Ukraine – Page 10

Su-25s downed by Russian missile is nonsense says Russian Defense Ministry

Fantasies of Kiev’s authorities, trying to divert public attention from the Malaysian Boeing 777 crash, were “worthy of being included in a Red Book of military aphorisms”, a Russian Defense Ministry official said on Thursday, commenting on the statement of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council’s spokesman Andrei Lysenko that two Ukrainian Su-25 planes, which fell near the village of Dmitrovka in the Donetsk region, were shot down by a missile fired from Russia’s territory.

“According to Lysenko, it turns out that the planes were not only shot down from Russia’s territory, which is nonsense, but even by one missile fired from an anti-aircraft rocket system of a powerful operation type earlier unknown to science.”

“With such progress, the next sensation from the military professional, the famous colonel Lysenko will be development of the theme of hitting of two planes by one antiaircraft missile, one in the morning and the second in the evening,” the Russian Defense Ministry official said.

Ukranian tape fingering rebels a fake

A tape posted by Ukrainian security services in the Internet and allegedly recording a talk between self-defense fighters about the destruction of a Malaysian airliner is a fake, experts said on Sunday.

A group of experts studied the tape and came to the conclusion that it was made up of numerous unrelated recordings.

The tape’s second fragment consists of three pieces but was presented as a single audio recording. However, a spectral and time analysis has showed that the dialog was cut into pieces and then assembled. Short pauses in the tape are very indicative: the audio file has preserved time marks which show that the dialog was assembled from various episodes, the expert said.

The tape’s linguistic analysis also shows that those who made the faked tape clearly didn’t have enough material and time, the expert told Itar-Tass.

That is why, speech fragments hardly correlate with each other in terms of their sense and the spectral picture of audio materials also differs, the expert said.

But the most indicative moment is that the audio tape clearly shows that it was created almost a day before the airliner crash, the expert said.

The intercepted phone conversations released by Ukraine’s security service of pro-Russian rebels discussing how they shot down Malaysian airliner MH17 are “genuine”, the US embassy in Kiev had said on Sunday.

The recordings that Ukraine’s SBU security agency released on Thursday of what it claimed were phone talks involving rebels and a Russian military intelligence officer admitting that they had hit the passenger jet after mistaking it for a military aircraft.

The recordings were presented as key evidence to back up Kiev’s claims that rebels downed the jet while the separatists accused Ukraine’s army of being responsible, AFP reported.

“Audio data provided to the press by the Ukrainian security service was evaluated by Intelligence Community analysts who confirmed these were authentic conversations between known separatist leaders,” the US embassy in Ukraine said in a statement.

In one of the recordings a rebel commander nicknamed the “Major” says rebels shot down the plane and tells a disbelieving comrade that the jet is “100 percent a civilian aircraft.”

International experts have still not arrived at MH17 crash scene

The international community has been accusing the anti-Kiev forces on the ground of mishandling bodies and evidence at the crash site.

A day earlier a spokesperson from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Aleksandr Borodai, accused the international community of lacking enthusiasm to investigate the plane crash.

The Dutch foreign minister said his country was “furious” to hear bodies were being “dragged around.” Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott described the crash site in the territory controlled by anti-Kiev forces as “absolutely chaotic.”

Borodai explained all of the actions undertaken at the site of the crash were dictated by urgent humanitarian need to take care of the decomposing bodies.

The bodies of 196 MH17 crash victims have been placed inside refrigerated train carriages, according to the leadership of DPR, with international experts still not at the crash scene.

The DPR once again said it was waiting for the international experts to come and said it guaranteed their security, but wanted the Kiev authorities to agree to a ceasefire in turn, according to statement by DPR’s deputy PM, Andrey Purgin.

“We declare that we guarantee security of international experts at the site of the tragedy if Kiev agrees to a ceasefire,” the statement reads as cited by RIA Novosti. “We call on Kiev to immediately sign this agreement with DPR at least for the period of time while experts are going to work at the site of the plane crash.”

Meanwhile, foreign journalists got to a station where a train with the dead bodies stood. Their tweets from the site made many internet users wonder why journalists were able to make it to the crash scene, but experts could not.

The carriages at the Torez station were reportedly examined by the OSCE observers, who said there were 196 bodies inside.

That has not been confirmed by Alexander Hug, deputy chief monitor of the OSCE special monitoring mission to Ukraine, who said his team had actually seen body bags in the train carriages but were unable to count them, Reuters reports.

Representatives of the special mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Ukraine do have access to the crash site of a Malaysian Boeing-777 in eastern Ukraine, a representative of the mission, Michael Bochurkiv, told Itar-Tass on Sunday.

Earlier, the U.S. Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed concern over the alleged failure of OSCE observers to reach the crash site.

“This is an element of information war against us,” Borodai said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio station, noting that “Fourteen OSCE observers have been working at the airliner’s crash site already for three days. In fact, on the first day they faced some restrictions in their movement. But we explained this by a very simple fact: we are responsible for their security.

“The air disaster area is very big and exceeds more than ten square metres,” Borodai added, noting that “When they entered the zone, which is precisely in sight of Ukrainian machine guns, patrolmen stopped them [OSCE observers]. They proposed to them [OSCE observers] not to go there for one simple reason that if they had come under Ukrainian machine gun fire, responsibility would be shouldered on us.”

Source: RT/Itar-Tass

What Happened to the Malaysian Airliner?

If we are honest and have the strength to face reality, we will realize that the Soviet Union did not collapse. It simply moved, along with Mao and Pol Pot, to Washington and London.

By Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s propaganda machine is in such high gear that we are in danger of losing the facts that we do have.

