Tag Archives: Crimea

The “Crimean” War misnomer – A bigger picture

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What is known as The Crimean War was much larger and had far-reaching consequences not only for Russia but for many other states. In a way it is as much about Crimea as the “Caribbean Missile Crises” was about the Caribbeans. The theatres of war of 1853-1856 covered the Danube delta, the Baltic Sea, the Far East – the Kamchatka and Petropavlovsk-on-Amur that were under siege and partially captured during 1854-55.

While it is true, that one of the main battles happened in Crimea, it could better be described as the “Eastern War”. It was closer to a “world war”, and was definitely the second large “information war”.

The “Crimean” War – The Baltic Front, prevention of the British Navy assault at St.Petersburg

Telling are the stated goals of the warring parties.

Initially, it was a war that Russia initiated against the Ottoman Empire. Ideologically, it was started to liberate the Orthodox Christian people of the Duchy of Moldavia (Romania did not yet get created – that would happen after that war). The more pressing geopolitical goal of Russia was to secure the Southern flanks and get control over the Bosphorus and the Dardanells, and influence over the Balkans. That decision did not come out of the blue, and was not a simple whim of Nicolas I. The Ottoman Empire had moved a 50,000 strong army that included Polish and Hungarian revolutionaries to the border of Austria, while at the same time trying to conquer Chernogoria (known in the West as “Montenegro”).

The “Crimean” War – Danube Theatre

Russia had two military strategies – one assumed a large-scale assault along the Black Sea coast with landing parties deployed to the Turkish ports and to the straits. The other strategy was a limited “military operation” with crossing of the Danube, avoiding direct confrontation with the Turkish army, with the outlook that this limited display of force would lead to a favourable peace treaty with the Turks. The latter strategy was adopted. Drawing a historical parallel, it is similar to the peacekeeping operation in Georgia on the 8th of August 2008, when such strategy worked, or the start of the SMO in 2022, when it almost worked before the British forbade Ukraine to sign the peace treaty.

The same happened in 1853-54. The British used this opportunity to accuse Russia of aggression against Turkey, and build a coalition that fought with Russia on behalf of Turkey. France joined its not so recent adversary, Britain, partly for the sake of Poland and partly as a revenge for the 1814 defeat.

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Crimea That Sailed Away From NATO – Vesti, 23.04.2014

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One of the publications from our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Crimea reuniting with Russia. Please subscribe!

On the 18th of March 2014, exactly 10 years ago, Crimea returned to the home shores, based on the results of the referendum.

The news program that we present was aired a month later, on the 23rd of April 2014, and tells about the unhealthy interest that NATO displayed for Crimea before it managed to escape its clutches.

An American military hospital and a CIA-affiliated school would have been the cherries on top of the Sevastopol Bay naval base.

This clip also marks 10 years of my acquaintance with Lada Ray, when I first came across her article Breaking! US Planned to Turn #Crimea into Military Base Against Russia on the Futurist Trendcast blog. That article is still worth re-reading, 10 years later, as it contains additional information, not present in the news clip.

One of the readers there pointed to “US government/US Navy solicitation for “Renovation of Sevastopol School #5″, dated September 05, 2013” with a link to the official site. As expected, the tender documents are no longer there, but they were archived by the WebArchive, and are therefore still available to the public, including all the PDF files, the front page of one of which – EUCOM Humanitarian Assistance Program – Renovations to School#05 – Sevastopol, Ukraine OHASIS ID-20420 – you can see here.

Transcript of the program:

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Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Crimea’s Reunification with Russia

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Congratulations to the people of Crimea on the 10th anniversary of their sailing back home to Russia! Much of what can be said, has already been written in the article, commemorating the 5th anniversary, but let us once again admire the cover image of the “Argumenty i Fakty” newspaper, published 10 years ago, on the 18th of March 2014.

Here are the earlier celebrations: Celebrating 3 years of Crimea’s reunification and Crimea Celebrates the 2nd Anniversary of Reunification – Legendary Sevastopol.

On our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden” we marked the occasion with several posts, and the translation of Lavrov’s congratulatory speech, now presented below with a complete transcript at the bottom of this article.

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German Cat Is Out of the Bag – representatives of the Bundeswehr discussed the strikes on the Crimean Bridge

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If you are coming here from our Telegram post at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”, you can continue reading the transcript from where you left off. If you are using the translation, please reference t.me/BeornAndTheShieldmaiden to help our channel grow!


