Tag Archives: geopolitics

Boris Yeltsin: Demon or Hero?

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On the 1st of February Boris Yeltsin, the first President of the Russian Federation, would have been 85. Commemorating the date, Argumenty i Fakty published a two-polar article about Yeltsin. Two views on what he did to Russia, one negative and one positive. The whole article Boris Yeltsin: Demon or Hero can be read in Russian at the site of AiF.

Here I am only going to translate one view, which reflects the real negative impact of Yeltsin on Russia. I cannot bring myself to translating the positive view by Vladimir Ryzhkov, who was the vice-speaker of the Parliament in 1997-1999 – in the years after the 1993 Yeltsin’s coup d’etat. Ryzhkov’s words are sugar-coated paintings of black as white. IF anyone wants to read them, go to the Russian article above and use Google translate…

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Ukraine: Still Smouldering Tinderbox (I) [Re-blog with comments]

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Below is a re-blog of Michael Jabara CARLEY’s article Ukraine: Still Smouldering Tinderbox (I) published at the Strategic Culture Foundation site.

But before I present the text, I want to add a few comments of my own, which the reader can keep in mind while reading the article.

The city of Odessa was founded in 1794 by Russian Empress Catherine II and was the first free trade port in Russia.

The city of Nikolaev was founded in 1789 by Russian Count Potjomkin as a ship-building docks. It got its present name in commemoration of the victory by the Russian troops, when Turkish fortress Ochakov was taken in 1788 on the day of St.Nikolaj.

Regarding what the American handler of the Ukrainian puppet government, Proconsul Pyatt was saying, that Russia wants to “create Novorossia”. Russia has no need to create Novorossia. Novorossia is actually an old concept – it was an administrative region within Russia at the time, when the European emigrants were still stealing the land from the Native Americans. For an in-depth look at Novorossia, see my article Two Ukraines.

Ukraine is indeed a smouldering tinderbox. For a look at what is going on, I recommend watching the English-subtittled Donetsk Republic’s Ministry of Defence Briefing: Jan. 29, 2016 Ceasefire Violations by Kiev, published at Lada Ray’s blog.

And finally, I disagree with the author’s conclusion in the last paragraph. Putin is not intimidated, but is rather trying to resolved the conflict and free Ukraine from the American occupation diplomatically and not militarily. There was also no homogeneous resistance in Donbass, but rather several groups with varying interests, which were united by not wishing to cow-tow to the coup government. This cost Donbass the loss of momentum. The situation is all to close to what Russia (an by that I also mean Ukraine) experienced after the coup d’etat of 1917 and the subsequent civil war and Western interventionism…

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Apocalypse of Europe
Special report from the flooded by refugees Austria

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This is the second article by travelling journalist Gergij Zotov, in the series about refugee crisis in Europe, published in the newspaper weekly “Arguments and Facts” number 40 9/30/2015. English translation of the first part, about Hungary, can be read here.

Apocalypse of Europe
Special report from the flooded by refugees Austria

“AiF” observer managed to find out: 2 months ago recruits arrived to the Turkish camps for ‘displaced persons’, organizing sending of Syrians and Iraqis into the EU. One question remains: who benefits from this?

There’s a complete pandemonium in Vienna’s Westbahnhof station, to which come the packed train from Budapest. Thousands of people are crowding on the platforms, cordoned off by the police – since early morning they are waiting to be sent to Munich. Austria is struggling to get rid of the refugees, including those that are asking for political asylum. However, you can no longer recognise the hungry and exhausted people, whom I saw at the border of Hungary and Serbia. All are smiling, happy to pose for photos, dressed in brand new clothes, many – with smartphones. Before they would grab any food, now they’d come to a food stall, browse through the products, and depart. Refugees learnt in such a short: one does not need to work in Europe . The food here is laid out for free, and you are even begged to take it.

Hangover of a dragon

– Actually, there is a way out, – assures the Austrian Freedom Party activist Christian Lander. – The war in Iraq was unleashed by the US and Britain, they are the very same, who with the help of France and Italy bombed Libya, financed the rebels in Syria. It will be fair if the countries involved in the Arab adventures would share the refugees among themselves. We in Austria already have a lot of problems with migrants, and now every day there come 20,000 more people. I do not understand the silence of the European Union, when America declares, that they will generously host ten thousand Syrians… If you are an “adult” state, and not a clown in short pants, then you are obliged to bear the consequences of your policies. Otherwise it will be as in the joke about the five-headed dragon – one head was drinking schnapps in the evening, and in the morning all heads had hangover together. It would have been appropriate to immediately put the refugees into the buses at the border and “export” them to the EU countries, which created chaos in the Middle East.

