigues, rode on top of the seized armoured vehicles, the first of which was flying a Russian tricolour. Several hundred locals gathered around the convoy, cheering, tooting their car horns and waving in support as it rolled past Kramatorsk's railway station, not far from the airfield where Ukrainian soldiers clashed with separatists on Tuesday.
Ukrainian military helicopters hovered above the dramatic scenes in central Kramatorsk but there seemed to be no attempt by government forces to try to wrest back control of the situation.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/16/1397634205724/Crowds-look-on-as-pro-Rus-006.jpg Crowds look on as pro-Russian separatists drive round the city on armoured vehicles. Photograph: Luke Harding The seized armoured personnel carriers were driven to Slavyansk, where a Russian flag had been raised above a checkpoint at the city entrance. A jet plane resembling a Su-27 circled low over the town's square.
The pro-Russian militiamen who drove the troop carriers into Slavyansk refused to say where they had got them.
"From space," one said. "They came on their own," said another.
There were, however, reports that six Ukrainian pieces of armour in Kramatorsk had fallen into the hands of pro-Russian militia. The troop carrier driven into Slavyansk did not look modern enough or well kept enough to be Russian armour.
Locals gathered as the militiamen parked the vehicles near city hall. A pair of women recognised one man and hugged him, suggesting that at least some of them were local.
The new "people's mayor", Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, arrived and greeted the men, then led a group of them off the square toward other occupied buildings.
But not all the locals who had gathered joined the hero's welcome. One man who identified himself only as Valery angrily asked the militiamen, who were enforcing a wide perimeter around the armoured vehicles, what they were doing.
"Part of the population supports them," he said. "But people who work, like me – I'm an entrepreneur – they don't want this."
Valery said he didn't support calls for a referendum and wanted to vote in the presidential elections planned for 25 May, which many here say they will boycott.
"People think everything in Russia (http://www.theguardian.com/world/russia) is spread with honey," Valery said – a statement that provoked angry exclamations and arguments from nearby crowds.
Separately, there were unconfirmed reports that armed men have captured the city administration building in nearby Donetsk.
Pro-Russian protesters seeking independence from Kiev have occupied at least nine government buildings in the region for more than a week – but this is the first time that separatist forces deep inside Ukraine have managed to seize heavy military equipment and a further sign that the situation in the east is slipping out of Kiev's grip.
Ukrainian government forces launched their first significant military action in the east of the country on Tuesday, clashing with about 30 pro-Russian gunmen at a provincial airfield and heightening fears that the standoff could escalate into a major armed conflict.
Shots were fired in Kramatorsk airport as Ukrainian special forces stormed in to reassert Kiev's control. As troop helicopters hovered above and tempers flared, a Ukrainian general was set upon by a group of local people incensed that two protesters had been injured, knocking off his military-issue fur hat and yelling: "Jail him."
At the same time as Kramatorsk airport was being seized, elite Ukrainian units were also gathering outside the nearby city of Slavyansk in an operation aimed at taking back control from armed pro- Russian groups.
Ukraine's acting president said the recapture of the airport was just the first such action aimed at restoring Kiev's control over the east.
"I just got a call from the Donetsk region: Ukrainian special forces have liberated the airport in the city of Kramatorsk from terrorists," Oleksandr Turchynov told parliament.
"I'm convinced that there will not be any terrorists left soon in Donetsk and other regions and they will find themselves in the dock – this is where they belong."
Russia's president, Vladimir Putin (http://www.theguardian.com/world/vladimir-putin), declared the Ukrainian moves "anti-constitutional acts" and in a phonecall to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, demanded that the UN condemn them. But the US voiced strong support for the Ukrainian operation, arguing that the government in Kiev "has to respond" to armed groups.
"We understand the government of Ukraine is working to try to calm the situation in the east and note the measured approach of the Ukrainian security forces thus far," said White House press secretary Jay Carney.
Representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the US and the European Union are due to meet in Geneva on Thursday for the first time since the crisis began in February, but there were clear signs that the situation in eastern Ukraine risked spiralling out of control before the diplomats could meet.
The mayor of Slavyansk said the pro-Russian local people there were being supported by unmarked troops from Russia and Crimea. Turchynov gave pro-Russians in eastern Ukraine until Monday morning to give up their arms and the buildings they had seized, but instead a pro-Russian mob took over yet another government building in Horlivka that day. A man who appointed a new police chief there later said he was a lieutenant colonel in the Russian army.
General Vasily Krutov, the commander of the Ukrainian operation in the region, said the government's ultimatum would not be extended. That would be "too humanitarian", he said. He added that civilian casualties were possible but his forces would try to make sure "not one innocent person suffers".
He said: "Unfortunately we face a difficult situation because those realising their plan are hiding behind human shields" – an apparent reference to the many pro-Russian local people who have taken part in taking over buildings. "Some of them are cynically working toward their own ends, but many are under the influence of propaganda," he said.
At the White House, Carney said the Ukrainian authorities had repeatedly sought to negotiate a peaceful resolution with armed groups occupying buildings in eastern cities, and made clear that use of force was not its "preferred action".
But he continued: "That said the Ukrainian government has a responsibility to provide law and order. These provocations in eastern Ukraine are creating a situation in which the government has to respond."
Asked what advice the CIA director, John Brennan, who visited Kiev on Saturday, and other US officials have given security forces in Kiev, Carney replied: "We urged the Ukrainian government to move forward, gradually, responsibly, and with all due caution, as it deals with this situation caused by armed militants.
"Let's be clear: the way to ensure that violence does not occur is for these armed paramilitary groups, and these armed so-called pro-Russian separatists, to vacate the buildings and to lay down their arms."
William Hague, the British foreign secretary, said in a speech to the City of London on Tuesday that the EU was completing preparations for "far-reaching economic, trade and financial sanctions whenever necessary" against Moscow.
"In recent days Russia has deliberately pushed Ukraine to the brink, and created a still greater risk of violent confrontation," he said. "We call on Russia to stop these actions and to condemn the lawless acts in eastern Ukraine."
The UN human rights office, meanwhile, said ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine had falsely claimed to be under assault to justify Russian intervention, warning that such propaganda could affect Ukraine's presidential election next month.
Russia condemned the report, saying it was one-sided and seemed to have been "fabricated" to fit pre-formed conclusions.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...oured-vehicles (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/16/pro-russian-separatists-seize-ukrainian-armoured-vehicles)

Ukraine is caught between a rock and hard place. If they attack, there will be civilian causalities, bad PR, they'll lose the already meager support they have from the people in the West and most importantly Russia will act. No way Russia will allow a civil war on its border. If they don't attack, eastern Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odessa is lost.

I think they'll have to be content with whatever scraps they can gather from the table tomorrow in Geneva.

[tallguy]

I can see the US administration trying to use Russia’s potential further military involvement in the east of Ukraine as "evidence" (according to the parameters of the US narrative) of Russia’s "malign" intentions. To reiterate, in order to head off the predictably hysterical charges by some on here of "Russian apologetics", I am not suggesting that Russia is all sweetness and light. I am simply attempting to describe (and predict) the larger geopolitical game that is being played out here.

[Tim Cornelis]

It seems that Putin's Russia, for all their anti-Soviet rhetoric, uses the terminology whenever it suits them.

-sosolo

Anti-Soviet rhetoric, surely Putin uses pro-Soviet rhetoric. Rehabilitating its history, saying he misses the Soviet empire.

[Dire Helix]

Anti-Soviet rhetoric, surely Putin uses pro-Soviet rhetoric.

As in speaking favorably of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology and the "actually existing socialism", paying lip service to Bolsheviks and calling for a return to the centrally-planned economy? Never happened, so cut the bullshit.

Just in the past few weeks Russian TV aired a few "documentaries" calling Ukraine a "virtual construct" whose borders "were drawn on a whim by Bolsheviks", accusing the latter of illegal transfer of the "historic Russian land"(in reference to Eastern Ukraine) to Ukrainian SSR and such.

[Sasha]

Maidan or anti-Maidan? The Ukraine situation requires more nuance

We should support the progressive wings of both factions, not tie ourselves up with hypocritical justifications of one or the other



(https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/15/maidan-anti-maidan-ukraine-situation-nuance)Volodymyr Ishchenko (http://www.theguardian.com/profile/volodymyr-ishchenko)



theguardian.com (http://www.theguardian.com/), Tuesday 15 April 2014 10.17 BST
Jump to comments (241) (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/15/maidan-anti-maidan-ukraine-situation-nuance#start-of-comments)



http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/4/15/1397552006749/Pro-Russian-activists-cla-011.jpg Pro-Russian activists clash with Maidan supporters as they storm the regional government building in Kharkiv on 1 March 2014. Photograph: Sergey Bobok/AFP

I have little doubt that Russian security services were in some way involved in the recent escalation of violence in several towns in eastern Ukraine (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/14/prorussian-militias-fill-vacuum-kiev-control-eastern-ukraine-slips).
The seizures of administrative buildings on 12 April (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-27000700) were well co-ordinated between different towns, the armed men were well equipped and showed high levels of military training. This does not necessarily mean that Russian special operations units are directly taking part; those men could be former Ukrainian riot police officers, many of whom fled to Crimea and Russia to escape punishment from the new government. But all of this does not preclude the fact that the planned provocation happened in the context of mass, grassroots, self-organised social protests which started against the new government in eastern Ukrainian regions after former president Viktor Yanukovych was toppled (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/22/ukraine-president-yanukovych-flees-kiev).
The Maidan movement has never had majority support in eastern and southern regions in Ukraine. After it succeeded in toppling the government, many people were scared and outraged with the exaggerated pictures they saw on television of violent clashes in Kiev, armed paramilitary groups including many far right elements controlling the streets, attacks on Lenin's monuments (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/ukraine-opposition-viktor-yanukovych-european-integration), and the far right Svoboda party included into the new government. Many people in the east call it the "Kiev junta" and disapprove of its actions.
Of course, there is a large degree of irrational fear driving the protesters, especially concerning the overstated problem of Russian language discrimination. But it would be hypocritical to employ double standards. Just as Maidan was not a "revolution", anti-Maidan is not a "counter-revolution" either (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/28/ukraine-genuine-revolution-tackle-corruption). Maidan was called a "revolution of dignity" but people in eastern Ukraine are also proudly talking about their dignity, regional identity, historical memory, Soviet heroes and language.
The anti-Maidans in the east are no more irrational than Maidan protesters who were hoping for the European dream but gained (quite expectedly) a neoliberal government, IMF-required austerity measures and increasing prices. In the eastern Ukrainian protests, "Russia" – with its higher wages and pensions – plays the same role of utopian aspiration as "Europe" played for the Maidan protesters. The economic situation in Ukraine continues to deteriorate and the national currency has lost more than 50% of its value in two months, so the protesters in the Donetsk region are talking more about the socio-economic problems the Ukrainian state was not able to solve for 23 years: collapsed enterprises, unemployment and low wages. They demand nationalisation and decent rewards for their labour.
It will sound paradoxical for those who celebrated grassroots self-organisation in the Maidan, but the anti-Maidan protests in eastern Ukraine are even more grassroots, decentralised, network-type and leaderless at the moment. Neither the Party of Regions nor the Communist Party of Ukraine play the same role of political representation for anti-Maidan as the three former opposition parties did for Maidan. The so called "representative of south-eastern Ukraine", the former Kharkiv region governor Mykhailo Dobkin, whom Russia was going to invite to the negotiations with the EU and US on an equal basis with the Kiev government, was violently booed by protesters in Lugansk. Equally, they do not trust the oligarchic elite of eastern Ukrainian origin; or the wealthiest person in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov, who has taken on a peacemaker role; or the new Donetsk governor Serhiy Taruta. And they do not want the discredited and corrupt Yanukovych back.
The social base of the protest seems to be more plebeian, poorer and less educated than on Maidan; we see more workers and pensioners and not so many intellectuals and higher-educated professionals who would help to formulate clear demands and defend them in the media.
This is precisely why these protests can be so easily influenced from the outside. It is not difficult to intervene, provoke and manipulate a decentralised revolt of scared people to serve Russian interests.
The anti-Maidan protests cannot be supported wholeheartedly and without reservation. Like Maidan they are diverse. Some people support joining Russia, some support more local autonomy within the Ukrainian state. Russian far-right nationalists, who are no better than the Ukrainian nationalist Svoboda or Right Sector, participate in the protests together with leftist organisations. The public in eastern and southern Ukraine is split. Simultaneously, with anti-Maidan rallies and seizures, demonstrations in support of the new government and a united Ukraine take place.
Even if from an abstract point of view a demand for federalisation and the direct election of the region's governors sounds democratic, in Ukrainian reality it would instead give more powers to local "big men" rather than lead to a vivid local self-government. And like in western Ukraine during the final stages of the Maidan rebellion, the local Donetsk police is now sabotaging the government's orders and is often allowed to take control of the buildings and weapons without much resistance, sometimes even taking the side of the protesters.
Rather than constructing necessarily hypocritical justifications as to why military suppression of some armed protesters is better than military suppression of other armed protesters, why the pro-Ukrainian far right is better than the pro-Russian far right, why the Ukrainian neoliberal government is better than the Russian neoliberal government, or why we are ready to fight Russian imperialism but ready to accept western imperialist interests in Ukraine, it would be better to support progressive wings of both Maidan and anti-Maidan, and try to unite them against the Ukrainian ruling class and against all nationalisms and imperialisms on shared demands for social justice.



source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/15/maidan-anti-maidan-ukraine-situation-nuance

[piet11111]

Anti-Soviet rhetoric, surely Putin uses pro-Soviet rhetoric. Rehabilitating its history, saying he misses the Soviet empire.

I am quite certain he once said something along the lines of people that miss the USSR are being stupid.
So if he claims otherwise now he is lying.

[Hrafn]

I am quite certain he once said something along the lines of people that miss the USSR are being stupid.
So if he claims otherwise now he is lying.

"People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened." - Putin, 2005.

"Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself." - Putin, 2005.

I'm quite sure you can resent the Soviet system and society and be happy for its collapse, and still be wishing to regain the geopolitical supremacy of the USSR, at the same time.

[Tim Cornelis]

As in speaking favorably of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology and the "actually existing socialism", paying lip service to Bolsheviks and calling for a return to the centrally-planned economy? Never happened, so cut the bullshit.

Did I step on your lil' dick... Jesus christ.

[Sasha]

A "People's Republic of Donetsk" has been declared - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26919928.

Yeah, some stupid tankies hailed it and its leader as glorious anti-fascist and anti-imperialist developments, turns out the guy is the leader of a paramilitary rusophile neo-nazi organisation

[Tim Cornelis]

Yeah, some stupid tankies hailed it and its leader as glorious anti-fascist and anti-imperialist developments, turns out the guy is the leader of a paramilitary rusophile neo-nazi organisation

was*

[khad]

Ukraine is caught between a rock and hard place. If they attack, there will be civilian causalities, bad PR, they'll lose the already meager support they have from the people in the West and most importantly Russia will act. No way Russia will allow a civil war on its border. If they don't attack, eastern Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odessa is lost.

I think they'll have to be content with whatever scraps they can gather from the table tomorrow in Geneva.
Is the Kiev government going to claim that their own elite 25th Airborne Brigade, which defected yesterday, is a Russian 5th column?

http://abload.de/img/ukr3126gj1b.jpg

You can see that the soldier here is wearing the blue telnyashka of the paratroopers, meaning that they're defectors and not "a pro-russian armed separatist" militia claimed by that guardian article.

[aristos]

Yeah, some stupid tankies hailed it and its leader as glorious anti-fascist and anti-imperialist developments, turns out the guy is the leader of a paramilitary rusophile neo-nazi organisation

Any proof?
From what I've read the foto of him in the neo nazi fatigues was photoshoped.
There is his biography (a short summary of his political activities) floating online.
According to it there is no way he could have been part of it because the organization itself did not exist when he became politically active (basically the dates and places do not support the accusation).

