All posts tagged: Crimea

Canada’s Largest Newspaper Opens 2016 With a Biased Salvo Against Russia

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By Roger Annis, January 15, 2016 After a hiatus from the Ukraine and Russia file for much of 2015, the editor of Canada’s largest daily newspaper has opened the year 2016 with sharp words for Russia, notably the “lightning annexation of Crimea” and the “Moscow-backed separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine” which Russia is said to have sprung on the world in early 2014. Olivia Ward pens an article in the January 10, 2016 edition of the Toronto Star loaded with grim predictions for Russia’s economy in 2016 and of “swelling grassroots outrage” against the rule of President Vladimir Putin. The Star editor explains, “In 2014, Russia’s lightning takeover of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula was a shock that reverberated around the world. Within a month, a Moscow-backed separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine convinced western leaders that the Russian bear was on the prowl, and its appetite for territory was growing.” Looking forward, Ms Ward writes, “In 2016, the question is not how much Putin’s geopolitical ambitions might expand, but how long it will be before they are …

Believe it or not: The true story of the Crimea blackout

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The Tatar Diogenes in the blown up power pole promises to sit to the death. Sputnik Pogrom writes: Yes, it’s still incredible. This can not happen, but here it is: 1. Crimean Tatar activists organize a “civilian food blockade of the occupied Crimea” (where around 90% of the existing Crimean Tatars reside). According to Crimean Tatar activists, deprived of Ukrainian food, water and alcohol, the Russian-occupied Crimean population would experience a sudden rush of love for Ukraine and would overthrow the Moskal occupiers, raising yellow and blue flags in grocery stores, pubs and stalls. 2. Someone timidly tries to tell the activists that Crimea is surrounded on three sides by water, with Kuban [Ukrainian region adjacent to Crimea, with a minority Tatar population] on the right and Turkey at the bottom, and famine in such conditions is absolutely impossible to organize. The maximum you can achieve is the substitution of products of the Ukrainian Kuban by Turkish ones. The activists ignore the pitiful sobs of the panicked occupants, and citizens continue having glorious Crimea Blockade …

Crimea blockade under barrage of criticism

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Sputnik International reports: The Right Sector/’Tatar activist’-organized food blockade of Crimea is off to a rocky start, with a split appearing to emerge over the initiative among both domestic and foreign supporters of post-Maidan Ukraine. From governors and journalists to experts and social commentators, many are beginning to challenge the blockade’s logic and rationale. Fugitive former Georgian president and current Odessa Governor Mikheil Saakashvili criticized the blockade for its ‘unofficial’ nature, telling Ukraine’s Espreso TV that it should have been organized by authorities in Kiev, not by armed social activists. “Such things should be carried out by official government entities, not by armed elements of the population,” he noted. The governor warned that these “unofficial groups” could go on to demand power, confident that having “crossed the line,” they may come to think of themselves as arbiters of state power. “The state must not give up to anyone its monopoly on the use of force,” he emphasized. Others criticized the logic and timing of the blockade, which was announced last week by Poroshenko Bloc MPs Refat Chubarov and Mustafa Dzhemilev, who also serve as leading figures in the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, a …

U.S. Tries to Stir Ethnic Division in Crimea – but fails thus far

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by Eric Zuesse On Saturday, August 1st, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko (who now acknowledges that his government is illegitimate and that his predecessor Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a February 2014 coup), sent greetings to an international conference of supporters of Tatars in Crimea, at the Second World Congress of the Crimean Tatars. He charged the current Crimean government (the government that Crimeans elected on 16 March 2014, rejoining Russia) of discriminating against Tatars. His message attacked the “torn imperial policies of the Kremlin,” and the “temporary occupation of Crimea by Russia.” He said that, “The Crimean Tatar people are again experiencing terror, and tens of thousands are thus forced to flee.” He thanked America’s Sunni ally Turkey for hosting this conference of pro-Saudi, Sunni Muslim, Crimeans. According to polls, the 12% to 15% of Crimeans who are Tatars (most of whom are Sunni Muslims, and thus oriented toward Saudi Arabia) are overwhelmingly in support of Crimea’s having severed its ties with Ukraine and of having become instead a province of Russia, as Crimea had …

Germans Don’t Trust the Media

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by Vaska Two German citizens, tired of propaganda in the German media, have decided to visit the “peninsula of terror”. They were to start their bike tour on May 9th. Listen to the great song they composed to launch the official start of the Crimea Tour 2015.

