Tag: Ukraine

Italian town renames piazza ‘Martyrs of Odessa’

The renaming of a piazza in a small Italian town has caused a diplomatic incident.

The square in Ceriano Laghetto, in the northern province of Lombardy, is now called “Martyrs of Odessa” in memory of people killed during the recent upheaval in the Ukrainian city. It is named for pro-Russian separatists who died during clashes with Ukrainian government supporters in May 2014, Mayor Dante Cattaneo, of the right-wing Northern League party, tells Il Fatto Quotdiano.

More than 30 people were killed in a fire after barricading themselves into a government-run building in the city to escape the mayhem.

The renaming of the piazza – which is used as a car park – has angered Ukraine’s ambassador in Rome, Yevhen Perelygin.

In a letter to the region’s prefect, he asks for the decision to be revoked, saying the events of May 2014 “are still unclear”.

He also suggested in an interview that the decision was “manipulated by political forces who support the Russian initiative” in Ukraine, something the mayor refutes.

Mr Cattaneo appears to be defiant, despite a request from the regional authority to undo the change, and says Italy shouldn’t be allowing foreign interference in decision making. “Piazza for the Martyrs of Odessa is there and will remain,” he tweeted.

“In Ceriano there’s a democratically elected local authority. It is not Ukraine.”

Source: BBC

Sleep-deprived Merkel at centre of Ukraine peace deal

When she arrived at the Brussels summit on Thursday, German chancellor Angela Merkel’s face bore the signs of the sleepless nights she has endured in the past week in a prodigious quest for a settlement of the Ukraine crisis.

But despite the deep rings around her eyes, there was no rest in sight for Europe’s most powerful leader. Just hours after the all-night Ukraine negotiations in Minsk, she was preparing for talks with her 27 fellow EU leaders — not least the radical new Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, with whom Germany is clashing over the country’s bailout.

“I have a certain camel-like quality,” Ms Merkel, 60, once said, explaining her capacity to keep going when others would have collapsed with tiredness. She has needed every ounce of it this week covering about 20,000 kilometres on an itinerary of Berlin-Kiev-Berlin-Moscow-Munich-Berlin-Washington-Ottawa-Berlin-Minsk-Brussels.

For all the effort, the ceasefire deal struck on Thursday morning is little different from a previous one reached in Minsk last September but never implemented.

Upon arrival in Brussels, Ms Merkel was more sober than triumphant, saying: “This is a glimmer of hope. Deeds must now follow words.”

It is her political style to tackle difficult problems step by step. With the Ukraine crisis, the first aim has long been to stop the fighting — and then hope that a ceasefire can create a little breathing space.

German officials concede that full implementation of the latest Minsk agreement might be a long shot — but believe even a “frozen conflict” in which the two sides did nothing more than stop fighting, would be worth the huge diplomatic effort.

The latest initiative sprang from a letter Mr Putin sent a month ago to Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko offering peace talks. With the support of French president François Hollande, Ms Merkel decided it was worth engaging the Russian leader, especially with the fighting intensifying around the strategic town of Debaltseve and growing calls in the US for the west to arm Kiev.

The US was not invited to the peace talks. Thus Merkel’s shuttle diplomacy finally brought the Minsk meeting — and buckets of praise at home for the dogged chancellor.

“Merkel: the world chancellor” ran a headline in Bild, the tabloid.

Even Gregor Gysi, leader of the far-left Linke party and who has fought Ms Merkel for years, allowed himself to say: “If the chancellor succeeds, I will find the words to praise her.”

Host Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko did not sleep much either and later joked that his task was “to provide supplies.” He later told the media that the leaders had the finest Russian and Belarusian “eggs, cheeses and dairy products, as well as buckets of coffee,” which helped them stay up “without so much as a nap,” pointing out that no one touched a single drop of alcohol, unlike the journalists.

Source: FT

Ukraine agrees on ceasefire

An agreement has been brokered in Minsk to stop hostilities in Ukraine from Sunday. The deal was reached after marathon talks between the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, and signed by the Ukrainian rebels.

“I believe we agreed on a big deal. We agreed to a ceasefire starting at 00:00 on February 15,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told the media after the talks were finished.

“The main thing achieved is that from Saturday into Sunday there should be declared – without any conditions at all – a general ceasefire,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told journalists in a separate statement.

A compromise decision was taken over the disengagement line, which was the biggest stumbling block in the negotiation. According to the document, Kiev’s troops would pull back heavy weapons from the current frontline. The rebels would pull back from the line as it existed in September, when the previous ceasefire agreement was signed.