Photo: German Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz.
Master in Aero-nautical Science

RIA Novosti writes, that the conversation in which representatives of the Bundeswehr discussed the strikes on the Crimean Bridge, took place on February 19th 2024.

The topic was discussed by the head of the operations and exercises department of the Air Force Command Graefe, Air Force Inspector Gerhartz and employees of the air operations center Fenske and Frostedte.

At the same time, one of the officers mentioned a planned trip to Ukraine on February 21st to coordinate strikes on Russian targets. 

Russia’s MFA Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova notes on the Telegram channel of the ministry:

I’m interested in Annalena Baerbock’s perspective on this matter. This presents a prime opportunity for German media to demonstrate its independence by asking probing questions and for Russian media to seek the opinion of the German Embassy in Moscow.

Margarita Simonyan, Editor-in-Chief of RT (https://t.me/rtnews):

Our people in uniform shared some intriguing information with me on the day when Scholz said that NATO was not and would never be involved in the Ukrainian conflict.

The information and videos are so riveting that I immediately wanted to share them with our audiences to bring them joy.
In that captivating footage, high-ranking German officers discussed the bombing (would you believe it) of the Crimean Bridge and methods to execute it discreetly so that Scholz could keep up to his talk of non-involvement.

The Bundeswehr officers have also spilled the beans about the Americans and the Brits who, they said, had been directly involved in the conflict for a long time.

In short, it’s 40 minutes of pure delight. In this connection, I have an official journalistic inquiry for the German Ambassador, the German Foreign Minister and Chancellor Scholz personally:

What does this mean, gentlemen? Should Russia jog Germany’s memory about what happened last time when Germany blew up Russian bridges?

As your media usually say, we expect an answer today.

Because nobody knows what may happen tomorrow.

Following is our English translation of Margarita Simonyan’s publication of the…

Transcript of a conversation between high-ranking Bundeswehr officers dated 02/19/2024

On February 19th 2024, the following conversation took place between the Head of the Operations and Exercises Department of the Bundeswehr Air Force Command Graefe, the Bundeswehr BBC Inspector Gerhartz and the employees of the Bundeswehr Space Command Air Operations Center Fenske and Frostedte.

Gerhartz: Hello everyone! Graefe, are you in Singapore now?

Graefe: Yes.

Gerhartz: Okay. We need to verify the information. As you have already heard, Defence Minister Pistorius intends to carefully consider the issue of supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine. We have a meeting planned with him. Everything needs to be discussed so that we can start working on this issue. So far I do not see that the start date of these deliveries has been indicated. It was not like the Chancellor told him: “I want to get information now, and tomorrow morning we will make a decision.” I haven’t heard anything like this. On the contrary, Pistorius evaluates this entire ongoing discussion. Nobody knows why the Federal Chancellor is blocking these supplies. Of course, the most incredible rumours appear. Let me give you an example: Yesterday, a journalist who is very close to the Chancellor called me. She heard somewhere in Munich that the Taurus missiles would not work. I asked who told her this. She replied that someone in military uniform told her this. Of course, this is a low-level source of information, but the journalist latched onto these words and wants to make a big deal out of it with the headline: “Now we know the reason why the Chancellor refuses to send Taurus missiles – they won’t work.” This is all stupidity. Such topics are available only to a limited circle of people. However, we see what kind of nonsense is spreading in the meantime, they are talking complete nonsense. I want to coordinate this issue with you so that we do not move in the wrong direction.
First of all, I now have questions for Frostedte and Fenske:
Has anyone talked to you about this topic? Did Freuding contact you?

Frostedte: No. I only communicated with Graefe.

Fenske: The same thing, I only communicated with Graefe.

Gerhartz: Perhaps he will contact you again. I will probably have to participate in hearings in the Budget Commission, because problems have arisen related to rising prices for the conversion of infrastructure for the F-35 in Büchel. I have already conveyed my recommendations through Frank so that we have slides to visualise the material. We showed him a test presentation where Taurus missiles were installed on a Tornado carrier or on another carrier required by the assignment. However, I have a hard time imagining this. It is necessary to remember that this is a half-hour meeting, so you should not prepare a presentation of 30 slides. There should be a short report. It is necessary to show what a rocket can do, how it can be used. It is necessary to take into account, if we make a political decision to transfer missiles as aid to Ukraine, what consequences this may lead to. I will be grateful to you if you tell me not only what problems we have, but how we can solve them. For example, if we talk about delivery methods… I know how the British do it. They always transport them in Ridgback armoured vehicles. They have several people on site. The French don’t do that. They supply Q7 with Scalp missiles to Ukraine. Storm Shadow and Scalp have similar technical specifications for their installation. How will we solve this problem? Will we be transferring to them the MBDA missiles with Ridgback? Will one of our people be assigned to MBDA? Graefe, report to us what our position is on this issue. Misters Fenske and Frostedte, please report how you see the situation.
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The Netherlands Plundered the Crimean Museums. The Scythian Gold Was Transferred to Ukraine.

