"Ukraine’s president strains to keep grip" by Andrew Higgins and Andrew E. Kramer | New York Times, February 20, 2014
KIEV — Ukraine spiraled deeper into crisis Wednesday as the government of President Viktor Yanukovych and several thousand grimly determined protesters — along with their supporters in Russia and Europe — prepared for an extended confrontation over the fate of this fractured country of 46 million.
As measures of the turmoil, the authorities announced a nationwide operation to keep guns and power from “extremist groups” and cashiered the country’s top general, then turned around later to declare that a truce had been reached with opposition leaders.
But it was clear that, with their bloody offensive to take back the center of Kiev stalled — and the deployment of paratroopers to help protect military bases — the Ukrainian authorities were concerned about maintaining control.
The Defense Ministry later added a further beat to a drumroll of ominous warnings....
“Military servants of the armed forces of Ukraine might be used in antiterrorist operations on the territory of Ukraine,” the defense ministry said, raising the prospect that Yanukovych could call on the military to try to restore order — and keep himself in office.
That statement brought a quick response from President Obama and other Western leaders, who sought to defuse the crisis even as their differences with Russia hardened.
I'm sorry, folks, but I'm tired of spinning turds presented as news.
“We have been watching very carefully, and we expect the Ukrainian government to show restraint, to not resort to violence in dealing with peaceful protesters,” Obama said. “There will be consequences if people step over the line.”
Oh, another red line with consequences, blah, blah, blah. Tell it to the Occupy kids who got their heads bashed in while the squares were cleared.
Earlier Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States might join a European sanctions response to the Ukraine crisis.
That is an act of WAR!
President François Hollande of France, speaking at a joint news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in Paris, said, “There are unspeakable, unacceptable, intolerable acts being carried out in Ukraine.”
OMG!
“But sanctions alone are not enough,” Merkel added. “We have to get the political process going again,” including both government and opposition representatives.
It was unclear how the Ukrainian military could be legally deployed for what would be a domestic policing mission unless the authorities first declared a state of emergency, a step that Yanukovych has previously shied away from and for which the military has shown no enthusiasm. That was why the firing Wednesday of the pro-European chief of the Ukrainian general staff, Volodymyr Zaman, set off alarms in the West.
Also raising concerns was the fact that US officials have sought to contact senior Ukrainian military officials by phone and “nobody is picking up,” a senior State Department official said.
I'm LAUGHING!
Together, the moves suggest that Yanukovych, whose resignation many protesters see as a necessary precondition for calm, will press on with a high-risk strategy rooted in his view — zealously encouraged by the Kremlin — that Ukraine confronts not a popular uprising but a foreign-backed putsch by extremists.
He must mean the paid agent provocateurs of the U.S. and E.U. (with Israeli operatives on the ground).
Also see: The US And Israel Behind Civil Unrest In The Ukraine
As the mayhem that gripped Kiev on Tuesday gave way to relative calm, the authorities on Wednesday reinforced squads of riot police....
A dozen military-style dump trucks, armored cars and other vehicles waited nearby. By late evening, however, there was no sign of a new push to sweep away the thousands of protesters still singing and chanting around a stage in the square.
Oh, the agenda-pu$hing jew$media loves the protesters!
--more--"
And then they totally obscure the weapons the protesters obtained to start riots, spinning the situation as if the police started it!
"Dozens dead as Ukraine crisis worsens; Truce implodes as police fire on Kiev protesters" by Andrew E. Kramer and Andrew Higgins | New York Times, February 21, 2014
KIEV, Ukraine — Security forces fired on masses of antigovernment demonstrators in Kiev on Thursday in a drastic escalation of the 3-month-old crisis that left dozens dead and Ukraine reeling from the most lethal day of violence since Soviet times.
The shootings followed a quickly shattered truce, with protesters parading dozens of captured police officers through Kiev’s central square. Despite a frenzy of East-West diplomacy and negotiations, there was little sign that tensions were easing.
President Viktor Yanukovych lost at least a dozen political allies, including the mayor of the capital, who resigned from his governing Party of Regions to protest the bloodshed. Yanukovych conferred with three foreign ministers from the European Union who had come to press for a compromise solution, practically within sight of the main conflict zone in downtown Kiev.
The sights of bullet-riddled bodies slumped amid smoldering debris, some of them shot in the head, and screaming medics carrying the dead and wounded to emergency clinics, including one in a hotel lobby, shocked the country and the world....
Wow, a full-on agenda push with all they got.
There were signs late Thursday that Yanukovych might be moving closer to compromise, but given the hostility and mistrust on both sides, aggravated by the mayhem that has engulfed central Kiev, the prospects of any agreement seemed remote — particularly now that many of the president’s adversaries say they will settle for nothing less than his resignation.
About the only thing that was clear by late Thursday was that protesters had reclaimed and even expanded territory in the center of Kiev that they had lost just two days earlier when the police began a bloody but unsuccessful assault on Independence Square, which has been the focal point of protests since late November. And the widespread use of firearms in the center of the city was a new and ominous element for the protest movement.
