I happened to watch the President’s address to the people live broadcast on TV, followed by the ceremony of signing of the documents recognising DNR and LNR, as well as establishing a security pact with them.
Putin signs ‘immediate’ recognition of Donbass regions
The address held an in-depth history lesson on the early history of the USSR, the constitutional norms left over from those days, when the national republics – including Ukraine – were formed.
This is History in the making!
Less than a year ago USNATO did a desperate push to start WWIII: On the brink of WWIII. Will NATO push for it 76 years after the NAZI defeat?. Now with the USA proclaiming its intent to start military aggression on the territory of Ukraine and fight Russia to the last Ukrainian – in other words to start a fratricidal war, with artillery shelling of Donetsk resumed by the UkroNazis (Ukrainian breakaway republic shelled, nearby RT crew reports) and with occasional shells exploding on the Russian side of the border (Russia makes artillery shell claim), it is a good time to take a pause and look back at history once again.
Crimea being one of the bones of contentions for the USNATO, who lost the prospect of placing a military base there, the following article put the peninsula’s history into a much-needed perspective, reiterating many of the points that I wrote about earlier on these pages, to wit, that Crimea’s transfer to Ukraine by Khrushov was illegal, unconstitutional and undemocratic, violating with prejudice all those values that the West is supposedly standing for!
however, this article covers a much wider swath of history, including those aspect, entirely unfamiliar to the Western populace (and in some cases to modern-day Russians).
How Crimea became part of Russia and why it was gifted to Ukraine
Here is a fragment of the article:
Legal nihilism in the USSR and its consequences
The question of the legality of the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine was raised even before the collapse of the USSR. The fact is that, according to the Soviet Constitution of 1937, neither the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, nor even the Supreme Soviet had the right to alter the borders of a republic. This was only constitutionally possible after holding a referendum to determine the opinion of the population living in the territory to be transferred. Of course, no referendum was ever held on the peninsula.
In November of 1990, the Crimean Regional Council of People’s Deputies decided to hold a referendum on whether to restore the peninsula’s status as an Autonomous Republic. Of those who took part, 93.26% voted in favor. Thus, Crimea became a participant in negotiating the terms of a new Union Treaty, which Mikhail Gorbachev was preparing at the time. Next, Crimean lawmakers planned to appeal to Gorbachev to cancel the illegal transfer of the peninsula to Ukraine, but the USSR collapsed before they had time to do so. Subsequently, the parliament of the Russian Federation voted on May 21, 1992, to confirm that the decision of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR of February 5, 1954, entitled ‘On the Transfer of the Crimean Region from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR’, had no legal force, since its adoption was “in violation of the Constitution (Basic Law) of the RSFSR and legislative procedure.
Since the Constitution of the Soviet Union was still in force and there was still no Ukrainian Constitution including Crimean autonomy, the Supreme Council of Crimea adopted its own declaration of independence for a Republic of Crimea. A referendum to decide its fate was planned for August 2, 1992, but the Ukrainian central authorities would not allow the plebiscite to take place.
In 1994, Crimea, which had status as an Autonomous Republic within Ukraine, elected a president who supported reunification with Russia, as did most of the members of the republic’s parliament. In response, Ukraine’s leadership unilaterally abolished the Crimean Constitution, the ‘Act on State Sovereignty of Crimea’, and the post of Crimean president, while banning all the parties that had made up the majority in the Crimean parliament. Against the will of the population, Crimea became Ukrainian.
On the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s landmark trip around Earth, RT publishes unique footage of his speech from the first anniversary of this flight – renewed and coloured using modern neural-network technologies.
“I am grateful to those who put their hearts, souls, skills, and hard work to fulfil this great mission,” Gagarin said in a speech that was first broadcast by Soviet television back in 1962, exactly one year after he became the first human ever to fly in space.
The first Soviet cosmonaut expressed his admiration for the Soviet scientists and engineers who made his flight possible by calling them “miracle workers.” Yet, he was equally welcoming to other nations’ efforts in space exploration. He symbolically greeted a US astronaut, John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, and welcomed him to the international “family of cosmonauts.”
“We know that our family of cosmonauts will grow bigger and bigger by the year and we will have more and more members joining,” Gagarin said in a speech that was originally recorded on 35-milimeter black-and-white film.
The first man in space also used the occasion to send a powerful message of peace as he said that cooperation in space between the US and the USSR “would open the way to stopping the onerous and pointless arms race as well as to channelling the joint efforts of both superpowers towards new scientific breakthroughs in space exploration.”
Backup at Rumble.