VIDEO: Crimea – the way back home (with English subtitles)

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Anyone interested in the Russian POV on the “annexation” of Crimea should watch this film. Is it the final word and full story? Of course not, but it’s an important perspective the western media is content to ignore. I invited heads of our security services, Ministry of Defence to the Kremlin and tasked them with – let’s put it bluntly – saving the life of the President of Ukraine. Our radio surveillance services started tracking his motorcade. It became clear Viktor Yanukovich would soon be ambushed. he would have been simply eliminated…” Vladimir Putin …I said we are forced to consider reuniting Crimea with Russia, because we cannot leave this territory and the people there…under the steamroller of the nationalists.. I have to say we would only do this under the condition we are absolutely certain the people of Crimea want it themselves. We had to let the people express their opinion…” Vladimir Putin English translation and subtitling prepared by VPE

Brzezinski calls for “accommodation” with Russia

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… Interviewer: You wrote, I think in 1997, in your book about The Grand Chessboard … this same phrase which I wrote down about Russia with Ukraine is an empire and Russia without Ukraine is more of an European country. But given that Eastern Ukraine is mostly occupied by Russian supportive forces, would you call Russia semi-empire or — Brzezinski: [laughs] …  Russia right now is an aspiring empire … … We really need to strike a balance between a policy in which we offer Russia a policy of accommodation — genuine accommodation — and at the same time convince Russia that crossing certain lines is prohibitively expensive — for Russia itself. … There is the risk that the Russians might calculate, or rather, miscalculate, that they may seek more than that’s tolerable, and that would produce unpredictable consequences. This is why I favor deterrence, including reliance on force if necessary, and accommodation, for instance reassurance to the Russians that it is not our intent or objective to make Ukraine a member of NATO. but …

The Moor Has Done His Duty

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by Anatoly Karlin, The Russian Reaction Blog Russian Opposition Journalist Andrey Babitsky Discovers Western Freedom of Speech Andrey Babitsky was the quintessential Russian democratic journalist. A correspondent for the US government funded Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe (RFERL) since 1989, his star began to shine at the start of the Second Chechen War in 1999, when he was embedded amongst the rebel fighters in Grozny. He took a harshly anti-Russian line, writing the following about a summarily executed Russian POW: It must be said that the Chechens don’t cut the throats of [Russian] soldiers because they are sadists inclined to treat them with brutality, but because in this manner they can make the war more visceral and visible to the public opinion, to explain that there really is a war and that war is cruel and terrifying. He was detained by the Russian military when attempting to leave Grozny in January 2000. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright personally appealed for his release in a visit to Moscow. In an ironic twist, he was freed, but …

YEARS OF WESTERN MEDDLING PUSHED UKRAINE OVER THE EDGE

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by Tara McCormack at SPIKED-ONLNE.com The current mainstream argument in the West about Ukraine is seriously misguided and dishonest. According to Western media and politicians, Russia has become an aggressive, reckless and expansionist power. Yearning for the glory days of the Soviet Union, Russia has ramped up tensions with the West with a series of bold and cunning moves directed by that inscrutable master strategist, Vladimir Putin. Post-Cold War, so the story continues, the West had dreamed that a new and better world order was dawning, one in which the European Union and America could act as forces for good in the world, bringing order and human rights to all. But Russia squandered that opportunity. And now it is dragging Western nations back into the old world, forcing them to respond to Putin’s aggressive and reckless policies. Virtually everything about this argument is false. The only thing that is true is that military and political tensions between Russia and the West have escalated to a level unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. But …

“Cartoon Détente” between Russia and Japan?

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Crimea’s Attorney-General Natalia Poklonskaya will head the Russian-Japanese Friendship Society, Russian media reported. The news was broken during former Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama’s visit to the peninsular which rejoined Russia exactly a year ago. The visit, sparsely reported in Western media, has been “slammed” by official Tokyo as an unseemly demonstration of solidarity with Russia over the bone of contention in the newly started Cold War 2.0. Hatoyama has been quickly labelled “gaffe-prone” by AFP. The news, of course, was deemed unfit to print by the Guardian’s discriminating editors. Natalia Poklonskaya, Crimea’s attractive top magistrate, was part of the movement of local Russians to politically rejoin Russia. She became a stunning success with the Japanese public, which fell in love with her good looks and quickly created a cult over her locally-stylized cartoons. While major news hubs sulk at the obvious breaking of ranks by an influential Japanese politician, this “cartoon diplomacy” may have really serious consequences for Russia, Japan and the world. Some Russian media have already speculated that a deal may be in …

Guardian-watch: The referendum that never was

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by BlackCatte The Guardian’s slide from liberal, informed media outlet, to crass, Ministry of Truth propaganda-sheet, gathers pace every day. Yesterday, for example, came this offering: Vladimir Putin describes secret meeting when Russia decided to seize Crimea Brief, yet crammed with splendid examples of honest, objective reporting, and paradigm-neutral language. For example… “In a trailer shown Sunday for an upcoming documentary on state-run Rossiya-1 television called “Homeward bound”, Putin openly discusses Moscow’s controversial grabbing of Crimea a year ago.” See that? Crimea was “grabbed”. It’s official. Not “liberated” like Iraq or Libya, or Kosovo. Grabbed. “Putin recounts an all-night meeting with security services chiefs to discuss how to extricate deposed president Viktor Yanukovych, who had fled a pro-Western street revolt in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.” Who knew that multi-million dollar-funded, nazi-infiltrated, CIA-handled Maidan Experience was just a big old spontaneous street revolt? Who knew those carefully-placed snipers murdering people on both sides were just ordinary everyday folks up there in their perches on a whim, like latter-day sans-culottes at the Bastille? But it gets better. …