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On the pages of this blog I previously followed the long-drawn saga with the Crimean Scything gold that the Netherlands refused to return to the museums that owned the artefacts. These articles are from 2016 and 2019 and can be found, following the Scythian Gold tag. The collections that were lent out to Holland, technically belong each to its legal entity (therein, the 4 Crimean museums).

Holland now sent the valuables to Kiev, and with the current kleptocratic neo-Nazi regime in power there, the chances to this heritage of mankind staying there is very slim. Ironically, if Holland was hell-bent on not returning the items to the proper owners in Crimea, it would have been better for the collection to stay in Holland until the end of the SMO and the de-Nazification of Ukraine, but that is, apparently, not in the interests of the overseas managers of Holland.

Below are two articles from “Argumenty i Fakty”. The first one is with the breaking news from yesterday regarding the delivery of the invaluable cargo to Kiev, while the second is from last year, that looks into the troubled legal canvas that surrounded the case. The articles overlap somewhat in the historical section, complementing each other.

The Netherlands Plundered the Crimean Museums. The Scythian Gold Was Transferred to Ukraine.

by Konstantin Mikhalchevsky, RIA Novosti, 27.11.2023

Collection of Scythian gold, Central Museum of Taurida, Simferopol, Crimea, Russia.

The collection of Scythian gold from Crimean museums has been handed over to the Kiev regime. Representatives of the authorities announced the arrival of a truck with the valuable cargo in the Ukrainian capital.

A truck with valuables

The Ukrainian portal “Strana”, with reference to the customs, reports that a truck with 2694kg of cultural valuables arrived on the territory of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. It is planned to perform the identification and registration of the cargo with the subsequent transfer of the valuables to the treasury of the museum.

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Russian Tzars Didn’t Even Think That They Were Founding Ukrainian Cities

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A photocopy of an article from “Komsomolskaja Pravda” dated 14.04.2014 caught my attention a few days ago. The short article was published just as the Nazi coup in Ukraine unseated the last legitimate government of the failed country, and Ukraine firmly set its course on becoming “not Russia”.

Russian Tzars Didn’t Even Think That They Were Founding Ukrainian Cities

Politicians, historians and bloggers on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border are arguing today, breaking microphones and keyboards, whose ancestral land is the South-Eastern Ukraine, or, as it was called earlier – Malorossiya (Rus Minor) and Novorossiya. Who worked it? And monuments to whom should stand here – to Bandera or, for example, to the Russian tzars?

Let us not get involved in this argument, but rather list those who founded the main cities here:

Harkov – founded in the 1630-s by the Russian Tzar Aleksei Mihailovich Romanov. Sailors who fleeing from the Poles from the right bank of Dniepr settled there.

Sumy – founded not later than 1655 by Tzar Aleksei Mihailovich Romanov. The tzar allowed
refugees-Malorossians, who were killed by the Poles, to settle here.

Kirovograd – founded in 1754 by the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna under the name of Elisavetgrad as a fortress to protect the southern boundaries of Russia from Tatars.

Zaporozhie – founded in 1770 by the Russian Empress Catherine II undere the name of Alexandrovsk.

Krivoj Rog – founded in 1775 by the Catherine II.

Dnepropetrovsk – founded in 1776 by the Catherine II under the name of Ekaterinoslav.

Herson – founded in 1778 by Catherine II for the construction of the Russian fleet. The Russian Count Potemkin built the fleet and the city.

Mariupol – founded in 1778 by Catherine II. She allowed Greek immigrants from
Crimea to settle there.

Nikolaev – founded in 1789 by Catherine II. At that time Russian Count Potjomkin was building there the ship “St. Nicolas” (“St. Nikolai”).

Odessa – founded in 1794 by Catherine II at the site of a fortress previously built by the Russian Commander Suvorov.