One fact is that the separatists do not have the expensive Buk anti-aircraft missile system or the trained personnel to operate it.

Another fact is that the separatists have no incentive to shoot down an airliner and neither does Russia. Anyone can tell the difference between low-flying attack aircraft and an airliner at 33,000 feet.

The Ukrainians do have Buk anti-aircraft missile systems, and a Buk battery was operational in the region and deployed at a site from which it could have fired a missile at the airliner.

Just as the separatists and the Russian government have no incentive to shoot down an airliner, neither does the Ukrainian government nor, one would think, even the crazed extreme Ukrainian nationalists who have formed militias to take the fight against the separatists that the Ukrainian army is not keen to undertake–unless there was a plan to frame Russia.

One Russian general familiar with the weapon system offered his opinion that it was a mistake made by the Ukrainian military untrained in the weapon’s use. The general said that although Ukraine has a few of the weapons, Ukrainians have had no training in their use in the 23 years since Ukraine separated from Russia. The general thinks it was an accident due to incompetence.

This explanation makes a certain amount of sense and far more sense than Washington’s propaganda. The problem with the general’s explanation is that it does not explain why the Buk anti-aircraft missile system was deployed near or in a separatist territory. The separatists have no aircraft. It seems odd for Ukraine to have an expensive missile system in an area in which it is of no military use and where the position could be overrun and captured by separatists.

As Washington, Kiev, and the presstitute media are committed to the propaganda that Putin did it, we are not going to get any reliable information from the US media. We will have to figure it out for ourselves.

One way to begin is to ask: Why was the missile system where it was? Why risk an expensive missile system by deploying it in a conflict environment in which it is of no use? Incompetence is one answer, and another is that the missile system did have an intended use.

What intended use? News reports and circumstantial evidence provide two answers. One is that the ultra-nationalist extremists intended to bring down Putin’s presidential airliner and confused the Malaysian airliner with the Russian airliner.

The Interfax news agency citing anonymous sources, apparently air traffic controllers, reported that the Malaysian airliner and Putin’s airliner were traveling almost the identical route within a few minutes of one another. Interfax quotes its source: “I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft at 15:44 Moscow time. The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost identical.”

I have not seen an official Russian denial, but according to news reports, the Russian government in response to the Interfax news report said that Putin’s presidential plane no longer flies the Ukraine route since the outbreak of hostilities.

Before we take the denial at face value, we need to be aware that the implication that Ukraine attempted to assassinate the president of Russia implies war, which Russia wants to avoid. It also implies Washington’s complicity as it is highly unlikely that Washington’s puppet in Kiev would risk such a dangerous act without Washington’s backing. The Russian government, being intelligent and rational, would obviously deny reports of an attempted assassination of the Russian president by Washington and its Kiev puppet. Otherwise, Russia has to do something about it, and that means war.

The second explanation is that the extremists who operate outside the official Ukrainian military, hatched a plot to down an airliner in order to cast the blame on Russia. If such a plot occurred, it likely originated with the CIA or some operative arm of Washington and was intended to force the EU to cease resisting Washington’s sanctions against Russia and to break off Europe’s valuable economic relationships with Russia. Washington is frustrated that its sanctions are unilateral, unsupported by its NATO puppets or any other countries in the world except possibly the lap-dog British PM.

There is considerable circumstantial evidence in support of this second explanation. There is the youtube video which purports to be a conversation between a Russian general and separatists who are discussing having mistakenly brought down a civilian airliner. According to reports, expert examination of the code in the video reveal that it was made the day before the airliner was hit.

Another problem with the video is that whereas we could say that separatists conceivably could confuse an airliner at 33,000 feet with a military attack plane, the Russian military would not. The only conclusion is that by involving the Russian military, the video doubly discredited itself.

The circumstantial evidence easiest for non-technical people to understand is the on cue news programs organized to put the blame on Russia prior to the knowledge of any facts.

In my previous article I reported on the BBC news report which I heard and which was obviously primed to place all blame on Russia. The program ended with a BBC correspondent breathlessly reporting that he has just seen the youtube video and that the video is the smoking gun that proved Russia did it. There is no longer any doubt, he said. Somehow the information got on a video and on youtube before it reached the Ukrainian government or Washington.

The evidence that Putin did it is a video made prior to the attack on the airliner. The entire BBC report aired over National Public Radio was orchestrated for the sole purpose of establishing prior to any evidence that Russia was responsible.

Indeed the entire Western media spoke as one: Russia did it. And the presstitutes are still speaking the same way.

Possibly, this uniform opinion merely reflects the pavlovian training of the Western media to automatically line up with Washington. No media source wants to be subject to criticism for being unamerican or to find itself isolated by majority opinion, which carries the day, and earn black marks for being wrong. As a former journalist for, and contributor to, America’s most important news publications, I know how this works.

On the other hand, if we discount the pavlovian conditioning, the only conclusion is that the entire news cycle pertaining to the downing of the Malaysian airliner is orchestrated in order to lay the blame on Putin.

Romesh Ratnesar, deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, provides convincing evidence for orchestration in his own remarks of July 17. Ratnesar’s opinion title is: “The Malaysia Airlines Shootdown Spells Disaster for Putin.” Ratnesar does not mean that Putin is being framed-up. He means that prior to Putin having the Malaysian airliner shot down, “to the vast majority of Americans, Russia’s meddling in Ukraine has largely seemed of peripheral importance to U.S. interests. That calculus has changed. . . . It may take months, even years, but Putin’s recklessness is bound to catch up to him. When it does, the downing of MH 17 may be seen as the beginning of his undoing.”

