East Ukraine Under Attack – 5 Defenders Killed by Army

7 Comments

1. 

   Oui on April 24, 2014 at 11:09 am

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   I understand the western junta government in Kiev has employed a PR company for their reports about pressing issues in the divide between East and West. Western media makes use of these press statements, often without any double checking or doing due diligence of investigative reporting.

   Ukraine claims photos prove Russian special forces in eastern Ukraine

   KIEV, Ukraine (CBS News) April 21, 2014 – Ukraine’s government has handed photographs to allies in Europe and the U.S. to bolster its case that Russian special forces are operating in the eastern parts of the country amid Ukraine’s escalating crisis — something Russian President Vladimir Putin has flatly denied.

    « click for more info
   A photo distributed by Ukraine's government to the OSCE purportedly shows Russian
   special forces deployed in eastern Ukraine. [Source: Kiev Western Junta]

   In an April 16 letter to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from Ukraine’s ambassador, the new administration in Kiev compiled several photos showing men identified as Russian special forces soldiers taken in the cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. Both the U.S. and Russia are members of the OSCE.

   All the men are pictured wearing the now-familiar green fatigues and military tactical gear which has become familiar in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian insurgents have seized local government buildings in as many as 10 different towns in recent weeks.

   During a live televised question-and-answer session Thursday, President Putin flatly rejected reports that Russian special forces were taking part in the unrest in the east alongside pro-Russian Ukrainians.

   OSCE: Latest from the Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine

   ○ State Department Cites Photo ‘Evidence’ Purportedly Showing Russian Troops In Ukraine

   New York Times admits the pictures really don’t prove much

   “After starting a propaganda stampede – with a lead story about photos of Russian troops purportedly in Ukraine – the New York Times admits the pictures really don’t prove much, and one photo was labeled as snapped in Russia when it was really taken in Ukraine, writes Robert Parry.”

   NYT Retracts Russian-Photo Scoop

   (Apr. 23, 2014) – Two days after the New York Times led its editions with a one-sided article about photos supposedly proving that Russian special forces were behind the popular uprisings in eastern Ukraine, the Times published what you might call a modified, limited retraction.

   Buried deep inside the Wednesday editions (page 9 in my paper), the article by Michael R. Gordon and Andrew E. Kramer – two of the three authors from the earlier story– has this curious beginning: “A collection of photographs that Ukraine says shows the presence of Russian forces in the eastern part of the country, and which the United States cited as evidence of Russian involvement, has come under scrutiny.”

   …
   And, one of the photos featured by the Times in its Monday lead article, purportedly showing some of the armed men in Russia, was actually shot in the Ukrainian town of Slovyansk, according to Maxim Dondyuk, the freelance photographer who took the picture and posted it on his Instagram account.

   Another NYT-Michael Gordon Special?

   (Apr. 21, 2014) – There is now a pattern to New York Times “investigative” stories that seek to pin the blame on some nefarious foreign enemy, as in the 2002 article on Iraq buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges; the 2013 “vector analysis” tracing sarin-laden rockets to a Syrian military base; and now a photographic analysis proving that Russian soldiers are behind unrest in eastern Ukraine.

   All these stories draw hard conclusions from very murky evidence while ignoring or brushing aside alternative explanations. They also pile up supportive acclamations for their conclusions from self-interested sources while treating any doubters as rubes. And, these three articles all involved reporter Michael R. Gordon.

   The infamous aluminum tube story of Sept. 8, 2002, which Gordon co-wrote with Judith Miller, relied on U.S. intelligence sources and Iraqi defectors to frighten Americans with images of “mushroom clouds” if they didn’t support President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. The timing played perfectly into the administration’s advertising “rollout” for the Iraq War.

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     Marie2 on April 24, 2014 at 2:58 pm

     I understand the western junta government in Kiev has employed a PR company for their reports …

     No shortage of US neo-con and neo-liberal PR folks available for hire.  

2. 

   Don Durito on April 24, 2014 at 12:37 pm

   Noticed another live blog via Guardian:

   The Interpreter

   Not sure about the source, but thought I’d mention it just in case it turned out to be worth a look.

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     Oui on April 24, 2014 at 2:22 pm

     Fully exposed in my earlier diary – Ukraine NGO Chesno (Honestly) partner of USAID  on March 10, 2014.

     More goodies to follow, I will update here @BooMan and @MofA.

     Found out shill-reporting for Russian oligarchs at Bad Orange and US websites using MP Hennadii Moskal as source. See The Interpreter and project for Modern Russia, registered by Pavel Petrovich Ivlev, ex Yukos lawyer.

     The Interpreter is underwritten by two registered non-profit organizations: the London-based Herzen Foundation [??] and the New York-based Institute of Modern Russia, of which the journal is a special project.

     Both organizations are committed to the advancement of democratic values and institutions in the Russian Federation.

     For More Information:
     http://www.interpretermag.com
     Twitter: @Interpreter_Mag

     ○ USAID projects for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance

     See my comment about Moskal – MP from Fatherland party linked to Chesno.

     Exiled oligarchs are pro-West, funding activities and writers of anti-Russian and anti-Putin articles. Thank you. I personally appreciate honesty from the eXiled journalist Mark Ames. More to follow …

     • 

       Don Durito on April 24, 2014 at 2:45 pm

       Okay. Good to know. Thanks!

