The Essential Saker - now available on Amazon

One of my long-time readers, the Saker soared into prominence last year following the Maidan putsch in Kiev, cutting through the smokescreen of lies about Russia and the Ukraine with his incisive analysis. He has not always been right, but he has been consistently straightforward about his opinions, and that's a rare quality in a blogger these days.

He has also accomplished something that I have only thought about doing, and collected his most important articles into a book. "The essential Saker: From the trenches of the emerging multipolar world" came out yesterday, on Kindle and in hardcover. I would go so far as to describe it as an essential resource for understanding the conflict between the Atlantic Empire and Russia.

I'll strive to post a proper review once I've read through the 600+ pages of the volume, but I confess to skipping ahead to the latter chapters, when he puts the events of Yugoslavia's demise into the context of Empire's war on dissenters. If the Saker's explanation of how the Empire has used Islam and Muslims as a weapon (always to their detriment) is the only thing you take away from the book, it will make a big difference in your understanding of the world today. 

Remember Ukraine?

In the hubbub about the Syrian crisis - on which I will post some thoughts in the next couple of days - the world seems to have forgotten about the fiasco that is Ukraine.

Fortunately, CrossTalk host Peter Lavelle has not - and he was joined by Mark Sleboda, Alexander Mercouris and yours truly to discuss what is going on in Washington's dysfunctional satrapy on the Dnieper.

I'm not sure either that the intent of Minsk was to buy time until the Kiev regime inevitably self-destructed, but that sure seems to be how it worked out in practice. Any sort of progress towards a real solution can only be made after the political spectrum in the US puppet state of Ukropia stops being limited to fifty flavors of fascist.

That may seem like a long ways away... but winter is coming.

CrossTalk: Kiev's cul-de-sac

In which Patrick Smith, Marcus Papadopoulos, and yours truly discuss how Congress admitted there were Nazis in Ukraine, whether the US is seeking a way to back out of Banderastan, and if Washington's behavior is an expression of strength, or desperation.

Big thanks to Marcus for pointing out that the West destroyed its own world order by murdering Yugoslavia, a crime it has ever since pretended never happened.

Air date: June 24, 2015

Why Empire Needs a Conquered Serbia

Back in the summer of 2011, when most of the Western public still believed in the big lie of the "Arab Spring" - which ended up producing chaos in Libya, civil war in Syria, and the ISIS "caliphate" - I mentioned a great little documentary about Empire's revolution business. The filmmakers brought up the role an ostensibly private, non-violent, civil society NGO played in a string of "color revolutions," from Serbia to North Africa. In doing so, they committed the two cardinal sins in the modern West: Noticing, and Remembering.

CANVAS leader Srdja Popovic, with the logo of Empire's "color revolutions" (source) 

For you see, nobody is supposed to notice that "spontaneous peaceful activists" are in fact coached by an Empire-backed operation; that their slogans are always the same; that their graphics are always the same; and that, whatever their official claims may be, the outcome is always the same: self-destruction of the targeted society and state, often to the point of civil war. Nor is anyone supposed to remember seeing that same pattern anywhere else before.

After the October 2000 coup that replaced Slobodan Milosevic's government with a regime more or less loyal to the Empire (today, that loyalty is absolute), some of the "student activists" instrumental in duping the Serbian public became professional revolutionaries. They named their organization "CANVAS" - Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies. In English. Please notice and remember that, it's important.

This morning I came across a Russian analysis of a suspicious explosion in Kharkov (reportedly involving one Aleksandar "Aca" Kazun, an Otpor/CANVAS operative), against the backdrop of a little-too-convenient murder of Boris Nemtsov. A marginal political figure polling in single digits while alive, once dead Nemtsov was made into a sacred martyr of the "progressive opposition."

Anyway, the analysis (seen here in the English translation) keeps talking about the "Serbian trail", the "Serbian organization," etc. when referring to CANVAS. I understand this might be shorthand. But if it isn't, if the authors genuinely believe that CANVAS is a Serbian outfit, then they are playing right into Empire's narrative.

To wit, as I pointed out in the 2011 article mentioned above:

Branding Otpor and CANVAS as Serbian is no accident. Few in the world would be inclined to suspect a Serb of working for the Empire, after everything that happened in the Balkans in the 1990s. Washington policymakers have just about admitted that American bombers flew over Belgrade because of "Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform," rather than any reports of atrocities, exaggerated or fabricated on demand.