[aristos]

Anyway it is absolutely hypocritical to hail maidan as a genuine people's protest (even if we ignore all the evidence of a well planned CIA operation attesting to the contrary) and at the same time deride the anti-maidan resistance as some nefarious Kremlin plot.
Double standards much!

[Tim Cornelis]

Anyway it is absolutely hypocritical to hail maidan as a genuine people's protest

Is this in reference to anyone on revleft, if so, any sources?


even if we ignore all the evidence of a well planned CIA operation attesting to the contrary

Sources?

[Rurkel]

It's important to notice, however, that not everyone in this Eastern Ukrainian anti-Maidan are some kind of aggressive Russian nationalists paid by Putin. There're good reasons for a popular discontent with the new government, even if they're expressed in a "Russia help us" way.

[Red Commissar]

I've been busy on my end and have admittedly not kept a close eye on events in Ukraine- what is going on now? The media is spazzing out over a demonstration in Donetsk and the mayor in Kharkiv getting shot.

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-04-30/putin-us-behind-ukraine-crisis-beginningnow-leading-it

“I think what is happening now shows us who really was mastering the process from the beginning. But in the beginning, the United States preferred to remain in the shadow,” Putin said

Washington's approach to the events in Ukraine is not fueled by concerns about the fate of the crisis-torn state, but rather by the desire to prove it is still running the show worldwide, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

The US is trying to shape public opinion in a specific manner “because they are not concerned by the fate of Ukraine in the first place, but have strong desire to prove that it’s them who decides how things should be – always and everywhere,” Lavrov stated.

[Corbeau]

Some good sources of information:
http://interpretermag.com/
http://www.kyivpost.com/

Information can be trusted most of the time; at worst, it may be unconfirmed. Commentary is usually biased, but comentary usually is.

Avoid any Russian media like plague. According to them, there are already concentration camps for Russians all over Ukraine. (Maybe that's why Gazprom increased the price of gas.)

[Nakidana]

^Those two sources are just as bad as Russian media. Are you a Euromaidan supporter?

[erupt]

I guess the Eastern Ukrainian "self-defence" forces brought down two Ukrainian helicopters; according to some members of the Eastern defence forces, the helicopters were shooting the common high caliber guns on military helicopters.

Of course, I have no way of verifying the helicopters firing on Sloviansk, but the video of one of these helicopters being brought down is circulating on Western, independent, and Russian media.

I'd like to say three things if the Ukrainian government heightened the stakes with firing bullets from airborne vehicles:

First, if they were firing on the ground, the successful maneuver to shoot the helicopter down shows how well trained these "self-defence" forces are.

Second, I'm not shedding any tears if this chopper was laying down fire in a civilian location like Sloviansk and got abruptly taken to the ground. I'm surprised the defence forces even took prisoners, like the pilot that survived getting shot down. Please, no one take this as some advocation of such a practice.

Third, militarily, the Ukrainians are escalating the conflict, as well. Soon, just as the defence forces got their arms by confiscation and directly from Russia, they will seize Ukrainian military aircraft or be given a few old Russian gunships or jet fighters.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Some 40-50 people were killed during a fire at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa
And Miners apparently have nearly a million small arms stored away in the mines in the Donbass region.

Also, when the fascists started raiding military bases earlier this year, there was a report that some high-end rocket launchers went missing from some places, so I think it would be safe to assume that perhaps some of the militias in the East have anti-aircraft launchers.


Helicopter in Slavyansk
QbWYEZWi-Cg

[Corbeau]

^Those two sources are just as bad as Russian media.
Nothing is as bad as Russian media. Those two sources will at least get some information through and won't make complete fabrications like when RT published that Right Sector is storming Russian homes in Crimea and harrassing the families.


Are you a Euromaidan supporter?
Yes, I am. Is that a problem?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Yes, I am. Is that a problem?


Fuck off and to hell with Maidan. (SERIOUS TRIGGER WARNING)
vv9_z6Cdf3g


https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1.0-9/10308135_1537447169815662_398469469902689240_n.jpg

[Per Levy]

Yes, I am. Is that a problem?

yeah it is, 1. you support the EU with that, wich is bad enough, 2. you are in league with fascists, 3. you are in league with billionairs, 4. you take a side in a imperialist battle of influence and markets in wich the working class of the ukraine only can loose.


Nothing is as bad as Russian media.

depends on where you live, i dont have to expirience russian media. the media here is so pro the kiev regime that it downplays the right sector and svoboda as right wing populists and writes that everything bad in the ukraine is because of putin and everybody who doesnt see it that way is a supporter of putin.

[Corbeau]

Fuck off and to hell with Maidan. (SERIOUS TRIGGER WARNING)
vv9_z6Cdf3g


https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1.0-9/10308135_1537447169815662_398469469902689240_n.jpg

The country is in turmoil. Many deaths for months now. Start crying now, when the other side starts seriously dying, too? I call it hypocrisy.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The country is in turmoil. Many deaths for months now. Start crying now, when the other side starts seriously dying, too? I call it hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy? I never supported Maidan because it was full of fucking fascists doing all the fighting and getting the biggest rewards, namely their own legitimate military wing.

[Corbeau]

yeah it is, 1. you support the EU with that, wich is bad enough,
No, it isn't.


2. you are in league with fascists,
There are fascists on both sides. Many more on the Russian side.


3. you are in league with billionairs,
Yeah, but they seem to keep forgetting to drop me a bundle or two. Cheap bastards.


4. you take a side in a imperialist battle of influence and markets in wich the working class of the ukraine only can loose.
I'm taking side in the February revolution. Yes, unlikely that we'll see the October one, but one doesn't go without the other in a country of feudal oligarchs.


depends on where you live, i dont have to expirience russian media. the media here is so pro the kiev regime that it downplays the right sector and svoboda as right wing populists and writes that everything bad in the ukraine is because of putin and everybody who doesnt see it that way is a supporter of putin.

Actually, I base my assumptions on messages from my friends in the street, who have nothing to do with the Right Sector, the government, police, army or any of the "billionaires". I trust what they tell me and take everything I read in any public media with a grain of salt.

[Corbeau]

Hypocrisy? I never supported Maidan because it was full of fucking fascists doing all the fighting and getting the biggest rewards, namely their own legitimate military wing.
Ah, so a person is a hypocrite if he supports Maidan? Ok, good to know. Plenty of hypocrites in Kiev these days, then. I thought the word means something else. Never too late to learn something new, I guess.

[Rusty Shackleford]

When did I declare you a hypocrite?


Also, just because some Maidan liberals or anarchists say one thing doesnt mean that Maidan didnt allow for fascists to be brought to power, and oligarchs from across the country flocked to their side.


And no, I wasn't cheering on Berkut and people flying tricolor flags just because groups like Antiimperialistische Aktion did, or because one of them had a red flag, or because they were singing the sacred war.

[cyu]

It used to be that imperial powers would send in their own troops to secure their empire, but now it looks like they're hiring the locals to do their dying for them instead. Right after which, I assume they'll then be sent to the gulag-without-walls that is usually known as pro-capitalist austerity.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-01/imf-warns-ukraine-fight-east-or-no-money

•IF UKRAINE GOVERNMENT LOSES EFFECTIVE CONTROL OVER EAST OF COUNTRY, $17 BLN IMF BAILOUT WOULD NEED TO BE REDESIGNED

Which, roughly translated, appears to mean go to war with pro-Russian forces or you don't get your money!

[Prometeo liberado]

Some 40-50 people were killed during a fire at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa
And Miners apparently have nearly a million small arms stored away in the mines in the Donbass region.

Also, when the fascists started raiding military bases earlier this year, there was a report that some high-end rocket launchers went missing from some places, so I think it would be safe to assume that perhaps some of the militias in the East have anti-aircraft launchers.


Helicopter in Slavyansk
QbWYEZWi-Cg

What are the politics of the trade unions and miners?

[Rusty Shackleford]

From what I've gathered on the miners at least is they are more for a more autonomous Donetsk region in general. The tricolor flag with the black stripe is from the short lived krivoy rog republic during the Russian civil war.

To be honest, I haven't read statements made by the unions but it would be safe to assume that at the very least, they want constitutional reforms and more regional autonomy. There's also news about 'peoples governors' in slavyansk and kramatovsk (sp?) And apparently some 'nationalizations in the Donetsk/donbass area.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The only large left force I know of is borotba party


Officially one of the self defense militia reps said they were not pro Russian but for Ukrainian unity and a finlandization of the country geopolitically. Meaning an equidistant but friendly relationship with both Russia and EU and their political and military machinations.

There is obviously going to be weird elements because like the 'FSA' its a bunch of different groups. Only names I know of is the donbass self defense and some local city militias.

[Prometeo liberado]

I can't help but wonder where the Jews, Romas and any other persecuted minorities will find refuge.

[cyu]

It nobody else will take them, personally I'd just encourage them to arm themselves... then go around helping other self-defense forces protect themselves. Rather than making mutual-defense agreements with other minorities, I'd recommend just helping to protect them, whether they asked for help or not. After all, actions speak louder than words - and actual, tangible help is worth more than a hundred contracts signed in blood.

[#FF0000]

Ah, so a person is a hypocrite if he supports Maidan? Ok, good to know. Plenty of hypocrites in Kiev these days, then. I thought the word means something else. Never too late to learn something new, I guess.

"Ukranian fascists are okay, Russian fascists are not"

That is what makes a person (you) a hypocrite.

[FSL]

In eastern Ukraine, the mob rules
BY MATT ROBINSON

His mistake was to run from the advancing mob, and that was enough for the men and women carrying clubs, knives and swords through Donetsk's Lenin district.

They set upon him. Beaten and bloodied, the unidentified man was saved, in a manner, by militiamen who dragged him through the crowd under metal shields, bundled him into the back of a car and drove him off at speed to an unknown fate.

No one could say what he'd done; he was a "provocateur", a term used by both sides of Ukraine's increasingly bitter divide to describe the other, but in the rebel-held east it means only one thing - a supporter of the "Fascist" government in Kiev. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/05/us-ukraine-crisis-mob-idUSBREA4406E20140505

Western media aren't really all that much in unbiased reporting, are they?
Eastern Ukraine is ruled by violent mobs that attack innocent people, an article appearing a few days after 40 people were either burnt alive or finished off by club-wielding nazis.
Also, Obama was pretty funny. Ukraine is now a sovereign country and can use violence against its people. What it can't do is sign a trade agreement with Russia.

I can't see how Ukraine can carry on as one state, without the current government commiting more mass murders. I hope that something more comes out of this "mob rule" in the east.

[Sasha]

Good internationalist statement from the AWU; http://avtonomia.net/2014/05/05/awu-kiev-statement-odessa-tragedy/

[Hrafn]

The amount of peoplw treating Borotba as anything other than just another pro-Russian force is... too goddamn high.

[FSL]

Anarchists -who pin the blame for the recent deaths equally to the nazis and the burnt victims- say borotba is "stalinist".


Now is it actually stalinist and we can therefore whole-heartedly support it in this clash or is it simply called stalinist in the same manner in which anarchists of a certain quality call anything stalinist?

[Rusty Shackleford]

The amount of peoplw treating Borotba as anything other than just another pro-Russian force is... too goddamn high.

Well, Borotba isnt 'just another pro-russian force"


that would be the communist party of Ukraine. I'm not super partisan about any organization but come on... cool points cant be that easy on this website.


look's like their main concern is with fascism (http://borotba.org/eng.html).

[PhoenixAsh]

I am not sure and I am beginning to have strong doubts as to the factual correctness of the statements made by the AWU. I haven't yet been able to find one single video showing molotovs being thrown from the inside of the building and yet there is ample evidence of molotovs being barraged at the building from the streets and this continued to happen after the building was already ablaze. In further video's I never see the detailed rescue operation before the police cordoned of the area and formed a line around the building. And until that happens we do see a lot of footage of outsiders continuing to throw things at the building.

I am not saying there is no evidence or footage. I am however saying that this footage yet needs to appear and I haven't found it at all.

So while the AWU seems to contrast with footage, eye witness accounts and live tweets it does seem more in line with the statements from the Kiev government about the origins of the fire. It also makes no mention of RS members arriving into Odessa from Western Ukraine days before the escalation. Nor of the attacks in the preceding days of Euro-Maidan activists on pro-autonomy demonstrations.

What I find disturbing is that the AWU is lumping pro-Russia and pro-autonomy together...which seems to parrot the Kiev regime and in fact the Russian line....and seems to deny there are more complex political forces involved than merely pro-Russia and pro-Kiev factions.

I am not saying their overall analysis is wrong. But I do find I want to be careful accepting their evaluation on face value.

[PhoenixAsh]

Here is the anarchist statement on Borotba:

http://avtonomia.net/2014/03/03/statement-left-anarchist-organizations-borotba-organization/


We, the collectives and members of Ukrainian leftist and anarchist organizations, announce that “Borotba” union is not a part of our movement. During the whole time of this political project’s existence, its members tended to be committed to the most discredited, conservative and authoritarian “leftist” regimes and ideologies, which do not represent the interests of working classes in any way.
”Borotba” has proved itself an organization with a non-transparent funding mechanism and unscrupulous principles of cooperation. It uses hired workers, who are not even the members of the organization. The local cells of “Borotba” took part in the protest actions together with PSPU (Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, which is an anti-Semitic, racist, and clerical party, and has no relation to the world socialist movement) and with Kharkiv pro-government, anti-Semitic and homophobic group “Oplot”; and are known for their linkage with an infamous journalist O.Chalenko, who openly stands for Russian chauvinism.
Recent events demonstrate that the leadership of this union, following the example of the “Communist” Party of Ukraine, have been overtly defending the interests of president Yanukovych, justifying the use of weapons by security forces and denying the acts of unjustified violence and cruelty on their part, the use of tortures and other forms of political terror. The representatives of “Borotba” take an extremely biased stance concerning the composition of protest movement, which is represented both on their own web resources and in the media commentaries. According to them, the Maidan protests are supported exclusively by nationalists and radical right, and were aimed only at a coup d’etat (“fascist putsch”).
We stand on antifascist positions, and our activists have often been victims of radical rightists’ attacks. We do not support some of the Maidan’s ideas, and are against the bourgeois opposition. We also condemn conservative, nationalist, and radical right sentiments, which are tolerated in the protesters’ circles nowadays. However, we emphasize that labeling all active citizens as “fascists” is not only false, but also dangerous. This one-sidedness is fueling chauvinist hysteria and divides society, which is only favourable for the ruling class.
On January 24th, the region council deputy and “Borotba” representative Oleksiy Albu participated in the protection of Odesa region administration building against “Nazis”, accompanied by Russian Cossacks and nationalists (“Slavic Unity”) and the members of ruling Party of Regions and Communist Party. In his later interview, he admitted his cooperation with the Security Service of Ukraine.
On March 1st, “Borotba” activists together with pro-Putin organizations took part in the assault on Kharkiv region state administration, which resulted in raising of a Russian flag and severe beating of many Kharkiv Maidan activists, including a leftist poet Serhiy Zhadan. The members of “Borotba” call all of this “an antifascist action” and claim that these violent actions were aimed against radical rightists.
Therefore, we conclude that the leadership of “Borotba” union not only support the authoritarian Soviet past, but also consciously manipulate public opinion, and are acting as “pocket revolutionaries” of the ruling elites. Their activity at the moment does not have anything in common with leftist politics and class struggle, and is aimed at the support of pro-Putinist forces behind the mask of “antifascism” and “communism”. Thus, the actions of this organization are discrediting both its name (which is derived from revolutionaries-“borotbists” of the beginning of the XXth century) and all the modern Ukrainian left in general. Moreover, “Borotba” does not disdain overt lies and fact manipulations, deceiving foreign leftists and antifascists.
We urge all the conscious revolutionaries, who are still the members of “Borotba”, to leave this treacherous, pro-bourgeois union and to cease all the political relations with its leadership. We also hope that European and Russian left will reconsider their attitude to “Borotba.” The organization of this kind should be isolated.
No gods, no masters, no nations, no borders!
Workers of all countries – unite!
Autonomous Workers Union
Independent Student Union “Direct Action “
Journal of literature and social critique ProStory
Editorial board of Tovaryshka.info
Anarchist Black Cross – Ukraine
Anarcha-feminist collective Good Night Macho Pride
Anti-Fascist Action Ukraine
Visual Culture Research Centre
Left Opposition
Ivan Shmatko
Ostap Kuchma
Oleksandr Bogachenko-Mishevsky
Andriy Rosdolsky
Sviatoslav Stetskovych
Andriy Zdorov
Myroslav Chaikovsky
Serhii Ischenko
Pavlo Myronov
Vadym Gudyma (Left Opposition)
Olga Papash
(The statement is open for further signatories, organizations as well as individuals)

[Sasha]

It does line up with this reconstruction; http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/what-really-happened-in-odessa-a-step-by-step-reconstruction-of-a-tragedy-that-killed-46-people-video-346192.html
And while I know kyivpost is in general here vilivied as "pro-maidian propaganda" it seems at least a lot more factual and void of unsubstantiated sloganeering than the RT items I have seen on the subject posted here.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Good internationalist statement from the AWU; http://avtonomia.net/2014/05/05/awu-kiev-statement-odessa-tragedy/

So the AWU have remembered that disturbances led by right-wing forces "cannot be considered a working-class social protest". Does this mean that they will criticise themselves over their unprincipled support for the Euromaidan protests?

