New Zealand Conservative

I've just watched Airport Donetsk, the short documentary film above. It's basically interviews with Russian separatists (Russian military) and with surviving Ukrainian armed forces who battled each other at the airport, with the Russians ultimately winning. There are some gruesome scenes of injured and/or dead bodies, and one particularly awful scene of Russian soldiers forcing captured Ukrainian soldiers to eat their Ukrainian flags cut off their uniforms. One can only imagine what happened next to those soldiers. I'm left feeling quite numb after watching it.

Novorossia died a quiet death this week. When separatist leader Oleg Tsarev announced the end of the scheme to unite the Russian-speaking regions of eastern Ukraine into a single pro-Moscow separatist entity on May 20, it was the latest in a series of signs that the yearlong conflict in the Donbas is lumbering toward some kind of endgame. In remarks reported by Gazeta.ru, Tsarev, the chairman of the self-styled parliament of Novorossia, said the project was being suspended because it "doesn't fit into" the cease-fire agreement signed in Minsk in February. In reality, Novorossia was stillborn from the get-go. Unlike in Donetsk and Luhansk, where pro-Moscow separatism took hold, Russian-speakers in Odesa, Mariupol, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, and elsewhere remained loyal to Kyiv. ... Russia had once hoped to partition Ukraine by seizing so-called Novorossia, which stretches from Kharkiv in the northeast to Odesa in the south, which would have given it...

From New Putin Invasion Coming This Summer ~ Michael Weiss and James Miller, Daily Beast On May 5, the Ukrainian government released new data which says that they have lost 28 towns to Russian-backed separatists since February 18. That was the day the strategic town of Debaltsevo, which guarded a key highway to separatist-controlled regions, slipped from Ukraine’s control. The map of separatist territory is as alarming as it is illustrative, especially when it is combined with the daily reports of ceasefire violations and fighting coming out of both the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and Kiev. On May 6, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko addressed the National Security and Defense Council and warned that Russia has 50,000 troops on the border and its proxies have more than 40,000 fighters inside the country. That’s not only a combined 50% increase in possible invaders over July of last year, the month which proceeded the “Russian invasion” on the...

* For more than year, there's been a war in eastern Ukraine that nobody called a war. And for the past three months, there's been a cease-fire there that wasn't a cease-fire. And now that the agreement reached in Minsk in February that was supposed to end hostilities in the Donbas is all but dead in the water, we seem to be lurching toward some kind of endgame. And it is shaping up to be as strange and counterintuitive as every other aspect of this through-the-looking-glass hybrid conflict. This article Lose The Territory, Win The War is what is said in the You-Tube above plus lots more analysis. Personally, I think, Russia Putin needs to be forced to repair the damage to the country of Ukraine and pay reparations to all those families, both Ukrainian and Russian, that have lost loved ones in this pointless war. Putin is worth at least $40 billion, though some think he's even richer at $200 billion , so he can afford it. Related link: The Daily Vertical: The ...

An Australian journalist, Michael Usher recently traveled to Ukraine, into rebel-held territory, to look into the evidence for a Russian BUK shooting down MH17 as it flew over Ukraine. He used information from Bellingcat , photos and geo-locations, which he verified by going to those places.  He saw exactly where the Russian BUK passed through, thus putting to bed any suggestion that it was a Ukranian BUK as asserted by Russia. He also talks to an expert as to whether the damage to the plane was from projectile (ie a Ukranian fighter plane as the Russians initially asserted) or a BUK which creates shrapnel type damage. This 60 Minutes TV programme was screened in Australia only a few days ago and is a must watch, especially for those that are unsure as to what actually happened.  It seems the Australians will not let this go, and with good reason. This is a new wave of internet crowd sourcing of forensic detective work backed up by the MSM. Related link: Michael Ushe...

From To Understand Putin, Read Orwell by Timothy Snyder. Anyone who wants to understand the current Russian position on Ukraine would do well to begin with George Orwell’s classic, 1984. The connections go deeper than the adjective “Orwellian”: the structure and the wisdom of the book are guides, often frighteningly precise ones, to current events. The easiest way to begin, in light of the now entirely open Russian invasion of Ukraine, is with “War is Peace,” one of the slogans of the imagined empire in Orwell’s tale. After all, every attempt thus far at negotiation and cease-fire has been accompanied by a Russian escalation, to the point where we can be certain that this is not a coincidence. If Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with other leaders, we must simply expect that this is cover for the latest outrage, as with the entrance of Russian troops, armor and artillery during the recent talks in Minsk. But we need to dig a bit deeper into the plot for the three concepts ...

And... Lenin falls in #Kharkiv . pic.twitter.com/gymCiD93me — Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) September 28, 2014

This of course, has everything to do with increased Russian aggression against Ukraine.  Related links: Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania Form Joint Military 'LITPOLUKRBRIG' Brigade Polscy żołnierze w jednym szeregu z Litwinami i Ukraińcami. Powstaje LITPOLUKRBRIG

I am so disgusted and outraged and horrified by the sneaky invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and now what is escalating into a full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, complete with threats of nuclear weapon use, that I will now be deleting any trolling comments to do with this subject. Any comments on the rightness or justness of the invasion by Russia will also be deleted. As will any comments on how the "evil fascists" of Ukraine had it coming, because those especially, just feed into the Russian propaganda machine. Anyway, now Russia is threatening Ukraine with nuclear strikes if Ukraine continues to resist the Russian invasion that can no longer be hidden. From The Interpreter : Ukrainian Defence Minister Says Russia Has Lost Hybrid War, Begun Invasion, And Threatened Nuclear Strikes 16:06 (GMT) Interfax-Ukraine reports that Valeriy Heletey, the Ukrainian defence minister, has written on his Facebook page that Russia has lost its "hybrid war" against U...

