Saturday, April 26, 2014

Slow Saturday Special: Moscow's Next Move

Well, they already rolled the tanks in so next in are the troops, right? 

"Ukraine threatens blockade in pro-Russia east" by Andrew Higgins, C.J. Chivers and Alan Cowell | New York Times   April 26, 2014

KIEV — Russian troops on maneuvers.... crossing the border.... seen as an invasion.

That was the message I got from the first paragraph.

The declarations reflected heightened worries that the government’s efforts to move against forces aligned with Moscow would trigger a Russian incursion under the guise of a humanitarian or peacekeeping initiative.

Oh, they would be taking a page from the playbook of the EUSraeli empire, 'eh, NYT? That's chutzpah right there. 

Meanwhile, Russia felt the effect of the Ukrainian crisis on its economy on Friday, when ratings agency Standard & Poor’s cut its credit grade for the first time in five years and the central bank raised interest rates to keep the sliding currency from fueling inflation.

S&P said in a statement it dropped Russia’s rating to one level above ‘‘junk status’’ because the situation in Ukraine was causing investors to pull money out of the country.

They lie to us about the AmeriKan economy; why would they not lie about the Russian ruble?

And who is S&P anyway? The same firm that signed off on the mortgage-backed crap as AAA. Talk about having a credibility deficit. Why would anyone listen to those Wall Street whores?

In another ominous portent, a group of foreign military observers traveling under the auspices of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, along with their Ukrainian military hosts, were detained by pro-Russia separatists in Slovyansk. It was unclear precisely how many were in the group, but the detention appeared to be the first time that members of Ukraine’s armed forces had been taken into custody by the separatists.

Unconfirmed reports earlier had identified the detainees as monitors from the OSCE in Ukraine as part of an agreement, which now appears to have all but unraveled, to ease the crisis. But OSCE officials said all their monitors had been accounted for. Tatyana Baeva, a spokeswoman for the organization in Vienna, said the reports had evidently been referring to a German-led group of eight unarmed military inspectors visiting under a separate treaty.

In other words, a NATO TEAM of AGENT PROVOCATEURS a la OPERATION GLADIO was BUSTED!

A pro-Russian militant leader in Slovyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, was quoted by Russia’s Interfax News Agency as saying his group was attempting to verify the identities of the detainees, who had been stopped on a bus that he said was carrying ammunition.

But they were unarmed.

The events Friday morning were marked by an icy hostility between Moscow and Washington. Interim Ukrainian leaders said operations to expel pro-Russian militants in eastern cities would continue, even though military action so far has done little more than prompt Russia to stage military exercises on Ukraine’s border and raise concerns about Moscow’s next move.

Now you know how the title of this post came to me.

“Attempts at military conflict in Ukraine will lead to a military conflict in Europe,” Ukraine’s interim prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, told the interim Cabinet, according to remarks broadcast live and posted on the government’s website. “The world has not yet forgotten World War II, but Russia already wants to start World War III.”

It's the exact opposite as I wrote OMG in the margin of my paper.  I will say one thing: the absolutely over-the-top, jump-the-shark propaganda and rhetoric coming from the Amerikan media makes it a lot easier to get these posts done.

The acting head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Serhiy Pashynskyi, said the operation to dislodge “terrorists” was continuing. “In the event of any crossing of the border by Russian troops, we will qualify this as an invasion and we will eliminate the invaders,” he said at a news conference in Kiev.

Yup, they are gonna win!

Ukraine’s interim defense minister, Mykhailo Koval, was quoted by the Interfax-Ukraine news agency on Friday as saying Russian troops on maneuvers had approached to within 1,100 yards of the border but had not crossed. There was no independent corroboration of the minister’s account.

They couldn't confirm they hadn't crossed or that they approached within 11 football fields or about half a mile?

Reporters in Slovyansk said there were signs of Ukrainian infantry units patrolling farmland northwest of the city, a day after Ukraine sought to dislodge pro-Russian forces from checkpoints.

Hey, that's okay!

On the road to Izyum, north of Slovyansk, a combined force of soldiers and Interior Ministry forces seemed to be well armed. In nearby Kramatorsk, a Ukrainian military transport helicopter was set afire, but the cause of the blaze was unclear.

In a posting on Facebook, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Ukraine’s military operations in the east had not been suspended, despite local news reports to the contrary.

Russia has repeatedly denied having a hand in the unrest convulsing eastern Ukraine or any intention to invade. But an announcement Thursday by Moscow that it would immediately start military maneuvers along the border with Ukraine, and a threat by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, of unspecified consequences for Ukraine as a result of what he called a “serious crime,” signaled a combustible new phase in a geopolitical struggle set off by the overthrow of Ukraine’s government in February.

The Ukraine is about to explode!

The heightened tensions have buried already faint hopes that a deal reached April 17 in Geneva by diplomats from the European Union, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States might calm a crisis, stirring fears of a wider conflict over Ukraine, a nation of 46 million on a volatile fault line between Europe and Russia.

I never had any hopes for that deal, and the fault line used to be a lot further west. That is one of Russia's complaints. Broken US and NATO promises, which is why I held out no hope for that deal. Biden made sure of it when he came and issued the orders to the puppet regime.

--more--"

I gotta get moving myself.