Merely defeating and conquering Serbia would not do. The Serbs had to be turned into the Empire’s most dedicated servants: when even a people like that can be so thoroughly crushed, resistance to the Empire must surely be futile.

This is why CANVAS has to be presented as a "Serbian" organization, when it is really a rabidly anti-Serb one. This is why the 2008-2012 government in Serbia was installed as puppets of Washington - because the junior partner in it were the Socialists once led by Milosevic, and demonstrating them broken was proving Empire's point. And this is why the current government, led by the former Radicals (now cynically rebranded as "Progressives") has plumbed the depths of submission and sycophancy like no other.

I may be personally invested in seeing Serbia throw off the yoke, but that last paragraph I quoted earlier is why Serbia ought to matter to everyone else.

The Truth Points to Itself

Item #1: Middle East Eye, August 15, 2014:

"The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan has been accused of acting as a proxy for the US and Israel in Eastern Europe while also attempting to exploit a loosely regulated Serbian arms market to distribute weapons across the Middle East.

Behind the huge investment lies the shadowy figure of exiled Palestinian strongman Mohammed Dahlan. He is said to be at the centre of a web facilitating communication between the UAE with American and Israeli intelligence figures while also aiding corrupt Emirati investments in Serbia that have lined the pockets of their political leaders."

IDEX-2013: then-Deputy PM Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and
Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, 18 February 2013 (source)

Item #2: InSerbia News, February 2, 2015:

"Ministry of Defence of Serbia announced that it will begin the sale of more than 480 tanks and howitzers, 220 armored vehicles, more than 20,000 rifles and pistols and a large quantity of ammunition and other equipment."

Item #3: Sputnik News, February 24, 2015:

"Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the signing of a deal on military and technical cooperation with the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, during his visit to the IDEX-2015 Arms Expo in Abu Dhabi.

The president told reporters that he had signed a 'very important memorandum about military and technical cooperation' with his UAE counterparts, without providing any more information on what the agreement will entail. The deal was struck between Ukrainian officials and UAE Crown Prince and Armed Forces Deputy Supreme Commander Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan."

(Points to the disclaimer) No comment.

Minsk

Will the new ceasefire bring peace to Ukraine? I think not.

Reading through the points of the agreement reached this morning in Minsk, I am trying to figure out why it took a marathon, all-night session to essentially resurrect the September ceasefire. Aside from some slightly stronger language and specific timelines, to me this looks basically like the same paper. And the only part of "Minsk 1" ever implemented was the OSCE monitoring mission, which has been worse than useless.

Alexander Mercouris believes that the talks were a Franco-German effort to halt the fighting before the Kiev junta suffered a catastrophic defeat; that would have given Washington a pretext to send weapons to the junta, which in turn would have caused a Russian response - and WW3. Fair enough.

(from Colonel Cassad)

Here's a problem, though: as Andrew Korybko points out, Washington wasn't at the talks. While Mercouris thinks that Merkel and Hollande have kept the Atlantic Empire in the loop, this does not mean Washington is bound by the terms of the paper. Then again, the Empire has a history of oath-breaking, so that's a moot point.

It is important to note, as Mercouris has, that this is not a political settlement - not a peace treaty, then. At best, it's a ceasefire with theoretical potential to grow into an armistice. If Kiev abides by it, within a month we should see some steps towards a political settlement. But honestly, what are the odds of that?

Facts and Fascist Fantasies

On Friday, February 6, six Bosnian Muslims ("Bosnians", per the US media) living in Missouri, New York and Illinois were arrested on charges of aiding ISIS. The day before, police in Manchester (UK) raided 17 homes, targeting an Albanian drug-trafficking ring. Meanwhile, thousands of Albanians are leaving their "free, independent state of Kosovo" - carved out of Serbia for them by NATO in 1999, and declared independent in 2008. Nobody seems to know why - though that doesn't stop the Western media for blaming the Serbs.

Over in Bosnia - the place that set the precedent for America's "white knighting" in the 1990s - an entire village has been taken over by Wahabi jihadists flying ISIS flags. This is news all of a sudden; yet the village's Serb inhabitants were driven out 20 years ago, and it has been a jihadist commune ever since - and no one in the West gave a damn. "See no jihad" was the order of the day, even after 9/11. Why? Perhaps because of Washington's plan to earn the jihadists' gratitude - even though they've clearly showm what they thought of the idea, over and over again.