[Rusty Shackleford]

And here is a helicopter getting hit by a rocket.

ctH57Xi4aH8

Self-Defense column in Slavyansk.

nN1cobPNemE


mind you, this article (http://rusvesna.su/news/1399281398) was posted by an anarchist, not some stalinophile putinist. the orange and black ribbon is the st george banner or whatever that is in memory of those who died in WWII.

The Tricolor is the "Donestskaya Respublika"

http://rt.com/files/news/25/67/c0/00/slavyansk.jpg


People's Defense of Donbass or something like that.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Flag_of_the_Donbass_People's_Militia.svg/260px-Flag_of_the_Donbass_People's_Militia.svg.png

[PhoenixAsh]

If you read how that is worded there are some serious problems.

So...a spontaneous peaceful movement comes equipped with shields, sticks, smoke grenades and guns. Naturally all for self defense. But yeah....they meant no harm at all. Which is of course why they only brought all those weapons for self defense purposes.

I find this portrayal of events very, very lacking in critical analysis.

[Rurkel]

I've read or heard nothing that indicates that Borotba is on Putin's payroll. They have agitated, without using Russian imperialist themes, against Ukrainian fascism and the way most Ukrainian liberal technocrats accepted fascists as uneasy, but legitimate coalition parters since 2011. Their completely uncritical attitude towards the "anti-maidan" (there's some stuff there that definitely needs confronting), expressed in their articles, worries me (though they, likely, understandably don't want to fight on two fronts - but not wanting to do so has its own price).

[PhoenixAsh]

What I find really and seriously disturbing is for Anarchists to parrot the Kiev line in perpetuating the narrative that everybody opposing the Kiev regime is in fact pro-Russian and a Russian agent.

This lack of criticism and nuance was certainly absent in their defense of Euro-maidan and dismissing the influence of right nationalist forces in order to justify the "peoples anger". The influence of these forces however and the influence of RS and Svoboda activists in exporting violence and opposition towards Eastern Ukraine now seems to be again diminished and there is no substance in nuance about the motives of the opposition forces....which all seem to consist of pro-Russian militants or duped workers. No such duped workers during Euro-maidan that rebellion was justified.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

What I find really and seriously disturbing is for Anarchists to parrot the Kiev line in perpetuating the narrative that everybody opposing the Kiev regime is in fact pro-Russian and a Russian agent.

This lack of criticism and nuance was certainly absent in their defense of Euro-maidan and dismissing the influence of right nationalist forces in order to justify the "peoples anger". The influence of these forces however and the influence of RS and Svoboda activists in exporting violence and opposition towards Eastern Ukraine now seems to be again diminished and there is no substance in nuance about the motives of the opposition forces....which all seem to consist of pro-Russian militants or duped workers. No such duped workers during Euro-maidan that rebellion was justified.

Someone hold me, because I'm about to agree with PhA. Methinks that our "anarchists" (I put that word in quotes because I suspect Bakunin would be insulted to have his name connected to people shilling for bourgeois governments) have absorbed a bit too much of the nonsense about "Europe" as a great progressive force, and their foreign fans - well, they haven't broken with Obama ever since he was elected, and they aren't about to start now.

[Rusty Shackleford]

It should be noted, if it hasn't already been mentioned, that reactionary forces are on both sides. Most obviously with the Cossack involvement in the east. (and the occasional Russian Imperial flag.)

I don't know if there is a difference between Ukrainian and Russian/Caucasian Cossack organizations, but if there is none, then there is a problem.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It should be noted, if it hasn't already been mentioned, that reactionary forces are on both sides. Most obviously with the Cossack involvement in the east. (and the occasional Russian Imperial flag.)

I don't know if there is a difference between Ukrainian and Russian/Caucasian Cossack organizations, but if there is none, then there is a problem.

I suspect there are none. And of course, there are reactionaries on both sides - if the AWU had acknowledged that from the first day of the Glorious People's Fascist (silly me, I forgot fascism doesn't actually exist and was invented by devious foreign types to slander Ukrainian revolutionaries) Revolution, no one would criticise them. Instead they supported Euromaidan, without even being paid for their services.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Oh, and a retort from Borotba (http://borotba.org/statement_of_the_union_borotba_over_recent_smear_c ampaign_against_anti-fascists_in_ukraine.html):


Despite the irrelevance, of the statement against ‘Borotba’, we need to clear up some facts. The statement that “Borotba” union is not a part of our movement” is true in some aspects. We are not part of the movement that tried to collaborate with far-right and Nazi forces that dominate in Euromaidan protest. We are not part of the movement that – like those small sects – that tried to hide their ‘leftism’ in Euromaidan while actually helping to bring to power open Nazis and just another clan of oligarchs that accepts IMF loans and austerity measures.

We are not part of the movement that actually backs clerical, conservative and reactionary sentiments. The signatures of the smearing statement just pretend to be anti-conservative at the same time backing nationalist, clerical and anti-semitic protest in Euromaidan. Some of them have given in to patriotic intoxications - ready to be enlisted in the army so that to defend nazi-junta and its oligarchs. A hundred years after WWI beginning and we are at the same situation again.

...

In short, we are not the part of the movement that has nothing common with left and antifascist stance. Thus, we are and have always been a leftwing and antifascist organization. We condemn ex-regime of Yanukovich and the new far-right government as well. We condemn Russian and Western interference in Ukrainian affairs as well as militarist patriotic intoxication induced by new power.

[Hrafn]

Well, Borotba isnt 'just another pro-russian force"


that would be the communist party of Ukraine. I'm not super partisan about any organization but come on... cool points cant be that easy on this website.


look's like their main concern is with fascism (http://borotba.org/eng.html).

Borotba most decidedly are pro-Russian. They have aligned with the Russian nationalist forces, and thus are part of the problem, just like all the petty "left-wingers" who have aligned with the West and Kiev.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Aside from RT bullshit, reporting from Liva states the mixed atmosphere in Donetsk, while Russian is a big topic, a lot of them are officially federalization, not separatism. Sure, there are people on the street who are justifiably upset about the situation begging Russia to send assistance, but the organizations at least are, like i said, for federalization.

First (http://liva.com.ua/levyie-na-yugo-vostoke.html)

Second (http://liva.com.ua/social-riot.html)

Apparently outside of the RSA (Regional State Authority, I assume) building in Donetsk, this is what graffiti says:


The first thing I heard hitting the walls to the RSA, was: "Glory to miners," "Glory metallurgists," "Glory Donbass!

[PhoenixAsh]

By reducing the situation in Ukraine to a conflict between pro-Russian or Pro-European groups the forces of imperialism legitimize their actions in the Ukraine towards their own population without having to address the actual situation and the abhorrent results developing because of their actions.

Both sides are pushing towards an escalation of the situation where there is no place for proper political, economic and social analysis. Everything needs to fit the narrative of propaganda.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Borotba most decidedly are pro-Russian. They have aligned with the Russian nationalist forces, and thus are part of the problem, just like all the petty "left-wingers" who have aligned with the West and Kiev.

Just like the AWU, no? If you're going to criticise those who support bourgeois forces - and I hope you will, because that (the Crimean issue notwithstanding) is the correct Communist policy - then criticise groups that supported the Euromaidan protests and that continue to alibi the current government in Kiev as well.

[Hrafn]

I have often stated my rejection of both pro-Kiev and pro-Moscow (which Borotba is, despite their opposition to Putin himself), so I don't see your point.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Borotba states explicitly that they opposed both russian and western intervention in Ukraine.


In case you didn't read the article I just recently posted from Borotba: (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2747315&postcount=101)


In short, we are not the part of the movement that has nothing common with left and antifascist stance. Thus, we are and have always been a leftwing and antifascist organization. We condemn ex-regime of Yanukovich and the new far-right government as well. We condemn Russian and Western interference in Ukrainian affairs as well as militarist patriotic intoxication induced by new power.

[Hrafn]

Formal statements mean nothing. "Words are wind" - GRRM.

[Rusty Shackleford]

+cool points

EDIT: sorry, I'm being a dick. seriously though, Borotba is not some Russian Nationalist organization.

[Hrafn]

There is, again, a difference between being pro-Russian in this conflict and being Putinist/Russian nationalist/etc. Borotba has aligned and allied itself with the nationalist groups, and have thus lost all claim to being anything else than a pro-Russian force on the geopolitical scale.

[Zukunftsmusik]

Just like the AWU, no? If you're going to criticise those who support bourgeois forces - and I hope you will, because that (the Crimean issue notwithstanding) is the correct Communist policy - then criticise groups that supported the Euromaidan protests and that continue to alibi the current government in Kiev as well.

I haven't read anything by or on AWU where they support or take action that supports the current Kiev government. Could you point to where they have done this? Regarding support of the Euromaidan protests, it seems to me they only had meek hopes that it could turn into something "better", no support beyond that (in so far this has even been support). Where have they said otherwise? (Honest questions - sorry if it has already been mentioned).

EDIT:

Okay, so I looked through the thread:


So the AWU have remembered that disturbances led by right-wing forces "cannot be considered a working-class social protest". Does this mean that they will criticise themselves over their unprincipled support for the Euromaidan protests?

Where and when have AWU showed "unprincipled support" for the Euromaidan protests? To my memory, they haven't. That being said, I have no sacred cows here. Again it's an honest question.

[Onecom]

Apparently the death toll is much more then 42.(I have seen as high as 300) and many of them did not die by the fire.


Triggers incoming:


http://ersieesist.livejournal.com/813.html


Apparently fires can shoot people in the face and strangle people.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Ok, so besides the large, active, and visible People's Defense of Donbass, what nationalist groups are operating that Borotba is working with?

And what makes AWU an authority on anti-fascism when it "has aligned and allied itself with the nationalist groups, and have thus lost all claim to being anything else than a pro-nazi force on the issue."

*Some word changes

[Hrafn]

Ok, so besides the large, active, and visible People's Defense of Donbass, what nationalist groups are operating that Borotba is working with?

And what makes AWU an authority on anti-fascism when it "has aligned and allied itself with the nationalist groups, and have thus lost all claim to being anything else than a pro-nazi force on the issue."

*Some word changes


Various Odessa-based groups, in the case of the devastating May 2 murders. Almost all those who died in the fire were carrying Russian nationalist insignia, according to Russia Today, and most of those arrested by the cops afterwards were Russian nationalists. Russia Today interviewed a number of bourgeois politicians and nationalist leaders who had escaped alive from the events. As for the stuff about AWU, I have nothing to say to that, as I have no interest in them.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Russian nationalist insignia? Like the st George ribbon? Rt doesn't even call them nationalists

[Sasha]

Good article: http://libcom.org/news/darkness-may-socialist-eye-witness-odessa-06052014

[jake williams]

Good article: http://libcom.org/news/darkness-may-socialist-eye-witness-odessa-06052014
That's a fucking terrible article which among other things has this to say about Stepan Bandera:


Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian nationalist leader of the 1940s; “Bander-ite” was a Soviet, and now a Russian, derogatory term applied to all Ukrainian nationalists. Bandera’s Ukrainian insurgent army (UPA) at different times fought against both the Soviet army and the fascist axis forces; this history is extremely controversial, partly because of the involvement of UPA units in massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.

[Sasha]

And a decent look by vice at the fash cheering the diferent sides; https://news.vice.com/article/i-know-you-are-a-fascist-but-what-am-i

[Sasha]

That's a fucking terrible article which among other things has this to say about Stepan Bandera:

Seems rather factual to me, what's your beef with it?

[Hrafn]

Russian nationalist insignia? Like the st George ribbon? Rt doesn't even call them nationalists

St. George ribbon is nationalist insignia, yes. And of course RT doesn't say nationalist, Christ.

[Rusty Shackleford]

St George's ribbon is now nationalist? Well... Shit. I guess its all over. Everyone go home. This discussion needs to be split btw

[Hrafn]

What, don't tell me you think it's an good little left-wing, anti-Fascist symbol, haha.

[Hrafn]

http://www.dreamdeferred.org.uk/2014/05/ukraine-slides-towards-civil-war-there-is-no-good-side-to-choose/

Interesting article on the subject.

[Rusty Shackleford]

this thread needs a split... badly.

[Nakidana]

http://www.dreamdeferred.org.uk/2014/05/ukraine-slides-towards-civil-war-there-is-no-good-side-to-choose/

Interesting article on the subject.

I think it goes a bit too easy on the US/EU/NATO. It says that "the US/EU side is concerned primarily with blocking Russia’s expansion" and doesn't even mention NATO expansionism and the threat of war this creates. Obviously the US/EU is not only concerned with blocking Russia's expansion, but also concerned with complete hegemony over Russia. Bringing Ukraine into the fold is an important part of this.

[Onecom]

Er to be clear in my post I was referring to how the junta said that everyone died by smoke inhalation.

Since you can clearly see this was not the case.


Also it has been established that IMF/EU are the biggest instigators of all the troubles in Ukraine.

[Lanfear]

interesting article here too

http://stopwar.org.uk/article/how-the-media-sees-no-nazis-in-ukraine-even-as-they-burn-dozens-to-death#.U2oJJFea9fc

[cyu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

The Tanaka Memorial, a document describing a Japanese plan for world conquest, beginning with the conquest of China, is now believed by most historians to be a forgery.

The FBI-authored Black Panther Coloring Book was distributed in the United States in the late 1960s in an attempt to discredit the Black Panther Party, and the civil rights movement in general.

In Dreux, France, in 1982 the National Front distributed anonymous fake letters, supposedly from an Algerian living in France to a brother living in Algeria. These fake letters, which described immigration as a method of conquering France without war, were instrumental in the National Front victory in the 1983 local council elections in Dreux.

In the run-up to the 2007 federal election in Australia, flyers were circulated around Sydney under the name of a fake organisation called the Islamic Australia Federation. The flyers thanked the Australian Labor Party for supporting terrorism, Islamic fundamentalists, and the Bali bombing suspects. A group of Sydney-based Liberal Party members were implicated in the incident.

In November 1995, a Sunday Telegraph newspaper article alleged Libya's Saif al-Islam Gaddafi (Muammar Gaddafi's son) was connected to a currency counterfeiting plan. The article was written by Con Coughlin, the paper's chief foreign correspondent and it was falsely attributed to a "British banking official". In fact, it had been given to him by officers of MI6.

The Zinoviev letter was a fake letter published in 1924 in the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. It claimed to be a letter from the Comintern president Grigory Zinoviev to the Communist Party of Great Britain. It called on Communists to mobilise "sympathetic forces" in the Labour Party and talked of creating dissent in the armed forces. The Zinoviev letter was instrumental in the Conservative victory in the 1924 general election.

