Thread: What Is Happening In Ukraine Is Far More Important Than Most People Realize

Additional Marines sent to guard U.S. Embassy in Ukraine
Feb. 25, 2014 - 06:00AM | 0Comments

Anti-government protestors wait in front of a parliamentary building in Kiev on Feb. 25. A contingent of Marine security guards has deployed to the Ukrainian capital to shore up security at the U.S. Embassy. (BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)

By Gina Harkins
Staff writer

Members of the Marine Corps’ new Security Augmentation Unit have been dispatched to shore up security at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, as the country is on the brink of a meltdown following weeks of violent unrest after a growing protests over agreements made between the former president and Russian leaders.
Marine security guards based in Quantico, Va., have deployed to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, according to a State Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official would not provide the number of Marines requested by the department, but NBC News reported that nine have deployed.
There’s no indication that any additional U.S. military forces in the region have been tapped to ready for any further action, according to the State Department official.
Ukraine’s acting government issued a warrant Monday for the arrest of former President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled last week after signing a deal with opposition leaders to end months of violent clashes between protesters and police. Yanukovych is accused of killing 82 people, mainly protesters, during one of the bloodiest weeks in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history.
The members of the Marine Security Augmentation Unit — or MSAU — will assist the existing detachment of Marines guarding the embassy, according to the official. The unit was created as part of the service’s response to boost diplomatic security capabilities following the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
The MSAU is made up of specially trained Marine security guards. The unit dispatches squad-size teams wherever and whenever a need for reinforcement arises, and can respond directly to calls from the ambassador, chief of mission or regional security officer at an embassy that’s in trouble.
The unit has been tapped to boost security at diplomatic posts at least a dozen times since it was stood up last year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/arti...mbassy-Ukraine

Russia May Attempt to Annex Crimea

Proposed legislation, troop movements all point towards a push for reunification

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
February 28, 2014

Russian lawmakers are proposing two bills that would simplify both the annexation of new territories into the Russian Federation and the process of granting Russian citizenship to Ukrainians, signaling that Moscow may attempt to absorb Crimea, Ukraine’s peninsula which has very strong ties to Russia.



The Russian battle cruiser Pyotr Velikiy sitting at dock. Credit: Digitaldarkroomcreator / Wiki

The bills were introduced in the Russian parliament today as Moscow confirmed previous reports that Russian troops and armored vehicles were already in Crimea, the population of which is nearly 60% ethnic Russian and is very pro-Russia as a whole.

The lawmakers said that the annexation bill stems from Russia’s 1997 agreement with Ukraine to take necessary steps to prevent violence against citizens due to national, ethnic or religious affiliations.

In regards to the confirmed Russian troops in Crimea, the Russian foreign ministry said that they were there to “protect the Black Sea Fleet’s positions.”



In addition, unidentified armed men, dressed in military gear but without any visible insignia, seized two airports in Crimea last night, prompting news outlets to speculate that they were also Russian troops.

Russia has around 26,000 troops stationed on their naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, which is of extreme strategic importance to Moscow.

And considering the strong ties that Ukraine’s semi-autonomous peninsula has with Russia, it isn’t a stretch to suggest that Russia would be willing to wage war over Crimea.

“If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war,” an unidentified Russian official told the Financial Times. “They will lose Crimea first [because] we will go in and protect [it], just as we did in Georgia [in 2008].”

Russian President Vladimir Putin already ordered combat readiness drills involving 150,000 troops in western Russia near the Ukrainian border as well as around-the-clock fighter jet patrols on combat alert.

Yesterday, over 50 gunmen stormed government buildings in Crimea and rose Russian flags and a banner stating that “Crimea is Russia.”

And on Monday, officials in Sevastopol even installed a Russian citizen as mayor in response to the pro-EU, western-backed coup in Kiev nearly 900 kilometers away.

“Sevastopol’s city council handed power to Aleksei Chaliy, a Russian citizen, during an extraordinary session on Monday evening while more than a thousand protesters gathered around city hall chanting ’Russia, Russia, Russia,’ and ’A Russian mayor for a Russian city,’” Howard Amos reported for the Guardian.

The Kremlin has also steadfastly refused to recognize the pro-EU interim government in Kiev and sent fighter jets to escort the plane carrying embattled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych into Russia, who declared today that he is still the president of Ukraine.

