by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich ‘All that glitters is not gold; all that shivers is not cold’ Mythology has it that Midas, the king of Phyrgia, was able to turn everything he touched into gold — ‘the Midas Touch’. According to Aristotle, the legendry figure died of starvation as a result of his greed to transmute everything from its natural substance to gold. This myth is a tragic reality when it comes
There are 160 billion dollars invested by Russia in the West. There are 248 billion dollars invested by the West in Russia. Sanctions anybody? Russia still has the option of shutting down the NATO route to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan. This is an option with Russia did not exercise over the war in Syria, but which it will almost certainly exercise in case of a NATO intervention in the
A deputy of the Ukrainian Rada who spoke on Russian TV from Moscow said that his contacts in the Crimea had informed him that the Ukrainian side had deployed unknown number of Grad BM-21M multiple-launch rocket systems (MRLS) just 2 way from the first Crimean checkpoints (these relatively old systems – they were built in the 1960s – have a 20 miles – 30km – range). Big demonstration in Kharkov
The situation outside Crimea is rapidly deteriorating. Yesterday, a SWAT team of the Ukrainian SBU has arrested the “popular governor” of the Donetsk region. He whereabouts are unknown. The local police has also arrested an unknown number of anti-insurgent demonstrators. Arrests of protesters have also happened in other cities of the Ukraine, including Odessa. To my knowledge there are no signs of police forces siding with the anti-insurgent forces anywhere
The Crimean authorities have just announced that the referendum of the future of the Crimea will be held on March 16 and that the two questions will be: Are you in favor of Crimea becoming a constituent territory of the Russian Federation? or Are you in favor of restoring Crimea’s 1992 constitution? Crimean MPs voted on Thursday for the region to “to become part of the Russian Federation as its
What a joke!According to RT, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has just announced that: “Alliance officials would put “the entire range of NATO-Russia cooperation under review.” He stated that NATO has decided to “take a number of immediate steps” because “Russia continues to violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and its own international commitments.” “We have also decided that no staff-level civilian or military meetings with Russia will take
The past few days have seen an amazing acceleration of developments which has created a totally new situation. In simple and plain language the following three momentous events have happened:1) In Kiev an armed insurrection overthrew the elected President and replaced him with a new revolutionary regime.2) Crimea completely broke-off from the rest of the Ukraine.3) An counter-revolutionary insurrection has begun in the eastern Ukraine.The situation in the eastern Ukraine
Dear friends, I have decided to take a short break for the torrent of news about the Ukraine to share with you an important development in the life of this blog: two days ago, last Thursday, the number of daily visitors to this blog has passed 10’000 to peak at an amazing 11’538 visitors! Now, some of them are webcrawlers, search engines, double visitors and my own, but the 10’000
First, a shot bullet style news update from the Ukraine: New government in Kiev declared that Russia had deployed 6’000 soldiers to the Ukraine. A car with 400kg of TNT-equivalent explosives was intercepted a a checkpoint yesterday in Crimea. There is no word on the diver or possible passengers. Crimean authorities had decided to hold the referendum on the status of Crimea on March 30th, and not May 25th as
The agreement on the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, which was signed on the 21 February and certified by the German, Polish and French Foreign Ministers, is still not being fulfilled. Militants have still not laid down arms, they have not freed administrative buildings, or announced their intention to “make order” in all the Ukrainian regions. There are threats of physical reprisals, as the President Viktor Yanukovych emphasised in his
This night sure was interesting. It appears that a group of unidentified armed men took control of the Belbek and Simferopol airports and, according to some reports, of an air-traffic control facility, then left. They kept a low profile, were extremely polite and said that they had come to prevent a “Ukrainian paratrooper force” from landing, but that this had been a false alarm. They then apologized and left. The
Русские долго запрягают, но быстро едут (“Russians take a lot of time to saddle up, but then they ride fast”) Russian adage Over the past few days the events in the Ukraine have seen a fantastic acceleration and many important events have simultaneously taken place. I will try to look at them one by one. In Kiev, the leaders of the insurgency have taken full control of the Parliament and
Reuters reports: President Vladimir Putin ordered an urgent drill to test the combat readiness of the armed forces across western Russia on Wednesday, flexing Moscow’s military muscle amid tension with the West over Ukraine. Putin has ordered several such surprise drills in different Russian regions since he returned to the presidency in 2012, saying the military must be kept on its toes, but the crisis in neighboring Ukraine gave them
Forget Klitchko, Iatseniuk, Tiagnibok or Tymoshenko. Though they all have some degree of popular support, what they don’t have is power. The real authorities in the Ukraine is the so-called “Right Sector”, their leader, Dmytro Yarosh, and his brownshirts. This video shows the reaction of one of these gentlemen, a certain Alexander Muzychka aka “Sashko Bilyi”, a veteran of the war against Russia in Chechnia, addressing a meeting the administration
by Pepe Escobar Anyone who believes Washington is deeply enamored of ‘democracy’ in Ukraine must hit eBay, where Saddam Hussein’s WMDs have been found, and are on sale to the highest bidder. Or pay attention to the non-denial denials of the Obama administration, which swears on a daily basis there’s no ‘proxy war’ or Cold War redux in Ukraine. In a nutshell; Washington’s bipartisan Ukraine policy has always been anti-Moscow.
Russian news sources are reporting the President Putin has chaired a meeting of the Security Council of Russia, the highest national security advisory board to the Russian President tasked with coordinating national security policies. The SCR heard a report by the Chairman of the State Duma, Sergei Naryshkin, and the Chairwoman of the Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko, about their consultations with Vladimir Konstantinov, the Chairman of the Supreme Council of
I have just finished watching a very interesting panel discussion on the First Russian TV channel about the events in the Ukraine. The participants were a rather diverse mix of Russian and Ukrainian experts, all very strongly opposed to the nationalist insurgents but otherwise with a wide spectrum of opinions. The majority of the panelists, both from Russia and the Ukraine, were extremely critical of Yanukovich whom they blamed for
Written for the Asia Times As the dramatic events in the Ukraine are unfolding the topic of what President Yanukovich can, or can not do, regularly comes up and I think that this is a good time to go back to basics and look at what a government – any government, regardless of its political orientation – can and even must do when confronted with an urban armed insurrection.First, a
A full scale armed insurrection seems to be taking place in the center of Kiev. RT reports 7 dead policemen, 11 dead civilians. 135 cops have been hospitalized, 35 are in critical condition. A total of 221 people have sought medical attention, 114 of them were hospitalized. The offices of the Regions Party of Yanukovich have been torched. The opposition leaders are demanding a constitutional change and Yanukovich’s departure. Communist
Today I just want to share with you my very real fears about either a terrorist attack or an “accident” of some kind in Sochi. What frightens me is that the list of potential “sponsors” for such an event is very long: the Saudis, of course, and their overt threats, but also the Anglosphere and it’s covert subcontractors of al-Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide. Less likely, but still possible, is
