THE UKRAINE WAR (APRIL 2014 to MINSK2)

In April 2014, in S.E. Ukraine a few hundred stalwarts occupied administrative buildings across the region of the Donbass soon after the ultra-violent U.S. and EU-fomented coup on Kiev’s Maidan.

How incredibly vulnerable those few hundred occupiers were, despite the barricades that gave an air of confidence to the proceedings.

The occupation of those admin buildings in S.E. Ukraine was meant to be a statement leading to the resolution of the issues raised by Maidan, namely a desire for autonomy for the region. Maidan was seen as a direct assault upon Ukraine's democracy and a dire threat to the values and culture of the Donbass. The reasons for these fears can be found in a detailed study of the history of Ukraine during the Second World War.

The occupation was peaceful. No one was injured during it, let alone killed. It was meant as a route toward dealing with a total breakdown in trust caused by the Maidan riots.

My Take On The Crisis In Ukraine as It Unfolded:

I go back further now to the period November 2013 to January 2014.

Maidan smashed the lynch pin that held west & east Ukraine together. That lynch pin was the faith in the democratic process in Ukraine as an institution safeguarded for ALL Ukrainians.

Swastikas & other Nazi symbols had been rife in west Ukraine well before Maidan. The Nazi collaboration of WWII unbelievably STILL infected the current generation.

The people of southeast Ukraine knew very well what Maidan heralded. They are a good, insightful people, they know their history & they know the Nazi mentality.

They knew all about the US elite figures like John McCain who turned up on Maidan urging the rioters on. Later they found out about Geoff Pyatt & Victoria Nuland plotting who would take over once the rioters had done their job.

This is not how you have been groomed to see things however. You have been groomed by politicians and media to see things from an entirely different perspective.

Many have been conditioned to believe the riots on the Maidan were peaceful protests against a corrupt government.

The initial protests (the truly peaceful ones) did indeed have this as a legitimate cause of discontent. But the later mayhem, riot & burning/shooting/maiming of police was another matter entirely.

Maidan terrified the people of Crimea & southeastern Ukraine. For many reasons, some to do with the ugly Nazi-legacy that persisted in the west and also due to knowing west Ukraine would thrust an alien orientation and culture upon them.

You ought to know that the Nazi-legacy thugs of west Ukraine call the people of southeast Ukraine 'Moskals', it's a highly derogatory name. Basically they hate the people there in the same way they despise Russians.

You ought to study the history of Ukrainian nationalism and of a particular ultra-nationalist called Stepan Bandera to realize why the people of S.E. Ukraine were SO afraid.

And study in detail the history of the thousands from western Ukraine who joined the Nazis in WWII and who helped the Nazis kill Russians.

You ought to read in detail of how the Ukrainian grandfathers of the current generation acted alongside the Gestapo, S.S. & storm troopers to burn Russian peasants in their homes.

Separate battalions of Ukrainians were even set up by the Nazis. It may tell you something that the Nazis feared these Ukrainians because they were even more cold-blooded and ruthless than they were.

Only when you fully understand the history of Nazi collaboration in Ukraine will you start to see why the people of S.E. Ukraine were SO alarmed after the rioting on Maidan and the violent, undemocratic overthrowing of the government and president they had elected.

Not only was their insurance, the lynch pin of the Ukraine democratic process destroyed, it was destroyed by a largely Neo-Nazi contingent of ultra-violent militants who hated them with a vengeance.

Crimea:

I hope you did not fall for the story that Russia forced the people of Crimea at gunpoint to vote to secede from Ukraine.

The truth is that Russian troops would have had to use their guns to STOP the people of Crimea arriving in their hundreds of thousands on polling day.

The west has used crude propaganda channeled through a compliant western mass media to muddy the clear decision that was made by the Crimean people.

Western politicians, their compliant officials & media messengers, even to this day use the lie of ‘Russia’ to misdirect attention away from the democratic decision made by the people of Crimea.

No, the truth is that the status quo in Ukraine could no longer stand. Maidan had smashed it. The people of Crimea made the most most sensible decision of their lives

Now up to the people of S.E. Ukraine to decide how badly they felt the need to be free of West Ukraine.

The Main Events Leading Up To The Conflict:

It started with unruly scuffles, large crowds gathered & fists flew. Strange men with military bearing were seen, many wondered if they were mercenaries.