Given these latest developments, including Russia’s recent military build-up, it is highly unlikely that Moscow will give up Crimea without a fight.

This article was posted: Friday, February 28, 2014 at 1:33 pm

http://www.infowars.com/russia-may-a...-annex-crimea/

US-Backed Neo-Nazi Party Given Key Roles in Ukrainian Government

Extremist group rewarded with power weeks after meeting with McCain & Nuland

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
February 28, 2014

Confirmation that a US-backed neo-nazi party has been handed key positions within the newly formed Ukrainian government illustrates the fact that the Euromaidan uprising was a contrived coup d’etat and has very little to do with freedom and democracy.Back in December, around the same time that top U.S. diplomat Victoria Nuland announced that the United States had invested $5 billion dollars to help Ukrainians achieve a new form of government, Senator John McCain met with Svoboda Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok, sharing the stage with him at an event during which McCain gave the United States’ blessing for the opposition revolt.

US Senator John McCain meets with Svoboda Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok and newly installed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

As recently as three weeks ago, Nuland met with both Tyahnybok and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who is now Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister. In a leaked phone conversation, Nuland was caught red-handed scheming to install Yatsenyuk in the government before President Viktor Yanukovych had even fled Kiev.The fact that both Tyahnybok and Yatsenyuk have been handed the reigns of power following the ouster of President Yanukovych just weeks after Nuland afforded them Washington’s seal of approval clearly reveals the United States’ central role in the overthrow of a democratically elected government.Yatsenyuk’s history as a banker makes him the perfect candidate to assume the role of technocrat in selling Ukraine into IMF debt slavery. However, the Svoboda Party’s rise to prominence is even more chilling given the organization’s clear links to extremist groups and anti-Semitism.

Top U.S. diplomat Victoria Nuland meets with Tyahnybok and Yatsenyuk weeks before they were handed power under Ukraine’s new US-backed interim government.

Despite Svoboda’s neo-nazi connections, the party has been handed three key positions in the newly formed government.“These posts include the deputy prime minister and the heads of the agriculture and environmental ministries. In addition to these positions, a Svoboda lawmaker was appointed the new prosecutor general in the interim government,” reports the Daily Caller.In backing Svoboda’s role in the coup, the United States, just as it backed extremists in Syria, is throwing its weight behind one of the most notorious political parties in Europe.Supporters of the party were pictured during the recent uprising in Ukraine wearing “wolfsangel” armbands, the same logo used by Hitler’s Waffen SS and numerous neo-nazi factions worldwide.

US-backed Svoboda supporters pictured during recent uprising wearing SS-style armbands.

While party officials have repeatedly made brazenly anti-Semitic statements over recent years, perhaps the most shocking insight into the group’s ideology is the fact that one if its top members, Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn, founded a think tank named the Joseph Goebbels Political Research Centre as an homage to the Nazi propaganda minister.“According to Per Anders Rudling, a leading academic expert on European neo-fascism, the self-described “socialist nationalist” Mykhalchyshyn is the main link between Svoboda’s official wing and neo-Nazi militias like Right Sector,” writes Salon’s Max Blumenthal.The party itself denies that it is xenophobic or anti-Semitic, part of a re-branding effort designed to increase its legitimacy which included ditching a Swastika-style symbol that was once the organization’s main motif.However, despite the clear documented ties that bind Svoboda to neo-nazi extremists, some quarters of the US media have attempted to downplay their role in the Ukrainian uprising, with Time Magazine ludicrously suggesting that, “Nowhere in Ukraine has the uprising involved neo-Nazi groups.” One would suspect that if Tea Party supporters started wearing SS armbands, Time’s take on the issue would be somewhat different.Svoboda’s integral involvement in the Ukrainian uprising and their reward of several key positions within the post-coup government underscores once again how the United States is willing to back some of the most repulsive and dangerous organizations on the planet, so long as they are on board with the long term goal of US hegemony and geopolitical domination.