The security zone separating the warring parties must be at least 50km wide for artillery over 100mm caliber, 70km for regular multiple rocket launchers and 100km for heavier weapons with a longer range, such as Tochka-U ballistic missiles, the document states.

The weapons pullout must start on Sunday and be completed in no longer than 14 days. The OSCE is charged with implementing the ceasefire on the ground and will use its drone fleet and monitors to verify that both parties are sticking to the deal.

China slams US weapons to Ukraine

China is against Washington’s plans to provide Ukraine with weapons, the country’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said on Monday.

“China calls for the political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine as this meets the interests of all the sides. People in eastern Ukraine now are more in need of peace rather than weapons,” the diplomat stressed, commenting on the US plans.

Beijing welcomes and supports the active mediation efforts, which have been recently taken by the parties to ease tensions in eastern Ukraine and resolve the crisis by political means, she said.

China urges all the sides to refrain from any actions that could lead to an increase in confrontation or affect the negotiation process, the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson said.

“China will continue playing a constructive role in the political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine,” the diplomat said.

Last Sunday, the New York Times newspaper reported that the Unites States considered supplying arms to Ukrainian forces.

Source: Itar-TASS

NATO fractures on Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced that each member of the alliance must make an independent decision on the supply of weapons to the Kiev government, which continues to fight independence supporters in southeastern Ukraine, the DPA news agency reports.

Speaking at the Conference of the Social and Democratic Party in Berlin on Sunday, Stoltenberg also said that he supports the reconciliation efforts of the Normandy Quartet, which includes Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine.

Normandy format talks have not led to any significant breakthroughs in Ukraine peace efforts. Kiev forces that launched a military operation against independence supporters in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions last spring, continue to clash with local militia, which leads to heavy civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, the US Congress has recently called for the provision of lethal assistance to Kiev-led forces.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked US Congress for lethal weapon supplies during his September visit to the United States, however, Washington did not grant his request.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out any possibility of weapon supplies to Ukraine, stating that this would not help solve the crisis. Other European states, including Finland, France and Italy have also rejected the idea.

Source: Sputnik News

Ukraine: War drums beat louder

As the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, prepared to brief Barack Obama in Washington on Monday about the state of peace negotiations in Ukraine, the Atlanticists were preparing for war.

The Estonian President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, compared Western inaction against Russia with the appeasement of Adolf Hilter in 1938, when Nazi Germany was alllowed to seize parts of the former Czechoslovakia.

“We know from history that appeasement will never satisfy those that are being appeased,” he said. “Munich ’38 I think should be a lesson to all of us even today.”

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond accused Mr Putin of “acting like some mid-20th century tyrant”, while the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said he would “fear the worst” if peace talks this week failed.

The US wants to send weapons to Ukraine, but Germany and France oppose arming Kiev’s forces, saying this could lead to an escalation of the conflict.

Lord Ashdown, the former UK Liberal Democrat leader, urged the West to use “military diplomacy” however, to hide their intent.

“The right reaction to the Russian arming of the Ukrainian rebels is to make it clear we are prepared to do the same for the Ukrainian government,” he writes. “Start small, slow and unaggressively – with communications and intelligence equipment for example.”

Carl Bildt, former Swedish foreign minister, said war “between Russia and the West” was now conceivable.

Ukrainian military transport aircraft have, for the past year since the putschists overthrew the government of President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev, been flying around the world, including the United States, collecting everything from weapons and military helicopters to armored vehicles and ammunition for Ukraine’s army and neo-Nazi militia units.

The respected German daily, the Süddeutsche Zeitung featured a Russian military expert Yevgeny Buchinsky warning that if Kiev receives hard military aid, “Russia will have to intervene, and then, bluntly speaking, take Kiev. Then NATO would be in a difficult situation. Then you would have to start World War III, which no one wants.”

The Atlanticist representative in Kiev, president Poroshencko, meanwhile has promised Ukrainians US military aid: “I don’t have any doubt that the US and other partners will provide help with lethal weapons.”

EU bureaucrats have admitted – off the record – that even sanctions are ridiculous, sanctioning in fact the EU for least 15% of exports to Russia. The British have whipped up the pro-sanction lobby into a frenzy about “Russian aggression”, hoping to gain from their efforts later.