"The Penkovsky Papers" are an example of a black propaganda effort conducted by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency during the 1960s. The "Penkovsky Papers" were alleged to have been written by a Soviet GRU defector, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, but was in fact produced by the CIA in an effort to diminish the Soviet Union's credibility at a pivotal time during the Cold War.

[Rusty Shackleford]

An interview with a survivor of the House of Trade Unions fire/mass murder in Odessa. Her and a few others made it to the roof.

xUoYJ5Q9kjU

[La Guaneña]

This is BS. Are we seriously blaming the people taking up guns against fascists for not wanting to open two front? One thing is being a russian chauvinist, another thing is knowing when and how to start a fight. Please, people. If the dozens of unionists and communists killed in the false-flag op in Odessa aren't enough warning, I don't know what can be.

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-08/here-comes-crimea-20-following-referendum-donetsk-will-vote-become-part-russia

the Crimea scenario is fully in play once more. in the aftermath of the new certain May 11 referendum, a week later east Ukraine will formalize the Russia annexation process and on May 18 there will be a "second round of the referendum where you will be asked to support accession to the Donestk region of Russia."

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-08/here-comes-crimea-20-following-referendum-donetsk-will-vote-become-part-russia

the Crimea scenario is fully in play once more. in the aftermath of the new certain May 11 referendum, a week later east Ukraine will formalize the Russia annexation process and on May 18 there will be a "second round of the referendum where you will be asked to support accession to the Donestk region of Russia."

I don't understand why the american "left" takes the imperialist american media's narrative as its own.

Why focus on whether or not this or that region of Ukraine where the mass of people have successfully revolted against the Ukrainian army, will join the Russian Federation?

What is a lot more interesting from the revolutionary proletarian perspective, and what should concern us more, are the events that happened in Odessa or the recorded tapes of the 'moderate' Yulia Timoschenko, where the US/EU backed main contender for the presidential election of Ukraine talks about "kiling russian pigs", stating "What should we do with the 8 million Russians that stayed in Ukraine?. . . They must be killed with nuclear weapons" "I will use all my means to make the entire world rise up so that there wouldn't even be a scorched field left in Russia".

Who gives a flying fuck about Putin. What should be news here is that Europe has a highly unstable country with a political leadership that is not only despicably racist, genocidal and thoroughly corrupt, but is pursuing to lure its allies into its war and effectively start WW3.

[Black Cross]

I don't understand why the american "left" takes the imperialist american media's narrative as its own.

We have? Out of curiosity, where are you getting that information? Or by "left" do you mean Democrats?

[La Guaneña]

We have? Out of curiosity, where are you getting that information? Or by "left" do you mean Democrats?

I guess he means the ultra-left apologies of narratives such as those of Maidan or Venezuela.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

We have? Out of curiosity, where are you getting that information? Or by "left" do you mean Democrats?

I should have been more precise: I mean by "left" the liberal media that masquerades as independent, left and a critic of capitalism, and is perceived by the american public as being the left of mainstream. Engaging with the corporate american media's conversation of how Russia has "invaded" the Ukraine and reporting incessantly in search of any Russian involvement in the East Ukrainian uprising is tantamount to being a tool for American imperialism. Even if some Russian special servicemen are found to be in the region, the truth is not always objective if it is not in proportion with reality. You can, and many do, fall for the narrow minded propaganda that has the illusion of "truth" on its side, whether you're for a society controlled by workers or if you've not yet been exposed to the idea, no difference.

[exeexe]

I dont have much time, but here is a video of Ukrainian nazis hanging an antifascist and he dies.
http://ukraine-human-rights.org/right-sector-hangs-ukrainian-citizen/

[Bala Perdida]

I got some links on the Odessa massacre.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/03/ukra-m03.html

Some of you may have heard of Stormclouds Gathering. Whatever your opinion of the channel I think this is a good article being that it provides some good evidence.
http://scgnews.com/odessa-massacre-evidence-the-mainstream-media-wont-show-you-warning-disturbing-footage

[fugazi]

I am not sure and I am beginning to have strong doubts as to the factual correctness of the statements made by the AWU. I haven't yet been able to find one single video showing molotovs being thrown from the inside of the building and yet there is ample evidence of molotovs being barraged at the building from the streets and this continued to happen after the building was already ablaze. In further video's I never see the detailed rescue operation before the police cordoned of the area and formed a line around the building. And until that happens we do see a lot of footage of outsiders continuing to throw things at the building.

I am not saying there is no evidence or footage. I am however saying that this footage yet needs to appear and I haven't found it at all.

So while the AWU seems to contrast with footage, eye witness accounts and live tweets it does seem more in line with the statements from the Kiev government about the origins of the fire. It also makes no mention of RS members arriving into Odessa from Western Ukraine days before the escalation. Nor of the attacks in the preceding days of Euro-Maidan activists on pro-autonomy demonstrations.

What I find disturbing is that the AWU is lumping pro-Russia and pro-autonomy together...which seems to parrot the Kiev regime and in fact the Russian line....and seems to deny there are more complex political forces involved than merely pro-Russia and pro-Kiev factions.

I am not saying their overall analysis is wrong. But I do find I want to be careful accepting their evaluation on face value.

They've been quasi-discredited by libcom due to their questionable anaylsis of the Odessa massacre. (one of the comments said that they watched it on livestream and that the AWU's statement was inaccurate...)

libcom.org/news/statement-odessa-tragedy-autonomous-workers-union-06052014

Although I'm unsure if they were actually thereso its possible that they just got bad second-hand information...

In a different thread you asked what the Israeli viewpoint was (out of curiosity I checked)

surprisingly, they seem to be still holding onto the Nazi insurgents as Russian propaganda line although The Jerusalem Post appears to be more concerned and Haaretz seems to be at least somewhat critical. (my italics are really just wishful thinking...)

since they, by-in-large, like most of the western press, seem to be in outright denial of the fascist influence on the protests.

(not that I deny that the Russians are using it as an imperialistic pretext, just that it is there)

[PhoenixAsh]

well... http://avtonomia.net/2014/01/18/open-letter-european-left/


To the members of GUE/NGL faction in the European Parliament,
Gabriele Zimmer
Dear comrades.,
We, the members of leftist, trade union and human rights organizations in Ukraine, as well as individual activists, would like to draw your attention to the recent events in our country.
On Thursday, 16th of January 2014 without the discussion and contrary to its own regulations and to the Constitution of Ukraine, the Ukrainian parliament, passed a series of laws directed at limiting freedom of speech and citizens’ right to peaceful protest. One of the approved items is the infamous amendment to the Criminal Code which bans so-called “extremism”. In this amendment “inciting social discord” is defined as “extremism”. It is clear that any kind of drawing attention to social problems, to the blatant inequality that exists in Ukrainian society, can be qualified as “inciting social discord”, therefore the activities of left, trade union and social activists in Ukraine can be criminalized to a large extent.
The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) plays a particularly shameful part in these events. Not only did the Communist Party’s faction unanimously voted for the repressive bills, but the CPU official website also features materials that condemn the recent protests as being inspired by foreign actors with the aim of destabilizing Ukraine. Spreading such opinion, the CPU in fact fulfills the task of the whitewashing of Yanukovych’s regime.
It is true that open anti-communists do play a significant role on Maidan, but this anti-communism is caused mostly by the arrogant position of the Communist Party itself. It is not the first time the CPU has tried to de-legitimize civil protests and adopted a conservative position. In addition to this, in the country that suffered the catastrophic losses caused by hunger and repressions during the Stalinist regime, the CPU refuses to condemn the actions of the USSR’s leaders or at least apologize for them, which makes socialist ideas less popular in Ukrainian society.
Yanukovych’s regime has demonstrated its readiness for repressions. It is evident today that the CPU will use its international connections in order to justify this regime’s actions. That is why we believe that the left all around the world and especially in the European Union must terminate any relations with the Communist Party of Ukraine and condemn its actions.
We believe that the party that treats popular uprisings with open hatred, the party that speaks out against “inciting social discord”, is not fit to be called communist or leftist and is “communist” in name only.
We ask you to bring this letter to the attention of the leadership of the parties which are members of your Union.

Autonomous Workers Union – Kyiv,
18/01/2014

[fugazi]

I got some links on the Odessa massacre.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/05/03/ukra-m03.html



not that I disagree with what that article actually says
but that headline is fucking ridiculous...

[RedHal]

well... http://avtonomia.net/2014/01/18/open-letter-european-left/


To the members of GUE/NGL faction in the European Parliament,
Gabriele Zimmer
Dear comrades.,
We, the members of leftist, trade union and human rights organizations in Ukraine, as well as individual activists, would like to draw your attention to the recent events in our country.
On Thursday, 16th of January 2014 without the discussion and contrary to its own regulations and to the Constitution of Ukraine, the Ukrainian parliament, passed a series of laws directed at limiting freedom of speech and citizens’ right to peaceful protest. One of the approved items is the infamous amendment to the Criminal Code which bans so-called “extremism”. In this amendment “inciting social discord” is defined as “extremism”. It is clear that any kind of drawing attention to social problems, to the blatant inequality that exists in Ukrainian society, can be qualified as “inciting social discord”, therefore the activities of left, trade union and social activists in Ukraine can be criminalized to a large extent.
The Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) plays a particularly shameful part in these events. Not only did the Communist Party’s faction unanimously voted for the repressive bills, but the CPU official website also features materials that condemn the recent protests as being inspired by foreign actors with the aim of destabilizing Ukraine. Spreading such opinion, the CPU in fact fulfills the task of the whitewashing of Yanukovych’s regime.
It is true that open anti-communists do play a significant role on Maidan, but this anti-communism is caused mostly by the arrogant position of the Communist Party itself. It is not the first time the CPU has tried to de-legitimize civil protests and adopted a conservative position. In addition to this, in the country that suffered the catastrophic losses caused by hunger and repressions during the Stalinist regime, the CPU refuses to condemn the actions of the USSR’s leaders or at least apologize for them, which makes socialist ideas less popular in Ukrainian society.
Yanukovych’s regime has demonstrated its readiness for repressions. It is evident today that the CPU will use its international connections in order to justify this regime’s actions. That is why we believe that the left all around the world and especially in the European Union must terminate any relations with the Communist Party of Ukraine and condemn its actions.
We believe that the party that treats popular uprisings with open hatred, the party that speaks out against “inciting social discord”, is not fit to be called communist or leftist and is “communist” in name only.
We ask you to bring this letter to the attention of the leadership of the parties which are members of your Union.

Autonomous Workers Union – Kyiv,
18/01/2014

lol full blown neo nazis are now just anti communist, AWU are nothing but Kiev "left" propagandists

[Rusty Shackleford]

I for once don't disagree with the rather unsavory 'communism' of the CPU though. Like with most official CPs they are rather degenerate ideologically.


other than that though...

[Dagoth Ur]

The KPU is a shit party, which is all the more stark considering how good they look compared to Kiev.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Shit like this reminds me why I'm a communist. We should maybe put some spam warnings on the links with the violent content, I nearly vomited and am sick after viewing that. What makes all this worse is that I researched World War 2 in the Ukraine a year ago, read about the ONU, Bandera, the german collaborators to exterminating the Ukrainian people; that background knowledge makes this all the more worse to take, just sitting here, powerless in front of a computer screen.

And the majority of westerners believe the issue at the moment is Russia, or Russian imperialism in Ukraine, where the real issue that should be brought to the fore is the crisis for human civilization that Fascism poses. What becomes clear is, that even though we may feel the need to, going against the Fascists with violence has no use: we need an international independent working class mass media that exposes the sick and violent game international capital plays with the people.

[FSL]

In Kherson, Ukraine, a southern city. The governor is from tymoshenko's party.



Here is a translation of the Governor’s main comments:


Today, celebrating Victory Day, we remember the turbulent events that occurred during the Great Patriotic War. We remember that people fought against aggressors who tried to take our land.

Those aggressors [Soviet troops] were motivated not just by the desire to take our land and enslave our people, but they also propagated slogans about the supposed liberation of nations of people who were living on the lands that Hitler was trying to seize. If you study history, we see that it was [Hitler] who was the first to propagate the slogans “liberating people from the Communist yoke” and “liberating people from the tyrant Stalin.”

This was Hitler’s first motivation, when he tried to take territory. But our people came together in our willingness to defend our native Ukraine, and presented a united front, showing [Hitler] that people can and will win back their territory. Today, the same thing is happening on Ukraine’s borders.As Odarchenko spoke of “the tyrant Stalin,” many in the crowd began booing and whistling. According to local news website Khersonskie Vesti, supporters of Ukraine’s Communist Party led the effort to interrupt the speech. Before long, a woman carrying a young child forced her way to the stage, grabbed the microphone from Odarchenko, and threw it to the ground. When the Governor moved to another podium several yards away, somebody else from the crowd approached and ripped away the microphone stand. Someone captured the entire spectacle on camera, and soon posted it on YouTube, where the video has attracted over 300 thousand views in less than 24 hours. http://globalvoicesonline.org/2014/05/10/crowd-boos-ukrainian-governor-during-victory-day-speech/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A05s6GrztbQ

[Sasha]

I really should go back in the forums old treads and dig up the old threads about the Balkan wars, I'm sure anti-imps said the same "anti-fascist" and "socialist" things about massmurdering fascists like Arkans Tigers as they do about these "self-defense forces".
anyone holding a gun in this conflict is just as fascist as the guy on the other side of the baricades, let's not cheer ourselves into another ethnic massacre.

[Hrafn]

I really should go back in the forums old treads and dig up the old threads about the Balkan wars, I'm sure anti-imps said the same "anti-fascist" and "socialist" things about massmurdering fascists like Arkans Tigers as they do about these "self-defense forces".
anyone holding a gun in this conflict is just as fascist as the guy on the other side of the baricades, let's not cheer ourselves into another ethnic massacre.
The enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I really should go back in the forums old treads and dig up the old threads about the Balkan wars, I'm sure anti-imps said the same "anti-fascist" and "socialist" things about massmurdering fascists like Arkans Tigers as they do about these "self-defense forces".
anyone holding a gun in this conflict is just as fascist as the guy on the other side of the baricades, let's not cheer ourselves into another ethnic massacre.

I really had the intention to stop posting here, due to a variety of reasons, but this is so horrifyingly hypocritical I can't leave it unanswered. You and the people who support you are the only ones who are cheering - who have been cheering from the beginning of the Glorious People's Fascist Revolution. You are the "Western" equivalent of the AWU - police "autonomists" (their chief Zadiraka, who allegedly knows O. Vernik personally, which might explain a lot to people who are familiar with the debacles of left organisations in the Ukraine, is part of a council in the Interior Ministry of the Kiev Government - the same ministry that is held by fascists no less!) who invent and twist facts so that their beloved Kiev government appears faultless and everything is blamed on "the Russians" - just like certain "left" groups did with the Tuđman and Izetbegović governments and "the Serbs". And then you have the gall to make these extremely vague statements about both sides being "full of fascists" (for the record, the Tigers were not fascists, "fascism" means a bit more than "people I dislike", although telling that to a Dimitrovist is a lost cause). Well, you're cheering on one side full of fascists. You've fallen in line behind the Kiev government just as you've fallen in line behind Obama. Hell, your denunciation of the separation of Crimea can only mean that the bourgeois Ukrainian state and its borders are sacrosanct.

