As Russia Controls 51 Ukraine Ships And Moves More Tanks To The Borders, Obama Denoun

As Russia Controls 51 Ukraine Ships And Moves More Tanks To The Borders, Obama Denounces "Brute Force"

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/26/2014 18:31 -0400

President Obama denounced Russia's "brute force" in Ukraine during a speech in Brussels today, but it seems from the images and clips below that Russia cares little for words and is more about strategic actions for now. Russia now, reportedly,controls 51 Ukraine Navy ships and while Merkel is talking tough, she is careful not to be too aggressive in her call for escalation. Talking of escalation, Russia tanks were being moved en masse across the nation to various borders.

Russian Forces Control 51 Ukraine Navy Ships in Crimea: Embassy

Ukraine retains 10 ships in Crimea, Ukrainian Embassy in Russia says in e-mailed newsletter.

But social media is flooded today with fresh pictures, videos, and reports of Russian tanks and troops on the move towards the Ukrainian border.

As InterprterMag notes,

After the annexation of Crimea, however, there was a military deescalation. Sources told us that the Russian troops were in position, but were no longer on the move in large numbers, and were not yet massed in large enough numbers that an invasion would be possible. Earlier this week, however, NATO began to once again raise the alarm that Russian forces were gathering to potentially invade Ukraine, or even move on to Moldova. Today, there are reports that Russian troops are indeed on the move near Ukraine’s borders.

...

There is another key difference. Much of the equipment spotted on the move today are not just troop transports and APCs. What we are seeing is reports of main battle tanks, support equipment, and other heavy weaponry. If Russia was not ready to invade two weeks ago, could these reinforcements be enough for an invasion?

Russian Tanks near the Ukrainian border

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71TwvJAJTI

And MPCs on the roads

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Duz8OeHXI

Furthermore, on the bypass road near Belgorod, more than 25 Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters have been spotted

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau...ukraine1_0.png

Julia Karmo of Sky News Broadcasting has geolocated this video, which was taken yesterday in Novozybkov, in the Bryansk region of Russia. Karmo notes that the trains are on tracks that lead to towards Belarus or towards Ukraine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-zUMBqqgTc

and Somova, north-northeast from Voronezh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YhUdomSpQc

But the good news is that Gazprom...

• *NAFTOGAZ UKRAINY SAYS GAS DEBT TO GAZPROM IS $1.7B: KOBOLYEV

might finally get paid

• *UKRAINE-IMF ANNOUNCEMENT 'MOST LIKELY' TOMORROW, LAPPO SAYS

And while Merkel is talking tough

• *MERKEL SAYS RUSSIA RISKS 'TOUGH RESPONSE' IF CRISIS ESCALATES

She is also backing away...

• *MERKEL SAYS SHE HOPES TO AVOID ESCALATION OF SANCTIONS

Leaving Obama to do the talking...

President Obama offered a sustained and forceful rejoinder against Russia on Wednesday, denouncing the “brute force” he said it has used to intimidate neighbors like Ukraine and vowing that the United States “will never waver” in standing up for its NATO allies against aggression by Moscow.

And after all that, this is happening...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjrqzH_CQAAVVSl.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...9w_normal.jpegEuromaidan <acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym></acronym></acronym> @EuromaidanPR
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#Ukraine, #Poland & #Lithuania creating a joint military brigade 4 peacekeeping purposes http://news.liga.net/articles/politics/1053979-mininato_zachem_ukraine_polshe_i_litve_obshchaya_v oennaya_brigada.htm … | <acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking"><acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym></acronym></acronym>
5:07 PM - 26 Mar 2014

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BjrYXs4CMAEJHqy.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images...YD_normal.jpegWeAreUkraine @WeAreUkraine
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Captured UA tanks in #Crimea moved north from Simferopol. Surely, to "protect" Russians&Ukrainians on mainland.
3:47 PM - 26 Mar 2014

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...nounces-brute-

Dear Ukrainians, Your Gas Bill Goes Up By 50% On May 1, Have A Nice Day

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/defau.../picture-5.jpg Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/26/2014 10:47 -0400

We assume this is not what President Obama meant when he said "costs"...

• *UKRAINE TO RAISE GAS PRICES FOR HOUSEHOLDS 50% FROM MAY 1
• *UKRAINE TO RAISE GAS PRICE FOR HEATING UTILITIES 40% FROM JULY

As we warned previously, "the honeymoon is over" and it seems, from today's address, President Obama is about to mandate who and where the free market for natgas delivers it supply.

Of course, this is not about to get better anytime soon:

• *NAFTOGAZ UKRAINY SAYS GAS DEBT TO GAZPROM IS $1.7B: KOBOLYEV

But President Obama is disappointed in the free market.

