Related: Absence of Ukraine
The propaganda pre$$ must be absent-minded because they seem to have forgotten they ever wrote that!
"Secessionists stage rally in Ukraine; Activists storm government sites in eastern province" by Peter Leonard | Associated Press April 07, 2014
KIEV — Crowds of pro-Russian demonstrators stormed government buildings Sunday in several major cities in eastern Ukraine, where secessionist sentiment has sparked frequent protests since Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president was ousted in February.
That is NOT WHAT I WAS TOLD DAYS AGO!
"Putin has been openly dismissive of Yanukovych, [and] Yanukovych describ[ed] their talks as ‘‘difficult.’’
Doesn't look too friendly to me! You AP reporters need to start talking to each other before you start shoveling!
Really, readers, how am I to go forward and believe any account being provided to me?
In Donetsk, 50 miles west of the Russian border, a large group of people, including many in masks carrying sticks and stones, surged into the provincial government building and smashed windows.
A gathering of several hundred, many of them waving Russian flags, then listened to speeches delivered from a balcony emblazoned with a banner reading ‘‘Donetsk Republic.’’ Activists in the building said they want to see a referendum for the Donetsk province to join Russia.
People brought car tires to be used as barricades against any presumed attempt by authorities to retake the building.
Eastern Ukraine was the heartland of support for Viktor Yanukovych, the president who fled to Russia in February after months of protests. About half of the region’s residents are ethnic Russians, many of whom believe Ukraine’s acting authorities are Ukrainian nationalists who will oppress Russians.
Ukraine’s interim authorities deny they are infringing the rights of the ethnic Russian population and accuse Moscow of trying to sow instability. Russia has moved large contingents of troops to areas near the Ukrainian border, and speculation is strong that unrest in eastern Ukraine could be used as a pretext for a Russian incursion.
Yeah, yeah. So insulting to see a pretext-creating pre$$ tossing that word around.
Since Crimea held a referendum to secede and then was annexed by Russia in March, calls for similar referenda in Ukraine’s east have emerged.
President Oleksandr Turchinov’s office said he had canceled a planned visit to Lithuania this week to take personal charge over the situation in eastern Ukraine.
In Luhansk, to the northeast from Donetsk, hundreds of people surrounded the local headquarters of the security service and later scaled the facade to plant a Russian flag on the roof. Ukrainian media reported that demonstrators pelted the building with eggs, and then stones, a smoke grenade, and finally a firebomb. The flames were reportedly quickly extinguished.
A police officer and a demonstrator were injured in the disturbances.
Local media reported similar unrest in Kharkiv, less than an hour’s drive from the Russian border.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook page that Russia was to blame for the turbulence.
Meaning the truth is the exact opposite.
Russia’s president, Vladimir ‘‘Putin, and Yanukovych have ordered and financed another round of separatist unrest in the east,’’ he said. ‘‘Not many people have gathered, but they are behaving aggressively. In Donetsk, the crowd brought many children and women for the storming. They are provoking a spillover into blood.’’
Avakov said no heavy-handed measures would be adopted to deal with the unrest.
‘‘The situation will be brought back under control without blood,’’ he said. ‘‘The Interior Ministry will not shoot at people, at this gang of paid-up provocateurs. Among the protesters, there are many that have been deceived, many that have been paid.’’
That's who took charge at the behest of the U.S., yeah. That's the "new government" in Kiev. No vote or anything.
If it's not straight out lies it is total distortion.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s security service said it had detained a 15-strong armed gang planning to seize power in Luhansk province.
The Security Service of Ukraine said it seized 300 machine guns, an antitank grenade launcher, a large number of grenades, five handguns, and firebombs.
It said the group intended to mount a grab for power. No names or additional details were provided.
--more--"
Hope you don't mind me taking a bit of a vacation:
"Crimean resort city of Yalta awaits tourists after Russia’s annexation" by Carol Morello | Washington Post April 06, 2014
YALTA, Crimea — At the czar’s summer palace, where the 1945 Yalta Conference was held, curators anticipating waves of Russian tourists are preparing a new art exhibit in the solarium.
With the smell of fresh paint lingering in the air at every hotel, prices are being slashed for package tours from Russia, and the Crimean Tourism Ministry is encouraging residents to tell their relatives and friends that everything is calm in Crimea.
The referendum that led to Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula has dealt a wild card to the local economy, which depends on tourism as its backbone. A quarter of Crimean workers owe their jobs to the spending done by 6.2 million visitors. Tourist season starts in one month and kicks into high gear from June to August.
Nowhere is tourism more crucial than in Yalta, a town of 80,000 nestled in a stunning location at the foot of the soaring Crimean Mountains, its pebbly beaches rimming the Black Sea. With an abundance of pines, palm, and cypress trees, it looks like Nevada butting up against the Mediterranean.
‘‘Tourism in Yalta is everything,’’ said Andrei Kolomitsev, the head of Yalta’s tourism office.
Although properties cannot be sold until they are reregistered under Russian law, dozens of Russians and Ukrainians have been calling Yalta Real Estate each day seeking dachas and apartments for investment purchases, said owner Oleg Kuznetsov, pulling out his iPhone to prove it by showing the country codes on his incoming-call log.
Kuznetsov rushed through the possibilities, from boom to bust, with little in between.
‘‘If Ukraine keeps the border open, we’ll have double the number of tourists,’’ he predicted, sitting in his office lobby while three agents sat quietly at their desks, the phone never ringing once in a half-hour time span. ‘‘But Kiev could urge Ukrainians to boycott the season to prove that after the referendum, everything went bad.
‘‘But Russians have more money to spend. And of course, there are 42 million Ukrainians, while Russia has more than 140 million. We’re just waiting to see how things evolve.’’