But I don't for a moment believe you're a Ukrainian nationalist. No, you're something worse, a liberal who believes that the Ukraine needs the "civilising" influence of the EU (of course, in practice it turns out that the EU supports the most violent, reactionary element of the Ukrainian, Belarussian etc. societies, but why should pesky facts get in the way of a scheme?). Maybe when the Ukraine joins the EU - after conquering Crimea back, you hope - they can elect a Green government and Obama can come on a state visit.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I can't edit the above post for some reason, so I will have to post this separately. Here (http://rada-mvs.org.ua/2/)is a list of the members of a "Civic Council" of the Interior Ministry of the Kiev government. Zadiraka is listed at number 12, allegedly representing a "Centre for the Study of Problems of the Civil Society". This same Zadiraka, Vladimir Sergeevich was a member (http://livasprava.info/content/view/2832)of the Direct Action group with fused (http://avtonomia.net/chto-takoe-avtonomny-j-soyuz-trudyashhihsya/)into the AWU. Here (http://avtonomia.net/2013/07/26/pop-art-i-ment-art-zaderzhaniya-uchastnikov-antiklerikal-nogo-protesta/) he is explicitly stated to be a member. Most people from the Ukraine I've spoken to consider him a leader of the AWU.

[Babeufist]

NATO-Nazi-Gladio pogrom.
Bloodthirsty pogrom against pro-Russian protesters

What happened in Odessa yesterday is much worse than what the initial reports had indicated: it was truly a deliberate and blood-curling massacre. To summarize:

In Odessa the pro-Russian demonstrators had never seized a building, all they did was erecting a small tent city and hanging out there. Hardly any violence had taken place. Yesterday, the neo-Nazis finally made their move:

1) They bussed in large numbers of Right Sector thugs.
2) They then got the local football hooligans (paid by oligarchs according to some reports) to begin a nationalist demonstration.
3) The Right Sector thugs then joined the hooligans and together they viciously attacked the pro-Russian tent city: the tents were torn down and the anti-regime demonstrators viciously beat up to a pulp. The local cops stood by and watched. [It's reported they were instructed so.]
4) The anti-regime demonstrators ran literally for their lives towards the building of Unions which had been their normal rallying point at which point they were surrounded and the building set ablaze.
5) Those attempting to leave the building were severely beat up and many murdered. Many were shot while standing in the windows to flee from the flames.
6) The neo-Nazis did not let the firefighters through.
7) With each jumping demonstrator or each person shot in the windows the crowd would scream "Glory to the Ukraine! Glory to he heroes!" Many took souvenir videos. For them, this was a joyful, liberating event.
8) The Ukrainian social networks flooded with joyful messages congratulation the "heroes" in Odessa and promising more of the same to the accursed Moskals.
9) The Western and Ukie press reported the events as a "clash" with "casualties" but with no reference to any one party causing this massacre.
10) The last fatalities figure was at 46. But with many dying from smoke inhalation and, especially, burns, it will probably go up.



Molotov cocktails prepared by Pro-Kiev junta girls
http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ukraine_crisis-31.jpg
were used to torch the tents of the pro-federalists activists, and later the building, were they tried to escape the death

Odessa slaughter: How vicious mob burnt anti-govt activists alive (GRAPHIC IMAGES)
http://rt.com/news/156592-odessa-activists-burnt-alive/

Certain elements in Kiev also celebrated the holocaust in Odessa.
http://www.vesti.ru/videos?vid=596180

FALSE FLAG? Ukrainian Police Filmed Assisting In Odessa Massacre !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpV_Dnd2v9s
http://www.1tv.ru/news/world/257896






Then the visibly smaller group of alleged anti-Kiev activists started to attack the march, apparently provoking the demonstrators. Footage then shows a smaller group men wearing red bands luring the pro-Kiev crowd into a different direction.

At some point, the police line opened up to let the men wearing red bands through and closed back up again. A video then shows a man standing behind the police lines shooting at the pro-Kiev crowd.

The provocations succeeded in triggering clashes, as both sides began to throw stones, and shots were heard.

The alleged anti-Kiev activists then disappeared and angry pro-Kiev supporters headed to the opposition camp based in front of the House of Trade Unions.

However, none of the original attackers with the red bands were there. Instead, a few dozen pro-autonomy activists were surrounding the camp. When the activists saw the angry mob approaching, they took shelter inside the House of Trade Unions.

Survivors of the fire say they had to barricade themselves inside the House of Trade Unions to hide from the agitated mob, which torched their tent camp.

Radicals then began throwing Molotov cocktails at the Trade Unions building, setting it on fire. Witnesses say those who managed to escape the blaze were severely beaten outside by the besiegers of the burning building.

But the Ukrainian Interior Ministry offers a different version of events, saying the victims of the violent unrest started the fire themselves when they began throwing Molotov cocktails from the upper floor.

Multiple videos of the incident, however, show Molotov cocktails flying from outside the building. Another video shows that some radical pro-Kiev elements were also inside the building, waving a Ukrainian flag.

The evidence leads one to conclude that the football fans could have been manipulated while unknown forces instigated the violence.

Local mass media quoted a source in the Interior Ministry as saying that militants from the special task force battalions Vostok (East) and Shturm (Storm) clad in civilian clothes had been involved in the killings and beatings in Odessa. Reports said they were manned with nationalists ready for mass clashes and sponsored by Ukrainian oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Pyotro Poroshenko.





There are lots of photos and videos of what was going on in the city on Friday and there are lots of details attracting special attention. Information to consider is quite enough for full investigation. It was taken by Pavel Ptshelkin.

At the very height of punitive action in the country when tensions in Russian-speaking Odessa reached the top level there was a football match. ;Metallist; from Harkov was playing with ;;Chernomorets;, Odessa. Several thousand ultras of both teams came to the city. These fans are nationalists, proponents of Maidan and they get a permission to march along the streets of Odessa in support of united Ukrain. They gathered here, near Sobornaya Square. Meanwhile from Alexandrovsky Avenue towards them there moved a group of well-equipped young men armed with batons and reinforcement. Many of these wear ;Georgian bands; but the main distinctive feature all of them have a mark made of red scotch on the sleeve. The authorities called them pro-Russian militants but it seems somebody needed everybody to believe it. And lots of eyewitnesses made these very conclusions.

And here is the first strange thing and ;mismatch; with junta;s official version. The same red marks were on the sleeves of some policemen. The most interesting thing is it was where these policemen stayed that the ;break; of ;separatists; to the members of the march happened.

Here we can see the red marks on the sleeves of the attackers and nearby the same bands on the sleeves of the policemen in cordon. The number of attackers is much smaller than the members of the march and it;s obvious they are not going to disperse them. They haven;t got enough power. But it is that very place where the break happened and another small group separated. What for? Soon it became quite obvious. They seduced a crowd of fans and succeed. Here the members of the march crying:

Fifty people that;s that means we can get them from side-lane, there;s few of them

The crowd changes the direction of movement and drives into Grecheskaya street. The main collisions happened over there. And here we can also see lots of strange things. The police chains part letting the attackers through and close down again. There are stones from both sides. Here we see a man with a red band on the sleeve he starts firing from the roof. And it was here where the first people were killed. The guns were on both sides but here is a strange frame the militant firing and a policeman is behind him. The bloggers recognized the deputy police head Dmitry Fuchedze. And here he is surrounded by those with red bands before the collision. And here he is walking with a group of those people to the place where the collisions with the members of the march happened.

And here - according to his chevron - an officer of Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs is obviously instructing the attackers with red bands.

;You should clearly understand what each unit is doing. They ran and ran. Where they ran? Look, every time there are some problems;

But it is much more difficult to believe in these pictures here a man in a bullet-proof vest starts firing the members of the march straight from behind the policemen. And now it becomes quite clear the main aim is to infuriate the crowd of fans and Maidan proponents.

Why? It became clear further when the attackers with red bands immediately left and a furious crowd aiming to Kulikovo Pole where the camp of protestors to current authorities is situated. These protestors were still there and for several months the authorities couldn;t afford to tackle with them. Naturally no people with red bands were in the camp. There on watch were some some dozens of activists. Trying to escape from the crowd they barricaded themselves in the building of Trade-unions.

And now some words about those in the crowd. Thousands of fans accustomed to street battles according to the plan were likely to become cannon fodder. According to the police staff there in the crowd were two battalions of police ;East; and ;Storm; recently staffed with nationalists from Right Sector in civil clothes.

According to surprising coincidence just that very day in Odessa there appeared a former commandant of Maidam Andrei Parubiy. The police appeared here after an hour and the fire-brigade after the police. That means there was a sign to make a pause. The leader is Parubiy. He was in Odessa yesterday and the day before yesterday. Everything was going on under his control.

And here is one more character. A man in a bullet-proof vest surrounded by clearly non-civil companions is falsely complaining to somebody about the attackers. He is clearly working for Ukrainian TV camera.

;They are armed, they are aggressively inclined, they have got pyrotechnics. My four guys are wounded and me too;.

He is clearly lying that he is not armed. Here he is near the flaming building of Trade-unions he is firing not to let people seeking shelter in the building to climb out of the windows.

This man is called Micola and he is a leader of one of hundreds Maidan fighters. It has recently arrived in Odessa. It is well known that Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs later announced that people who died in that building fired themselves because it is impossible to throw a bottle to the third floor. This cynical statement is easily disapproved. Here is what one of the survived told in his blog:

Meanwhile there was a message the maidans are breaking through the other corridor how did they happen to get there I ran there and helped to block the door. In the corridor I met two girls they tried to move an old iron safe. I helped them to move it to the door, blocking. While I moved it and blocked there came a white-green smoke from under the door... the air from my lungs was kicked out at once. One moment I thought I would choke

In other words the Maidan fighters were also inside the building. Here they demonstrate the Ukrainian flag in the window followed by the crowd approval. And here are other pictures made some minutes later. You can see that in that very window at the 3d floor the fire starts. At that very moment the governor Vladimir Nemirovsky actually gives the fighter the licence for murder:

;The actions of Odessa inhabitants aimed at neutralization and detention of armed terrorists are considered to be valid;

As we have already told the majority of those who came to fire the building of Trade-unions were not from Odessa but inside the building they were all odessits. The fighters from Right Sector were the first to enter the building and they started at once to seek for the documents of the dead. Later the Ukrainian propagandists tried to lie stating the dead had Russian passports. These passports were in the Internet and the lie was easily destroyed the same passports with the same family names appeared in a message on 16 April concerning alleged Russian diversionists.

April 2 in Odessa the people were burned alive and those who tried to escape were finished off with sticks. Besides as it appeared later among the dead there were lots of people with gunshot wounds. And moreover the police even didn;t think to interfere. All in all the facts lead to one conclusion. The reason of this tragedy in Odessa is a provocation in order to disperse and arrest the members of a numerous protests on the Kulikovo Pole against acting authorities. The fans were just used for this. On both sides there were skilful instigators. Considering all in all there was hardly anyone to plan the massacre but the crowd excited by the blood and impunity couldn;t stop.





Emergency Care Jewish Doctor: Neo-nazi thugs attacked doctor treating wounded!
My name is Igor Rozovskiy. I am 39. I live in Odessa, Ukraine. I am an Emergency Care doctor with 15 years experience.Yesterday, on May 2, 2014 a frightful tragedy happened in Odessa: over 40 people were burned alive in the Trade Union Building.As a doctor, I tried to help the burned injured survivors. I was confronted by one of the armed neo-nazi Ukrainian nationalists who rudely pushed me away from the injured. He also threatened that soon me and other Jews of Odessa will be burned too.I
Meir Segal, Odessa (4/5/14)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdSexaH-ggw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=je1neAJT4Hs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9AMjLBIliw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9_z6Cdf3g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9_z6Cdf3g (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv9_z6Cdf3g)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsViVUr1CbY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpV_Dnd2v9s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPwbpVbF6R8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEjziCDbTXY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_305108229&feature=iv&src_vid=aYLyJrOhpVQ&v=s9AMjLBIliw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLVXQg-2nx4Bl0J2hEJHmp-jFg7bjY25Fy&v=iVmcKRdyQDI#t=1106
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rx5VaTQR6k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoeaDHoxb18



Provocation gone wrong: Murky forces instigating Odessa violence?
http://rt.com/news/156744-video-footage-odessa-fire/

How the thugs killed Odessa inhabitants in the Trade Unions House - the details of bloody scenario
http://ersieesist.livejournal.com/813.html

http://frallik.livejournal.com/781599.html

http://hinter-der-fichte.blogspot.co.at/2014/05/ard-massaker-von-odessa-irgendwie.html
http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/ukraine_crisis-31.jpg

[Babeufist]

Oligarch and coup-appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk Kolomoisky is advertising huge cash bounties for killing pro-Russian separatists www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/kolomoisky-promises-a-reward-for-fighting-against-separatists-343970.html
See also www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/17/ukrainian-oligarch-offers-financial-rewards-russians-igor-kolomoisky

$10,000 per pro-Russian activist, $200,000 for getting an occupied building back. This is the creep whom Putin singled out as a "unique impostor." One dangerous character all right.
The clumsy hoax about a $50 fee for Jews to register, evidently invented to defame Donetsk, went wildly viral on the Net. But the Jewish oligarch Kolomoisky can blatantly solicit the murder of activists on giant billboards at $10,000 a head, and a giant yawn swallows up the story.

Oligovernor Kolomoisky said he has already paid the first $10,000 for a "captured saboteur," in an announcement on his page on VKontakte. www.profi-forex.org/novosti-mira/novosti-sng/ukraine/entry1008208163.html The most direct proof that this is a struggle between the money power and the people.


Billionaire criminal oligarch Kolomoisky was appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk province by the illegal Kiev junta.
Billionaire criminal oligarch "Gas Princess" Yulia Tymoshenko has a different tack, raising a private militia to put down Donetsk uprising. www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/18/pro-russian-groups-occupations-eastern-ukraine-kiev-geneva-deal (final paragraphs)

Kidnapped by Kolomoisky's bounty hunters? Pro-Russian leaders in Donetsk oblast are missing.




Dozens of FBI, CIA agents in Kiev 'assisting Ukraine security' http://rt.com/news/156692-ukraine-cia-fbi-agents/hed time: May 04, 2014

Agenten von CIA & FBI beraten Kiew http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/nachrichtendienste-usa/dutzende-agenten-von-cia-und-fbi-beraten-kiew-35807724.bild.html

After initially denying it, the White House acknowledged that CIA Mr. Brennan had in fact visited Kiev over the weekend.
http://vz.ru/news/2014/4/15/682084.html

One of Brennan's advisors told a reporter that the CIA director was in Kiev "to seek information and rescue twenty Greystone Ltd mercenaries of whom there has been no news." Clearly, they too surrendered to provocative grannies serving up tasty pastries. And that's certainly elite level work!
Brennan wasn't supposed to let on his Gladio operatives were in Ukraine, though. Slip of the tongue there. Must have been the jet lag.



Amateur footage shows an angry mob in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine yelling at Kiev forces as a new anti-terror operation is underway. Locals are calling soldiers fascists and telling them go back to Kiev because they dont need them in Kramatorsk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75dlup0WXGY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYLyJrOhpVQ&sns=tw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYLyJrOhpVQ&sns=tw)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YasV0J1ogR0

[Sasha]

(for the record, the Tigers were not fascists, "fascism" means a bit more than "people I dislike"
Remember kids, if you are getting gangraped and murdered by paramilitaries for being the wrong ethnic group check wheter said paramilitaries are wearing Celtic crosses on their uniform, it matters.
Sheesh, that I as an lifelong anti-fascist would ever come to agree in part with the left-com position on (anti-)fascism....

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Remember kids, if you are getting gangraped and murdered by paramilitaries for being the wrong ethnic group check wheter said paramilitaries are wearing Celtic crosses on their uniform, it matters.
Sheesh, that I as an lifelong anti-fascist would ever come to agree in part with the left-com position on (anti-)fascism....

That's hardly fair to the left communists. Your position on anti-fascism is, as I said, substantially the same as that of Dimitrov, occasionally the chief of the ComIntern, noted supporter of popular fronts and working together with the liberals and cops.

The rest of the post is empty bluster - unlike you, I don't think that nationalist paramilitaries that are not fascist are somehow better than those that are fascist, or vice versa. And unlike you, I don't view fascism as defined by the overt ideology of fascist groups, which is nonsense - the PFR had little in common with the FET y JONS (in fact they had more in common with your SP). Fascism is not an ideology, or a cluster of ideologies, but a particular type of reactionary movement. Distinguishing between fascism and non-fascism is important, not because non-fascists are the "lesser evil" but because they call for different tactics.