Spreading the gifted blankets, people lay down to rest on the pavement. Munich slows down with a reply today: the refugee centres there are already over-crowded, they just do not know what to do. “We were promised that we’d be in Germany today, – complains Khamis, a 44-year-old engineer from Damascus. – But now it turns out that the Germans were not prepared to accept more people. What to do? We sit on each other’s heads.” Meanwhile, in the course of the conversation an interesting thing turns up. Khamis has lived in the camp “for displaced persons” in Turkey (Mardin province) for two years and did not think about Europe: for the smugglers took 10 000 dollars per person for transport by sea to Greece, while he had nowhere near that kind of money. So, in July there came some unidentified recruiters to their camp – they promised free shipping to Europe. One had to agree to the offer quickly and to go right away. “I think it is very necessary for someone that Europe is drowned with refugees – said Khamis. – But honestly, I do not want to go into details. I’m just happy that I’m far away from war.”

Control over oil

– Many Europeans probably wonder: The war in Libya and Syria began five years ago, and in Iraq as far back as in 2003, so why do hundreds of thousands of people poured into the EU now? – says political consultant of the Lebanese TV channel “Al-Manar” Mohammed Aswad. – Turkey kept the Syrians behind barbed wire, their passports were confiscated, they were not allowed to leave the camps. And suddenly there come recruiters, offering a free ride into Europe. Why such selflessness? Turkey, the closest US ally, suddenly opens the door, releasing a crowd of fugitives who freely enter the EU. Now the question is: Who benefits? The main dividends are received by the United States. The tide of migrants means huge costs for the weak EU economy, which will lead to a drop in the Euro, worsening crime situation in Europe. As a result, the EU has no resources to bother with the United States, and Washington will be able to smoothly carry out its plans for the control of oil sources in the Middle East in order to bring the price of oil to $10 per barrel.

Austrians themselves meet the “guests from the East” warmly enough – Westbahnhof is equipped with a children’s play area, where volunteers play with the kids, handing out food, clothing, offering hot drinks. However, it appears from the conversations: friendliness is based in part on the belief that no one will stay in Austria, that the “newcomers” will leave for Germany and Sweden, which give high social benefits. “Recently, on the highway to Vienna, they found a van full of corpses – seventy dead refugees, – tells a terrified housewife Laura Heusinger, who is handing out biscuits at the station. – Syrians and Libyans are trying to get to the West by all means. Of course, I feel the fear – a tiny Austria will not be able to feed the whole world. I feel sorry for these people, so I came to the station to help them as much as I can. But why do they ask money from me, and not from America?”

The train to Munich and did not arrive – the refugees are sleeping on the platforms side by side. Europe frankly does not know what to do with the millions of people of people, who broke into her boundaries, while the EU countries arguing until hoarseness sets in about quotas, pushing fugitives from one country to the next. The war in the Middle East is expanding, and crowds of residents from the destroyed cities fleeing to where it is safer. And it’s true: I wonder why the exodus started right now, where did the recruiters in camps in Turkey come from? Here, of course, one is reminded of the history – the US economy during the years of World War II has grown 7-fold(!), raising that country over the rubble of the ruined Europe. An example is good, although it is only a theory. But one fact remains unchanged: the conflict in the Middle East, and the current chaos with immigrants in Europe is profitable for the US. It is much more difficult to argue with this point of view…

“We have nothing to lose!”
The refugees, who arrived in the European Union are ready to revolt

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This spring I travelled to Austria and Hungary, spending a few days in Vienna, and then reaching Budapest by train. Budapest gave me the impression of a rather clean and sleepy city, a city of contrasts, where some buildings in the main street were in desperate need of repairs, while another building right beside it would glitter with newest uplifting. And overall, a rather friendly city to be in. But nothing spoke of the coming disaster in the form of the hoards of the refugees – both real and for-hire, who would swamp Hungary in only a month’s time…

In this light, the following article in “Argumenty i Fakty” seemed very enlightening. It is written by the travelling journalist Georgij Zotov and is the first article in a series of two, the second telling about the situation in Austria. The original can be read in the newspaper weekly “Arguments and Facts” number 39 9/23/2015. Translation of the second article, pertaining Austria, can be read here.

“We have nothing to lose!”
The refugees, who arrived to the European Union are ready to revolt

Crowds of desperate Arab refugees storm the “entrance” to the EU. However, it is not too late for Europe to join Russia to work together so as to destroy the “Islamic state.” Otherwise, the worst predictions will come true.