   • 

     Oui on April 24, 2014 at 2:23 pm

     .
     Just like Libya, Syria and now Ukraine … new regime in Washington DC, same old neocon policy! Links added are mine – Oui.

     How Dick Cheney Got His Cold War On   by Mark Ames

     (the eXile) May 19, 2006 – One of the oddest reactions to Vice President Cheney’s now-infamous speech in Lithuania, the one which many Russians believe officially heralded the start of a new Cold War, came from the mainstream American media. What was so strange? They actually did their job.

     Instead of simply parroting the Administration’s latest pieties, something the press has been doing for as long as I’ve been here, they actually allowed themselves to smell a rat. And what a putrid, bloated, rotting-in-a-flooded-Manila-gutter rat odor it was! You’d have to have been literally brain dead not to have smelled it.

     The rat of course was the insane hypocrisy of a foaming fascist like Dick Cheney suddenly getting all Amnesty International righteous over a bad regime that does bad things. The fact that Cheney flew straight to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan right after squirting over Russia’s human rights problems turned the rank hypocrisy into a bad black comedy routine, barely fit for even a hack like Tom Green. Kazakhstan is a country where opposition politicians and media aren’t merely jailed, exiled or cowed as they are in Russia, but are shot and dumped in forests, Miller’s Crossing-style, on behalf of a despot whose family runs the country like its own fiefdom.

     Azerbaijan is even worse, if such a thing can be imagined… not only because the Azeri authorities brutally suppress pro-democracy protests, but because it is the first and only post-Soviet state to officially create a despotic family dynasty. After former leader Heydar Aliyev died in office, he passed power (along with control over the country’s vast oil wealth) to his son, Ilham Aliyev, in 2003, a dynastic transfer that was quickly “legimitized” by rigged elections that the Bush administration chose to see as a democracy cup 1/100 full rather than 99/100 empty.

     Incredibly enough, a few members of the mainstream American press were shocked into action by Cheney’s crackpipe hypocrisy. On May 9th, the normally anti-Putin New York Times published an editorial titled, “Cheney as Pot, Putin as Kettle,” tepidly calling into question Cheney’s bizarre meta-irony routine: “spearing Russia while flirting with its even more undemocratic neighbors confuses the message, especially when done by a vice president identified with oil interests.” Tepid, but at least a rare acknowledgement of Cheney’s end-of-the-crack-baggie logic.

     The hypocrisy was so bizarre and brazen that even bland newswire agency AP got in on the outting bandwagon, with a May 8th article, “Analysis: Cheney promotes democratic reform everywhere but oil-rich Kazakhstan.” You’d almost think that the American media actually questions its leaders’ motives!

     Even the pro-Cheney Wall Street Journal published an Op-Ed by Andrew Kuchins, although in a clever ruse he tried to diffuse it by pointing out how obvious it was: “Alert the media: We’ve identified double standards in U.S. foreign policy!” he sneered, before moving on to the “real” issues raised. As if obvious evil is somehow less pernicious than the kind of evil you have to look for.

     Cheney’s speech raised a lot of questions and a lot of debate, but no one asked one of the most obvious questions of all: Why did Cheney choose to flaunt his hypocrisy in everyone’s faces? Why not try faking it, the way most Western leaders operate when they mix righteous words with rapacious policies? Why didn’t Cheney choose to put a bit of space in between his speech attacking Russia’s record on democracy and his visits to the despotic Central Asian states?

     Or put another way, what if it wasn’t a mistake. What if the blatant, insane hypocrisy WAS the real message…and always has been all along?

      

     h/t poemless, his diary here @BooMan and @ET.

3. 

   Oui on April 29, 2014 at 4:13 pm

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   Ukraine’s leading presidential candidate visited Israel in secret, asked for public support

   (Haaretz) Apr. 22, 2014 – The leading candidate for the Ukrainian presidency, former Foreign Minister Petro Poroshenko, visited Israel over the weekend and met with President Shimon Peres and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Poroshenko told Lieberman he expected Israel to clearly declare support for maintaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine, which Israel has refrained from doing since the beginning of the crisis.

   Poroshenko arrived in Israel secretly for a very low-profile, private visit of a few days. He did not make his arrival public, and both the President’s Office and the Israeli Foreign Ministry kept quiet about the visit. It was not until after his return to Ukraine on Monday night that Poroshenko reported on his visit.

   Since the start of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine, Israel has maintained its neutrality. Jerusalem did not join the United States and the European Union in expressing support for Ukraine, and did not condemn the Russian invasion. The fact that Israel is “sitting on the fence,” along with the fact that Israel’s United Nations representatives did not report for the vote in the General Assembly on the crisis in Ukraine, aroused a great deal of anger in the White House. Senior U.S. officials expressed astonishment at Israel’s conduct and said that they were “surprised” at its abstention from the vote at the UN.

   Lieberman interrogated on issue by Susan Rice

   The issue also occupied most of the meeting between Lieberman and U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice at the White House about two weeks ago. Lieberman explained to Rice that Israel was staying neutral out of fear of a Russian reaction that would harm Israel’s security interests regarding Syria’s chemical weapons or Iran’s nuclear program.

   Lieberman’s office confirmed that he had met with Pororshenko but declined to give details, saying the meeting was private. Lieberman said on Tuesday morning, in an interview with Voice of Russia Radio, that both Russia and Ukraine are friends of Israel and that Jerusalem is willing to help the two states to “normalize” their relations.

   Israel wants to help Russia and Ukraine re-establish good relations – Israel’s FM