Sieg heil? US-backed Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

This article was posted: Friday, February 28, 2014 at 10:50 am
Tags: foreign affairs

http://www.infowars.com/us-backed-ne...an-government/

Alex Jones

US-Backed Neo-Nazi Party Given Key Roles in Ukrainian Government

Paul Joseph Watson | Extremist group rewarded with power weeks after meeting with McCain & Nuland.

http://www.infowars.com/us-backed-ne...an-government/

Ukraine’s Nationalists Complain About Russia While Violating UN Charter On Minorities - Russians, Jews, and Muslims all at risk under rule of militant and xenophobic nationalists.

http://www.infowars.com/ukraines-nat...on-minorities/

Russian Air Force Trains to Attack “Enemy” Forces

Paul Joseph Watson | Tension builds as Ukraine accuses Russia of “military invasion.”

http://www.infowars.com/russian-air-...-enemy-forces/

OBAMA’S RED LINE JUST CROSSED BY RUSSIA – NOW WHAT YOU SNIVELING WEASEL?

24 comments
Posted on 27th February 2014 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues
civil war, Fourth Turning, Obama, Putin, Red Line, Russia, Ukraine

Obama warned the elected government of the Ukraine to back off on defending itself against revolutionaries in the streets. Russia begs to differ with Nobel Peace Prize winning Obama. The red line has been crossed this morning. Your move Mr. Obama. I predict another speech and then he’ll play some basketball in the White House gym, put out a press release about the tremendous success of Obamacare, and do an interview with a liberal shrew on MSNBC about another executive order to force all businesses to raise the minimum wage to $10.12 per hour. He did a study and the the extra 2 cents will save the world and create 1 million new jobs.

Does this Fourth Turning seem to be calming down or heating up?





Pro-Russian Gunmen Seize Ukraine Crimean Parliament; Russia Puts Jets On High Alert; Hryvnia In Record Plunge

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/27/2014 07:01 -0500

All those clips we showed in the past few days of Russian forces amassing in the Crimean (such as this one)? Well, turns out they were all predictive of what has just happened in the Crimean region parliament at Simferopol, where around 120 pro-Russian Gunmen occupied the parliament building and raised the Russian flag. The scene was the site of Wednesday’s scuffles between Tatar groups and pro-Russian supporters. As Euronews reports, local Tatar leader Refat Chubarov posted that the buildings have been occupied by men in uniforms bearing “no recognisable insignia.” Kyiv says it would regard any movements by Russian military in Crimea outside Moscow’s Black Sea Base in Sevastopol as an act of aggression. Following the fall of President Viktor Yanukovych divisions in Ukraine have come to the fore. All this happens as Russian troops in the area are building up and at the same time as Russia put fighter jets on combat alert, according to Interfax.

The Russian flag flies atop the parliament building:





Euronews clarifies that the 120 men that seized Crimea parliament “have enough weapons to defend [the buildings] for a month” according an MP quoted by Interfax agency. Former Crimean Prime Minister and UDAR MP Serhiy Kunitsyn said to the agency that he spent all the night in contact with the armed group, “These professionally trained people are armed. They brought weapons – automatic weapons, grenade launchers, and machine guns,” he said, while speaking from the Ukraine parliament on Thursday.

According to Bloomberg, the group is allowing deputies to enter the legislature in the city of Simferopol for a possible vote on the status of Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet, the Center of Journalist Research said. Ukraine prosecutors began a terrorism probe. .
“Provocateurs are on the march,” Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on his Facebook Inc. page as police cordoned off the block around parliament. “It’s time for cool heads, the consolidation of healthy forces and precise actions.”
At the same time Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s acting envoy in Kiev for immediate consultations.
“I am appealing to the military leadership of the Russian Black Sea fleet,” said Olexander Turchinov, acting president since the removal of Viktor Yanukovich last week. “Any military movements, the more so if they are with weapons, beyond the boundaries of this territory (the base) will be seen by us as military aggression

Reports Reuters:

There were mixed signals from Moscow, which put fighter jets along its western borders on combat alert, but earlier said it would take part in discussions on an International Monetary Fund (IMF) financial package for Ukraine. Ukraine has said it needs $35 billion over the next two years to stave off bankruptcy. The fear of military escalation prompted expressions of concern from the West, with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen urging Russia not to do anything that would “escalate tension or create misunderstanding”.

Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the seizure of government buildings in the Crimea a “very dangerous game”. “This is a drastic step, and I’m warning those who did this and those who allowed them to do this, because this is how regional conflicts begin,” he told a news conference.