Last week, Russian agencies reported that "up to 200 mercenaries from the Balkans" were fighting for the Nazi junta in the Ukraine. According to the report, the US corporation formerly known as Blackwater recruited Croats and Albanians.

Croats in the Nazi "Azov" battalion  (source)

It wouldn't be the first time; when the tattered remnants of the German 6th Army surrendered at Stalingrad in February 1943, among them were troops of the Croatian Legion - a unit personally deployed to the Eastern Front by the Croatian Nazi leader Ante Pavelić, proud of his alliance with the "Thousand-Year Reich." Albanians also served Hitler faithfully, as he (and Mussolini) gave them today's Kosovo and western Macedonia, a Waffen-SS division, and a blank check to murder and expel as many Serbs as they could.

Fast-forward fifty years after the end of WW2. Pavelić's heirs again hitched their wagon to the strongest power, and used the status of its "junkyard dogs" to fulfill their iron dream. But the International Court of Justice just said you shouldn't worry your pretty little heads about that.

Mercenaries in Mariupol?

You may have heard of Mariupol back in May 2014, when local citizens of this seaside town in the Donetsk Oblast tried to stop Nazi squads loyal to the Kiev junta from taking over. The Nazis shot at the crowd, killing several people (as you can see in videos at the linked page). Eventually, Kievite armor broke into the city and imposed "democracy and human rights" at gunpoint.

Mariupol then became the base of the Nazi "Azov" battalion - you know, the one with the SS insignia as their banner and Nazis from around the world flocking to their ranks? The ones even the Western mainstream media are queasy about, even as they try to paint them as "freedom fighting democrats"?

"Out of my face" - an English-speaker at the scene of the Mariupol shelling (via RT)

This week, as troops loyal to the governments in Donetsk and Lugansk - which declared independence in May 2014, following the butchery in Odessa and Mariupol - defeated a half-witted attack by Kiev's "cyborgs" and once again made advances towards the edges of Mariupol, a city block on the eastern side of town came under rocket fire.

Of course, the junta immediately cried out "the terrorists are killing us!" Western media reporting on the incident blamed the "Russians" (i.e. the Donetsk forces) - but that's no surprise, since they lie routinely.

What makes this incident different is that the path of the rocket volley was easy enough to ascertain: it came from deep behind the junta lines. My colleague the Saker, ever reasonable, thinks it may have been a mistake by the junta artillery - a volley meant for the advancing Novorossian troops, falling short.

While I would not normally go looking for malice where stupidity will suffice, the junta forces have been proven malicious time and again. As the Saker himself points out, they shell Donetsk, Lugansk, Gorlovka and many other places, on a daily basis. But the reason I am inclined to think this may have been deliberate is that a local news crew on the site accidentally ran into an odd man speaking English.

Hiding his face from the camera, the man - wearing fatigues and carrying a rifle - tells the reporter "Out of my face, out of my face please" in what to me sounds like American English. What was he doing there? Removing the evidence? Why was an ordnance disposal team, seen in another video, speaking English as well?

I spoke with RT about that earlier today. While it is possible these men could be "Azov" volunteers from the West, such men would not bother hiding their faces from - presumably friendly - cameras. Far more likely, these are Western "advisors" sent to bolster the ineffective junta military. Rather than regular troops - though there was an announcement US troops would be setting up a "training center" in Galicia in a couple of months - I figure these are mercenaries (Blackwater, aka Academi) that have been rumored to be in the area since this summer.

One correction: in the segment, I mentioned today's resignation of the Bosnian Defense Minister over the pressure from the West to sell weapons and ammunition to Kiev. Turns out I was slightly off the mark: the official in question is the Minister for Foreign Trade, Boris Tučić, and he resigned Thursday. However, the reason he cited was indeed the political pressure to sell weapons to the junta. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Damned Lies and Donetsk Airport

Alexander Mercouris has an interesting article on Russia Insider today, pointing out that the Western media deliberately ignored the facts about the fighting at Donetsk airport:

"... whilst the Ukrainians were pretending to be still in control of the airport, conclusive evidence existed that this was untrue.
What is extraordinary about this affair is that the Western media nonetheless went along with the Ukrainian pretence they were still in control of the airport. Reports from the rebels, the Russians and Graham Phillips, clearly showing the airport controlled by the rebels, were largely ignored. Instead the Western media uncritically reproduced the Ukrainian claims they still controlled the airport."

