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The Ukrainian Missile Crisis
Ukrainian Missile Crisis: Day 2 and 3
DAY 4
"Ukraine presses offensive as Russia belittles new sanctions" by Andrew Rothand Neil MacFarquhar | New York Times July 31, 2014
KIEV — The day after the European Union and the United States announced expanded sanctions against Russia over the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Moscow remained defiant, the Ukrainian Army remained on the offensive, and an international team remained unable to reach the crash site of a Malaysian jetliner.
A senior Ukrainian official, Valeriy Chaly, the deputy chief of Ukraine’s presidential administration, told reporters in Kiev Wednesday his government would not scale back its offensive against the pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, which he said had already freed 60 cities and towns and more than a million residents from rebel control.
But Chaly denied that the military was trying to seize control of the crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by force.
Meaning that is exactly what they are doing from what I heard.
“We are not ready for such a scenario without the agreement of our international partners,” he said. “Our partners have pushed us to find another solution” for specialists to gain access to the site and begin their investigation.
Earlier in the day, observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe tried to get to the site but were turned back by reports of fighting and gunfire along the route. And a mission of Dutch police officers and specialists said that after being similarly blocked Monday and Tuesday, they would not attempt the journey Wednesday.
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The government of Belarus, a neighboring country on good terms with both Kiev and Moscow, said Wednesday that it has been asked by President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine to host talks among Ukraine, Russia, and the cooperation group over access to the crash site and other issues, Reuters reported. The office of President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus said that “all interested parties” were invited to attend, the news agency reported, but it was not clear whether the separatists would be represented, nor when the talks would convene.
I never take peace talk in a war paper seriously. Think Af-Pak for starters.
Andriy Lysenko, the spokesman for the Ukrainian government’s National Security and Defense Council, said the main obstacle to reaching and securing the wreckage of the plane was rebel resistance.
The Russian government said Ukraine and the United States were fueling the violence in the area.
“It’s not Russia, but the Kiev regime and its overseas sponsors who are to blame for the growing number of victims among the civilian population of the eastern regions,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that just made a sour diplomatic atmosphere worse.
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Related: Stronger sanctions are needed to stop Putin
Putin’s assault on Ukraine matters because by standing up to Putin now we may yet preserve the democratic peace
So says a member of the Bush administration.
Also see: The Middle East is Burnsing
I thought something stunk.
"Flights over Iraq diverted out of safety concerns" Associated Press July 31, 2014
BAGHDAD — European airlines and a Dubai-based carrier are rerouting flights over Iraqi airspace as a security precaution amid fears that militants with the Islamic State group have weapons capable of shooting down planes, despite Iraq saying its skies are safe.
A number of European carriers, including Virgin Atlantic, KLM, and Air France, say they have devised alternate flight plans. Air France specifically said it detected a ‘‘potential threat’’ on July 24 that triggered the airline’s decision, said Eric Prevot, a spokesman for the Air France’s Flight Operations Center.
The decisions come after a Malaysia Airlines flight was downed over rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board.
Iraq is facing its worst crisis since the 2011 withdrawal of US troops amid the offensive launched last month by the Islamic State group, an Al Qaeda breakaway that captured large swaths of land in the country’s west and north, including Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul.
Related: Occupation Iraq: ISIS in Stasis
When the group overran the cities and towns in June, Iraqi security forces virtually collapsed. In most cases, police and soldiers simply ran, abandoning arsenals of heavy weapons. Some fear the militants may have captured some sophisticated weapons capable of shooting down airplanes.
US carrier Delta Air Lines has no-fly zones over Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Ukraine.
DAY 5
Set to launch!
"Moscow’s Cold War site evokes the unthinkable; In bunker, echo of a tense then and now" by David Filipov | Globe Staff August 01, 2014
MOSCOW— If this isn’t the scariest interactive exhibit in the world, it’s way up on the list.
Deep beneath the Russian capital, the musty, cavernous control room of the secret bunker goes dark. A green map of the Northern Hemisphere lights up a large screen. Smaller lights glow and blip on a hulking console.
A man’s emotionless voice counts out a numeric code. Another man turns a key that arms the intercontinental ballistic missiles. Then he turns a second key to launch them. The screen shows the projectiles rising from their silos like giant metal cobras, blasting off to obliterate their targets half a world away. Or so it appears.
“It was a great feeling to destroy America,” says the key man, a Swiss visitor chosen to take part in the display. His laugh seems misplaced, and a bit unsettling, given the new and rising tensions between Russia and the West.
I'm unsettled by reading this slop.
This nuclear strike is, of course, a simulated one — not the start of World War III.
Well, there is always hoping, right?
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This the Cold War museum at Bunker-42 on Taganka,, and it has been letting its visitors touch off nuclear warfare for years, a show that seemed — until recently — a script from another time. But in the wake of recent events in Russia and Ukraine, it is a reminder of the worst that could happen when tensions boil over.
Thanks for the mind-manipulating reprogramming reinforcement.
The US government this week accused the Kremlin of violating a landmark 1987 nuclear weapons treaty. This further strained a relationship that has been deteriorating rapidly over US sanctions leveled to punish Russia for its support of Ukrainian separatists. US leaders say the rebels used a missile supplied by Moscow to shoot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 people.
Then that is likely the last thing that happened then. Better chance that it is anything but.
Neither country’s leaders have suggested that the confrontation over Ukraine will lead to a nuclear conflict, but one of Russia’s most influential voices recently threatened one.
In March, Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of a popular news program on Russia’s main state-owned channel, and the voice of the Kremlin’s anti-Western propaganda campaign, reminded viewers that Russia is capable of turning the United States into “radioactive dust.” Both countries still have thousands, and deploy hundreds, of nuclear warheads.