It was not immediately known who was occupying the buildings in the regional capital Simferopol and they issued no demands, but witnesses said they spoke Russian and appeared to be ethnic Russian separatists.

Interfax news agency quoted a witness as saying there were about 60 people inside and they had many weapons. It said no one had been hurt when the buildings were seized in the early hours by Russian speakers in uniforms that did not carry identification markings.

“We were building barricades in the night to protect parliament. Then this young Russian guy came up with a pistol … we all lay down, some more ran up, there was some shooting and around 50 went in through the window,” Leonid Khazanov, an ethnic Russian, told Reuters. “They’re still there … Then the police came, they seemed scared. I asked them (the armed men) what they wanted, and they said ‘To make our own decisions, not to have Kiev telling us what to do’,” said Khazanov.

About 100 police were gathered in front of the parliament building, and a similar number of people carrying Russian flags later marched up to the building chanting “Russia, Russia” and holding a sign calling for a Crimean referendum. One of them, Alexei, 30, said: “We have our own constitution, Crimea is autonomous. The government in Kiev are fascists, and what they’re doing is illegal … We need to show our support for the guys inside (parliament). Power should be ours.”a

As a reminder, so far Putin has been silent on his views about the sovereignty of the Crimean region which is host to the critical Russian Sevastopol naval base. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ignored calls by some ethnic Russians in Crimea to reclaim the territory handed to then Soviet Ukraine by Soviet Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. The United States says any Russian military action would be a grave mistake. But Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Moscow would defend the rights of its compatriots and react without compromise to any violation of those rights.

Russian Lenta, citing the Crimean information agency, reports that the Crimean deputees have begun a referendum on the status of the Crimean autonomy, which is not quite a secession. Yet.

Elsewhere, Ukraine’s deposed president, who as we reported first some time ago had fled to Russia, reappeared, as expected in Russia, and claimed legitimacy to his post saying the Ukraine’s “mob” actions were illegal . From Reuters:

Ukraine’s Viktor Yanukovich said on Thursday he was still the legitimate president of his country and that people in its southeastern and southern regions would never accept the “lawlessness” brought by leaders chosen by a mob. Russian news agencies quoted a statement by Yanukovich as saying he had asked Moscow to guarantee his personal safety.

The statement could not be independently verified and it was not clear where Yanukovich was, although some media groups have suggested he is in Moscow after fleeing Ukraine, where he was toppled by opposition forces at the weekend.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said he had no information and could not comment on the statement.

“I, Viktor Fedorovich Yanukovich appeal to the people of Ukraine. As before I still consider myself to be the lawful head of the Ukrainian state, chosen freely by the will of the Ukrainian people,” he was quoted as saying.

“Now it is becoming clear that the people in southeastern Ukraine and in Crimea do not accept the power vacuum and complete lawlessness in the country, when the heads of ministries are appointed by the mob.”

“On the streets of many cities of our country there is an orgy of extremism,” he said, adding that he and his closest aides had been threatened physically.

“I have to ask the Russian authorities to provide me with personal safety from the actions of extremists.”

Russian television showed what it said was a copy of the statement.

Interfax news agency quoted a source in the authorities as saying Moscow would ensure Yanukovich’s safety on the Russian territory.

“In connection with the appeal by president Yanukovich for his personal security to be guaranteed, I report that the request has been granted on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the source was quoted as saying.

And just to make sure tensions reach a fever pitch, Interfax reported a few hours ago that Russian fighter jets along the Western Border were put on high alert:

The crews of fighter jets deployed in Russia’s Western Military Districts have been placed on high alert as part of surprise combat drills ordered by Russian President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, the Defense Ministry said.

“Our fighter jets are constantly patrolling the airspace over border districts,” the ministry said in a press release, seen by Interfax-AVN on Thursday. “As soon as they were put on high alert, aviation units of the Western Military District redeployed to their operative air fields,” it said.

At the moment, “the district’s bombers are tackling combat training tasks targeting an imaginary adversary at aviation training ranges,” the ministry said.

Not surprisingly, the Ukraine economy, already in critical condition, is shutting down and the Hryvnia is imploding: Ukraine’s currency weakened 10.3 percent to 11.2 per dollar at 12:21 p.m. in Kiev, the lowest level since it was introduced in 1996, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The central bank imposed capital controls this month to stem its decline.


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