And that's putting it politely. Mercouris is being too kind when he wonders that the Western media are choosing to tell only the story told by the Kiev junta - "despite the fact that what Kiev says is repeatedly shown to be untrue." Despite, or because?

I mean, if this happened once or twice, I would buy the idea that the media were somehow being deceived. But if it's happening on an everyday basis, the logical conclusion is that they are deliberately going along. Remember the piece by Phillip Butler I mentioned in Wednesday's post? He explains how it took five Reuters writers/editors to come up with a completely bogus story. Does that strike you as coincidental? Me neither.

Sure, the Kiev junta is spewing propaganda out of every orifice - but the Western media is lapping it up because they serve the Empire. And the Empire needs the Narrative of "democratic, free, etc. etc." Ukraine resisting the "evil Russian aggression". So that is what the media report. Case in the point: yesterday's Foreign Policy feature making sure to hit every single propaganda note in the Narrative, while bemoaning the death of Ukie "Cyborgs" at the hands of "Russian invaders."

Now come the reports that U.S. troops will deploy to Lvov (Lwow, Lviv, Lemberg...) "in the spring", supposedly to train the Ukie military in "rule of law." The same way MPRI taught "democracy and human rights" to Croatians in 1995, most likely. Now I'm imagining US Army officers trying to explain to "Right Sector" Nazis the importance of following the Geneva Conventions using the slides from Abu Ghraib...

The long and short of it is, mainstream Western reports out of Ukraine are worse than worthless: they are outright lies. Relying on them to understand what is happening is like relying on Newspeak to oppose IngSoc.

Want to know what's really happening? The rebels put almost everything up on YouTube. Feel free to take everything with a grain of salt, and judge for yourself. That's what you're supposed to do.

Losing on purpose?

After some three months of (very) relative armistice, the war in Donbass rages again. Not long after the new year, the Kiev junta's artillery opened up on the civilians of Donetsk. Then, on Sunday or so, junta tanks and infantry began attacking.

They failed. Badly.

Not that you'd know this from the mainstream Western reporting... See here for Phillip Butler's glorious fisking of Reuters' coverage. But while I was fairly sure the junta troops were losing (I'll explain why in a moment) when I took part in a discussion of the hostilities on RT's CrossTalk yesterday morning, I didn't realize how bad it was.

Apparently, a brigade commander - and a major "Right Sector" officer - was captured at the Donetsk airport, which is fully under Novorussian control at this point. Mind you, Kiev and the Western media keep pretending this is not the case. They are also screaming about another "Russian invasion" - which always happens when they suffer a major defeat. So it is entirely possible the battlefield fiasco of the junta's "punishers" was due to the fact they bought into their own propaganda.

I may have said it here, or elsewhere (it's hard to keep track) that I fully expected hostilities to resume come spring. The junta cannot make peace, because the identity that drives them demands a conflict with Russia and the Russians, going back to the shadowy origins of "Ukrainianism" a century ago in Austrian-terrorized Galicia. But even if they could, they don't want to - believing that the Atlantic Empire has their back.

Logically, they would bide their time until they had rebuilt their army - shattered last fall by the dramatic defeats at the hands of Novorossian rebels - and rearmed with US equipment. Kind of like the Croatians in 1995 - in fact, that's precisely what Poroshenko's adviser, one Yury Lutsenko, said last September as the armistice took effect.

In clear preparation for just such a turn of events, Kiev announced a new draft of 50,000 men last week. As the Saker put it, it is "rather evident for anybody with a semblance of intelligence that [Poroshenko] is really conscripting cannon fodder, not a capable fighting force." Sure enough, many Ukrainians are already defecting to Russia, not eager to become the Nazis' cannon fodder.

So, why launch a half-witted attack now? Not only was the weather atrocious, but the artillery was aiming at civilians (rather than the Novorossian positions) and the attacks were small and not very coordinated, enabling the rebels to shred them to bits.