Lugansk – founded in 1795 by Catherine II. People from central and north-western counties of the Empire came to work here at the iron foundries.

Donetsk – founded by the Russian Emperor Alexadner II in 1869 during the construction of the iron foundry in Yuzovka.

As for Crimea:

Sevastopol – founded in 1783 by the Russian Empress Catherine II at the site of a fortress previously built by the Russian Commander Suvorov. The Russian Count Potjomkin was building the city.

Simpferopol – founded in 1784 by Catherine II. Count Potjomkin was building it at a site of a military camp of the Russian Commander Suvorov.

Black Sea can go up in a fireball – a looming natural disaster

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Yesterdays act of terrorism when Ukraine blew up the Kahovskaja HPP dam creates not only a military and humanitarian difficulty for Russia, not only does it create a short-term ecological disaster, killing hundreds of thousands of animals in one swipe, not only does it create a mid-term epidemiological disaster, when ll that has been washed off begins to rot and decompose, it also exacerbates a long-term looming catastrophe hanging over the Black Sea. As it stands now, the sea is already on the verge of going up in a hige fireball, and any additional dumps of the sediments and warm water only hasten that outcome.

Below is a translation of an article by “Argumenty i Fakty” from the 29th of May 2023.

Deep poison. A scientist from Turkey warns of a catastrophe of the Black Sea

Turkish geologist, Professor Osman Bektash warned about the impending danger to all who live on the Black Sea coast. According to him, global climate change is to blame.

The middle layer is thinning

Insufficient precipitation and an increase in temperatures above average values have led to the fact that life in the depths of this sea has become impoverished. The number of fish has decreased, the diversity of biological species has decreased. But that’s not even the main concern.

The Black Sea is practically a closed basin, it is connected to the World Ocean through the narrow Bosphorus Strait. The rivers flowing into it — the Dnieper, Dniester, and Danube — have deposited silt over millions of years, which settled on the bottom and produced hydrogen sulfide as a result of chemical reactions. The excess of this gas with a foul smell of rotten eggs in the depths is the most famous and unusual feature of the Black Sea. It accumulated there for a long time, and since its solution is heavier than water, hydrogen sulfide concentrated in the deepest places.

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The 9th of May 2023 – Remembering the continued fight against Nazism

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On this Victory Day, the 9th of May 2023, I want to remember not the Victory on the 9th of May 1945 in the Great Patriotic War and the World War II, I want to remember the continued struggle against Nazism, a struggle that Russia once again had to hoist up on its shoulders.

The perfect way to remember it, is another 9th of May celebration that happened a year earlier – in 1944 – when the Crimean city of Sevastopol was liberated from the German Nazis, who had been rampaging Crimea for almost 2 years, not unlike how the Ukro-Nazis had been rampaging Donbass for the long 8 years since 2014.

In a small way the liberation of Sevastopol was a Victory, but more struggle was still ahead, just like today.

6 years ago, when Artjom Grishanov made this clip, the continuation of the fight was only starting, the warnings in the documentary portion of the clip were not heeded, the “delirium” that Putin spoke of back then, has engulfed the “garden”.

And now, the article co commemorate the continued fight.

Liberation of Sevastopol from the Nazi invaders

The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Ruins of Sevastopol

On the 9th of May 1944, during the Great Patriotic War, as a result of an offensive operation that got the name of “Crimean”, the city of Sevastopol was liberated from the German Nazi troops.

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The Legacy of Gorbachev. Germany is denying Russia what it got from Russia 30 years ago.

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After Gorbachev’s passing, a lot can be said about his deeds and legacy. Little of it will be positive.
At best, he’s remembered as a bumbling fool, who started reforms that he was in no position to bring to a positive fruition.
At worst he – along with Yeltsin – is remembered as a malicious traitor to the Russian world, responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people as the result of the demolition of the USSR, which started several years before the fateful events of 1991.
As a middle-ground, I would recommend Scott Ritter’s article in Consortium News SCOTT RITTER: Mikhail Gorbachev, a Vector of Change

My today’s translation takes a look at Gorbachev’s legacy from a different angle – from the perspective of the reunification of Germany. It was in 2014 that first read a short comment about the German counter-historical stance on the reunification of Crimea in light of the prior reunification of Germany. Back then it was just that – a comment in some other discussion. Yesterday I came across an article at the Federal News Agency site that makes a much deeper , and more passionate dive into the matter. And article, a translation of which I am presenting below.