So WHEN is the NUCLEAR FALSE FLAG set to go off in AmeriKa?!!
The guides at Bunker-42 stay out of politics and emphasize that the museum is entirely educational.
“By its very existence it will long remind the future generations about the period of the Cold War, when humanity was perched on the edge of its own self-destruction,” said Fyodor Belousov, the guide on a recent tour.
In keeping with this mission, he avoided clarifying which country launched first in the simulated strike, although the visitor who turned the key, Reto Wachter of Switzerland, said he believed he was launching a Soviet missile attack against the United States....
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I guess Filipov felt “it’s worth reminding people that there are still thousands of nuclear weapons in the world,” but I disapprove.
"UK to probe death of ex-Russian spy" Associated Press August 01, 2014
LONDON — A British judge opened an inquiry Thursday into the death of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, saying the central question is whether the Russian state ordered the killing.
The timing sure is odd, 'ey?
Judge Robert Owen said he was determined to publish conclusions about Russian responsibility, although some parts of the inquiry, and possibly some of his report, will remain secret.
Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB agent who became a critic of the Kremlin, died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with radioactive polonium-210 at a London hotel.
On his deathbed, he accused President Vladimir Putin of responsibility. British police have named two Russians as suspects, but Moscow refuses to extradite them. An inquest into the case stalled because British authorities were unwilling to disclose secret intelligence evidence. But amid growing tensions with Moscow over violence in Ukraine, Britain announced a public inquiry.
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Owen said the issue of Russian state responsibility was of ‘‘central importance’’ to the inquiry. It is not due to examine whether Britain failed to protect Litvinenko, whose family believes he was working for Britain’s MI6 intelligence service.
Owen said he would consider broadening his investigation if evidence emerged that Britain could have prevented Litvinenko’s death.
He said some hearings would be held in private to hear sensitive evidence. ‘‘But I make it clear now that I intend to make public my final conclusions on the issue of Russian state responsibility together with as much as possible of my reasoning in that regard,’’ he said.
He's already reached his conclusion, and this is nothing but a political cudgel.
Inquiry hearings are expected to start in January.
Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, said she was confident Owen would find out who was to blame.
‘‘Everybody all around the world will know the truth,’’ she said.
We already do even if we do not know the specifics. Western governments under the control of Israel lie.
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"International monitors reach jet crash site in Ukraine; Little fighting seen between rebels, military" by Andrew E. Kramer | New York Times August 01, 2014
SHAKHTYORSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian government officials said they had temporarily suspended offensive operations against the rebels to allow the monitors to reach the site safely. Military commanders confirmed that they had been ordered to halt their advance.
Even so, columns of rising smoke were seen and explosions were heard near the site. In Shakhtyorsk, a mining town 10 miles south of the site, gunshots and explosions were heard through the afternoon.
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Donetsk, the nearest sizable city to the crash site, is the main remaining rebel stronghold in eastern Ukraine.
That's what all this has been about. Driving out the rebels.
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At one rebel checkpoint within the crash area, near the village of Rozsypnoe, the Associated Press reported that a separatist militiaman allowed the monitors to pass but fired a shot in the air to keep accompanying reporters from proceeding any farther.
He said there was fighting in the village, the agency reported. Reporters accompanying the group said explosions from nearby shelling could be heard.
The Russian government aviation agency said Thursday that it had sent its own team of experts to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, in hopes of reaching the crash site and examining the wreckage.
Russia has denied allegations by Ukraine and Western governments that it supplied missiles to the rebels that were used to shoot down the plane, and has claimed that photographs and other evidence offered to support those allegations were fabrications.
Wouldn't be the first time the U.S. has done that!
Moscow has asserted that the Ukrainian military was responsible for the disaster.
Vladimir Antyufeyev, the acting prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as the main separatist group in eastern Ukraine is known, said that a representative of the group would take part in the talks in Minsk on Friday, discussing security at the crash site and other issues with envoys from Ukraine, Russia, and the European security agency. He said he expected political support from Russia at the talks, pressing Ukraine to halt the shelling of civilian areas by its army and allied militias.
In Kiev, Ukraine’s deeply fractured legislature managed to head off a dispute with international creditors who have promised to bail out the country with $17.5 billion in loans, by approving budget amendments and tax measures that the creditors had demanded.
The prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, had staked his position on the legislation, submitted his resignation last week after Parliament voted against adopting a similar bill. His tactic succeeded Thursday when the legislature voted 109-16 against accepting his resignation.
That collapse of Parliament seems to be of little concern to my propaganda pre$$.
I hope you Ukrainians love life under IMF rule.
You thought you had it bad under Yanukovych? Just wait!
“There are two pieces of news today,” Yatsenyuk told lawmakers afterward. “The first is that Argentina has defaulted. The second is that Ukraine has not defaulted, and never will.”
That first bit did not make my paper today.
The legislators also released funds for the military and for repairs to damaged infrastructure in the country, and imposed a 1.5 percent war tax on all incomes.
Do I really have to type anything? Freedom and liberation comes with a war tax!
And they ratified agreements with Australia and the Netherlands allowing those countries to send about 950 “armed personnel” to secure the Flight 17 crash site.
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Time to hoof it the hell out of here.
DAY 6
Thankfully, the Tefft has cooled off considerably, at least for today. New guy looks like an agitator to me and would not be well received were I a Russian.
UPDATE: Ukraine: Antiwar and Anti-Conscription Protests. Kiev Regime Wages All-Out War in East Ukraine, NATO Threatens Russia