As a former Wall Street Journal editor, anyone who handed me a piece of shit like Ratnesar published would have been fired. Look at the insinuations when there is no evidence to support them. Look at the lie that Washington’s coup is “Russia’s meddling in Ukraine.” What we are witnessing is the total corruption of Western journalism by Washington’s imperial agenda. Journalists have to get on board with the lies or get run over.

Look around for still honest journalists. Who are they? Glenn Greenwald, who is under constant attack by his fellow journalists, all of whom are whores. Who else can you think of? Julian Assange, locked away in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London on Washington’s orders. The British puppet government won’t permit free transit to Assange to take up his asylum in Ecuador. The last country that did this was the Soviet Union, which required its Hungarian puppet to keep Cardinal Mindszenty interred in the US Embassy in Budapest for 15 years from 1956 until 1971. Mindszenty was granted political asylum by the United States, but Hungary, on Soviet orders, would not honor his asylum, just as Washington’s British puppet, on Washington’s orders, will not honor Assange’s asylum.

If we are honest and have the strength to face reality, we will realize that the Soviet Union did not collapse. It simply moved, along with Mao and Pol Pot, to Washington and London.

The flaw in Putin’s diplomacy is that Putin’s diplomacy relies on good will and on truth prevailing. However, the West has no good will, and Washington is not interested in truth prevailing but in Washington prevailing. What Putin confronts is not reasonable “partners,” but a propaganda ministry aimed at him.

I understand Putin’s strategy, which contrasts Russian reasonableness with Washington’s threats, but it is a risky bet. Europe has long been a part of Washington, and there are no Europeans in power who have the vision needed to separate Europe from Washington. Moreover, European leaders are paid large sums of money to serve Washington. One year out of office and Tony Blair was worth $50 million dollars.

After the disasters that Europeans have experienced, it is unlikely that European leaders think of anything other than a comfortable existence for themselves. That existence is best obtained by serving Washington. As the successful extortion of Greece by banks proves, European people are powerless.

Here is the official statement of the Russian Defense Ministry.

Washington’s propaganda assault against Russia is a double tragedy, because it has diverted attention from Israel’s latest atrocity against the Palestinians locked up in the Gaza Ghetto. Israel claims that its air attack and invasion of Gaza is merely Israel’s attempt to find and close the alleged tunnels through which Palestinian terrorists pour into Israel inflicting carnage. Of course there are no tunnels and no terrorist carnage in Israel.

One might think that at least one journalist somewhere in the American media would ask why bombing hospitals and civilian housing closes underground tunnels into Israel. But that is too much to ask of the whores that comprise the US media.

Expect even less from the US Congress. Both the House and Senate have passed resolutions supporting Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. Two Republicans–the despicable Lindsey Graham and the disappointing Rand Paul–and two democrats–Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin–sponsored the Senate resolution backing Israel’s premeditated murder of Palestinian women and children. The resolution passed the “exceptional and indispensable” people’s Senate unanimously.

As a reward for its policy of genocide, the Obama regime is immediately transferring $429 million of US taxpayers’ money to Israel to pay for the slaughter.

Contrast the US government’s support for Israel’s war crimes with the propaganda onslaught against Russia based on lies. We are living all over again “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” “Iranian nukes.”

Washington has lied for so long that it can’t do anything else.

President Reagan appointed Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and he was confirmed in office by the U.S. Senate. From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. After leaving the Treasury, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Commerce. He has written written many articles and several books.

Sanctions and Airliners

By Paul Craig Roberts.

Photos are now available of the wreckage from the Malaysian airliner crash. Notice the extensive debris and the large section of fuselage. You are observing remains of an airliner that was hit with a missile at 33,000 feet and fell to impact land. Remember, no such debris was present at the site where the airliner is alleged to have hit the Pentagon and at the alleged crash site in Pennsylvania of the 4th 9/11 hijacked airliner. Give that some thought. No doubt but that the 9/11 Commission will conclude that only Malaysian airliners leave debris.

The unilateral US sanctions announced by Obama on July 16 blocking Russian weapons and energy companies access to US bank loans demonstrate Washington’s impotence. The rest of the world, including America’s two largest business organizations, turned their backs on Obama. The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers placed ads in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post protesting US sanctions. NAM said that the manufacturer’s association is “disappointed that the US is extending sanctions in increasingly unilateral ways that will undermine US commercial engagement.” Bloomberg reported that “meeting in Brussels, leaders of the European Union refused to match the US measures.”

In attempting to isolate Russia, the White House Fool has isolated Washington.

The sanctions will have no effect on the Russian companies. The Russian companies can get more bank loans than they need from China, or from France and Germany.

The three traits that define Washington–arrogance, hubris, and corruption–make Washington a slow learner. Arrogant people wallowing in hubris are incapable of learning. When they encounter resistance they respond with bribes, threats, and coercion. Diplomacy requires learning ability, but Washington left diplomacy years ago and relies on force.

Consequently, with its sanctions Washington is undermining its own power and influence. Sanctions are encouraging countries to withdraw from the dollar payments system that is the foundation of US power. Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said that Washington’s sanctions are driving companies and countries out of the dollar payments system. The huge sum extorted from the French bank, BNP Paribas, for doing business with countries disapproved by Washington makes clear the increased legal risks that arise from using the dollar when Washington makes the rules.

Washington’s attack on the French bank was the occasion for many to remember the numerous past sanctions and to contemplate future sanctions, such as those that loom for Germany’s Commerzbank. A movement to diversify the currencies used in international trade is inevitable. Noyer pointed out that trade between Europe and China does not need to use the dollar and can be fully paid in Euros or Renminbi.