Earlier Thursday, there had been rumors that Yanukovych, his police ranks stretched thin, might declare a state of emergency, a move that could herald the deployment of the military to help quell the crisis in the former Soviet republic of 46 million.
But his authority to do so was unclear. Opposition leaders convened a session of Parliament late Thursday, and together with defectors from the progovernment party they passed a resolution obliging Interior Ministry troops to return to their barracks and the police to their usual posts, and prohibiting the use of firearms against protesters. It also asserted that only lawmakers, rather than the president, could declare a state of emergency.
Both the United States and the EU, which made good on pledges to slap punitive sanctions on Ukrainian officials deemed to be responsible for the deadly escalation, warned Yanukovych to avoid declaring a state of emergency, which could take the country deeper into civil conflict. But short of calling in troops it looked unlikely that Yanukovych could restore his battered authority and regain control of the capital.
It's not a civil conflict. It's western-sponsored agents and assets, a few thousand at most.
As the protesters, reinforced by swarms of ordinary residents, erected barricades around their extended protest zone, a woman mounted a stage to appeal for help from foreign governments to prevent the president from declaring a state of emergency.
That is where the American people failed Occupy. We didn't swarm to them.
“A state of emergency means the beginning of war,” she said. “We cannot let that happen.”
Even as they push for it to happen.
In the center of Kiev, however, war had basically broken out, with the police having been authorized to use live ammunition.
You know, like a routine AmeriKan police patrol.
Just after dawn, young men in ski masks opened a breach in the police barricade near the stage on Independence Square, ran across a hundred yards of smoldering debris from what had been called a protective ring of fire and confronted riot police officers who were firing at them with shotguns.
Meaning the "peaceful" protesters started the fires and initiated confrontation.
Snipers also opened fire, but it was unclear which side they were on.
Related: Mystery Snipers Enter Ukrainian Destabilization Operation
Clear now?
The demonstrators captured more than 60 officers, who were marched, dazed and bloodied, toward the center of the square through a crowd of men who heckled and shoved them. A Ukrainian Orthodox priest accompanied the officers, pleading with their captors not to hurt them.
Some said later that the officers were taken to a hotel and released.
"Congress should sanction leaders of Ukraine crackdown" February 21, 2014
This has been a week of mounting bloodshed and chaos in Ukraine, with at least 100 people dead and the capital Kiev ablaze as police tried to clear the streets of opposition supporters.
The fighting marks the worst violence so far in the three-month
confrontation over Ukraine’s future — and appears to be the tipping
point needed to unite the United States and European Union toward
serious action to stop the carnage. Both American and EU officials made
it clear Wednesday that embattled President Viktor Yanukovych and his
government will face targeted sanctions if security forces continue to
use live ammunition against protesters. Congress should not hesitate to
carry out this threat if Yanukovych fails to comply.
Mass protests sprung up across Ukraine late last year after the
government announced plans to pursue closer economic ties with Russia
instead of allying with the EU, as the opposition demanded.
Demonstrators now want Yanukovych’s resignation and early elections. The
president, however, appears prepared to fight to the end, and the
escalating violence has brought fears that he will declare an official
state of emergency, bringing the army onto the streets. Neither the
United States nor Europe would benefit from the inevitable regional
unrest should Ukraine deteriorate into a military state, especially one
under Moscow’s thumb. Vladimir Putin would no doubt bask in the idea of a
revived Russian empire, making negotiation over global security and
economic matters, such as the Syrian conflict, all the more polarized.
The
State Department has already issued travel bans against 20 civilians
and political leaders responsible for the crackdown in Kiev, including
prominent cabinet members
. Yet a bank freeze and additional sanctions, as proposed by Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy,
would hit directly at both top government officials and the Ukrainian
oligarchs who have accumulated much of their wealth in American and
European financial institutions. It’s a strategy that helped to finally
bring Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear program last year.
Whether a similar result can be achieved in Ukraine remains to be seen,
but at least Yanukovych and his government should now understand, as
Secretary of State John Kerry has suggested, that there will be
repercussions if they choose bullets over dialogue. And Congress must
act quickly if they choose wrongly.
He should just shut up these days!
He should just shut up these days!
Related:
Winners and losers in the Olympics ad games
Athletes caught between theirs sponsors and Olympic rules
Despite loss, US women’s hockey team wins hearts
Restrictions have allowed the FBI to monitor their defense strategy
I've forgotten all about the Games.
Nothing on the effort in Venezuela yesterday.... or today.
Related:
Venezuela expels 3 US officials amid protest tensions
CIA spies infiltrating the university
Venezuelan critic arrested after protest
‘‘We have seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela,’’ a State Department spokeswoman said in a statement Tuesday. ‘‘These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan government to deal with the grave situation it faces.’’
The allegations are baseless, says the CIA-cover station known as the State Department.
So what is my government's excuse for doing the same thing?