Russian president Putin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande are all due to take part in the Minsk peace summit. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia expected “important decisions” to be made at the meeting.

Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper reported today that German intelligence estimated up to 50,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed during the conflict, nearly 10 times higher than Kiev’s estimate. “The official figures are clearly too low and not credible,” a source said.

Insiders say Merkel and Hollande came to Moscow but with the purpose of having what diplomats call “a full and frank discussion” in private with Putin in the Kremlin, where they can be confident the Americans are not spying on them.

Poroshenko’s officials are insisting that the question of federalisation was not discussed during a meeting with Hollande and Merkel.

Hollande has however now come out publicly to support “autonomy” for the eastern regions, making a discussion of federalisation a virtual certainty.

Russian student Alexander Mercouris says the reason Hollande is there and appears to be taking the lead is to provide Merkel with cover.

The one thing Merkel cannot afford politically is the appearance of a Moscow-Berlin stitch-up that the hardliners in Washington, Kiev, London, Warsaw and the Baltic States will claim is a new Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to divide Europe into German and Russian spheres of influence. Whether we like it or not in Germany the shadow of Hitler still hangs heavy and exposes Berlin to endless moral blackmail.

Hollande says Ukraine should not join NATO

French President François Hollande and the German chancellor Angela Merkel are set to visit Moscow on Friday after a trip to Kiev, in order to find a peaceful solution to the escalating violence in Ukraine.

“Together with Angela Merkel we have decided to take a new initiative,” Hollande told a news conference. “We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

The two European leaders decided Wednesday night on the trip and did not consult American officials about it, AP reports citing a senior French official.

Hollande also added that he did not think it would be a good idea for Ukraine to join NATO.

He called on the international community on Thursday to fulfil its “duty” to take action against Islamist extremists in Africa, saying that France could not go it alone, France24 reported.

“There is a message that I want to send to the international community and to the biggest countries,” he told a bi-annual presidential press conference on Thursday. “Do your job. Don’t give lessons – act. Do your duty. No one else will do it in your place.”

“France cannot settle all the world’s conflicts,” he said.

The African Union has backed plans for a regional five-nation force of 7,500 troops to defeat the deadly rise of Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, and Chad has deployed its army to join the fight against the jihadists.

France is supporting the operations by carrying out reconnaissance flights over border areas of Chad and Cameroon to provide the two nations with intelligence, defence officials in Paris have said.

“We must help the Africans much more to act against terrorism,” Hollande said. “If we don’t do it, countries will be destabilised once again.”

France deployed troops to the Sahel region of Africa to fight against militant extremists after helping oust the Islamist forces that had seized much of northern Mali in 2013. The country is also taking part in US-led operations against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.

The United Nations Security Council last month called for a multinational military effort to tackle Boko Haram, expressing concern that its incursions were undermining peace and stability in Central and West Africa.

Anglo-Saxons win a losing battle

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says that in the latest mobilization, only 20% of those called up for service reported for duty. The Ukranians are not ready for the Neocon war effort, it seems.

But in the last 15 years Anglo-American foreign policy experts and think tank fellows have made compelling cases for armed conflict, called “humanitarian interventions” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and about a half dozen other defenseless nations desperately in need of drone strikes or some other form of Western aid to turn them all into failed states.

More than one million Ukrainian men of military age are now refugees in Russia. Dying in a pointless war against an enemy that doesn’t exist is not popular with many it seems, except with those same Anglo-Saxon policy experts and think tank fellows.

Since the dawn of the internet, the idea that the privileged few urges everyone else to perish for nothing is becoming seriously outdated, but the British are having none of it.

Tradition is still important in the United Kingdom. Well-placed sources tell us that sadism at Eton College is as alive and well as it was 100 years ago when innocent Afrikaner women an children died in British concentration camps.

Writing in the rabidly-leftwing Guardian, Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash has demanded more weapons for Ukraine, and more hostile, draconian measures levied against Russia. Why? Because “Saddam” Putin is a maniac.

“Russian aggression” is the BBC’s meme, devoted entirely to the “Russian problem”. The theme is drummed in relentlessly.

The idea is that Russia presents a huge a growing threat to world peace and stability. Russian bombers are threatening the ‘English’ Channel, albeit in international airspace.

The BBC’s dismal performance on “Russian aggression” reminds one of the run up to the Iraq war, when the BBC was similarly gung-ho in its depictions of Saddam Hussein as a real and present danger to us all, whose ambitions had to be countered by military force.