The phenomenon of US rules expanding to all US dollar-denominated transactions around the world is accelerating the movement away from the dollar payment system. Some countries have already arranged bilateral agreements with trading partners to make their trade payments in their own currencies. The BRICS are establishing new payment methods independently of the dollar and are setting up their own International Monetary Fund to finance trade imbalances.

The US dollar’s exchange value depends on its role in the international payments system. As this role shrivels, so will demand for dollars and the dollar’s exchange value. Inflation will enter the US economy via import prices, and already hard-pressed Americans will experience more compression of their living standards.

In the 21st century distrust has been growing of Washington. Washington’s lies, such as Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” and “Iranian nukes” are recognized as lies by other governments. The lies were used by Washington to destroy countries and to threaten others with destruction, keeping the world in constant turmoil. Washington delivers no benefit that offsets the turmoil that Washington inflicts on everyone else. Washington’s friendship requires complying with Washington’s demands, and governments are concluding that Washington’s friendship is not worth the high cost.

The NSA spy scandal and Washington’s refusal to apologize and desist has deepened the distrust of Washington by its own allies. World polls show that other countries regard the US as the greatest threat to peace. The American people themselves have no confidence in their government. Polls show that a large majority of Americans believe that politicians, the presstitute media, and private interest groups such as Wall Street and the military/security complex rig the system to serve themselves at the expense of the American people.

Washington’s empire is beginning to crack, a circumstances that will bring desperate action from Washington. Today (July 17) I heard a BBC news report on National Public Radio about a Malaysian airliner being shot down in Ukraine. The reporting might have been honest, but it sounded like a frame-up of Russia and the Ukrainian “separatists.” As the BBC solicited more biased opinions, the broadcast ended with a report from social media that separatists had brought down the airliner with a Russian weapon system.

No one on the program wondered what the separatists had to gain by shooting down an airliner. Instead, the discussion was whether once Russian responsibility was established, would this force the EU to endorse tougher US sanctions against Russia. The BBC was following Washington’s script and heading the story where Washington wanted it to go.

The appearance of a Washington operation is present. All the warmongers were ready on cue. US Vice President Joe Biden declared that the airliner was “blown out of the sky.” It was “not an accident.” Why would a person without an agenda be so declarative prior to having any information? Clearly, Biden was not implying that it was Kiev that blew the airliner out of the sky. Biden was at work in advance of the evidence blaming Russia. Indeed, the way Washington operates, it will pile on blame until it needs no evidence.

Senator John McCain jumped on the supposition that there were US citizens aboard to call for punitive actions against Russia before the passenger list and the cause of the airliner’s fate are known.

The “investigation” is being conducted by Washington’s puppet regime in Kiev. I think we already know what the conclusion will be.

The probability is high that we are going to have more fabricated evidence, such as the fabricated evidence presented by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN “proving” the existence of the non-existent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction.” Washington has succeeded with so many lies, deceptions and crimes that it believes that it can always succeed again.

At this time as I write, we have no reliable information about the airliner, but the Roman question always pertains: “Who benefits?” There is no conceivable motive for separatists to shoot down an airliner, but Washington did have a motive–to frame-up Russia–and possibly a second motive. Among the reports or rumors there is one that says Putin’s presidential plane flew a similar route to that of the Malaysian airliner within 37 minutes of one another. This report has led to speculation that Washington decided to rid itself of Putin and mistook the Malaysian airliner for Putin’s jet. RT reports that the two airplanes are similar in appearance. http://rt.com/news/173672-malaysia-plane-crash-putin/

Before you say Washington is too sophisticated to mistake one airliner for another, keep in mind that when Washington shot down an Iranian airliner over Iranian air space, the US Navy claimed that it thought the 290 civilians that it murdered were in an Iranian fighter jet, a F-14 Tomcat fighter, a US-made fighter that was a mainstay of the US Navy. If the US Navy cannot tell its own workhorse fighter aircraft from an Iranian airliner, clearly the US can confuse two airliners that the RT report shows appear very similar.

During the entire BBC frame-up of Russia, no one mentioned the Iranian passenger airliner that the US “blew out of the sky.” No one put sanctions on Washington.

Whatever the outcome of the Malaysian airliner incident, it demonstrates a danger in Putin’s soft policy toward Washington’s ongoing hard intervention in Ukraine. Putin’s decision to respond with diplomacy instead of with military means to Washington’s provocations in Ukraine gave Putin a winning hand, as evidenced by the opposition to Obama’s sanctions by the EU and US business interests. However, by not bringing a quick forceable end to the Washington-sponsored conflict in Ukraine, Putin has left the door open for the devious machinations in which Washington specializes.

If Putin had accepted the requests of the former Russian territories in eastern and southern Ukraine to rejoin Mother Russia, the Ukrainian imbroglio would have come to an end months ago, and Russia would not be running risks of being framed-up.

Putin did not get the full benefit of refusing to send troops into the former Russian territories, because Washington’s official position is that Russian troops are operating in Ukraine. When facts do not support Washington’s agenda, Washington disposes of the facts. The US media blames Putin as the perpetrator of violence in Ukraine. It is Washington’s accusation, not any known facts, that is the basis for the sanctions.

As there is no act too dastardly for Washington to undertake, Putin and Russia could become victims of a devious machination.

Russia seems hypnotized by the West and motivated to be included as a part of the West. This desire for acceptance plays into Washington’s hands. Russia does not need the West, but Europe needs Russia. One option for Russia is to tend to Russian interests and wait for Europe to come courting.