Yuri Gagarin – Congratulations on the 1st Anniversary of the Day of Cosmonautics
Dear friends, today is the day of the first anniversary of
the first, in the history of mankind, flight of man into Space.
I want to sincerely greet you from the bottom of my heart
and share with you some thoughts on this matter.
Over the past year, since the day of the flight of the Soviet space ship “Vostok-1”
carrying a Soviet person aboard,
I, a participant in this flight
and a witness of an enthusiastic attitude to this great event by our Soviet people,
the people of the entire globe,
I want to simply and sincerely thank all those who took part
in the creation of the powerful rocket that took me to orbit,
in the creation of wonderful systems and the “Vostok-1” spacecraft itself,
those who put their souls, hearts, skills,
their work into this great event, into this great deed,
which was carried out on the 12th of April last year.
Glory to you, wondrous scientists, wondrous masters!
The flight of the Soviet ship “Vostok-1” revealed not only new faith in the development of Space,
it was a messenger of peace and benevolence of the peoples of our Motherland,
building Communism, towards all the peoples of the Earth.
After the successful flight into space of two Soviet people –
my flight and the flight of German Stepanovich Titov,
which lasted more than 25 hours and flew more than 17 times around the globe,
the family of astronauts has grown by another cosmonaut –
the American cosmonaut, John Glenn,
who made his orbital flight around the globe,
completing 3 turns and staying in space for about 4.5 hours.
And, we know and believe that the family of cosmonauts
will continue growing with every year,
and there will be more and more of them.
Soviet people are peaceful people, both on Earth and in space.
Quite recently, this was emphasized with a new force
in the message of Nikita Sergeevich Hrushchev
to the President of the United States, Mr. Kennedy, on the issue of study and use of Space.
These clear proposals of the head of the Soviet government
found a hot response from all peoples.
After all, their implementation would open the way to stopping
the onerous and pointless arms race
to faster channel the joint efforts of the great superpowers
towards new scientific breakthroughs in Space.
And I would like to say one more thing, dear friends,
on this significant day, of happiness to live and work in my Fatherland,
together with you, my compatriots,
to build the brightest, most beautiful society on Earth,
to build Communism.
Glory to our great Motherland! Glory to our Party of Lenin!
Glory to the Soviet people,
the creator of all our victories on Earth and in Space!
Long live peace!
Continue reading
One of my first posts on this blog was Is the West gearing up to invade Russia once again?, which looked at some historic parallels from the previous pre-invasion periods, and noticing some similarities. The article was written in June 2014, and the rhetoric question is still very much valid, even more so after the developments of these past 3 weeks.
The reports are worrying, with Ukrainian forces executing one provocation after. A few days ago a 5-year-old child was killed when Ukro-nazis dropped an explosive charge on a residential house from a drone.
Yesterday, Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa, in his article Reports of Russian troops ‘massing’ near Ukraine miss the mark: Russia-Ukraine war is possible, but only if Ukraine strikes first echoed the conclusions in Rostislav Ischenoko’s article “On the edge: Who will blink first?”, which I am translating in full below.
On the edge: Who will blink first?
Rostislav Ishchenko
Columnist of MIA “Russia Today”
4th of April 17:43 198 20447
The situation in the long-suffering Ukraine (without any irony to the country and its people) is developing in such a way that it can be stated that the parties interested in the, possibly armed, conflict have completed the pre-war preparatory measures, at least in the diplomatic sphere. After that, either someone has to give in, or the next step forward means war.
At the same time, Russia cannot have a “large—scale” war with Ukraine – they are in different weight categories. Ukraine is not even able to conquer Donbass. Kiev’s participation in a direct military clash with Moscow, even as part of a group of states, will mean for Ukraine an almost instantaneous destruction as a political entity.
At the same time, Ukraine acts only as a provocateur of the first strike. Its task is to somehow signify to the world community Russia’s participation in the military conflict.
Next, the United States intends to unleash a European war, with the participation of at least a few Eastern European countries, members of NATO and the EU. This will allow them to put pressure on their Western European allies, who do not want a conflict with Russia, demanding that they decide: if they are with Moscow or with NATO.
Just in on RT!
A window broken by a recent shelling is pictured in the village of Vesyoloye (Vesele) in the Donetsk Region, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Eastern Ukraine. © Sputnik
Moscow has warned that fighting is escalating in eastern Ukraine, insisting that the region must avoid a full-scale conflict, as Kiev asks NATO to step up its local combat readiness and says the US would come to its aid in a war.