The crucial bit of information is that there is a high-ranking U.S. general visiting Kiev this week. Reportedly, his mission is to asses whether and how to implement Washington's insane "Ukraine Freedom Support Act" - those weapons and supplies the junta says it desperately needs. At first I thought the plan was to score a tactical victory somewhere - the airport seemed the logical place, especially if the Ukies believed their own propaganda about "winning."

But this morning another thought occurred to me: what if the plan all along was to lose? Basically, send some men to get slaughtered in order to prove a point to the Americans that "brave threatened Ukraine needs help to defend the Free World from evil Russian aggression" - or whatever the official line in Banderovsk is these days.

I've seen this before, in Bosnia. In fact, one of the reasons I've been able to accurately parse the events in Ukraine over the past year or so is that I've seen them before: the Maidan was basically a re-run of the October 2000 coup in Serbia. The snipers were a repeat of the tactic used in Bosnia in April 1992. Kiev's howling about "Russian invaders" and "aggression" is likewise right out of the propaganda manual written during the Bosnian War. As is the false-flag murder of innocents (MH17, the Volnovakha bus) for propaganda purposes. I am well aware of the dangers of false analogies, and forcing the facts to fit preconceptions. But time and again, the shoe fits.

Anyway, if the Banderites in Kiev are thinking they can manipulate the U.S. to fight their war for them, they have learned nothing from the Bosnian experience. Sure, the Izetbegovic regime got NATO to lend a hand - eventually. But instead of a triumph, they got the same peace treaty they were offered prior to four years of bloodshed - the one Washington had slyly advised them to reject. So, who used whom, exactly?

Nazis and Countries That Back Them

After Canada, USA and Ukraine were the only countries that voted "No" in the UN General Assembly to a resolution proposed by Russia condemning the glorification of Nazis, Peter Lavelle had Alexander Mercouris, Dimitri Babich and I over to discuss the meaning of that on CrossTalk.


(or watch on YouTube)

As you can see, I agree with the other two guests on almost everything - except for their assertion that Washington has ever actually regretted the consequences of its misdeeds. From where I stand, the Empire is not only absolutely unrepentant, it declares its wrongdoing to be right and just!

I mean, the New York Times of all media recently published an admission that a thousand (at least!) actual German Nazis still receive Social Security. How many thousands were brought over after WW2, and how many were propped up in Europe to "fight Communism"? And that's not counting the seven decades of collaborating with Nazis from the so-called "captive nations" (the Baltics, Ukraine, Croatia, etc), documented in The Nation (again, of all places). So it's fine that Croatians are sieg-heiling at fooball games while Kyevite militias are flying swastikas, since that represents "democracy and European future" merely defending themselves against "Serbian and Russian aggression" (see here, for example).

Another thing we didn't get a chance to mention is that all of the EU - and its hangers-on - abstained from voting. The sole European country that supported the resolution was Serbia. Personally, I'm shocked the quisling regime in Belgrade dared oppose Brussels and Washington on this, considering their absolute willingness to cut Serbia's throat on every other issue. Perhaps even they draw the line at backing Nazis, for what it's worth.

The show aired on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and was recorded the day prior. Thus there was no time to fix the error in the titles identifying me as director of the Reiss Institute (I resigned earlier this month. It was a personal decision - nothing against the Institute, and I wish it all the best in future endeavors.)

Wastelands Called Democracy

Friday was a year since the start of the "EuroMaidan" protests in Kiev, which would lead to the February 21 coup and the subsequent fracturing of the Ukraine.

In spite of the overwhelming evidence of U.S. government involvement in funding, organizing and even controlling the protests, the mainstream Western media continue to present the events in Ukraine as a spontaneous popular revolt for the sake of "democracy and European future." Just like Serbia was (not). Or Libya. Or Georgia. Or any other place where "color revolutions" brought devastation and called it democracy.

Want to know what "European future" looks like? Here's Odessa, on May 2:

(RIA Novosti / Maxim Voitenko)

I spoke with RT on the subject Friday; here's the video and here a (mostly accurate) transcript. I also wrote a special feature on the subject, which was published this morning.

And while Biden the Deputy Emperor and Victoria "Biscuit-Giver" Nuland were posting for cameras in Kiev with their stooges, Nazi death squads and the Ukrainian Army were terror-bombing civilians.