[Sasha]

My SP? Wut...

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The Dutch Socialist Party.

[Sasha]

A mine as in you dutch, not mine as in Q who is a active member, got it.
But anyways, it might shock you to hear that I actually quite agree with your analysis of (anti-)fascism (though probably les so in proposed praxis against it)
I do think for exactly that reason though that a group like arkans tigers where more fascist (as in behaving in the traditional role of fascists and needing to be physically/politically countered in the way one needs to counter fascism) than most self declared fascists.
I don't know where you get the idea I'm a popular frontists or anything, I dont mind liberals or Stalinists beating or otherwise hindering fascists during anti-fascist actions but they are more coincidental temporary fellow travelers, as AFA here in the Netherlands we only mobilse fellow libertarian revolutionary organizations, we never work actively with organisations that are not and at least my group would never appeal to the state for repression of the extreme right, individuals of all progressive persuasions are obviously always welcome, we are not a cadre organisation we are a fluid direct action network with revolutionary basis principles.
My beef here is mostly with the people who play right into the hands who want to balkanize the Ukraine by overemphatising the fascist influence on one side and minimize (or even deny) the fascist presence on the other. There are fash on either side, both also in influental/prominent positions. But they are not determinial on either side either. Making this s fash - anti-fash or even a junta - oppresed workers conflict is counterproductive, its a blooming ethnic nationalist conflict fueled by competing bourgeois imperialist factions. Only the flat out refusal to participate in this false dichotomy by the proletariat can prevent civilwar.
And yes, I really don't think that that in conflict with my initial understanding why leftists would participate in the maidan uprising, not because I believe in European fairytales but because confloct with the state creates room for politicizing, now we have to conclude though that the possibilities to make this a progressive struggle have passed and this devolved into an purely inter reactionary brawl for now.

[PhoenixAsh]

http://325.nostate.net/?p=10278#more-10278


On Friday, the 2nd of May, the House of Trade Unions in Odessa caught on fire. Altogether at least 42 people lost their lives during the clashes in the city, most of them in the fire and the others in streetfights. There is an excellent Russian language, eyewitness account of the events available here.

Events began to unfold when armed pro-Russian AntiMaidan fighters attacked a demonstration organised by football hooligans with nationalist sympathies. This attack resulted in lethalities, but soon the pro-Russians were overpowered. They escaped back to their protest camp in the Kulikovo field, but pro-Kiev demonstrators followed and lit the protest camp on fire. The pro-Russians then escaped to the House of the Trade Unions, which soon caught on fire. The fire spreading, is visible in this video. At the 2 minute mark, you can see a flame behind a closed window, making it plausible that some of the fires were started from the inside. For example, due to accidents with Molotov cocktails which were used by both sides during the fight. However, you can also see pro-Ukrainian nationalists throwing Molotov cocktails, making them at least partially responsible for the fire.

There are doubts as to whether the core group of pro-Russians who attacked the demonstration with firearms were outside provocateurs. But certainly, there were people in the House of Trade Unions, who had nothing to do with the attack. In a number of photographs, you can see police protecting the core group of attackers. Otherwise, police were very passive during the fire, and did not interfere in the events. Even if the police were not part of a conspiracy, at the least, they acted completely unprofessionally.

During the weekend, troops of the central government and local «federalists» had been waging war in the city of Kramatorsk in Eastern Ukraine. This means, that what is happening in the Ukraine can already be considered a civil war. In the upcoming weeks, it will become clear how widely the warfare will spread and if Russia will interfere.

I consider myself an expert on the Russian context as I lived in Moscow for more than 12 years, but this does not mean that I am an expert on the Ukrainian one. I have only visited the country three times in the last years, and have hardly more than 20 friends there. Still, when getting myself acquainted with the Ukraine, I quickly understood that civil war could be a possible scenario there. All of my Ukrainian friends, however, were absolutely certain, that nothing like that would ever happen there. That even with all the differences between Eastern and Western Ukraine, no-one was prepared to kill in their name. They were convinced, that Ukraine could never become another Yugoslavia. All of them had acquaintances, friends and loved ones on both sides of the river Dnieper, both Ukrainian and Russian speakers. But if you only ever take into consideration your own friends, you will fall into the trap of scaling, obstructing those mechanisms which create hatred on a large scale.

War does not require personal hatred between people, geopolitical and economical reasons are good enough for that. And in the Ukraine, the geopolitical interests are far greater than in Yugoslavia. If you have an interest in flaring up ethnic hatred or war, a rather small ethnic rift is enough. A few abuses, murders, and kidnappings, and everyone will be ready for battle. This has succeeded now in Ukraine, just as it has succeeded in many other places.

At the moment, the Western «left» seems to be pretty much clueless in terms of the events taking place there. This is because the «left,» broadly speaking, is not a very useful concept in the former Soviet Union, as it can mean anything from social-democrats and anarchists, to stalinists supporting Putin. Personally, I prefer to always write the word in quotation marks. I identify with anarchists, not the «left,» since, for quite a while now anarchists have been the only political force in Russia which united the ethos of opposing racism, sexism and homophobia to the ethos of social equality. Until very recently, there had not been much of any Western «new left» in Russia, with the exception of a handful of Trotskyists.

A split within the «left» in Ukraine is completely predictable and even necessary. In Kharkiv the streetfighting, Stalinist organisation, «Borotba» (meaning Struggle) has been on the opposite side of the anarchists. In this region of the former Soviet Union, 99.9% of the «left» will always support imperialism for the sake of «being with the people.» It is about time that anarchists refuse the «left» label. We have nothing in common with these people.

But anarchists, too, can be easily manipulated with buzzwords such as «self-organisation» and «direct democracy.» For example, Boris Kagarlitsky, a Russian intellectual widely known amongst the Western «left» and a frequent guest of World Social Forums, has found favorable ground in the West by using these buzzwords.

Apparently, the Ukrainian and Russian anarchists could not foresee the developments which lead to the civil war. Maidan had only been discussed from the point of view that it could offer something better than the Yanukovich regime. It was not expected that Russia would react to a Maidan victory with a conscious escalation of the conflict, and which could eventually lead to civil war.

Whereas Russia is the major propaganda machine and arms provider in the conflict, Western countries are not doing much better, as they only acknowledge the interests of the new government in Kiev and present the movement in Eastern Ukraine as mere Russian puppets.The armed wing of the «federalists» are definitely Kremlin puppets, but if it were not for the widespread discontent and protests against the new regime in Kiev, this armed wing would not have emerged.

I do not believe that a civil war was the Kremlin’s aim. First of all, it wanted to destablizie Ukraine to the maximum in order to have Kiev give up any attempts to gain back control over Crimea. Now the situation is out of the Kremlin’s control, and it may have to send regular troops to Ukraine in order to fulfill the promise of support it has given to the «federalists.»

The government in Kiev has given so many «final ultimatums» which were quickly forgotten, and has announced so many unexisting «anti-terrorist operations,» that it is clear it has very few battle-ready troops. A few times, the central government troops have actually taken action and the results have been tragi-comic. Thus, the government understands that it’s still in question whether it would succeed in a full-scale civil war. However, it also understands, that war can help discipline society and stabilize the new order to the extent, that any promises given to Maidan would be forgotten. With time, both sides have come to understand that a full-scale war might be necessary for their interests, even if neither was initially planning for this.

Disagreements within the anarchist movement

Over the course of events, the Ukrainian and Russian anarchist movements have split into three different sides. A first group concentrated on producing internet-statements against both sides of the conflict. For them, keeping out of any social processes is a matter of principle, and they only want to monitor and assess. Participation in the social protest is not a goal for them, as they prefer to keep their hands clean. Since every process has input from either disgusting liberals, hated nationalists, awful stalinists, all three at the same time, or other undesirables, one can never fully participate in anything and the only alternative is to stay home and publish statements on the internet about how everything is going from bad to worse. However, most of the time these statements are just self-evident, banalities.

A second group, was made up of those who got excited about all the riot-porn and anti-police violence in Kiev, without considering who was carrying out this violence and in whose interests. Certain antifascists drifted as far as to defend the «national unity» in Maidan, and threatened particular Kiev anarchists due to their criticism of Maidan and refusal to participate. Most of the people in this camp are just fans of anti-police violence without any theoretical frame, but some want to give Maidan an imagined anti-authoritarian flavor, by equating the general meeting of Maidan («Veche») with the revolutionary councils established during 20th century revolutions. They base this claim on the social demands occasionally presented at Maidan, but these demands were always at the periphery of the Maidan agenda.

One of these peripheral demands was the proposal that oligarchs should pay a tenth of their income in taxes and was generally in tune with nationalistic populism. However, the demands of the Kiev Maidan were still far from returning the billions stolen by oligarchs back to society. In Vinnytsa and Zhitomir, there was an attempt to expropriate factories owned by German capital , but this was the only case going beyond the national-liberal context that I am familiar with.

In any case, the main problem at Maidan wasn’t the lack of a social agenda and direct democracy, but the fact that people did not even demand them. Even if everyone kept repeating that they did not want another «orange revolution» like in 2004, nor for Yulia Timoshenko to return, at the end of the day chocolate industrialist Poroshenko and Vitaly Klitchko are leading the polls. This was the choice the people made as they grew weary of the revolutionary path as proposed by the radical nationalists of the Right sector. As of now, people want to return to «life as usual,» to life before Yanukovich, and are not prepared to make the sacrifices that further revolutionary developments would demand. Representative democracy is indeed like a hydra, if you cut one head, two will grow in its place.

However, none of the fears of «fascist takeover» have materialized. Fascists gained very little real power, and in Ukraine their historical role will now be that of stormtroopers for liberal reforms demanded by the IMF and the European Union — that is, pension cuts, an up to five times increase in consumer gas prices, and others. Fascism in Ukraine has a powerful tradition, but it has been incapable of proceeding with its own agenda in the revolutionary wave. It is highly likely, that the Svoboda-party will completely discredit itself in front of its voters.

But anyone attempting to intervene, anarchists included, could have encountered the same fate — that is, to be sidelined after all the effort. During the protests, anarchists and the «left» were looking towards the Right sector with envy, but in the end all the visibility and notoriety, for which they paid dearly, was not enough to help the Right sector gain any real influence.

If Kiev anarchists would have picked the position of «neutral observers» after Yanukovich had shot demonstrators, it would have completely discredited them. If after being shot, the working class, or more exactly «the people,» that is, the working class along with the lower strata of the bourgeoisie, would have failed to overthrow Yanukovich, Ukrainian society woul have fallen into a lethargic sleep such as the one Russian and Belarusian societies are experiencing. Obviously, after the massacre there was no choice left except to overthrow the power, no matter what would come in its place. Anarchists in Kiev were in no position to significantly influence the situation, but standing aside was no longer an option.

And thus, we come to the third, «centrist,» position taken by anarchists — between the brainless actionism and the «neutral» internet statements. The camp of realist anarchists understood, that even if the Maidan protests pretty much lacked a meaningful positive program, something had to be done or the future would be dire.

The limits of intervention

In Kiev, anarchists took part in a number of important initiatives during the revolutionary wave — first of all the occupation of the ministry of education, and the raid against the immigration bureau by the local No Border group, which was looking for proof of illegal cooperation with security services of foreign countries. But the most succesful anarchist intervention was the one in Kharkiv, where Maidan was relatively weak but also freeer of nationalistic influence.

Still, such centrism has its own problems. For one, you might unintentionally help the wrong forces gain power, also discrediting radical protest. A second problem would be that you might end up fighting a fight which is not your own. When AntiMaidan attacked the Maidan in the city of Kharkiv, its imagined enemy were not the anarchists, but NATO, EU or Western-Ukrainian fascists. Since anarchists had joined Maidan, it would have been cowardly to desert once the fight started. Thus anarchists ended up fighting side by side with liberals and fascists. I do not want to criticize the Kharkiv anarchists, after all they made, perhaps, the most serious attempt among Ukrainian anarchists to influence the course of events, but this was hardly the fight, and these were hardly the allies they wanted.

And so, comes the point when desertion becomes imperative, and that is when civil war begins. As of now, it’s still too early to make any final assessment of the anarchist attempts to influence Maidan, but after the beginning of a civil war, Maidan will no longer play a role. From now on, assembly will gradually turn to the army, and assault rifles will replace Molotov cocktails. Military discipline will replace spontaneous organisation.

Some supporters of the Ukrainian organisation, Borotba (meaning Struggle) and the Russian Left Front claim that they are attempting to do the same things as the anarchists did at Maidan, that is, direct protest towards social demands. But AntiMaidan has no structures of direct democracy, not even distorted ones. It quickly adopted the model of hierarchical, militaristic organisations. The AntiMaidan leadership consists of former police and reserve officers. It does not attempt to exert influence through the masses, but with military power and weapons. This makes perfect sense, considering that according to a recent opinion poll, even in the most pro-«federalist» area of Lugansk, a mere 24% of the population is in favor of armed takeovers of government structures. That is, AntiMaidan cannot count on a victory through mass demonstrations.

Whereas at its essence Maidan was a middle-class liberal and nationalistic protest, supported by part of the bourgeoisie, AntiMaidan is purely counter-revolutionary in tendency. Of course, AntiMaidan has its own grassroots level. One could attempt to intervene, but an intervention by joining would mean supporting a Soviet, imperialist approach. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Borotba, the Russian Left Front and Boris Kagarlitsky have all joined this Soviet chauvinist camp. Intervening in Maidan made sense only as long as the enemy were Berkut police forces and paid thugs. When the opponents are mislead AntiMaidan participants, it no longer makes sense to fight in the streets.

When looking at either side of the conflict one can see a dangerous tendency, which every anarchist and anti-authoritarian will face in the future: the recuperation of anti-authoritarian rhetoric and terminology for the purposes of hierarchical ideologies. On the one side, «autonomous nationalists» who have found sympathy amongst many anarchists, and on the other, intellectuals such as Boris Kagarlitsky. Both characterising warring factions with attributes such as «direct democracy» and «self organisation.» In reality, these characteristics are either present in a distorted form or not at all. When two different flavors of nationalism are «self-organising» in order to maim and murder each other, there is nothing to celebrate. Subsequent to the events in Ukraine, it is clear that anarchists must explain the essential difference between «self-organisation» and self-organisation to the world.

According to the opinion poll referenced above, in Eastern Ukraine as a whole, only 12% of the population supports the «federalists’» armed actions, whereas the Kiev government is supported by some 30%. The remaining 58% supports neither, and in conditions of civil war, this is the majority on which we should count. We should encourage desertion and conflict avoidance. Under any other conditions, and if anarchists had more influence, we could form independent units against both warring factions.

Unarmed civilians have stopped bloodbaths in several places by moving in between the troops as human shields. If not for this kind of civil disobedience, a full-scale war would have been launched much earlier. We should support this movement, and attempt to direct it against both «federalist» and government troops simultaneously.

In case Russia reacts either by occupying parts of Eastern Ukraine or the country as a whole, we could take the example of anarchist partisans in World War II era France and Italy. Under such conditions, the main enemy is the occupying army, as it will antagonise the whole population very quickly. But it is also necessary to keep the maximum distance from the nationalistic elements of the resistance, as any alliance with them would hinder anarchists from realising their own program in the framework of the resistance.

The events in Odessa are a tragedy, and it is possible, that among those who died in the House of the Trade Unions were also people who played no part in flaring up the violence. People who threw molotov cocktails at the House should have understood the consequences. Even if the fire igniting was not solely due to them, it is not for lack of trying.

In case civil war spreads, these deaths are just the beginning. No doubt that on both sides the majority only wants a better life for their close ones and their motherland, and many hate governments and oligarchs to an equal extent. The more sincerely naïve people die, the greater the pressure to support one of the factions in the war, and we must struggle against this pressure.