Britain now also boasts a “famous” sniper to ward off all evil. The Telegraph heaped romantic praise on their best assassin of the dark races recently:

A Royal Marine has been revealed as the world’s most lethal military sniper.

The Briton is understood to have recorded most of his 173 confirmed kills during tours of Afghanistan in 2006/7 and has also served in Iraq.

Most of his killings took place during a six-month tour of Afghanistan and he is said to have hit more than 90 Taliban fighters in a single day, according to The Sun.

His reported death toll puts the corporal, said to be married and from southern England, ahead of US Navy SEAL commando Chris Kyle, who had 160 confirmed kills to make him the most lethal US sniper.

However, sources told the newspaper the British marine’s figure of 173 is “conservative”, with unconfirmed killings believed to take his total even higher

And these are the folks fighting racism… and fascists daily, no less.

The current pro-Anglo-American government in Kiev boasts too many neo-Nazi extremists to ignore. Glamorising violence, racism and war, while denouncing those who are opposed to it, surely has limited appeal, but not to the English and their Neocon brethern.

Gen. Philip M. Breedlove is another one of the advocates of the move to heighten conflict. Breedlove, NATO’s American military commander, is now reportedly leading the crusade to provide lethal military assistance to Kiev to battle the anti-government forces.

Crimea belonged to Russia for over 200 years. “We can’t allow Russia to keep Crimea,” goes the favorite neocon mantra. Why not? Hardly any American can find Crimea on a map.

With Ash loudly cheering for further violence and hostilities in the world, one is reminded of Mark Twain:

As Mark Twain warned long ago:

The loud little handful–as usual–will shout for the war. The pulpit will–warily and cautiously–object–at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, ‘It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.’ Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers–as earlier–but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation–pulpit and all–will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

A quarter of a century ago the Berlin Wall came down and the West “won the Cold War”. But a quarter of a century later, it’s really hard to see what it won.

By Egon Mess

Ukraine military ‘to boost forces in the east’ as Mariupol airport falls to rebels

Kiev “sees no alternative” to the Minsk ceasefire accords, President Petro Poroshenko said. However, the Ukrainian military is building up troops in the east to conduct “an adequate response” to the militia advancement, the Defense Ministry stated.

The violence in eastern Ukraine escalated recently with the ceasefire deal penned in Minsk last year finally shattering. Ukraine last week attempted to launch a massive offensive operation against militia positions, but it ended in failure. Their opponents have since pressed forward and gained ground, advancing in the direction of the port city of Mariupol in the south of the Donetsk region.

Amid an apparent setback for the Ukrainian military, President Petro Poroshenko called for sticking to the Minsk accord.

“The Minsk agreement is a priority for us, we don’t see any alternative to it. We will not allow it to be undermined. Everything relies on it. Now we must implement it comprehensively and accurately,” the Ukrainian president said.

The ceasefire deal between Kiev and the militia forces, which was sponsored by the OSCE and Russia, was never fully implemented. It helped tone down the violence, but OSCE monitors reported regular violations committed by both sides of the conflict. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk Republics accused Kiev’s troops of launching regular attacks on residential areas of Donetsk, Lugansk and other cities.

While the tension continued, Kiev angled for switching the peace negotiation from Minsk to another format – the so-called “Normandy format” – which would exclude the rebels and include several Western nations. Attempts for talks were virtually abandoned recently, with two key meetings canceled due to failure to agree on an agenda.

As Poroshenko demonstrates a willingness to talk directly to the rebels, his military are building up troops in the east of the country.

To respond adequately to the actions of the ‘terrorist’ groups, we are continuing to build up reserves in practically all sectors where combat action is being conducted,” Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said on Sunday.

The militia said they no longer trusted Poroshenko and his calls for peace after months of the ceasefire.

“Poroshenko is cynical beyond all limits. For us the Minsk process was a question of life for our civilians. For Kiev it was a cover [for preparing the offensive],” Denis Pushilin, a Donbass representative in Minsk, told Interfax.

“Why do they pretend in the US and Europe that they don’t see Kiev’s aggressive policies? It’s business for them in Washington, and we are being killed here,” he added.

The violence in eastern Ukraine has claimed more than 5,000 lives, according to the latest UN count, and sent some 1.5 million refugees fleeing for their lives to Russia or other parts of Ukraine.

The episode in Mariupol on Saturday claimed 30 lives, when a barrage of rockets hit a residential area in the east of the port city. Kiev was quick to accuse the militia of launching the attack, which the latter denied.