The Russian government should not forget that Washington’s attitude toward Russia is formed by the Wolfowitz Doctrine which states:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Black box will show who redirected MH17

As reported earlier by RIA, the Russian Defense Ministry says it had intercepted the activity of a Ukrainian radar system on the day the Malaysian plane went down in eastern Ukraine, the ministry’s press service said Friday.

“Throughout the day on July 17, Russian means of radar surveillance intercepted the operation of the Buk-M1 battery’s Kupol radar station located in the region of the populated area of Styla [30 kilometers south of Donetsk],” the press service said in a statement.

“The technical capabilities of the Buk-M1 allow the exchange of data on air targets between batteries of one battalion. Thus, the launch of rockets could have also occurred from any of the batteries deployed in the populated area of Avdeevka [8 kilometers north of Donetsk] or from Gruzsko-Zoryanskoe [25 kilometers east of Donetsk],” the ministry said.

Then we go to Itar-Tass which reported that civil flights in the air space of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions cannot be performed as the relevant communications infrastructure was destroyed there, a source from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) told ITAR-TASS on Thursday.

“Kiev operates all air traffic control services and it is unclear how this plane (the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border Thursday night. — ITAR-TASS) could appear in the area,” he said.

“During the combat actions in Donetsk’s airport the communication tower, a part of the united air control service was blown up,” he said adding that “planes cannot fly there.”

On July 8, Ukraine’s State Aviation Service banned all flights over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions aiming to provide “adequate safety and security for all flights of civil aircraft in favor of state aviation.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council took a decision to close the airspace over the area of the so-called anti-terror operation to commercial flights three days ago, Rosaviatsia reported.

It is not clear why flight MH-17 diverted from its usual trajectory to fly over what was effectively restricted airspace.

Qantas hasn’t used the route for a few months, said Andrew McGinnes, a spokesman for the Australian carrier, while Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific said it has been detouring for “quite some time.” Korean Air Lines Co. and Asiana Airlines Inc. said in statements they have been avoiding the area since March 3.

Questions about the flight path, and where the instructions to change it came from, will be answered when the contents of the flight black box are released.

Airlines avoid Ukraine airspace after MH17 Boeing crashes

A number of airlines around the world have announced they are going to reroute flights to avoid Ukrainian airspace. The list of companies includes Russian Aeroflot, UTair and Transaero, German Lufthansa and Turkish airlines.

“After the incident we have decided to avoid Ukrainian airspace,” a Turkish Airlines spokesman said.

American airlines have also agreed to avoid airspace near the Russian-Ukrainian border, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Thursday. The US Federal Aviation Administration issued a Notice to Airman (NOTAM)“prohibiting US flight operations until further notice” over eastern Ukraine.

The restricted area includes the “entire Simferopol and Dnepropetrovsk flight information regions (FIRs).” No scheduled US airlines are currently flying routes through this airspace, the watchdog added.

Air France and Virgin have decided to temporarily re-route flights to bypass Ukraine.Italy’s Alitalia has also announced it is diverting flights away from eastern Ukraine joining the growing list of companies re-routing flights.

The UK department of transport has ordered “flights already airborne” to bypass south-eastern regions of the country.

Pilots around the world are being advised to plan routes that avoid the area, the statement said. China’s aviation administration has ordered all Chinese airliners to avoid eastern Ukrainian airspace where flight MH17 has crashed, CCTV reports.

Dubai-based Emirates Airline has turned around its Kiev-bound Flight EK171 which has returned to it airport of departure in United Arab Emirates.

“The safety of our customers and crew is paramount, and we will continue to monitor the situation carefully,” the company said in a statement.

In addition Belorussian Belavia, Eva Air, Korean Air Lines, Asiana Airlines, and Swedish SCA, have all announced rerouting their flight patterns to avoid Ukraine.

Flight MH17 crashed in Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpar, and was carrying 298 people.

The flight was due to enter Russian airspace when contact was lost.

The EU air traffic control regulator – Eurocontrol – has closed the airspace over eastern Ukraine and has already started working on routes that would bypass the country.

“Since the crash, the Ukrainian authorities have informed EUROCONTROL of the closure of routes from the ground to unlimited in Eastern Ukraine (Dnipropetrovsk Flight Information Region). All flight plans that are filed using these routes are now being rejected by EUROCONTROL. The routes will remain closed until further notice,” it said in a statement.

Both Ukrainian government and anti-Kiev fighters have denied shooting the plane down.

A source in Russia’s federal air traffic agency Rosaviatsia has said that three days ago Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council closed the airspace over eastern Ukraine because of the so-called “anti-terrorist operation” that Kiev conducts in the region.

Earlier a representative of Donetsk People’s Republic said that civil aviation planes could not fly over Donetsk and Lugansk regions. He added that all necessary traffic control and navigation equipment was damaged.

“Dispatching support of all passenger flights is being conducted from Kiev. How this plane could be there – is not clear,” a representative of Donetsk People’s Republic said.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has issued a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) prohibiting US Airlines from flying in the area in Ukraine in April.

‘Only professional military could take down Malaysian Boeing’

If the plane was taken down then it was done by a professional military force

A Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing-777 with over 290 people on board has crashed in Ukraine, close to the border with Russia. Both Kiev and the opposition deny involvement in the incident.

Reports in the Western media hurried to blame the self-defense forces of the People’s Republic of Donetsk for bringing the plane down.

The claims were denied by the representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, saying that it’s the Ukrainian military, which destroyed the aircraft.