Thugs were being bused in and violence was increasing. On these occasions locals forced  them back to their buses and made sure they left, hopefully never to come back.

Out of the maelstrom at the beginning of 2014 the occupation of administrative buildings in S.E. Ukraine began.

A month or two went by peacefully. Then Ukraine sent its first exploratory sortie into the S.E. It had a rather impotent outcome.

Another week or two passed peacefully. There was no trouble & two rudimentary republics were announced in the two main towns, Donetsk and Lugansk. They began to plan referendums on their status, to be held in May 2014.

The May 2nd referendum when it arrived was quite a day. The people queued around the block and down the street and into the local parks for hour after hour up to four hours in order to vote.

The result of the referendum in S.E. Ukraine was completely clear. The people wanted autonomy, to run their own affairs free from fear, free from the new hatred which gripped Kiev.

It was shortly after this that Kiev sent its first forces to the southeast. They stayed and were increased. They created checkpoints and created an intimidatory effect.

Eventually the Ukraine forces attacked one of the checkpoints of one of the new republics. Several men from the republic side were killed. Later the men defending the civilian populations of Donetsk and Lugansk would come to be called ‘The Rebels’.

Soon after the attack & deaths of checkpoint members the spokesmen for the republics announced that the Ukraine forces must leave.

At this point Kiev gunmen entered an administrative block & killed several people. Shortly thereafter what we have seen until now began, an all out war.

Meanwhile there was the horror of the Odessa atrocity where fresh faced teenage girls created molotov cocktails of death for pro-Kiev ultras who murdered at least 48 young men in the Union Building.

These savage thugs without a trace of conscience burned, clubbed, kicked and shot many of the victims that day within the Union House before barring the doors and setting the building alight. Others were clubbed to death after falling from the burning building.

And so it all began.

Initially the ‘Rebels’ were highly vulnerable. They were not many in comparison with the Ukraine army and had little by way of weapons.

But, over time volunteers arrived from Russia to bolster their numbers and young and old men and women of the Donbass queued to train and fight for their region and for the future generations who would come after them.

To this day the local men and women still form the majority of fighters defending their homeland from the Kiev forces.

The evolution of the resistance to fascism in S.E. Ukraine is a story that will surely be told in full one day.

This was not a war S.E. Ukraine chose. Self-Defence was the title of the forces there & there was no intention to provoke conflict, only to provide a protective force to allow a peaceful protest and pressure to take place for greater autonomy.

It was Kiev who provoked the conflict in S.E. Ukraine, not the people of the southeast. The west Ukraine forces, part composed of the ultra-violent haters of Maidan used every kind of barbarism, sadism & terrorism on the people of the Donbass.

The most unconscionable acts imaginable were carried out by the Ukraine forces. Apartment blocks, homes, schools, hospitals and even orphanages were shelled, seemingly at random.

Civilians in the Donbass were targeted and killed daily. Tens, then hundreds and eventually over two thousand died.

Through this time, month after month the self-defense forces grew to be a more and more formidable force. In terms of numbers, of experience and of armored capacity. And eventually began defeating the Kiev forces. They drove them into so-called ‘cauldrons’ and steadily began to outwit, outfight and outmaneuver them.

The self-defense forces had the motivation, the experience in depth and the guts to take the fight to the enemy. How VERY far they had come in such a relatively short time.

Some successes had occurred before the Kiev forces were finally defeated but the self-defense forces at that early stage were outnumbered and outgunned & without regular Russian troops the task of winning out against Kiev seemed hopeless.

They were based in Slavyansk in those days. When they left to stop even more civilian casualties, command & control was unified in Donetsk.

It was only after the unification of command & control in Donetsk that the successes started to come thick & fast.

For four horrible months though the civilians of S.E. Ukraine took a horrific pounding with Ukraine forces firing mortar shells at random into urban areas destroying homes and daily killing many civilians.

All during this time, from approximately May until September 2014 the international community sat on their hands and remained silent about the Ukraine army's atrocities. The United Nations, normally anxious to halt violence of this kind, said nothing.

Western politicians began misdirecting attention to Russian troops supposedly “massing” on the border. This was a propaganda technique that proved highly successful in generating fear in the West and snuffing out any disquiet about civilian deaths and destruction of civilian infrastructure by the Ukrainian army & its neo-Nazi militias.