The Donetsk Republic leader said that after “Kiev decided to shift the blame on us for its erroneous fire from Grad multiple rocket launchers at residential areas [in Mariupol],” he gave an order to suppress the positions of the Ukrainian military stationed east of the port city.

Zakharchenko added that the forces of the People’s Republic of Donetsk (DPR) have no plans of storming the city itself.

It remains unclear whether militia forces will be strong enough to take over Mariupol. Over the months of the ceasefire, the Ukrainian military has fortified its positions around the militia-held areas.

During a phone conversation on Sunday, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry, called for an immediate cessation of shelling in eastern Ukraine and for the withdrawal of heavy weaponry, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Both Moscow and Washington confirmed their readiness to promote a peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis, with Lavrov stressing that “actual results may only be achieved through direct dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk, which Kiev is avoiding by all means, taking a clear course at the violent suppression of southeastern Ukraine.”

The Russian FM also urged the US to use its influence on the Ukrainian authorities in Kiev in order to persuade them to backtrack from the military scenario, they said.

In another phone call with High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, Lavrov stressed the shelling of Donetsk and Mariupol should get an objective investigation, with the involvement of OSCE observers.

The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized “that if Ukrainian authorities had accepted the January 15 proposal made by the Russian president on an urgent withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the line, specified by the Minsk memorandum from September 19, 2014, the tragedies of Volnovakha, Donetsk and Mariupol could have been avoided.” – rt.com

Soviet-style reactors struggling with US nuclear fuel

Ukrainian energy sector workers are facing technical problems with American nuclear fuel loading into the Soviet-type reactors

China is ready to sell fuel for nuclear power plants in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, a China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) source told TASS on Friday on the sidelines of the World Nuclear Spotlight forum.

According to the source, Chinese companies intend to sell the fuel to the countries that operate various types of Soviet-and Russian-made NPPs. Aside from Ukraine, China is viewing the possibility of exporting nuclear fuel to Hungary and Romania.

The source said Ukrainian energy sector workers are facing technical problems with American nuclear fuel loading into the Soviet-type reactors.

At the moment China is actively buying uranium mines with a view to exporting uranium to other countries in the foreseeable future.

Asked about Russia’s possible claims to the Chinese manufacturers of nuclear fuel, he said that “there are no special restrictions.” “Despite the related agreements, the Russian side is unlikely to stop the supplies,” said the CNNC representative.

Russia and China have been actively developing co-operation in the nuclear sphere for many years. For example, State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom and CNNC signed a protocol to launch the discussion of possible formats of co-operation in the sphere of construction of nuclear power plants in third countries.

Russia cuts off gas to six European countries

Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian state energy giant Gazprom to cut supplies to and through Ukraine amid accusations, according to The Daily Mail, that its neighbor has been siphoning off and stealing Russian gas.

Due to these “transit risks for European consumers in the territory of Ukraine,” Gazprom cut gas exports to Europe by 60%.

The EU raged that the sudden cut-off to some of its member countries was “completely unacceptable,” but Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller later added that Russia plans to shift all its natural gas flows crossing Ukraine to a route via Turkey; and Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak stated unequivocally, “the decision has been made.”

Russia’s decision plunged the continent into an energy crisis ‘within hours’ as a dispute with Ukraine escalated.

Six countries reported a complete shut-off of Russian gas shipped via Ukraine today, in a sharp escalation of a struggle over energy that threatens Europe as winter sets in.

Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments from Russia through Ukraine.

Source: Zerohedge

China ready to help Russia says foreign minister

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Monday that China is ready to help Russia overcome its economic difficulties.

Beijing is willing to help Moscow and believes that Russia “has the ability and the wisdom to overcome the current economic difficulties,” the minister was quoted as saying by the South China Morning Post.

Wang did not outline any specific measures, according to the newspaper.

Last week, China’s Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng stated that China could increase the use of yuan in trade with Russia amid falling ruble rates.

Russia has seen a rapid depreciation of its national currency in recent months due to falling oil prices and sanctions imposed by the West over Moscow’s alleged involvement in the Ukrainian crisis.

Changing Russia from within

The Russian Ministry of Justice discovered another foreign agent.

And this time it is not a human rights organization or a union of observers, but an entire school for training of human resources for the State Department.

For several years an organization called “Moscow School of Civic Education” operated in Russia’s capital. It was in the business of literally preaching American multicultural ideology and values.