Whereas it may occasionally be worth it to swallow tear gas or to feel the police baton for a bourgeois revolution, it makes no sense at all to die in a civil war between two equally bourgeois and nationalist sides. It would not be another Maidan but something completely different. No blood, anarchist or otherwise, should spill due to this stupidity.

Antti Rautiainen

[cyu]

not that I disagree with what that article actually says
but that headline is fucking ridiculous...

It could be argued that if the United States was never involved in Ukraine, the coup would have never succeeded.

It could also be argued that if Russia had not taken in Snowden, there wouldn't have been so many American officials calling for a more anti-Russian policy in Ukraine.

It might then be argued that if the White House didn't act so hypocritically when getting on its high horse about human rights when dealing with other nations, Russia wouldn't have wanted to stick it to them by giving Snowden asylum.

One might then say that if Whitehouse policy weren't just to use adulterated democratic principles in order to push the agenda of business interests, it wouldn't have had to act so hypocritically with regard to human rights abroad.

...and so on...

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Originally posted by Sasha:
its a blooming ethnic nationalist conflict fueled by competing bourgeois imperialist factions

This comment shows exactly how little you have bothered to investigate the developments in the Ukraine. It's quite clear that the large Federalist movement in Ukraine has next to no sponsorship whereas the Fascist movements (and by this I am naturally including the conservatives of the Fatherland party, not just the open neo-nazis) not only have US State department funding in the tens of millions but also the support of a large portion of the Ukrainian capitalist ruling class.

The pro-Russian separatists in particular and the federalist militias have an unbelievable lack of resources. If Russia had a genuine interest in taking over the region, it would do like the US and EU have done, that is: not only send in billions of dollars of street cash bribes and government check "sweeteners" but also send in its own army officers on the ground and intelligence officers to assist in the defense of Donbass. Obviously, Russia has no interest in emulating NATO which is sending in Bundeswehr officers and its CIA chief to aid the Kiev gangsters in taking control of the whole country.

If this really were a simplistic little equal conflict between two imperialistic oligarch camps, as western liberals like to think, "Russia" would have won a long time ago. As it stands, however, the poor people from the industrial eastern part of Ukraine who have peacefully disarmed and ransacked a large portion of the Ukrainian Army (styled after the old Bandera organization), are winning against the petty-bourgeois "rebels" and establishment of Ukraine which are burning trade-unionists and communist sympathizers alive.

[Rusty Shackleford]

A BMP was captured by civilians in Mariupol.



A long video outside the Police building which the national guard attacked:

Also this from a friend on Facebook:

Some notes about yesterday's massacre in Mariupol (southern Ukraine). How it started: in the morning of May 9, the newly appointed head of the police department Andruschuk (accompanied by the head of special battalion 'Denpr' - newly formed death squad of neo-nazis) - has called a council of local police personnel. During the meeting the head of police department read to the policemen the order to disperse the rally on V-Day and arrest 'the most active citizens'. The policemen refused to fulfil the order then the head of department Andruschuk shot from a pistol at one of the rank-and-file policeman. His colleagues immidiately shot back - the head of the police department was wounded, the head of a death squad 'Dnepr' - killed on the spot. The personnel of police refuse to obey any orders and declare that they would not wage a war against their people. Immidiately APCs, 'National guard' and Right Sector militants sent to suppress the riot of police. Local residents try to defend their policemen but 'National Guard' shoots down at civilians in the streets. Then APCs and 'National Guard' surround the police department and shot down it from machine guns. Policemen shoot back, the the department is set ablaze. Some rebellious policemen were burnt inside. Then immidiately starts the riot of localcivilians. One of the APCs was seized by them. People chase on the streets the Right sector militants and build barricades. The rest of ploice personnel joins them. After the strong confrontation (21 killed and some 80 wounded) 'National Guard' and Right sector militants have to retreat from the town. The mayor flees the town. Today there started a spontanious rally under slogan: 'Glory to policemen - defenders, down with police-murderers and 'National guard'.

WExEvZYR6yU

[Rusty Shackleford]

This won't help anything. I wouldn't be surprised if this was staged, but I wouldn't be surprised by the opposite either.
"prefilled votes for independence found in Slaviansk"
imcyNGvbPGw



Also, a song called "Yugo-Vostok" that is a bit of a 'partisan song' focusing on the miners in the east.

v-JfO34vFDk

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

A mine as in you dutch, not mine as in Q who is a active member, got it.
But anyways, it might shock you to hear that I actually quite agree with your analysis of (anti-)fascism (though probably les so in proposed praxis against it)
I do think for exactly that reason though that a group like arkans tigers where more fascist (as in behaving in the traditional role of fascists and needing to be physically/politically countered in the way one needs to counter fascism) than most self declared fascists.

The Tigers were a military unit, not a political movement, they were armed and trained by the state, and they had no street-level presence. So I can't see how any sort of anti-fascist strategy could beat the Tigers - or the ZNG, etc. etc. - back.


I don't know where you get the idea I'm a popular frontists or anything, I dont mind liberals or Stalinists beating or otherwise hindering fascists during anti-fascist actions but they are more coincidental temporary fellow travelers, as AFA here in the Netherlands we only mobilse fellow libertarian revolutionary organizations, we never work actively with organisations that are not and at least my group would never appeal to the state for repression of the extreme right, individuals of all progressive persuasions are obviously always welcome, we are not a cadre organisation we are a fluid direct action network with revolutionary basis principles.

What sort of "progressive persuasion" are you talking about? The thing is, I distinctly remember you talking about working with observers sent by social-democratic parties etc. Furthermore, you consistently praise liberals over Stalinists and have commented positively on election campaigns of bourgeois politicians.


My beef here is mostly with the people who play right into the hands who want to balkanize the Ukraine by overemphatising the fascist influence on one side and minimize (or even deny) the fascist presence on the other. There are fash on either side, both also in influental/prominent positions. But they are not determinial on either side either. Making this s fash - anti-fash or even a junta - oppresed workers conflict is counterproductive, its a blooming ethnic nationalist conflict fueled by competing bourgeois imperialist factions. Only the flat out refusal to participate in this false dichotomy by the proletariat can prevent civilwar.

So why do you continue to post articles by the AWU, whose members cooperate with the Interior Ministry, and who consistently blame everything on "the Russians", including the events in Odessa, consistently shielding the Kiev government from blame? You can't have it both ways. If you want to condemn both sides, then actually condemn both sides, don't post propaganda from one side.


And yes, I really don't think that that in conflict with my initial understanding why leftists would participate in the maidan uprising, not because I believe in European fairytales but because confloct with the state creates room for politicizing, now we have to conclude though that the possibilities to make this a progressive struggle have passed and this devolved into an purely inter reactionary brawl for now.

So if conflict with the state "creates room for politicising", why do you not advocate that leftists participate in the anti-Maidan movement? The point is that this sort of love affair with anything that moves, or appears to be moving, is what's driving the left into obscurity, irrelevance and tailism. I refer you to the quote in my sig.

[PhoenixAsh]

Working with Liberals or Stalinists/ML.

I am not sure I see the difference.

There is one reason I would work with either and that is on an anti-fascist platform. And that is indeed wholly opportunistic.

[Tim Cornelis]

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_05_11/400-US-commandos-help-Kiev-in-its-military-offensive-in-east-Ukraine-reports-8880/


About 400 elite commandos of a notorious US private security firm, Academi, are involved in a punitive operation mounted by Ukraine’s new government against federalization supporters in eastern Ukraine, the German Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported on Sunday./

[cyu]

Voting

http://shaltaibaltai.deviantart.com/art/South-East-of-Ukraine-Referendum-453416117

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/131/2/5/south_east_of_ukraine__referendum__by_shaltaibalta i-d7hya45.jpg

[PhoenixAsh]

Landslide victories for independence from Kiev in both regions.

In Donetks 89.7% voted for independence out of 74.8% turn out.

Lugansk had a turn out of 81% but hasn't released any numbers yet but it is rumoured to be in the 90% range.


Nobody will recognize the votes as legitimate. Maybe Russia. So now what.

[Black Cross]

"Sorry but your vote is not legitimate like our foreign backed coup."

It sucks though that kiev now has those pre-filled ballots to try and argue against the validity of this vote.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Black Cross]

http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_05_11/400-US-commandos-help-Kiev-in-its-military-offensive-in-east-Ukraine-reports-8880/

Hmm I wonder. That's a Russian, state owned radio station regurgitating news reported by a German conservative tabloid... Not that I doubt these goons are mercenaries, or something of that nature, but it seems like some conclusions are being jumped to.

[Rusty Shackleford]

What's the likelihood of some sort of transnistirian situation coming about?

[Black Cross]

Zero, assuming I understand what you mean by that word.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Rusty Shackleford]

Just a weird pseudostate like transnistria

[Nakidana]

Zero, assuming I understand what you mean by that word.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Why?

I guess the fact that they could go through with the referendum shows what a failure the Kiev military campaign has turned out to be. What makes you think they'll be able to establish dominance by the 25th?

[SHORAS]

Fairly good Trot article from IMT here:

Kiev unable to crush the Donbas uprising - White terror in Ukraine

Two days from the May 11 referendum in Donetsk and Luhansk, the Kiev authorities, unable to crush the uprising in the Donbas, are stepping up the war hysteria, curtailing democratic rights and incorporating fascist paramilitaries into the state apparatus. Meanwhile there are signs of growing working class activity in the areas under the control of the rebels.

http://www.marxist.com/donbas-uprising-white-terror.htm

[Black Cross]

Why?

Cynicism has a lot to do with it. I don't think the EU, IMF or the USA is gonna just let eastern ukraine be autonomous.


I guess the fact that they could go through with the referendum shows what a failure the Kiev military campaign has turned out to be. What makes you think they'll be able to establish dominance by the 25th?

Who are you referring to establishing dominance? Kiev?



Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Sasha]

There will be a series of info nights in the Netherlands the coming days about the situation in Ukraine from people from the Ukrainian anarchist black cross. Dutch people can contact me for the dates and details.

[Rusty Shackleford]

So the video of pre filled ballots was fake for sure. They differed from the actual ballots.

[Nakidana]

Who are you referring to establishing dominance? Kiev?



Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

Yeah. The EU/US is acting through Kiev, if Kiev can't establish dominance in the area then there isn't really much they can do.

Kiev hasn't been able to prevent the referendum. Just today 6 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and a further 8 injured in an ambush. It seems to me they've lost the region.

[Black Cross]

Yeah. The EU/US is acting through Kiev, if Kiev can't establish dominance in the area then there isn't really much they can do.

Kiev hasn't been able to prevent the referendum. Just today 6 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and a further 8 injured in an ambush. It seems to me they've lost the region.

Why is it they have until the 25th in your opinion?

I imagine they could find the military strength and numbers - if not from within ukraine, from without - to take control of eastern ukraine. But I'll remain optimistic for now.

Regardless, I was merely saying that I don't think the east will become its own autonomous nation. If Russia doesn't absorb it, I feel like east ukraine won't be able to avoid being looted by the USA/EU/IMF. I'd also like to think I'm 100% wrong.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

[Nakidana]

Why is it they have until the 25th in your opinion?

Because that's when the election is. They would want elections in Eastern Ukraine too, to make a show of them being in control of a united Ukraine.


I imagine they could find the military strength and numbers - if not from within ukraine, from without - to take control of eastern ukraine. But I'll remain optimistic for now.

Surely they'd have found the strength by now? Mind you, this is the third time they attempt a military campaign.


Regardless, I was merely saying that I don't think the east will become its own autonomous nation. If Russia doesn't absorb it, I feel like east ukraine won't be able to avoid being looted by the USA/EU/IMF. I'd also like to think I'm 100% wrong.

Well all they need to do is establish closer ties with Russia. I don't think Russia needs to annex it, for it to resist Kiev.

Let's see, maybe I'm wrong.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Kiev unable to crush the Donbas uprising - White terror in Ukraine

Oooohh! Things must be really falling into place. I guess since the "White" terror has returned to Ukraine, bolshevik style hard core revolutionary vanguard-ism will soon prevail...

The lack of realist political creativity and original polemic of the left is really disheartening.

[cyu]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-13/farce-complete-joe-bidens-son-joins-board-largest-ukraine-gas-producer

The Farce Is Complete: Joe Biden's Son Joins Board Of Largest Ukraine Gas Producer

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Working with Liberals or Stalinists/ML.

I am not sure I see the difference.

There is one reason I would work with either and that is on an anti-fascist platform. And that is indeed wholly opportunistic.

This presumes a homogenous "Stalinism" which is an ahistorical construction based on debates in the 30's. But if you are referring to the quasi-eurocommunists of the CPU well then there can't be any anti-fascist work with the running dogs of Russian imperialism. Borboko or whatever that one Ukrainian "communist" group is called does seem to put out statements that look nice and played the whole neither kiev nor putin game but so did the Autonomous Union and they turned out to be filth as well so until they prove themselves I don't see them as any more progressive than the Donbass People's Militia, as in not progressive at all.

Also it's funny the person who works with the Dutch Socialist Party is talking about opportunism.

[PhoenixAsh]

This presumes a homogenous "Stalinism" which is an ahistorical construction based on debates in the 30's. But if you are referring to the quasi-eurocommunists of the CPU well then there can't be any anti-fascist work with the running dogs of Russian imperialism. Borboko or whatever that one Ukrainian "communist" group is called does seem to put out statements that look nice and played the whole neither kiev nor putin game but so did the Autonomous Union and they turned out to be filth as well so until they prove themselves I don't see them as any more progressive than the Donbass People's Militia, as in not progressive at all.

Also it's funny the person who works with the Dutch Socialist Party is talking about opportunism.

I don't work with the Dutch Socialist Party. I used to be a member right up until they abandoned Marxism...after which I left...and that was several decades ago and in lieu of more radical alternatives. Besides that I never denied opportunism and in fact don't think opportunism to push for certain strategical goals is necessarily a bad thing.

However wrong and specious certain statements and conclusions of the AWU are this does not deny the basic tendency is the same and on many points we do agree. This is rarely the case with Stalinism because of its inherent doctrine of authority and organization which will inadevertently lead to repression. From that perspective Stalinism is homogenous and anti-thetical to Anarchism and will inevitably lead to anti-working class policies...and because of that it differs little from bourgeois liberals when it comes to cooperating with them.

In both cases our goals do collide sometimes and in these cases it might be advantageous to find grounds for cooperation. However, I would oppose Stalinism just as much as Liberal bourgeois regimes.

[Sasha]

big groups of local industrial workers are reported to be kicking out the separatist militia's and Russian agitators from some mayor separatist strongholds,
while I think its pretty obvious this is no spontaneous workers action but a move ordered by the industrial bosses to protect their interests this still an interesting and potentially game chancing development (if true).


Workers Seize City in Eastern Ukraine From Separatists

By ANDREW E. KRAMER (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/andrew_kramer/index.html)MAY 15, 2014


Photo http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/16/world/JP-UKRAINE-1/JP-UKRAINE-1-master675.jpg

An almost deserted Ilyich Iron and Steel plant in Mariupol on Thursday. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

[/URL]

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Thousands of steelworkers fanned out on Thursday through the city of Mariupol, establishing control over the streets and banishing the pro-Kremlin militants who until recently had seemed to be consolidating their grip on power, dealing a setback to Russia and possibly reversing the momentum in eastern Ukraine.
By late Thursday, miners and steelworkers had deployed in at least five cities, including the regional capital, Donetsk. They had not, however, become the dominant force there that they were in Mariupol, the region’s second-largest city and the site last week of a bloody confrontation (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?action=click&contentCollection=Movies%C2%AEion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article#story-continues-1) between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militants.