Poland stuck in the middle ~ The Global Think Tank What worries the Poles is that if stability in Ukraine returns under terms suitable to the Kremlin, it may only be a matter of time before it is business as usual with Russia. That would give Russia the space to make another move. A Collective Psychosis Is Taking Hold of Ukraine ~ The New Republic A collective psychosis, born of machismo and paranoia and fuelled by rumour, is taking hold. The latest story gaining traction in the capital is that thousands of Russians—solitary males of military age—have begun to appear in Kyiv, renting rooms and just waiting. “Let them come,” says Maksym, my wiry and intense landlord. “I’ve got body armour and I’m cleaning all my guns.”

When I read the following article on New Republic by Julia Ioffe, it was called After Crimea, Putin is going to take Eastern Ukraine Next . It's now called The Maps That Show the Inevitability of a Russian Land-Grab in Eastern Ukraine , because when it comes down to it, Russia cannot support Crimea without taking the east.  Already a gas plant in Ukraine has been taken over by Russian troops, a gas plant that supplies Crimea with gas.  On Sunday, the new pro-Russian prime minister of Crimea was appealing to Russia to send in the fleet to "protect" this gas plant.  Julia explains, based on the geography, why it's important to Crimea (and Russia) to get gas from the Ukraine and ensure that it's not cut off and how in order to do that, the likelihood is that Eastern Ukraine is next in the land grab: Crimea qualifies as a peninsula on the slightest of technicalities, dangling from the Ukrainian mainland by an isthmus (Perekop, on the left side of the map) that, ...

Wow, journalists are going through the documentation that ex-Ukrainian President Yanukovych left behind when he fled to Russia. Part of that was information that they were being pressured by Russian President Putin: Putin pressured Yanukovych to crack down on the Maidan protesters.  Ukrainska Pravda  found that the notebooks of Yanukovych's security chief, Kostyantyn Kobzar, detail a private meeting between the two leaders at Putin's residence at Valdai on January 8, as the Maidan protests continued to grow. Ironically, Ukrainska Pravda found record of Yanukovych's suspicion of one of its own articles , an investigation into how special police were ordered to forcefully disperse the crowd on Independence Square on November 30. "Where did  Ukrainska Pravda get the documents before the interrogation?" the notebook reads, and goes on to note that Yanukovych had plans to call Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka about the issue . What are the cha...

The maximum territorial extent of countries in the world under Soviet influence after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and before the official Sino-Soviet split of 1961 (Source: Wikipedia ) Andrei and I have been having an ongoing conversation about what is going on in the Ukraine with regards to the removal of the duly elected President (who seems more than a little corrupt) and the consequent invasion of Crimea by Russia. Rather than continue in the comments with this, I thought this post important enough to become it's own entity, in response to Andrei saying: Ukraine as it is drawn on the map today is an accident of history - nobody even called themselves "Ukrainian" until the Romantic movement of the 19th century - Ukraine was a region of Europe where Catholicism meets Orthodoxy - the Western parts of the modern state were in the Austro-Hungarian Empire 100 years ago while the Eastern parts were in the Russian Empire and always had been Anyway by quirks of h...

Palace of Science and Culture in Warsaw, Poland, lit up in blue and yellow, in solidarity with Ukraine (Source: The Economist ) An important article on the deep understanding that Poland has with what is going on in the Ukraine right now. As an example: Yanukovych's regime, together with the Kremlin, have been telling us that the protestors are anti-Semites and Nazis—while simultaneously telling their riot police that the protestors are gays and Jews. This is bewildering to most Europeans. It is much less bewildering to Poles. They have experience with just this kind of shameless—and absurdist—mendacity. After all, they remember the Stalinist regime promising to protect Jews from the anti-Semitism of the anti-communists, while conducting an anti-Semitic campaign of its own. And they remember March 1968, when the communist regime justified its suppression of demonstrators against censorship by accusing protestors of engaging in a Nazi-Zionist conspiracy against Poland. T...

From a Polish post on the situation in the Ukraine , an explanation on why there are so many Russian speakers in Crimea: Stalin deportował większość Tatarów Krymskich, dokonując w ten sposób, czystki narodowościowej o cechach ludobójstwa. Następnie, osiedlał na Krymie głównie rosyjskich komunistów, tak jak Car swoich, tych najbardziej zasłużonych – potrzebujących ciepłego klimatu i wygód życia w po carskich kurortach. ZSRR, podarowała Krym Ukrainie (za Chruszczowa), po śmierci Stalina, nieoficjalnie w zamian za ludobójstwo – jakiego się dopuściły władze komunistyczne na narodzie Ukraińskim (okres wielkiego głodu), a oficjalnie z wielkiej przyjaźni a tak naprawdę, dla konsolidacji obu narodów w nowy twór państwowy, którą to przyjaźń, na naszych oczach, teraz Rosja szybko marnotrawi. Now the translation using Google Translate. Unfortunately, my Polish is not good enough for me to translate this properly myself. Stalin deported the majority of Crimean Tatars , making in this way,...