Practically a sect, undermining the foundations of the country from the inside. Last year alone, the school held nearly 30 events with an audience of over 2,000 people. In the framework of the country it is not much, but all these 2000 people were prepared as professional specialists – organizers and instigators of protest and decent.

On the list of donors of Moscow School of Civic Education in 2013 there are 17 foreign organizations and foundations. Among them, the governments of five European countries, four of them – members of NATO. And of course funding from USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and IRI (International Republican Institute – American non-profit organization, whose director is the odious senator from Arizona John McCain).

The people behind the funding do not hide that they create this kind of training centers around the world. For example, the most recent example, the branch of the school operated in Georgia – we all remember what happened there. Finally this type of school operated in Ukraine, and during the Maidan its curators personally traveled to Kiev to visit their “disciples”: in particular, the assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, who is remembered for handing out cookies on Maidan.

The work at the school went on on all fronts. Ideological brainwashing, with help of foreign lecturers, and through the works of Russian opposition. The school had its own publishing house. In the series “The Library of MSGP” were published such books as: “The Fourth Republic” and “Granted Democracy” by Vladimir Ryzhkov; “The Lost Decade” by Vladislav Inozemtsev – the main idea of the book is the study of the hypothesis about the “uselessness” of the first decade of the XXI century for Russia and the world; “Russian Youth”, written by the staff of the Levada Center – Lev Gudkov and Natalya Zorkaya.

In addition, the school, like “Azazel” by Akunin, tried to integrate its successful graduates into the structures of the government, so that they could change the policies of the country from the inside in accordance to the ideology of the school. Among the people in power related to the school, for example, is the former Governor of Volgograd region Sergey Bozhenov, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Region’s Government Mikhail Kuznetsov and recently stepped down as Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Moscow Region Andrey Ilnitsky, Chairman of the faction “Georgian Dream – Republicans”, one of the most active organizers of the “rose revolution” in Tbilisi, David Berdzenishvili, and many others.

Finally, a large group of graduates are members of the media, both federal and, especially, regional, where the primary focus is today. Who even knows how many of these sects are open across the country.

Source: VKontakte

Opera diva supports Ukrainian separatists

The Russian-Austrian opera soprano Anna Netrebko has given support to east Ukrainian separatists, posing with one of their top political leaders and holding up the flag of Novorossia, a self-declared amalgamation of territory that is seeking independence from Kiev.

Netrebko, who holds dual citizenship, was pictured with the flag during a press conference in St Petersburg over the weekend, where she announced she was donating 1m roubles (£12,000) to the Donetsk Opera Theatre.

“I have a lot of musician friends in Donetsk, we have been writing to each other a lot, and they told me the theatre was sacred for them, and the building had been partly damaged. I decided that I wanted to help as much as I can. I think it’s the right thing to do because art is art, and helps us get through all situations,” Netrebko said.

Donetsk is under the control of pro-Russia separatists, and much of the civilian population has fled after areas of the city were shelled by the Ukrainian army. Fighting in east Ukraine has killed more than 4,000 people since May.

The main opera house building has not suffered but a warehouse where costumes are kept was damaged by shelling. Although many of the singers and orchestra have left town, the theatre plans to put on operas and ballets this season.

Netrebko said she would visit Donetsk and sing at the opera theatre as soon as military hostilities in the region were over. Asked about her views on the conflict, she insisted she was apolitical. “This is politics and I have nothing to do with politics, I just want to support art,” she said.

However, minutes later she held up the Novorossia flag and handed over a cheque to Oleg Tsaryov, a former Ukrainian MP who is wanted by Kiev on charges of separatism. Tsaryov, who is on a list of individuals sanctioned by the EU for their role in events in east Ukraine, styles himself as the chairman of the parliament of Novorossia.

“Donetsk has not surrendered, just like Leningrad did not surrender [during the Nazi siege],” Tsaryov said. “This [donation] is important for us not just because it’s money, but because it is support for us.”

“I think it’s the right thing to do because art is art, and helps us get through all situations,” Netrebko said.

Netrebko, 43, is one of the most in-demand opera singers in the world, drawing full houses for her performances. She made her name at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, whose director, Valery Gergiev, is close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Some of Gergiev’s concerts in the west have been disrupted over his apparent support for the government line on issues such as gay rights.

Netrebko is due to perform in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in January, and will sing the role of Mimi in Puccini’s La Boheme at the Royal Opera House in London next summer.