As time went by the self-defense forces won more & more vehicles & arms from the Ukrainian forces caught trapped in the ‘cauldrons’ prepared for them.

Some thought should be given to many of the Ukraine troops who died in these cauldrons as cannon fodder, forced to serve under various threats, conscripts, sometimes criminals threatened with more jail time unless they fought, a great many would not have chosen to kill their fellow Ukrainians.

And so the self-defense force grew more confident & in stature to the people of the southeast who remained. Many had left as the shelling of their towns by the Ukraine army began and continued. But most did remain.

The self-defense force's experience in depth plus their motivation & bravery paid off. There followed win after win after win as Ukraine’s forces were trapped and dealt with. Those who could surrender were treated well and returned to their families in western Ukraine, some surrendered by crossing into Russia. Others deserted from an army they had never wished to join.

So we arrive near to the present time & the closer parity between the two sides. The self-defense forces were woefully outnumbered and outgunned as the conflict had started but had grown to form an asynchronous balance of power with Kiev.

Now the ratio of men & materiel is only around 4 to 1 in favor of the Ukraine army over the self-defense forces. A relative asynchronous balance of power. More or less. But enough to force Kiev into suing for peace.

We have had Minsk1 and now we have Minsk2. But the peace is tenuous and fragile. Kiev is not known for either truth-telling or agreement-keeping.

With the recognition they could never win an outright victory came the concession Russia had been demanding from the start, that Kiev sit down with the rebel representatives.

So the first ceasefire, Minsk1, was drawn up. This far from pleased everyone on the rebel side nor the Kiev side. Many were disappointed on the rebel side and felt the self-defense forces should have kept on fighting as they had the Ukraine forces on the run.

I was unsure what the best course of action was but put some faith in the knowledge of others in the strength of gains that could be had from the Minsk1 agreement..

I was also of a mind  that no one should die unnecessarily and it is certain MANY more would have died on both sides no matter HOW successful the self-defense forces continued to be.

Coming Nearer To Present Time:

The first ceasefire of Minsk1 failed and fighting commenced once more.

During this time self-defense forces succeeded in wresting control of the destroyed Donetsk airport from Kiev forces.

Toward the end of the relatively brief period of fighting (compared to the previous long period) the strategic town of Debaltsevo was taken by the self-defense force.

This was days after the second Minsk protocol, Minsk2 was agreed.

The peace exists in most places now though recent reports suggest that the skirmishes are increasing in number and seriousness.

The future looks far from peaceful as Kiev is re-arming and re-grouping and hopes to receive further weaponry from the United States. This did occur eventually though during Obama's time in office he refused to authorize lethal weaponry for Ukraine. Upon Trump taking office the delivery was finally authorized.

Meanwhile the self-defense forces reportedly continued to accept hundreds of volunteers into its ranks and prepared for any eventuality to come.

The people of the Donbass use any respite in attacks from the Ukrainian army and the neo-Nazi militias to rebuild and strengthen their communities. They continue to nurture their beloved Russian culture that is their heritage, they face whatever is to come with stoicism and resolve and welcome back some of those who have fled.

The goal of autonomy remains undiminished, nay strengthened by the barbarity of the terrorist actions of the Ukraine forces. The people desired self-rule by all reported polling before Kiev sent its forces. Whether the people would be willing to remain part of Ukraine after these acts of atrocity by Ukraine forces must be tested at some point by referendum.

One point everyone agrees upon however, all Ukraine terrorist forces MUST leave the Donbass. Their ugly presence is DEEPLY unwelcome. They are akin to a terminal cancer, always seeking to infect the people of the Donbass and exterminate them.

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There have been proposals to give the Donbass republics a special (temporary) status within Ukraine but these proposals have not been enacted in Kiev as agreed. No agreement Kiev makes has been found to be trustworthy thus far..

The potential benefits of the various agreements on this special status failed to be ratified by the Ukrainian parliament and this ratification is unlikely ever to be revived.

The future remains uncertain due to the nature of the Kiev coup leaders who have been found to be as untrustworthy as it is possible to be.

We live in hope however that they will finally see sense, even if it is only to assure their own financial survival as western Ukraine hovers always on the brink of economic collapse and thereafter a potential collapse of all social order west of the Dneiper river.

If Kiev does not see sense there will be no other option but to use force to finally drive its terrorist forces from the totality of the two republics guarded against all foreign fascist elements… and ensure they can NEVER, EVER return.