Thread: WORLD BRACES FOR WAR: Canada send Jetfighters to Poland to Bolster NATO Forces

Over 1000 US, NATO Troops Begin Military Exercises In Ukraine

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2014 - 07:59 Russia could care less whether Ukraine signs meaningless accession agreements with Europe (as it just did) because at the end of the day, Ukraine needs Russia's gas (if only for the next 4-6 years until Hunter Biden develops Ukraine's shale deposits and the Qatar gas pipeline finally crosses Syria). Russia, however, is very angry when NATO gets ever closer to its borders, which it just did when earlier today, more than 1,000 troops from 15 NATO and non-NATO countries, including the US of course, are taking part in a military exercise in Ukraine.

Meanwhile In Ukraine, The Parliament Is Being Stormed, Again - Live Webcast

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2014 11:22 -0400

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the popular anger aimed at Ukraine's president Porohsneko following his "Bohnering" on Ukraine's demands for a free trade agreement with Europe, we said the new president's days are likely numbered. Less than 24 hours later, this has started to play out, and as the live feeds below show, the Kiev parliament is being stormed by what appears to be discontent from the right wing "Right Sector" political group, despite today's ratification of the meaningless EU pact, whose purpose was to offset popular anger at the delay of the trade agreeement. Moments ago from Bloomberg:

• UKRAINE PROTESTERS ATTEMPT TO ENTER PARLIAMENT BUILDING: UNIAN

Below is a live feed of what may soon be the second political coup in Ukraine in under 1 year.



Live view below

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

Some stills:







http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...n-live-webcast

Over 1000 US, NATO Troops Begin Military Exercises In Ukraine

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/16/2014 07:59 -0400

Russia could care less whether Ukraine signs meaningless accession agreements with Europe (as it just did) because at the end of the day, Ukraine needs Russia's gas (if only for the next 4-6 years until Hunter Biden develops Ukraine's shale deposits and the Qatar gas pipeline finally crosses Syria). Russia, however, is very angry when NATO gets ever closer to its borders, which it just did when earlier today, more than 1,000 troops from 15 NATO and non-NATO countries, including the US of course, are taking part in a military exercise in Ukraine.
The good news: The “Rapid Trident” exercise is happening near Lviv on the Polish-Ukrainian border, around 1,000 miles from the conflict in east Ukraine.

The bad news: 1,000 miles will hardly be considered enough by the Kremlin which will see this latest incursion by NATO ever closer to its border as another direct threat and a hint of what will happen if Ukraine is allowed to progress on its path of demanding entry into the military alliance.

From EuroNews:

Ukrainian army colonel, Oleksandr Syvak, said: “This year’s military exercise will concentrate on the particular aspects of the undeclared or “hybrid” war, which is happening in the east of Ukraine. This will be be taken into consideration during the military drill. The Ukrainian militaries will also share their experiences gained during the anti-terrorist operation”

Moscow has previously condemned what it calls NATO’s expansion in eastern Europe close to Russia’s borders.

In August, Ukraine’s prime minister said he would ask parliament to put the country on a path towards NATO membership.

At the weekend, the Ukrainian Defence Minister admitted NATO countries had begun arming his nation in the fight against the rebels – something NATO members had previously denied.

Euronews correspondent Mykhaylo Dubyak in Ukraine says: “In the Rapid Trident exercises, NATO and Ukrainian troops will train in how to react to an ambush and convoy operations, amongst other things. It will raise the combat capability of the Ukrainian army and may be used in operations in Donbas.”

Well, at least nobody is even hiding any more that NATO is both implicitly and explicitly involved in the Ukraine war, which has now surpassed simple proxy status and is in effect one between Russia and the West, quite directly.

And now we await as the Kremlin reveals yet another, massive "surprise" military drill just off the Ukraine border to make it quite clear how all this will end unless the warmongering puppetmasters operating behind the scenes are put in their place.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...rcises-ukraine

A Simple Primer On "War Propaganda" From An Unexpected Source

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/15/2014 19:41 -0400

Stop us when this becomes familiar:

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out.

Source: Chapter 6, "War Propaganda" of Adolf Hilter's 1926 "Mein Kampf"



h/t @George_Chen


http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...xpected-source

This Russian Trend Is Not Europe's Friend

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/17/2014 09:12 -0400

The cold war is on, literally, because it will determine who will survive Europe's upcoming cold winter - a Europe with decreasing Russian gas supplies, or Russia now officially starved of Western sources of funding. The "Plan Bs" - Europe has record gas inventories in storage giving it hope it can last out an entire winter without any incremental Russian gas, while Russia is increasingly reliant and hoping on China-based sources of funding. While it remains to be seen just how Russian corporations will react to the recently imposed credit starvation, the chart below shows the steps Russia is now taking ahead of the European winter. Clearly, the trend in Russian gas supplies into Europe's core distribution hub, Slovakia, is not Europe's friend.
Of course, Gazprom had a politically acceptable excuse for the trend: "technical reasons."And then this:

• CEO MILLER SAYS GAZPROM SUPPLYING GAS TO EUROPE ACCORDING TO CONTRACTS, COULD NOT SATISFY ADDITIONAL DEMAND FOR NOW

We assume that not even the clueless Eurocrats in Brussels will fall for that one.
In the meantime, keep an eye on the trend: if and when the blue bar hits zero, Europe's coldest war will have officially started.



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...europes-friend

More Than Just Gas: Is This Natural Resource The Reason For The Ukraine Civil War?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/18/2014 11:25 -0400

Earlier today, we got a definitive confirmation that when Obama was talking about "costs" when jawboning on the ongoing Ukraine civil war, he envisioned not only Germany, and thus Europe, both of which are teetering on the edge of a triple-dip recession due to Russian sanctions, but Ukraine itself. The reason: the Ukraine economy appears to have ground to a halt following an overnight report that the war-torn country's industrial output plummeted 21.4% Y/Y in August, above the 18% estimate, and some 12.7% on a monthly basis. As the chart below shows, this was the biggest drop in industrial production since the global crisis of 2009 and followed a 12% fall year-on-year in July.



As the FT further added, according to an EBRD forecast earlier today, the Ukrainian economy will contract 9% this year, a far greater contraction than assumed in the IMF's bailout (odd how that always happens). Accordingly, this "makes sustainability of Kiev's government debts much more doubtful, and has sparked concerns that the country will eventually be forced to default and restructure."
As skepticism grows that Ukraine will be the next Greece, only without the backstop safety net of the EUR currency, bondholders are starting to get skeptical, and overnight the yield on Ukraine bonds due April 2023 slid to 10.61%, the highest in 4 months on rising fears of a default.



And while the collapse, in either the economy or the bonds, were not surprising and were predicted here and many other places, what did seem out of place was the following observation by Reuters:

The statistics office said the main industries of Ukraine's Donetsk region, one of the areas where the war is most intense, had suffered, with coal extraction down almost 60 percent and steel production down by 30 percent.

In other words, while the most important commodity for Europe is gas, whose supply Russia largely controls on the margin, for Ukraine the one commodity, located deep within the perimeter of the raging civil war, and which it desperately needs to regain access to to stop its economic collapse, is the following (courtesy of Stratfor):



Which begs the question: are the massive stores of coal in the Donetsk region the main reason why Russia continues to support a civil war in just that region, a war which with every passing day means the Ukraine bankruptcy, and inevitable regime change, is also one day closer?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-0...aine-civil-war