Speaking to journalists on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that a series of military clashes in the Donbass region was a cause for concern. “Unfortunately for us,” he said, “the reality on the line of contact is quite frightening, and not just one, but many, provocations by the Ukrainian Armed Forces are taking place.”
…
A house on Stratonautov Street in the village of Veseloye, Donetsk region, which was damaged during the fighting in the DPR. © RIA
Russia has warned that it would regard any deployment of Western troops in Ukraine as a serious provocation, after Kiev asked NATO to step up its local combat readiness and claimed the US would come to its aid in any future war.
On Friday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying that it had received guarantees of American support after a telephone call with Washington’s top military official, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austen. “The US Secretary of Defense stressed that in the event of an escalation of Russian aggression, the United States will not leave Ukraine alone,” the Ministry said.
Asked about the prospects of a standoff in the region, Peskov warned that this could begin a potentially dangerous chain of events. The Kremlin official said that “undoubtedly, such a developing scenario would lead to a further increase in tensions near Russia’s borders. Of course, this will require additional measures from the Russian side to ensure its security.”
I’s been a while since I looked in the direction of Ukraine on these pages, and, more specifically, at the civil war that Ukraine wages on its citizens for 7 years, calling the whole population of the eastern republics for terrorists, including children, and treating with constant artillery shelling, terror bombings, denial of basic human rights, etc. This conflict was largely frozen with only occasional escalations and “only” a few civilians killed by the Ukrainian shells each day (the current death toll is close to 12000 people among the civilian population of Donbass). All this to a complete silence from the “humane, democratic, freedom-loving” media in the West.
The situation is about to change. Kiev is amassing troops on the borders with both Donbass and Crimea (not reported in the West), and Russia responds in kind, increasing its military capacity there (trumped about in the Western press). Russia has asked Germany and France (and, indirectly, the US) to curb their Ukrainian puppets, but the pleas have fallen deaf ears. The final warning was the summit between Putin, Merkel and Macron.
I am translating below an analytical article, highlighting the results (or lack thereof) from that summit. The article is written by Rostislav Ischenko on Cont platform: Мир без Украины
Video conference in the format of Putin / Merkel / Macron took place anyway, and this is good news. Nothing else can be called as “good” about this.
It’s bee a while since my last post, but this one is too good to pass. The Belorussian Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted an official humorous response to a meddling “congratulation” from the US State Department.
The complete text in Russian can be found here: Комментарий пресс-службы МИД в связи с заявлением Посольства США от 25 марта 2021 года
While the English version is here: Comment by the Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus in connection with the statement of the US Embassy on March 25, 2021
RT wrote a piece about this response, titled:
And this is indeed a level 100 trolling on the Belorussian part. I take my proverbial hat off! Below is the complete official text of the response, followed by my re-translation of the American “congratulation”, which triggered it:
The continuation of the farce that Navalny’s handlers started with his fake poisoning and the subsequent staged return Russia with the fake “palace” video in his arsenal (outlined in the previous article The Navalny’s Palace – Fake Documentary from Fake Opposition (with a list of past crimes)) has come to the logical conclusion with the much-welcome imprisonment of the fraudster.
Navalny got his remaining 2.8 years of suspended sentence for defrauding of two companies converted into a real term. This was the outcome which Russians hoped for. Should the court have caved in to the Western pressure and release Navalny, that would have given a clear signal that he is above the Law and that Law does not apply to fraudsters in the employ of the foreign secret services. The reactions that I read on the Russian internet could be summed up as: “Why so little?!” Well, this is just one past conviction for one of his crimes. (By the way, Navalny has already got away with too much – he’s the only Russian citizen who managed to have two suspended convictions for fraud!)
There is still the case of defamation of WWII veteran, and the case of defrauding donors to his organisation (with the donated money spent on luxury and vacations). These cases were open and, coupled with the suspended sentence, were grounds for not letting Navalny out of the country in the first place. It was actually President Putin’s request that allowed Navalny to be transported to Germany, where he spent almost 2 months after his recovery on skipping his parole and on creation of the film targeting to defame Putin.
And there are strong calls to open a new case – this time for high treason due to Navalnys NGO direct appeal to Biden to impose sanctions on Russia. Seeing as sanctions qualify as an act of war, these people were calling on a foreign power to start a war on the country that they are citizens of.
The pressure on the Court of Justice was immense, including from the foreign diplomats, who amassed there to intimidate the judges and influence the course of a civil court by their presence. The hall of shame includes the diplomats from the following countries:
USA, UK, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, Finland, Japan, Austria, Czechia and Bulgaria.