Well, at least that explains why the US, UK and Canada were the only states to vote against a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism.

Skewering the Liars

A satirical German TV show "Die Anstalt" (The Institution) has aired a segment on September 25 mocking the Western coverage of the conflict in the Ukraine.

Someone was kind enough to post it with English subtitles. Watch and enjoy:

A Tale of Two Letters

Who would know better about the lies and fabrications of spies than people who used to be spies themselves? A group of ex-intelligence officials, called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), has spoken out against Imperial madness for some time now. On August 30, they sent an open letter to German Kanzlerin Angela Merkel, warning her about falsified claims of "Russian invasion". From the letter:

Obama, however, has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration – who, sadly, lack much sense of history, know little of war, and substitute anti-Russian invective for a policy.
[...]
Largely because of the growing prominence of, and apparent reliance on, intelligence we believe to be spurious, we think the possibility of hostilities escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine has increased significantly over the past several days.
[...]
Photos can be worth a thousand words; they can also deceive. We have considerable experience collecting, analyzing, and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery, as well as other kinds of intelligence.  Suffice it to say that the images released by NATO on Aug. 28 provide a very flimsy basis on which to charge Russia with invading Ukraine. Sadly, they bear a strong resemblance to the images shown by Colin Powell at the UN on Feb. 5, 2003, that, likewise, proved nothing.
[...]
the government army that was starting to take heavy casualties and lose ground, largely because of ineptitude and poor leadership. Ten days later, as they became encircled and/or retreated, a ready-made excuse for this was to be found in the “Russian invasion.” That is precisely when the fuzzy photos were released by NATO and reporters like the New York Times’ Michael Gordon were set loose to spread the word that “the Russians are coming.” (Michael Gordon was one of the most egregious propagandists promoting the war on Iraq.)

One doesn't have to be an intelligence professional, of course, to realize the timing of the "invasion" propaganda was conspicuously coincidental with Kiev's crushing defeat. In resorting to such transparent lies, the Empire and its mainstream media betray a belief that their citizenry are idiots.

Empire's "Fascist Freedom Fighters"

This is what madness of the West looks like:

(click image to enlarge)

This is a screenshot of an article that appeared in Foreign Policy, August 30, 2014. (h/t Mark Sleboda)

As to why they did not opt for the alliterative "fascist freedom fighters," the answer is simple: they had to put "defenders" in there somewhere, so as to reinforce the lie of "Russian aggression." 

Novorussian Dawn

Yesterday I posted a photo of the Donetsk flag over the monument to Soviet heroes at Saur-Mogila, demolished by the spiteful Banderists as their rout began.

Here is a follow-up image, which I like to call "Novorussian Dawn":

via Colonel Cassad

Flag Over Saur-Mogila

Some photos of flags are destined to become iconic. Think Mt. Suribachi. Think the Reichstag. And now, perhaps, the Donetsk Republic flag flying on the ruins of Saur-Mogila:

via Vineyard of the Saker

This used to be a monument to heroic Soviet servicemen of WW2, who fought bitterly against the Nazis for control of the strategic hill, finally liberating it in August 1943. 

Though heavily damaged in the fighting between the Donetsk Republic forces and troops loyal to the coup regime in Kiev, the monument still stood until last week - when the retreating junta troops demolished it out of spite. 

"Every 30-50 Years, The West Invades Us"

Following the parade of captured Nazis, on August 24, leader of the Donetsk Republic gave a press conference. The fantastic volunteer translators, editors and bloggers at Vineyard of the Saker have uploaded a video of it, and provided transcripts in multiple languages.

As the transcripts are raw text files, I have taken the liberty of reproducing the English text here, with the timestamps removed for ease of reading and minor grammatical edits. I have also emphasized the parts I consider of particular importance.  ~ Gray Falcon

V. P. Kononov (left) and A.V. Zakharchenko (right), August 24, 2014

[Alexander V. Zakharchenko, Chairman of The Council of Ministers of The Donetsk National Republic]  As you all know, a week ago we announced our plan to attack. We started it yesterday. Until yesterday we have been preparing for the attack, examining trophy equipment, arming the crews, and testing communication between different military formations.