“We’ve already licensed, authorized the export of as much natural gas each day as Europe uses each day; but it’s going into the open market; it’s not targeted directly,” President Obama says.

“It’s going through private companies who get these licenses and they make decisions on the world market about where that energy is going to be sold,” Obama says at news conference in Brussels

Time for another executive order? We suspect a 50% gas price hike may just be another tipping point...(as we noted before)
What is certain, is that the struggling population, most of whom never wanted the recent political overhaul and were quite happy with life as it was, will suddenly demand a return to the living standards under the old, if "horrible" regime, and demand an even quicker overhaul of the current administration.
Something Putin knows all too well.

Why does he know it? Because current events are a carbon copy of what happened in 2007 that led to the infamous 2008 Ukrainian political crisis.

What happened in 2007? This:

Ukraine agreed to pay close to $180 for every thousand cubic meters of natural gas it gets next year from Russia, Russia's state-run gas monopoly said, marking a nearly 40% increase over current prices.

The deal, which comes after months of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, is part of what Russia describes as an effort to stop giving energy supplies to former Soviet republics at cut-rate prices.

That effort escalated into a full-blown dispute two years ago, when Russia cut supplies to Ukraine. The dispute affected some European countries, raising concerns about Russia's reliability as Europe's main energy supplier.

OAO Gazprom said Ukraine agreed in a deal signed by Ukrainian Energy Minister Yury Boiko to pay $179.50 for every thousand cubic meters it buys from Russia next year. Gazprom said transit prices would be set at $1.70, the price for gas shipping across Russia.

Ukraine currently pays $130 for every thousand cubic meters of gas from Russia.

In October, Russia urged Ukraine to make good on what it said was a $1.3 billion debt for gas shipments, a demand described by some Ukrainian officials as an effort to influence Ukrainian politics after September's parliamentary elections.

The deal comes a week after Gazprom said it would pay as much as 50% more next year for natural gas from Turkmenistan. Russia controls nearly all gas exports from the Central Asian nation.

Funny how history not only rhymes, but sometimes repeats itself. Verbatim.


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...-have-nice-day

Former Blackwater Mercenaries Hired as Thought Police in Eastern Ukraine

Hired to suppress protest mood and neutralize leaders and activists

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 26, 2014

http://static.infowars.com/bindnfoco.../blackheli.jpg Blackwater helicopter over a bust of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Iraq. The mercenary group was implicated in the 2007 shooting in Baghdad’s Nisour Square that killed 17 unarmed civilians, including women and children. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

ITAR-TASS, Russia’s state-owned news agency, claims the junta in Kyiv has hired a Blackwater spin-off to act as political police force in the eastern part of the country.
The Voice of Russia reported on Tuesday:
Ukrainian authorities believe that the Security Service is not able to suppress the protest mood and neutralize the leaders and activists of the pro-Russian movement in the eastern regions. In particular, the source said, the acting president Alexander Turchinov shares this opinion. “Therefore it was decided to attract foreign mercenaries, who will serve as political police and state security protection, ” said the representative of the Security Service.
On March 10, Infowars.com reported the presence of corporate mercenaries in Donetsk, an industrial city in eastern Ukraine on the Kalmius River. A video posted on Youtube showed men with weapons and body armor on a street where a pro-Russian demonstration was held. A Russian diplomat told Interfax 300 employees of Blackwater, now known as Academi, had arrived in the pro-Russian city.
The mercenaries in Donetsk “are soldiers of fortune proficient in combat operations,” the diplomatic source told Interfax, according to the Daily Mail. “Most of them had operated under private contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan and other states. Most of them come from the United States.”
Greystone Limited was acquired by Academi, aka Blackwater, and currently operates as astandalone security service. The company is registered in Barbados and employs “personnel from the best militaries throughout the world.”
It remains to be seen if mercenaries can stem the political tide in Ukraine’s industrial heartland.Thousands of people have protested in Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, and Odessa in opposition to the coup government in Kyiv. The results of an improvised referendum held in Lugansk, a city of around 500,000 in eastern Ukraine, showed more than 100,000 people favored joining Russia.
On March 16, a referendum held on the status of Crimea resulted in the peninsula joining the Russian Federation. Despite the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections, an election monitoring organization, concluding the referendum was conducted freely and fairly, the United States, the European Union and Canada declared the result to be illegitimate. Officials reported that over 96% of voters supported the choice to join Russia with a turnout of over 80%.

This article was posted: Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 9:36 am

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http://www.infowars.com/former-blackwater-mercenaries-hired-as-political-police-in-eastern-ukraine/
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