“We simply don’t have such air defense systems. Our man-portable air defense systems have a firing range 3,000 – 4,000 meters. The Boeing was flying at a much higher altitude,” Sergey Kavtaradze, special representative for the prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, explained.

Kavtaradze also expressed condolences to the relatives of all of those who lost their lives in the tragedy.

IHS Jane’s Defense analyst, Nick de Larrinaga, also shared the belief that the self-defense forces lack the capability to bring the Malaysian plane down.

“At normal cruising altitude a civilian passenger aircraft would be out of the range of the sort of manned portable air (defense) systems that we have seen proliferate in rebel hands in east Ukraine,” he said in a statement.

But the aircraft would be within range of Buk or other medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, he stressed.

“Both Russia and Ukraine have such SAM systems in their inventories,” the expert added.

It seems unlikely that the self-defense forces could’ve used Buk surface-to-air missile systems to down the Malaysian plane, retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, the director of the Defense and Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said.

“It takes a lot of training and a lot of coordination to fire one of these and hit something,” he told CNN. “This is not the kind of weapon a couple of guys are going to pull out of a garage and fire.”

According to Ryan, if the plane was really taken down then it was done by a professional military force.

Ukraine believes children would be better off bombed

The children’s rights ombudsman of Ukraine demanded Russia send back Ukrainian orphans who cross the border after evacuation from battle zones in the country’s east. The ombudsman accuses Russia of “kidnapping” and violation of children’s rights.

“Ukraine’s ombudsmen requests not to let orphans into Russia, probably thinking they’d be better off bombed,” tweeted Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in response.

There have been repeated reports of the Ukrainian army and national Guards shelling schools, kindergartens and orphanages over the last month.

Valeria Lutkovskaya sent an open letter to the head of Russia’s border guards, Colonel General Vladimir Kulishov, demanding the passage of orphans leaving eastern Ukrainian war zones be prohibited. She also published the letter on her Facebook page.

Lutkovskaya accused Russia of violating the rights of Ukrainian orphan children, who are being admitted to Russia “without proper paperwork.”

The directors of two orphanages refused to let children travel to Russia. They refused to prepare the proper documents.

In case children get to Russia, Lutkovskaya promised to regard the issue as “kidnapping” and would apply to international organizations to have the children returned.

At this point, there is no information on whether the children have started their journey to Russia, or if the buses transporting them have crossed the Russian border.

Ukraine’s heavy artillery shelled Donetsk all night long, the militia of the Donetsk People’s Republic said. “The cannonade continued all through the night until 8 am. The sound of explosions was coming from all parts of Donetsk,” Southeast Front spokesman Konstantin Knyrik told Interfax. “Immediate reports indicate that Grad launchers were used. Reports about casualties are being verified,” Knyrik said.

The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic announced on Twitter on Saturday, “as a result of the shelling of Maryinka, a suburb of Donetsk, an orphanage was destroyed; information about the victims will be specified”.

Source: RT

Ethnic cleansing is coming to Ukraine

The NWO only leaves death and destruction, a scorched earth, in its wake

Ethnic cleansing is coming to Ukraine.

Global chessboard enthusiast Zbigniew Brzezinski has a plan for Ukraine. In a recent speech to the Woodrow Wilson Center, excerpted by the Atlantic Council, he argues forcefully in favor of the United States providing the Ukrainian military far more weapons.

Under the guise of preventing a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has been the rallying cry of those who seek more US involvement in the region, Brzezinski believes that the US must provide Ukraine with weapons.

Russia has no such plans though.

The odds of defending against the invading Russian military being very low, Brzezinski has a different idea of how the US should arm the Kiev government.

Said the former National Security Advisor:

I feel that we should make it clear to the Ukrainians that if they are determined to resist, as they say they are and seemingly they are trying to do so (albeit not very effectively), we will provide them with anti-tank weapons, hand-held anti-tank weapons, hand-held rockets—weapons capable for use in urban short range fighting.

The US must provide urban warfare equipment to the Kiev government, he says, in order to “forestall” the impending Russian invasion.

Really? What could a huge shipment of urban warfare weapons and the advisors that go with them be used for?

Ethnic cleansing.

We already see with the resumption of Kiev’s attacks on the east, a sharp turn toward the targeting of civilian apartment blocks and non-military targets. We know from a recent United Nations report that more than 100,000 have already fled eastern Ukraine. The country’s post-coup president, Petro Poroshenko, was very clear, ending the ceasefire (that wasn’t much of a ceasefire) by stating that “We will attack and we will liberate our land!”

Does that mean liberating it from the “others” who do not accept rule by the post-coup government? Those who Kiev’s prime minister Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk has already called “subhumans“?

Urban warfare equipment and training for the Kiev military machine would, as Russian political scientist Yevgeny Minchenko points out, mean “municipal infrastructure will be destroyed, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe.” In his view, “[t]he war will continue, and people will gradually leave their homes. It will be bad for both sides, but neither one can stop now.”

Brzezinski has long advocated US domination of Ukraine to deprive Russia of any productive relationship with its neighbor. “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire,” he wrote in his 1997 book book, The Grand Chessboard.

Source: Daniel McAdams

Another CNN geography goof-up in Ukraine

CNN, already infamous for its embarrassing geography goof-ups, has mistakenly relocated the Eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk in an infographic – all the way to the Crimea peninsula.

The American network was reporting Saturday on the Kiev military forcing out the self-defense troops out of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the cities in Ukraine’s Donetsk region that used to be their strongholds for a while. In a lead-in to the report, the TV channel showed a map – where Slavyansk was moved hundreds of kilometers away from its actual location, to Crimea, a peninsula that rejoined Russia in March.