Once the summer playground of Russian royalty and other notables, Yalta became a workers’ paradise when the Soviet Union built sanatoriums, campgrounds, and mammoth hotels, and subsidized cheap vacations for factory workers and their families. But those subsidized vacations were severely curtailed when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
For the past two decades, Yalta has struggled in its appeals to Ukrainians, who have made up more than half of the tourism traffic. But the per capita income in Ukraine is less than a third of what it is in Russia, according to World Bank figures....
Today, Yalta blends high and low culture in an attempt to draw both the Russian and Ukrainian politicians and entertainers who own pricey dachas nearby and the less affluent Ukrainian tourists who stay in private rooms offered by women waiting at Yalta’s bus station....
Time to get off the WaPo tour bus!
--more--"
And right back on it (didn't realize it was a double-decker):
"European nations reluctant to increase military spending; Ukraine example not enough to boost forces" by Griff Witte | Washington Post April 06, 2014
LONDON — After years of watching as defense cuts sliced away at the army he once led, Richard Dannatt decided that Russia’s thrust into Ukraine marked the right moment to start rebuilding the British military.
I thought they were under austerity, but....
Dannatt, now a member of Parliament after an army career that spanned 38 years, sought to do just that with legislation that would have saved a brigade — or about 3,000 troops — in Britain’s rapidly shriveling active-duty force.
But the modest bill was quickly nixed by the government last month, and Dannatt conceded defeat. ‘‘When [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is running rampant, it’s not a good time to look weak,’’ Dannatt said. ‘‘Right now we’re looking weak.’’
And Saddam can be here in 45 minutes.
President Obama has sought to coax his European allies to wake up to the renewed threat of Russia, and reinvest in militaries that have long gone fallow.
Related:
"The deal buoyed Wall Street investors. Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm, concluded that as a result overall Pentagon spending will remain relatively the same for the next several years before it begins to grow once again, at about 2.5 percent per year."
He's done his part!
But for the moment, there appears to be little appetite among European leaders to bust their recession-scarred budgets or buck their war-weary populations in order to shore up thinly stretched armed forces.
Feels like a FALSE FLAG is in order! Get that war spirit up again, except it ain't gonna work. We are so weary we won't won't care, and will in fact BLAME GOVERNMENT for IT, no matter what the case!
Military spending across Europe fell dramatically after the Cold War, then rose up for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the five years since the global financial crisis, it has been cut sharply again — even as Russia’s defense spending has surged by more than 30 percent.
The AmeriKan Empire spends more than the entire planet, but you know. I don't want that to get in the way of the wonderful war propaganda, and am not complaining!
More European cuts are on the way, even as leaders hurl a daily dose of tough rhetoric toward Moscow.
Yeah, I do buy a newspaper every day, what of it?
That has frustrated Washington policy makers, who have long agitated for Europe to pay its fair share for security on a continent that, until last month, had looked remarkably tranquil but now faces its biggest crisis since the Cold War.
Speaking in Brussels, Obama chided fellow NATO members for not contributing to the collective defense.
‘‘The situation in Ukraine reminds us that our freedom isn’t free, and we’ve got to be willing to pay for the assets, the personnel, the training to make sure we have a credible NATO force and an effective deterrent force,’’ Obama said in a news conference at the Council of the European Union.
I'm starting to get angry, so....
Only a handful of countries other than the United States met NATO’s target last year of spending at least two percent of gross domestic product on defense.
Even stalwart members of the alliance have sharply reduced spending in the past five years, with Germany down by four percent, Britain off by nine, and Italy slashing nearly a quarter of its defense budget, according to figures compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Diminished military spending in Europe has contributed to a deep unease among some of the continent’s smallest and weakest nations, which happen to be on the front lines should Russia decide that it’s not content to add Crimea, and wants to go for more.
The impotence of Ukraine’s military was on vivid display in recent weeks as Russian troops overran base after base in Crimea. Badly outgunned Ukrainian forces gave up without a fight, and the country’s new leadership was forced to admit that its military would have to be rebuilt from scratch.
The ease with which Russia seized Crimea has raised fears that its conquest may not be over.
Now I'm being yo-yoed.
NATO warned that Russia had massed an unusually large force on Ukraine’s eastern border, and could be preparing to go in — either to seize eastern Ukraine itself, or to hop across to the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria.
Actually, a U.S. news crew found nothing, but you know. Don't let the lies and omissions spoil the wonderful war propaganda and their yo-yo tricks.
Both regions are heavily populated with Russian speakers, whom Putin has said were victims of a great injustice when the dissolution of the Soviet Union left them outside Russia’s borders.
Neither Ukraine nor Moldova is a member of NATO. But Putin has long bristled at the alliance’s expansion into its former sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.
To mollify Putin, NATO has traditionally held back from actions in the east that might be seen as provocative, analysts say. That reticence has left NATO countries such as Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia wondering how seriously the alliance will take threats to their interests.
That's holding back? Going right up to their borders after promising not to?
During a recent visit by Vice President Joe Biden to reassure anxious European allies, President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland pointedly reminded Biden of Russia’s recent military spending binge, and called it ‘‘a challenge as well as a lesson to be learned for the future of the whole NATO.’’
I'm sure I could find a link, but why bother?
NATO Secretary General Anders Rasmussen made a similar point while speaking in Washington, calling the Ukraine crisis ‘‘a wake-up call.’’
Oh, I'm wide a wake and watching, dip.
So this whole "crisis" was really about keeping NATO relevant?
Speaking of things no longer relevant:
--more--"
UPDATE: Ford’s Russian joint venture cuts about 950 jobs