I can now proudly announce that we formed 2 tank battalions, 2 full artillery brigades, 2 Grad divisons, 1 mechanized infantry battalion, 3 infantry brigades and a special purpose assault airborne brigade. All these units have now received Army numbers. The communication system have been regularized and 2 field hospitals and 1 maintenance brigade have been formed.

Russian Statement on the Aid Convoy

The following is the statement by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, document 
1956-22-08-2014 (source), dated August 22, 2014, announcing the crossing of the humanitarian convoy into Lugansk and Donetsk regions of the Ukraine. (h/t Vineyard of the Saker)

The endless delays hampering the initial deliveries of the Russian humanitarian relief aid to southeastern Ukraine have become intolerable.

A lorry convoy with many hundreds of tonnes of humanitarian relief aid, urgently needed by the people in these regions, has been standing idle for a week now on the Russian-Ukrainian border. Over this period, the Russian side has made unprecedented efforts in all areas and at all levels in order to complete the required formalities. We have met all conceivable and inconceivable demands of the Ukrainian side and have submitted to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) exhaustive lists of food, drinking water, medications, essential items and diesel generators due to be delivered to Lugansk, where they are urgently needed by women, children and the elderly. These people are experiencing the horrors of daily artillery attacks and air strikes that have resulted in an increasing number of killed and wounded and destroyed the entire vital infrastructure in the area.

Time and again, we met requests to check and recheck the shipment route, to coordinate procedures for the shipment’s delivery, and have signed the required documents with the ICRC. We have provided all essential security guarantees and have ensured similar guarantees on the part of the self-defense forces. These guarantees apply to the Russian convoy as well as other humanitarian relief aid being sent to Lugansk by the Kiev authorities.

At the same time, Kiev has delayed granting its formal consent required by the ICRC for several days, while repeatedly inventing new pretexts and stepping up attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk that involve military aircraft and heavy-duty armored vehicles, targeting residential areas and other civilian facilities. Over the past few days, the Ukrainian side has been launching ballistic missiles, including the deadly Tochka-U missiles, ever more frequently.

On 21 August, the situation appeared to have been resolved when the Ukrainian authorities finally informed the ICRC of their readiness to start clearing humanitarian shipments for prompt delivery to Lugansk. The Ukrainian side officially confirmed its unconditional consent for the convoy to start moving during a phone conversation between the Foreign Affairs Ministers of Russia and Ukraine. On 20 August, customs clearance and border control procedures were launched at the Donetsk checkpoint. On 21 August, however, this process was stopped, with officials citing much more intensive bombardment of Lugansk. In other words, the Ukrainian authorities are bombing the destination and are using this as a pretext to stop the delivery of humanitarian relief aid.

It appears that Kiev has set out to complete its “cleansing” of Lugansk and Donetsk in time for the 24 August Independence Day celebrations. It seems increasingly credible that the incumbent Ukrainian leadership is deliberately delaying the delivery of the humanitarian relief aid until there is nobody left to deliver this aid to. Quite possibly, they hope to achieve this result prior to the planned 26 August meetings in Minsk.

Russia is outraged by the blatant external manipulation of the international experts involved in preparing this operation. An endless succession of contradictory and mutually exclusive signals and messages we have been receiving is a true indication of behind the scenes games for purposes that have nothing to do with accomplishing a set humanitarian objective. Those who are holding the reins and hampering efforts to save human lives, to mitigate the suffering of sick and wounded people neglect the basic principles of society. We have called on the UN Security Council to promptly declare a humanitarian armistice, but these proposals are being invariably blocked by those who pay lip service to universal human values. Last time, this happened on 20 August, when the United States and some Western members of the UNSC declined to issue a statement in support of a ceasefire during the delivery of humanitarian relief aid to Lugansk by Russian and Ukrainian convoys.

We hereby state once again: All the required security guarantees regarding the passage of the humanitarian convoy have been provided. The ICRC has officially recognised these guarantees. The delivery routes are known, and they have been checked by an ICRC mission. The documents have been drawn up. The shipments have long been ready for inspection by Ukrainian border guards and customs officers who have been waiting at the Donetsk checkpoint in the Rostov Region for a week now. The capitals that display heightened concern for the situation in southeastern Ukraine are well aware of this. The endless artificial demands and pretexts have become unconscionable.