In fact, the distance between Slavyansk (in Ukrainian language – Slovyansk) and Kramatorsk is only about 16 kilometers. Both cities lie to the north of the region’s capital, Donetsk.

It is not the first time that CNN graphics staff have demonstrated a relaxed attitude to accuracy when it comes to geography.

Earlier this year, the channel reshaped the world suggesting on its map that Eastern Ukraine was somewhere in Pakistan. The error was snapped by one of eagle-eyed viewers from a TV screen and published on Twitter, soon going viral on the internet and a target for sarcastic comments.

US supports ethnic cleansing in Ukraine

Poroshenko wants to rid Ukraine of ‘parasites’

On Wednesday, July 2nd, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko resumed unlimited war against the residents of southeastern Ukraine, whom he calls “terrorists” for their wanting not to be killed by his troops. European leaders (especially Merkel of Germany, Hollande of France, and Putin of Russia) urged him not to resume his bombing campaign against the southeast, but the U.S. (specifically President Obama) supports the bombings, and that’s enough for Poroshenko; so, he did it.

As the U.S. State Department said, “he has a right to defend his country.” Reuters reports that Poroshenko gave as his reason for the resumption, “to rid Ukraine of ‘parasites’.” Adolf Hitler had given the same reason for ethnically cleansing his country.

Here are graphic images of the Obama Administration’s sponsored ethnic cleansing.

After this ethnic cleansing, maybe Ukraine can have another nationwide election, which will produce the type of outcome that the U.S. Government likes. But on 25 May 2014, we held in Ukraine an election where people voted only in the pro-American portion of Ukraine, and only leaders who were acceptable to the U.S. White House were allowed onto the ballot.

America’s “news” media are not reporting on America’s ethnic-cleansing program in Ukraine. It’s happening in the dark, as far as the American public are concerned: they don’t know about it.

Washington’s people do not call this ethnic cleansing operation what it is; they instead call it Ukraine’s “Anti Terrorist Operation,” or “ATO” for short. The people we’re massacring are “Terrorists.” What they actually are is simply the residents in the parts of Ukraine that had voted overwhelmingly for Viktor Yanukovych on 7 February 2010 to become President, the final nationwide election in Ukraine.

The United States itself are actually terrorizing them.

And the Government that Obama put in place in Kiev, which is a government by Ukrainian oligarchs whom Obama’s agent Victoria Nuland selected and placed in control, is now advertising on the television stations that those oligarchs own, advertising that the people who live in Ukraine’s southeast are destroying the country and must therefore be destroyed by patriotic Ukrainians.

The government’s Defense Minister announces publicly that concentration camps are being established in order to deal with any who don’t flee. The message to those “Terrorists” is clear: flee, or else die. The government has even announced that the military volunteers who go to the southeast to do the killing are patriots, whose reward will be that they will receive the properties of everyone they kill.

A Google-search of “Ukraine” at a typical U.S. news site yields little — and nothing at all about this slaughter that our Government is financing and put into place there.

For example, at the left-wing Huffington Post, the search produces articles about supposed “aggression” by Russia for its accepting Crimea back into the Russian Federation after all public opinion polls and a public referendum in that region, which had been Russian until 1954, showed massive public support there for rejoining Russia.

A recent Gallup poll of Crimeans confirmed that they craved to rejoin Russia and are now delighted that they did. HuffPo has only news-wire reports about Ukraine, mainly AP and Reuters, screaming things like “Ukraine Vows To Punish Rebels Who Downed Plane.”

There’s nothing about the genocide.

For example, there’s no mention that this “plane” had been carrying 49 troops to murder civilians in the southeast where a genocide is taking place to clear the land and terrify the residents to flee into Russia. It’s a classic ethnic-cleansing campaign, and Obama put it into place. Americans don’t know.

One article is a March 3rd poll, which showed “Few Americans want the United States getting involved in policing the political turmoil in Ukraine.” The presumption there was that “we” shouldn’t fix “their” problems.” Who knew that “we,” our own President, is the mastermind behind that “turmoil,” and of this actual ethnic cleansing campaign?

This made-in-America horror story, which will only grow as the years roll by, just as is already happening in Iraq.

Remember Iraq? This one will be vastly worse.

Because, if the American public doesn’t start investigating this now, then the results for all of us will be far worse, especially because this one could end in a nuclear war.

Barack Obama’s Ukrainian gambit is the most evil and worst part of his entire Presidency, and you will be shocked to learn about it, and how evil it is.

Because the American press hasn’t told you about it. But it’s not too late for you to find out.

Source: globalresearch.ca

Washington isolating itself says German analyst

Christoph R. Horstel, government consultant and publicist, based in Germany, discusses the situation in Ukraine.

On June, 20 Ukraine’s recently elected president, Petro Poroshenko, ordered a unilateral ceasefire between government-backed forces and independence supporters in the east until June, 27 to defuse the crisis in the country, promising amnesty for all independence defense forces not involved in grave crimes and willing to lay down their arms.

Pro-independence forces in the South East said they do not believe in the goodwill of the Kiev authorities, and that Poroshenko is not in control.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has pointed out that Poroshenko’s peace plan bears no mention of a nationwide dialogue.

Says Christoph R. Horstel, government Consultant and publicist, Germany:

“In fact, if you offer a peace plan, that plan should address the problems which have lead into a violation of peace. But the Poroshenko’s plan has never addressed anything, except for one point – complete obedience, subordination of all the Ukrainian people under the rule in Kiev, which is the result of the coup d’état – the second in ten years – a strange kind of election where a majority was no longer necessary, and meanwhile we had rumors that there were frauds all over the place with the presidential election and the government is still in the interim regime.