EDIT: 05.02.2021 – Good to see Russia acting in accordance with the international norms and also showing backbone – Russia expels diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden for alleged participation in pro-Navalny protests. If only Yanukovich did the same with Biden and Nuland back in 2014, Ukraine would most probably not be a Nazi-infested impoverished and depopulated basket-case right now…
Navalny’s fake documentary, readied for him by his American 3-letter-agency handlers in Germany (as uncovered by German journalists) and scheduled to coincide with his staged return to Russia has been peddled uncritically in both the Western MSM and on YouTube, where it was pushed as automatic “algorithmic” continuation to any watched Russian-language video, as well as being shown as a “commercial”. This manipulation along with some other peddling netted the fake documentary somewhere around 103 million views (as of writing) with 80% of views lasting less than 10 seconds. The goal was two-fold.
To entice the teenagers to go to protests, which failed miserably – only about 50000 gatehred across the whole of Russia with its 145 million population. And half of those gathered were journalists. Children as young as 9 years of age were drawn to the street in search of something cool and exciting, in search of a party. For this stunt Navalny got a byname in Russian social media sphere of “Oppositionsführer” (that’s how he was called in the German media), while the unfortunate children that he flocks to himself are often referred to as “Navalnyjügend”. But that is just his latest crime. Scroll down to a detailed list, compiled by Alexander Rogers.
The other goal was to place the Russian authorities in an awkward position: if they arrest Navalny for floundering the law (remember that he was released from the German hospital around November, while the deadline to register with the Russian penal services for his suspended embezzlement sentence was in end of December, so he had time to do it!), then it would demonstrate to the Russian population that Navalny and his ilk are above the law, and if he is arrested, then a mighty howling would be raised about “suppressing the opposition”.
Back to the palace video. That particular place in Gelendzhik was first attributed to the-then target of Navalny’s and his handler’s slander – Pesident Medvedev. When Putin was elected President, the “ownership” suddenly became ascribed to him. In 2012 Vladimir Kozhin, the Superintendant for Presidential Affairs gave an extended interview to “Rossijskaja Gazeta”:
A new TV series was aired in Russia, a series about the famous Russian tsar, who has been so much defamed both abroad and then domestically. I was critical in anticipating this series, and it seems my fears were well-founded to a point where watching it would be inadvisable. In a way the vibe of “Grozny” series appears to be somewhat akin to HBO’s “Chernobyl” angle.
As I wrote in the article with the translation of the documentary Black myths about Rus – From Ivan the Formidable until our time, “Grozny” actually translates as “Formidable”, while from the set go a mis-translation of his by-name was adopted in England, implying something terrible. We see the same pattern with every Russian leader throughout history, who did something great for Russia (and, often, the world) – they’d be maligned, while a weak leader, who worked towards destruction of Russia, would be celebrated in the West. Sadly, the tune, started in the West would later get foothold in the Russian minds, thus weakening Russian self-perception.
Alexander Rodgers is a journalist and blogger with many astute analytical articles in the economic and political spheres. Below is my translation of his review of “Grozny” TV series, titled “Hard tsar or hard times. A truthful lie. The analysis of ‘Grozny’ series”. His analysis echoes my own perception based on the documented accounts. The original Russian version can be found at Cont and at the author’s LiveJournal page.
It has been a while since I returned to the topic of MH-17 downing in Ukraine when it was established that It was a Ukrainian BUK missile that shot down MH-17. A bizarre case where the most likely culprit – Ukraine – sits among the judges, while a bystander – Russia – is being accused of the wrongdoing without any evidence, while any factual evidence not in line with the Russia-bashing narrative is dismissed.
Russia has had enough of this Western charade and is exiting the three-way talks, for which the Russian ambassador to Netherlands have been summoned: how come Russia refuses to be the West’s favourite beating-boy!
Russia’s Foreign Ministry believes it’s “impossible” for Moscow to continue consultations with the Netherlands and Australia on the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, as they are not interested in uncovering the truth.
Instead, in a Thursday morning statement, Russian diplomats accused the two countries of seeking only to blame Moscow, and arriving at the process with a preconceived outcome.
It added that Russia agreed to trilateral consultations two years ago, hoping that these would help establish, based on hard facts, the true reasons behind the 2014 tragedy. The Boeing 777 crash, which occurred six years ago, during the hot phase of the war in Eastern Ukraine, took 298 lives, with 193 victims from the Netherlands and 27 from Australia.
But, according to the ministry, the Dutch and Australian governments had other goals in mind, as they only wanted “Russia to be declared the guilty party and compensation paid to the relatives of those that died,” the statement outlined.