Germany refuses the Russians what Russians gave her thirty years ago

03.09.2022


Pravda Komsomolskaya/Russian Look

In Germany, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is very much loved. Much more than in Russia and many former Soviet republics. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was even called “the best German” because he did a huge historical thing for the German people. He united a divided Germany.

But he demolished his own country.

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The Russian military was transferred from near Kiev to lift the water blockade of Donbass – TopCor

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As the sire TopCor reported yesterday, there is an indication that Russian military is now working against the clock to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Donbass. Translation below:

The Russian military was transferred from near Kiev to lift the water blockade of Donbass

The information that the Russian military are voluntarily withdrawing from Kiev and the northern regions of Ukraine and are being transferred to Eastern Ukraine has caused quite justified bewilderment and indignation among the overwhelming majority of Russians who support the Special military Operation. How so, what for did our paratroopers die in Gostomel and near Irpen? However, it has now become clear that the resolution of the problem for which they were promptly transferred to Donbass does not tolerate any delay.

Military experts give various arguments, trying to explain the reasons why the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation suddenly decided to give up the previously occupied positions to the Ukrainian Armed Forces without a fight. These include both the impossibility of reliable supply of the Russian group hanging on a thin line, where our columns will be subjected to constant attacks by Ukrainian special forces, and the DRG from Zelensky, which is about to go. This is also the inexpediency of storming “head-on” such a giant metropolis as Kiev, which will either have to be demolished under the foundation, or pelted with the corpses of the Russian military. It also includes a perfectly reasonable argument that after the defeat of the offensive group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass, the criminal Zelensky regime will de facto lose the most combat-ready units, which will radically facilitate the implementation of the third stage of liberation of the rest of Ukraine. But this is not what forced the Russian military to break away from the already conquered positions and rush to the eastern front.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation needed to put together a powerful strike fist with a multiple numerical advantage over the Armed Forces of Ukraine in order to have time to defeat it in the shortest possible time. This must be done to prevent the genocide of the Russian population of the DPR and LPR. The count-down goes in days, a maximum of a couple of weeks left. And this is not an exaggeration.

Genocide “the Ukrainian way”

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The brief history of Crimea

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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.

Dedicated to the 75th Anniversary of the Victory. Hero-City of Sevastopol. NTV video-tribute

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Sevastopol. The Crimean city that the locals say survived three sieges, the longest one ending in 2014. The second siege was between 1941 and 1944, when the city ultimately fell under the German control yet retained it fighting spirit until its liberation.

Below is an NTV tribute to the Hero-City of Sevastopol with my translation of the transcript

By the start of WWII, Sevastopol was the largest port of the Black Sea, and the main maritime military base of the USSR. Thus it was among the first Soviet cities bombed by the German aviation on the 22nd of June 1941.

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Crimean Bridge Complete – The First Passenger Train Passes!

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Such splendid news on the eve of the New Year of 2020!

The 100-year-old Russian dream has come to fruition and the bridge to Crimea is now complete. It was during the reign of tzar Nikolai II that the first plans to build the bridge to Crimea appeared. The technological know-how was not, however, in place and the first actual attempt to build the bridge happened right after WWII. The bridge was constructed between the two nearest shore points and could not withstands the pressure of the ice, so it collapsed shortly after its construction. And now this third attempt is a resounding success, started shortly after Crimea’s reunification with Russia and necessitated by the hostile attitude from the Russian break-away Borderland area. The bridge now carries both cars and trains.

Watch the exclusive reportage of the first passenger train passage by the British independent journalist Graham Phillips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GsuYrEoGkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GsuYrEoGkg

And here is a local view:
MEET! The FIRST TRAIN to CRIMEA! Simferopol. Railway Station comes to life! Sevastopol.

Celebrating the 5th Anniversary of Crimea’s Reunification with Russia

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This March marks 5 years since the people of Crimea overwhelmingly voted in favour of reunification with the rest of Russia. This event was preceded by a violent Western-sponsored coup d’etat in Ukraine, which removed there the legitimate government and left Ukraine without any constitutional government for several months. De facto Ukraine was ruled by the US/EU-approved Ukro-Nazi mob, which saw as its mission eradication of everything Russian in Ukraine. And Crimea stood high on their list of territories to be depopulated from the Russians.