I think Poroshenko is a deeply criminal person and that is a big trouble for Ukraine. He is just walking after Washington and that’s a very bad story now.

What now? What could be the implications for Poroshenko?

And if I were a citizen of that area, I would never drop my arms, of course, because that is the only chance I have. Otherwise these people would be just an easy prey for whoever comes and tries to destroy homes or take away the men, and what else has happened in the past – all these kinds of atrocities.

Could it be that the Western media eventually stops to overlook how things really are in Ukraine?

What we have is a general line. The general line is not friendly to Russia.

But what we also have is so much information on the Internet about things contradicting the Washington policies and so much unhappiness among the European politicians with the same Washington policies, that in fact the media are now in a very awkward point. If they continue publishing the official stuff coming from Washington via the Western capitals to the big media, then they will lose the credibility with the population to such an extent, that their economic survival would be endangered even more than now.

You know, we have a reduced circulation number of major papers. The interest in the Internet versions of these papers is so weak, in fact, that they cannot sell their content. This is another problem of this big media. And that is what would aggravate very quickly, if they continue lying in the same fashion and strength that they had in the past.

You’re also saying that politicians are getting increasingly unhappy with the current situation?

Yes, a huge scandal has broken open in Poland. [The scandal erupted last weekend, when a Polish news outlet Wprost released a transcript of an excerpt from secretly recorded conversations involving Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski who was describing his country’s security relationship with the United States as “worth nothing.” ]

And that is in fact shaking Europe, because Poland was always considered to be the mainstay of the American interests, especially against Russia. And now the Foreign Minister, being married to an American national, he himself spoke out in such a brutal blunt way, that everybody is in fact shocked. And that makes waves in Facebook and all the alternative media in the Internet. People are crying “hoo” and “wow” and think that is very interesting, and they are very happy, and they are rejoicing it and things like that. So, in fact, they treat him as a hero. He is a hero, Mr. Sikorski.

In Germany we have a former member of the Foreign Committee of the German Bundestag, Mr. Gauweiler, who is an important person in the Conservative Party in southern Germany, saying that this is all going wrong regarding Russia and Ukraine and he is opposed to it. We have the former politicians speaking out in large numbers. And we know that the whole German Government is very uneasy. The economic circles are up in arms in an unprecedented way since the WW II. So, if that is not enough, I don’t know what is.

But does that imply that perhaps we are going to see a change of heart and a change of course in the West?

I think something is still missing. And I’m wondering myself what that could be. We have so terrible pictures from Ukraine. You cannot in this 21st century oppress people like we have see in the Middle Ages, that this is crazy.

In fact, if we look at the details, we see that the real terror operation by Kiev. We have heard that the professional killers trained by the CIA in Poland are used in Ukraine to kill their own people, their own brothers and sisters, so to say, in such a fashion. This is something terrible. The European people may be corrupt, there may be bad governments, but they are not stupid. And they have open eyes, they see these realities themselves, even if they push their media to publish otherwise. That is the situation. It is a complete hypocrisy phenomena we have there in politics today.

But, at the same time, if Russia actively intervenes, Russia would be there to blame.

Of course! And I’m quite sure, if that happens, if Russia takes out a big stick, that is something Washington is hoping for all the time. This is why they are going so hardcore and push Ukraine to execute these wishes. They hope that Russia would be unwise and come in with big troops, and take up the battle. And I don’t think Russia will do that.

It drives the Western politicians nuts. They get crazy over the fact that Russia is patient, very constructive, all the time talking to everybody explaining exactly what they are doing and the Western side is looking like a warmonger all the time. That cannot continue that way for a long time in the West.

And there is another aspect to that, as far as I understand, shares of leading Western companies are going down. And that is a brilliant chance for the Chinese.

Germany, yes, is doing quite well, but all the other countries in Europe are further and further down the road. These are huge inroads also on the technological advantage of the Western countries, which is diminishing day by day, because they have to simply sell their nuggets to the Chinese in such a bad situation.

So, in fact, one of the big winners keeping out of most of the trouble is China right now.

What we have is that all of these countries – Russia and China, and others – investing a lot of money into armament, and this comes only because of these Washington hegemonic terror policies.

Which means that Washington’s policy is reinforcing China, which Washington sees as its biggest adversary. Where is the logic?

There is no strategy anymore. There is no plan reaching beyond a few months. That is very bad. We have all kinds of plans, of course, of interference and scenarios by the military, and these things. But what we do not have is a real policy – policy planning, policy strategy to go ahead constructively. What Washington is doing, is isolating itself as if it was its own arch enemy.

Source: VoR

Kiev puppets want Putin killed

A Verkhovna Rada deputy who is also an ex-defense minister of Ukraine, said during a prime time talk-show that the country’s “patriots” would be justified “to kill” the very popular Russian President Vladimir Putin if he came to Kiev.

Anatoly Gritsenko made his shocking statement speaking on the popular national talk show ‘Shuster Live’.

“Putin won’t stop. He wants not only Ukraine, he wants the Baltic States and other countries,” claimed Gritsenko, who was a presidential candidate twice, in the 2010 and 2014 Ukrainian elections. Gritsenko did not elaborate on what had driven him to such a conclusion.

Calling the Russian president “a fascist,” Gritsenko went on to say that he cannot imagine Vladimir Putin coming to Ukraine to sign some kind of a deal.

“I believe there are patriots who would volunteer to kill him – and that would be the right thing to do,” Gritsenko remarked.

Source: RT