About 1 month ago I wrote about the first in the world Russian vaccine against COVID-19. And now Russia comes with another break-through – a medicine that blocks COVID-19 and cures patients already infected with the virus. The medicine is now available in the apothecaries in Russia and is sold based on doctor’s prescription.
Here are some of the highlights from the “Argumenty i Fakty” article from 22.09.2020, titled “A Special Tablet: The makers on their Russian medicine against COVID-19”:
This week brought hope to humanity, and again from Russia. The N. F. Gamaleya Federal Research Center for Epidemiology & Microbiology which previously developed the vaccine against Ebola in 15 months, beat their own record and developed the COVID-19 vaccine in just 5 months. The vaccine’s name is fittingly “Sputnik V”.
The vaccine is entering the third phase of clinical tests, but it is already cleared for use this autumn for those in the high risk group. This is a two-part vaccine, which uses two different biological carriers of the COVID-19 genome. The first part crates immunity (antibodies), the second – applied 3 weeks later – creates immunologic memory. The immunity is expected to last for 2 years (analogous to the the effect of the Ebola vaccine).
The vaccine can be applied to those between 18 and 60 years of age. It should not be applied to those with allergies, infectious diseases or pregnant women.
Three factories have already started producing the vaccine at a rate of 1 million doses per month each, doubling the production capacity towards the end of the month. All of Russia should have enough vacines in 9 to 12 months. 29 other countries showed interest in the vaccine – in order to either buy or produce it under license.
President Vladimir Putin in his statement said that one of his daughters got vaccinated, thus participating in the clinical tests.
In the interview with academician Alexander Gintsburg, he said that as the result of the current work, Russia now has technology to develop vaccines even faster – in about 1 month. This is an indirect message to the USA, which has biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine and Georgia developing battle viruses there with Russia as an obvious target.
More about it in this Vesti report:
https://youtu.be/PI7M_ipMqss?t=621
https://youtu.be/PI7M_ipMqss?t=621
The West met this news with incredulous rejection. And it is not for the first time. Four years ago Russian vaccine against Ebola was met with equal incredulity and ridicule, which Alexader Rogers drew a reference to in his article at Cont.
“Future generations will acknowledge their debt to the Red Army as unreservedly as do we who have lived to witness these proud achievements.”
— Winston Chirchill
At the end of last year the heads of CIS (sans Ukraine) held a summit in St.Petersburg, during which President Vladimir Putin raised a very important of keeping the record of the pre-WWII years straight, especially in light of the EU and the collective West trying to reverse polarities and paint the victim – the USSR – as an aggressor. Like in the caricature below:
Quite a few documents were taken out of the archives and made available to the public for the first time, presenting unrefutable evidence of how Germany was armed by the West for an attack on the USSR, and how the USSR tried every thinkable peaceful venue to stop the war at the bud.
This initiative resulted in, among other things, a documentary film “The Great Unknown War”, which I newly translated. The President also published an article in The National Interest, called The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II with great insights of that not so distant past for the Western “amnesiaside” audience.
Here I want to draw everyone’s attention to Mr. Putin’s speech during that summit, with a few fragments quoted below.
This year marks the 75th Anniversary of victory over the Western-neutered Nazism in Germany. But more than that, it marks the full reawakening of Russia when it finally says, enough of the history rewriting, enough of painting white as black, enough of selective amnesia in the West, enough of trying to spare the feeling of the Eastern-European “brothers” when uncomfortable for them truths were swept under the rug.
The suspiciously-timely COVID-19 pandemic was seemingly going to falter this reassertion and stop the Parade. But the events unfurled in an unfathomable way and allowed to push the day of the Parade further in time, to the 24th of June, the day, when the very first Victory Parade was held on the Red Square. The dark forces tried to demolish memory by demolishing the memorial, like it was done in Prague in May, but all they did was to awaken the sacred wrath.
And so it commenced…
This is a parade, where memories and history are reaffirmed with a detachment of the legendary T-34 tanks and soldiers in WWII uniforms
and the present-day Russias commitment to the defence of peace is reasserted
These images are from the following two RT reportages:
Moscow marks 75 years since victory over Nazis with traditional parade on Red Square (FULL VIDEO)
New additions & battle-proven hardware on display as Russia marks 75th anniversary of Nazi defeat with military parade (PHOTOS)
More at Lada Ray’s Futurist Trendcast: Full Red Square Parade Dedicated to 75th Anniversary of Great Victory in WWII, June 24, 2020, Moscow