While it was still far too early to say the tide had turned in eastern Ukraine, the day’s events were a blow to separatists who recently seized control here and in a dozen or so other cities and who held a referendum on independence (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/world/europe/ukraine.html) on Sunday. Backed by the Russian propaganda machine and by 40,000 Russian troops just over the border, their grip on power seemed to be tightening every day.
Photo http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/16/world/JP-UKRAINE-2/JP-UKRAINE-2-articleLarge.jpg

The company produces five million tons of slab steel a year. Many of its employees have joined patrols. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times But polls had indicated (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/europe/ukrainians-favor-unity-not-russia-polls-find.html?_r=0) that a strong majority of eastern Ukrainians supported unity, though few were prepared to say so publicly in the face of armed pro-Russian militants. When President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia withdrew support for the separatists last week, calling for a delay in the referendum and for dialogue on Ukraine’s future, the political winds shifted, providing an opening that the country’s canny oligarchs could exploit.
The workers who took to the streets on Thursday were among the hundreds of thousands in the east who are employed in metals and mining by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who only recently went beyond paying lip service to Ukrainian unity and on Wednesday issued a statement rejecting separatism.
Critics say Mr. Akhmetov could have prevented much of the bloodshed in the east if he had taken a strong stance sooner. But his lieutenants say he decided to confront the separatists out of a deep belief that independence, or even quasi-autonomy, would be disastrous for eastern Ukraine. Mr. Akhmetov urged his employees, whose jobs were at risk, to take over the city.
The workers, who were wearing only their protective clothing and hard hats, said they were “outside politics” and were just trying to establish order. Faced with waves of steelworkers joined by the police, the pro-Russian protesters melted away, along with signs of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and its representatives. Backhoes and dump trucks from the steelworkers’ factory dismantled the barricades that separatists had erected.
Metinvest and DTEK, the metals and mining subsidiaries of Mr. Akhmetov’s company, System Capital Management, together employ 280,000 people in eastern Ukraine, forming an important and possibly decisive force in the region. They have a history of political activism stretching back to miner strikes that helped bring down the Soviet Union. In this conflict, they had not previously signaled their allegiance to one side or the other.
It remains possible that the separatists could regroup and challenge the industrial workers, though few were to be found in and around Mariupol on Thursday, even in the public administration building they had been occupying.
“We have to bring order to the city,” Aleksei Gorlov, a steelworker, said of his motivation for joining one of the unpaid and voluntary patrols that were organized at Ilyich Iron and Steel Works. Groups of about six steelworkers accompanied two police officers on the patrols.
“People organize themselves,” he said. “In times of troubles, that is how it works.”
Workers from another mill, Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, took one side of the city, while the Ilyich factory took the other. Both groups were trying to persuade longshoremen to patrol the port, Mr. Gorlov said.
The two steel mills fly Ukrainian flags outside their headquarters, though like so much else in Ukraine, the lines of loyalty are muddled. At least a portion of the police in the city mutinied last Friday, leading to a shootout with the Ukrainian National Guard that killed at least seven people.
The chief executive of Ilyich Steel Works, Yuri Zinchenko, is leading the steelworker patrols in the city. He said the company had remained on the sidelines as long as possible, while tacitly supporting unity with Ukraine by conveying to workers that a separatist victory would close export markets in Europe, devastating the factory and the town.
Though the workers had differing views of the new government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, on the whole they supported the patrols to restore order, employees and managers said. “Everybody can have their own opinion, but not at work,” Sergei Istratov, a shift boss at the factory, said. “At work, you have to do what the factory demands.”
Yuri Ryzhenkov, the chief executive of Metinvest, which is ranked among the top five steel producers globally, said managers had been conveying to workers: “The most important thing you have is the steel mill. If you have the steel mill, you have jobs, salaries and stability for your families.”
Once patrols began, he said, representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic visited the Ilyich factory, demanding to know what was happening. “They were not very friendly at first,” Mr. Ryzhenkov said. But the patrols were welcomed in town, he said, and militants had little option but to acquiesce, at least in Mariupol.
“The Donetsk People’s Republic understands if they attack unarmed local people, they will lose all support here,” he said.
The effort is more than ad hoc. The coal and steel workers will soon have uniforms for the street patrols, Metinvest executives said, with patches identifying them as members of the “Volunteer People’s Patrol.”

If the patrols are successful, they said, they will try the tactic in most major cities in the Donetsk region, though not in Slovyansk, a stronghold of pro-Russian militants where Metinvest and DTEK have no factories or mines.
Ilyich Iron and Steel, a grimy scene of mid-20th-century industrial sprawl, is one of Ukraine’s most important factories, producing five million tons of slab steel a year. About 50,000 people work in the steel industry in Mariupol, a city of 460,000. So far, 18,000 steelworkers have signed up for the patrols, Metinvest executives say.
“There’s no family in Mariupol that’s not connected to the steel industry,” Mr. Zinchenko said in an interview at his desk, which was decorated with a miniature Ukrainian flag. He said he had negotiated a truce with local representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, but not with the group’s leaders.
Mr. Akhmetov’s statement detailed the daunting problems facing the regional economy — and his assets — if the Donetsk People’s Republic were to win its struggle with Kiev.
“Nobody in the world will recognize it,” he said in a videotaped statement. “The structure of our economy is coal, industry, metallurgy, energy, machine works, chemicals and agriculture, and all the enterprises tied to these sectors. We will come under huge sanctions, we will not sell our products, cannot produce. This means the stopping of factories, this means unemployment, this means poverty.”
Russia itself exports steel, so it has never been a significant market for the output of the Donetsk region.
Residents welcomed the steelworker patrols for bringing an end to chaos and insecurity. They said masked men had robbed four grocery stores, a shop selling hunting rifles and a jewelry store, and that they had burned down a bank.
The crowds of pro-Russian protesters who had jeered and cursed Ukrainian soldiers last week were nowhere to be seen. On the city’s central square Thursday afternoon, a pro-Russian rally drew a few dozen protesters, who were watched over by a group of steelworkers.
The government in Kiev rebutted reports that the police chief had been found hanging and dead in the town. He had indeed been kidnapped by gunmen and was severely beaten, the Interior Ministry said, but he was eventually rescued.
“There are a lot of idiots with guns in my city,” said Aleksey Rybinsev, 38, a computer programmer who added he welcomed the new patrols, though he feared they might develop into another informal militia group. “I haven’t seen a policeman all day. I didn’t see them, and I didn’t want to see them.”


source: [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?action=click&contentCollection=Movies%C2%AEion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?action=click&contentCollection=Movies%C2%AEion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article#story-continues-5)

[Sasha]

big groups of local industrial workers are reported to be kicking out the separatist militia's and Russian agitators from some mayor separatist strongholds,
while I think its pretty obvious this is no spontaneous workers action but a move ordered by the industrial bosses to protect their interests this still an interesting and potentially game chancing development (if true).


Workers Seize City in Eastern Ukraine From Separatists

By ANDREW E. KRAMER (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/andrew_kramer/index.html)MAY 15, 2014


Photo http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/16/world/JP-UKRAINE-1/JP-UKRAINE-1-master675.jpg

An almost deserted Ilyich Iron and Steel plant in Mariupol on Thursday. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

[/URL]

MARIUPOL, Ukraine — Thousands of steelworkers fanned out on Thursday through the city of Mariupol, establishing control over the streets and banishing the pro-Kremlin militants who until recently had seemed to be consolidating their grip on power, dealing a setback to Russia and possibly reversing the momentum in eastern Ukraine.
By late Thursday, miners and steelworkers had deployed in at least five cities, including the regional capital, Donetsk. They had not, however, become the dominant force there that they were in Mariupol, the region’s second-largest city and the site last week of a bloody confrontation (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?action=click&contentCollection=Movies%C2%AEion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article#story-continues-1) between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian militants.


While it was still far too early to say the tide had turned in eastern Ukraine, the day’s events were a blow to separatists who recently seized control here and in a dozen or so other cities and who held a referendum on independence (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/09/world/europe/ukraine.html) on Sunday. Backed by the Russian propaganda machine and by 40,000 Russian troops just over the border, their grip on power seemed to be tightening every day.
Photo http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/05/16/world/JP-UKRAINE-2/JP-UKRAINE-2-articleLarge.jpg

The company produces five million tons of slab steel a year. Many of its employees have joined patrols. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times But polls had indicated (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/europe/ukrainians-favor-unity-not-russia-polls-find.html?_r=0) that a strong majority of eastern Ukrainians supported unity, though few were prepared to say so publicly in the face of armed pro-Russian militants. When President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia withdrew support for the separatists last week, calling for a delay in the referendum and for dialogue on Ukraine’s future, the political winds shifted, providing an opening that the country’s canny oligarchs could exploit.
The workers who took to the streets on Thursday were among the hundreds of thousands in the east who are employed in metals and mining by Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, who only recently went beyond paying lip service to Ukrainian unity and on Wednesday issued a statement rejecting separatism.
Critics say Mr. Akhmetov could have prevented much of the bloodshed in the east if he had taken a strong stance sooner. But his lieutenants say he decided to confront the separatists out of a deep belief that independence, or even quasi-autonomy, would be disastrous for eastern Ukraine. Mr. Akhmetov urged his employees, whose jobs were at risk, to take over the city.
The workers, who were wearing only their protective clothing and hard hats, said they were “outside politics” and were just trying to establish order. Faced with waves of steelworkers joined by the police, the pro-Russian protesters melted away, along with signs of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic and its representatives. Backhoes and dump trucks from the steelworkers’ factory dismantled the barricades that separatists had erected.
Metinvest and DTEK, the metals and mining subsidiaries of Mr. Akhmetov’s company, System Capital Management, together employ 280,000 people in eastern Ukraine, forming an important and possibly decisive force in the region. They have a history of political activism stretching back to miner strikes that helped bring down the Soviet Union. In this conflict, they had not previously signaled their allegiance to one side or the other.
It remains possible that the separatists could regroup and challenge the industrial workers, though few were to be found in and around Mariupol on Thursday, even in the public administration building they had been occupying.
“We have to bring order to the city,” Aleksei Gorlov, a steelworker, said of his motivation for joining one of the unpaid and voluntary patrols that were organized at Ilyich Iron and Steel Works. Groups of about six steelworkers accompanied two police officers on the patrols.
“People organize themselves,” he said. “In times of troubles, that is how it works.”
Workers from another mill, Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, took one side of the city, while the Ilyich factory took the other. Both groups were trying to persuade longshoremen to patrol the port, Mr. Gorlov said.
The two steel mills fly Ukrainian flags outside their headquarters, though like so much else in Ukraine, the lines of loyalty are muddled. At least a portion of the police in the city mutinied last Friday, leading to a shootout with the Ukrainian National Guard that killed at least seven people.
The chief executive of Ilyich Steel Works, Yuri Zinchenko, is leading the steelworker patrols in the city. He said the company had remained on the sidelines as long as possible, while tacitly supporting unity with Ukraine by conveying to workers that a separatist victory would close export markets in Europe, devastating the factory and the town.
Though the workers had differing views of the new government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, on the whole they supported the patrols to restore order, employees and managers said. “Everybody can have their own opinion, but not at work,” Sergei Istratov, a shift boss at the factory, said. “At work, you have to do what the factory demands.”
Yuri Ryzhenkov, the chief executive of Metinvest, which is ranked among the top five steel producers globally, said managers had been conveying to workers: “The most important thing you have is the steel mill. If you have the steel mill, you have jobs, salaries and stability for your families.”
Once patrols began, he said, representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic visited the Ilyich factory, demanding to know what was happening. “They were not very friendly at first,” Mr. Ryzhenkov said. But the patrols were welcomed in town, he said, and militants had little option but to acquiesce, at least in Mariupol.
“The Donetsk People’s Republic understands if they attack unarmed local people, they will lose all support here,” he said.
The effort is more than ad hoc. The coal and steel workers will soon have uniforms for the street patrols, Metinvest executives said, with patches identifying them as members of the “Volunteer People’s Patrol.”

If the patrols are successful, they said, they will try the tactic in most major cities in the Donetsk region, though not in Slovyansk, a stronghold of pro-Russian militants where Metinvest and DTEK have no factories or mines.
Ilyich Iron and Steel, a grimy scene of mid-20th-century industrial sprawl, is one of Ukraine’s most important factories, producing five million tons of slab steel a year. About 50,000 people work in the steel industry in Mariupol, a city of 460,000. So far, 18,000 steelworkers have signed up for the patrols, Metinvest executives say.
“There’s no family in Mariupol that’s not connected to the steel industry,” Mr. Zinchenko said in an interview at his desk, which was decorated with a miniature Ukrainian flag. He said he had negotiated a truce with local representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, but not with the group’s leaders.
Mr. Akhmetov’s statement detailed the daunting problems facing the regional economy — and his assets — if the Donetsk People’s Republic were to win its struggle with Kiev.
“Nobody in the world will recognize it,” he said in a videotaped statement. “The structure of our economy is coal, industry, metallurgy, energy, machine works, chemicals and agriculture, and all the enterprises tied to these sectors. We will come under huge sanctions, we will not sell our products, cannot produce. This means the stopping of factories, this means unemployment, this means poverty.”
Russia itself exports steel, so it has never been a significant market for the output of the Donetsk region.
Residents welcomed the steelworker patrols for bringing an end to chaos and insecurity. They said masked men had robbed four grocery stores, a shop selling hunting rifles and a jewelry store, and that they had burned down a bank.
The crowds of pro-Russian protesters who had jeered and cursed Ukrainian soldiers last week were nowhere to be seen. On the city’s central square Thursday afternoon, a pro-Russian rally drew a few dozen protesters, who were watched over by a group of steelworkers.
The government in Kiev rebutted reports that the police chief had been found hanging and dead in the town. He had indeed been kidnapped by gunmen and was severely beaten, the Interior Ministry said, but he was eventually rescued.
“There are a lot of idiots with guns in my city,” said Aleksey Rybinsev, 38, a computer programmer who added he welcomed the new patrols, though he feared they might develop into another informal militia group. “I haven’t seen a policeman all day. I didn’t see them, and I didn’t want to see them.”


source: [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?action=click&contentCollection=Movies%C2%AEion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/16/world/europe/ukraine-workers-take-to-streets-to-calm-Mariupol.html?action=click&contentCollection=Movies%C2%AEion=Footer&module=TopNews&pgtype=article#story-continues-5)

[Rusty Shackleford]

http://borotba.org/protiv_konservativnogo_povorota_v_doneczkoj_narodn oj_respublike.html

"Turning against the conservative People's Republic in Donetsk"


Statement of Association "Borotba"

According to published in the press the Draft Constitution of the People's Republic of Donetsk, in the fundamental law of the new state are invited to rule on the state religion - Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate.

Association "Borotba" strongly protests against the state religion in the Republic, created by the people. We insist on the inclusion in the Constitution of DNR rules on freedom of conscience and religion and the separation of church and state and the school from the church. This was the outcome of democratic norms struggle many generations of our ancestors against the reactionary clerical regime and was enshrined in the laws of the Republic of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog, which considers itself the successor of the DNI, and the Constitutions of the Ukrainian SSR, USSR and the RSFSR.

We believe that the state created by the people, should not go on about the clerical elements and impose mandatory public religion.

Also troubling to the draft Constitution of the provision for equality of all forms of ownership, and private comes first in their listing. Do not follow from the experience of our struggle, what large private property (oligarchy) led the country to disaster and decay? Is not it the largest private owners have paid and organized neo-Nazi gangs and other groups, which are terrorizing the South East?

In our view, the priority in the new states should be under state ownership and national workers' control. Only the rule of the national wealth in the economy will prevent the parasitic oligarchy.

Donetsk's Republic should really become a social state. Otherwise it will be only the second edition of Ukraine, as we have known it since 1991, only the replacement of Ukrainian nationalism - Russian. Association "Borotba" urges DNR does not go on about the conservative-clerical forces that support minority. This - the path to a dead end path to defeat.

[Sasha]

^ credit where credits due.

[DDR]

So, the PRD has decided to nationalise the industries of Akhmetov because he refuses to pay the "revolutionary tax" as well as he has threaten the steel workers with firing them if they refuse to be his stormtroopers against the PRD.

http://lifenews.ru/news/133522

http://www.vestifinance.ru/articles/42982

Also seems that a Russia Today journalist has been taken into custody by Kiev.

http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1199878