USA had its own interests in Crimea, having scouted it for its new US-NATO military base. Crimea would have become another Kosovo for the US-NATO, Kosovo, which was split off from Serbia in a savage aggression on Yugoslavia by the US-NATO in March 1999 and lead to the establishment one of the largest US-NATO military bases in Europe – Camp Bondsteel, which Graham Phillips documented in his latest reportage.

And then “The Third Siege of Crimea” – as the locals call it, the longest 25-year-long siege, ended and Crimea reunited with its motherland!

The Crimeans overwhelmingly voted for the reunification, exercising their right under the international law and the UN charter of people’s right to self-determination. It was not the first time the Crimeans voted for the reunification, but this time it worked, while in 1991 the results were ignored and suppressed.

Whatever passed between Russia and Ukraine in 1954, it was not sovereignty over Crimea. The Union States did not have sovereignty over the autonomous bodies within them. The USSR had sovereignty over both of them. According to the Constitution the Supreme Soviet would determine the fate of the autonomies if a state seceded.

USSR Law of Secession: “The people residing in the autonomies are given a right to independently decide whether to remain in the Soviet Union or in the seceding Republic as well as to decide on their state legal status.”

Crimean Referendum Jan. 20, 1991: “Do you support re-establishing the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as a subject of the Union SSR and a participant of the Union Treaty?”

— 94.3% yes —

As 2.5 million Crimeans celebrated, the West was gnashing its collective teeth as the loss of a prospective military base for the USA to put their missiles aimed at Moscow. Sanctions followed, trying to punish the Crimeans for their choice. Ukraine, with the Western blessing, blew up the electric power lines as well as left the peninsular without water, leading to a large-scale humanitarian disaster. No-one bombed the Obama regime for organising it, but Russia rather quickly managed to restore both water and power to the peninsular through a dedicated infrastructure bridge.

More sanctions followed from the West. The Russians felts especially betrayed by the Germans – only in 1989 Gorbachev, against the strategic interests of the USSR, and to the hollow NATO promises of “not one inch East of Berlin”, green-lighted the reunification of the German people. And that is how the Germans repaid when the Russian people reunified – by slapping on sanctions.

Time passed, and Russia continued to undo the damage done to Crimea by the 25 years of Ukrainian neglect. They built new infrastructures, built new international airport, built a large mosque for the Crimean Tatars and recognised their language as one of the three official languages in Crimea (something Ukraine promised to do, but never did), they built the miracle of engineering – the Kerch railway and motor bridge, they restored Artec.

Looking back at 2014, when this revival started, I found my copy of Argumenty i Fakty from the 18th of March 2014, which I keep as a valuable memento – akin to how our grandfathers would have kept newspapers announcing the end of WWII. Here is the facsimile of its front page.

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Five Years Later, the Crimean Scythian Gold Worth $4 Million May Fall into Poroshenko’s Hands

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In a twist of fate, just as Crimea returned to Russia after 25 years of Ukrainian oppressive rule, Crimea’s most precious collection of Scythian gold was on tour in European and promptly became arrested by Holland. It is in Holland still, despite several Crimean Museums’ ownership of the collection. After the first hearing in 2016, Holland awarded the golden collection to Ukraine. The decision was appealed, and is now coming for a near hearing in Holland. The following article in Argumenty i Fakty from 12.03.2019 is about this.

The gold that got stuck.
Will Poroshenko get the wealth of the ancient Scythians?

The second trial, which will decide the fate of the exhibits of the Crimean museums, started in Holland.


The gold of the Scythians. © / PHGCOM / Commons.wikimedia.org

Hearings on the case of the “Scythian gold” began on March the 11th in Amsterdam. In 2014, it was taken from the Crimean museums to an exhibition in Amsterdam. After the reunification of Crimea with Russia, the Ukrainian authorities demanded to return the exhibits to Ukraine. In 2016, the district court of Amsterdam ruled in favour of Kiev. Crimean museums have filed an appeal, which will now be considered in court.

Aif.ru answers the main questions about the upcoming process.

What are these gold artefacts?

In February 2014, when Maidan was raging in Kiev, the exhibition “Crimea: Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea” was opened in Amsterdam. It collected the best exhibits from the ‘Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine’, ‘Kerch Historical and Cultural Reserve’, ‘The Central Museum of Tavrida’, ‘Bakhchisarai Historical and Cultural Reserve’ and ‘The National Reserve “Tauric Chersonesos”‘. Amsterdam became another point in the Museums’ “tour” of the collection: before Holland they were exhibited in Bonn, Germany.

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