It is no longer possible to tolerate this lawlessness, outright lies and inability to reach agreements. All pretexts for delaying the delivery of aid to people in the humanitarian disaster zone have been depleted. The Russian side has decided to act. Our humanitarian relief convoy is setting out towards Lugansk. Naturally, we are ready to allow ICRC officials to escort the convoy and to take part in distributing aid. We hope that representatives of the Russian Red Cross Society will also be able to take part in this mission.

We are warning against any attempts to thwart this purely humanitarian mission which took a long time to prepare in conditions of complete transparency and cooperation with the Ukrainian side and the ICRC. Those who are ready to continue sacrificing human lives to their own ambitions and geopolitical designs and who are rudely trampling on the norms and principles of international humanitarian law will assume complete responsibility for the possible consequences of provocations against the humanitarian relief convoy.

We are once again calling on the Ukrainian leadership, as well as the United States and the European Union, which are exerting their influence on Kiev, to promptly launch negotiations in southeastern Ukraine and start complying with the accords formalised in the 17 April 2014 Geneva Statement by Russia, Ukraine, the United States and the EU on stopping the use of force, mitigating the humanitarian situation and immediately launching nationwide dialogue that would involve all Ukrainian regions.

Convoys

Just how many convoys are there in Novorossia (or "Eastern Ukraine", if you swing that way)? It reads as a riddle, but the punchline is death.

There is the Russian EMERCOM convoy, white trucks bearing humanitarian aid for the beleaguered civilians of Donetsk and Lugansk regions - declared "terrorists" by the junta in Kiev and subjected to airstrikes, artillery, and deliberate destruction of utilities.

Then there is the phantom "Russian armored convoy" that Kiev and two British reporters claimed - but with zero evidence - had crossed over into Ukraine. Moreover, the Banderites then claimed they'd destroyed the said convoy. Offering no evidence, of course. Because there was none: no such convoy ever existed. In this age of ubiquitous cell phones (and their cameras), does anyone seriously think a mere assertion will suffice?

And then there was the convoy of refugees, allegedly hit by rocket fire on Monday. Kiev claims the separatists launched the strike that killed "dozens of people including women and children", but even Reuters has felt the need to add "it has yet to provide visual evidence."

Another Reuters report quotes a Ukie military spokesman who placed the strike "near the area of Khryashchuvatye and Novosvitlivka." That would be the two suburbs of Lugansk that recently came under attack by junta forces. Take a look at this map:

(via Colonel Cassad)

This is a detail from a bigger map of military activities in the region, between August 10-18, 2014. In case you do not read Cyrillic, allow me to explain: blue lines and arrows are Kiev troops. Red lines and arrows are the Donetsk self-defense forces ("separatists"). The blue bubble below Lugansk (ЛУГАНСК) is the airport pocket, where the 80th Brigade and "Aydar" Nazi Guard battallions have been surrounded for weeks.

At some point last week, the junta troops - probably somewhat resupplied from the air - struck at the village of Novosvetlovka (Новосветловка), cutting the road between Lugansk and Krasnodon (bottom right, near the circled "4"), and onward to Izvarino. This was done to block the Russian aid convoy from reaching Lugansk.

Now, pay attention to the blue arrow labeled 14.08 (for August 14), the red X marked 16.08, and the dotted blue arrow retreating to circled "9". This was the junta attack from Novosvetlovka to Khrashchevatoe, which failed.

So, what happened here? Could Kiev be trying to pass their own military casualties as civilians? Is the junta using captured civilians as human shields? Could this be the phantom "Russian column" that Kiev claimed to have destroyed - and is now spinning as "rebels killed civilians" instead? The most unlikely scenario is that this was an actual convoy of civilian refugees, attempting against all logic to drive through a combat zone.

The Kiev junta's Western backers have a history of targeting civilians and refugees. Recall the NATO terror-bombing of Serbian infrastructure in 1999, for example. Or, for that matter, targeting refugee columns: on at least two occasions, NATO planes hit the columns of ethnic Albanian refugees, claiming they were "Serbian army convoys". When confronted with evidence conclusively proving otherwise, NATO replied "Oops!" - and continued bombing.

I'll say one thing, though: if the junta has to resort to desperate lies such as "they are killing civilians" (when it's the junta troops that have been doing so from the start), it is far from winning the war, but rather desperately trying to postpone defeat.