You know, it’s just a real apocalypse. Dirt. Everywhere heaps of rubbish. Barking of the police dogs. Thousands of people wander under the cold rain on rusty rail tracks – wet, hungry, exhausted, with children in their arms. At the police cordon volunteers gave them bananas, they sat down on the ground and ate them right there. A hastily built wall on the border did not improve the situation – the refugees climb over it, throwing clothing over the barbed wire. Old railway near the town Rёske (following it, the refugees travel to Hungary on foot) was blocked by a carriage. The Iraqis and Syrians on the Serbian side openly discuss the possibility to dig a tunnel: “Then try to make our way through the forest in Austria and Germany … It is better to sleep off during the day, and walk by night.” Police are trying to put the newcomers into buses to be sent to a filtration camp. Some accept it, others break through the cordon and walk on foot 170 kilometres (!) To Budapest: taxi drivers and drivers of private vehicles are forbidden to give them a lift. Along the road tired refugees sit in groups: to gain strength, then to get up and move on. Crawl they may have to do, but forward – to Europe.

“We will start a rebellion”

– Previously, local Gypsies took the Arabs along the secret paths, asking $500 per person – says the captain of the Hungarian police Attila Rakosi. – Now so many refugees have accumulated, that they can not be held back at a checkpoint. The border is now closed, but will it have any effect? Syrians and Iraqis have gone to a bypass – through Croatia. We do not register people, don’t even look though their passports – as the result, many of the “guests” from the Arab countries scattered across Europe. On many occasions I identify former soldiers among the refugees. When I frankly wonder against whom they fought, I get a scripted response – “for democracy and against Syrian President Assad”. But frankly, it is the “Islamic state” that is fighting against Assad… I have a strong feeling that I’m just losing my mind: perhaps we are witnessing the end of Europe.

Hastily equipped Hungarian refugee camp for refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa is located in the open field, three kilometres from the border. There Syrians, Libyans and Iraqis lodge in army tents, handed out blankets and food. But there is nowhere to wash – chronic shortage of water. There is a constant traffic jam at the gates – 4-5 buses stay there, crowded with refugees, having just arrived from Rёske. Police does not let journalists into the camp to talk to people, so I walk up to the fence. “I am here with the children for five days!” – complains 36-year-old Mustafa from the Libyan city of Sirte. – “My house was bombed already 4 years ago during NATO air raids, I lived with relatives, but we had to run here because of the attack on Sirte from the “Islamic state.” We were promised to be taken to Germany, but persistent rumours of deportation back to Serbia are spreading. If this happens, the rebellion will rise … We have nothing more to lose!”

“Throw them into the sea?”

Officials privately admit: the situation is dreadful. Hungary is not prepared, there is the danger of epidemics: people live on the ground, in unsanitary conditions, do not wash. I’ve seen a lot of camps in Iraq, where the Kurdish survivors of ISIS live – there things are organized much better. Here it’s a mess, oceans of dirt, piles of garbage. It is clear: Europe did not fully believe in the influx of the refugees.

– There have already been cases where the elderly have died – says the Hungarian volunteer Maria Hedek. – They cross the border, lay down, and do not get up. There is a lack of medicines, there is no funding: The EU promised the Hungary money, but not really helped. Brussels do not care about our problems. This is interesting: Americans and the British fought in Iraq, Libya was bombed by the Italians and French, militants in Syria were trained all of them together, while the Hungarians must take responsibility for this. 10 thousand refugees come to Rёske every day… and what should the police do: take them back to Greece and to drop back into the sea? It is necessary to destroy the ISIS, pounce on the terrorists together – and necessarily with the help of Russia.


The main ways of refugees into Europe. Infographics

Inside the underworld

What the emotional Libyan Mustafa warned about, happens in the evening. The refugees walk out of the camp gates in Rёske and in front of the bewildered guards scatter in all directions, while about a thousand of their “colleagues” from Serbia are storming the Hungarian fence. Stones are thrown at the police, the guardians of order respond by firing tear gas, even though there are lots of children in the crowd. We hear screaming and children crying, the refugees are in full frenzy, break through the barriers and begin beating the police, those respond with batons. Spray of blood scatter around, giving the feeling that I am in one of the circles of hell. Women throw children over the barbed wire: “Let at least them get into the EU!” An hour later the refugees are finally being pushed back, and wiping broken faces, they use the foulest words about Europe. Residents of Rёske watch the battle with the outright resignation. “You see how much trash there is all around?” – sighs a local farmer. – “The town turned into a dustbin. Why not ask the refugees to clean up after themselves? But the authorities piled everything on us, the service can not cope with cleaning up of the surrounding area. Leftovers are rotting everywhere, dirty clothes lying lying around.”

…The night only confirms the thought of apocalypse. Howling of dogs is heard, refugees along the borders of the EU lit fires – and there is no end to them in sight. The US adventure with the overthrowing of the rulers of Iraq and Libya, as well as US support for the civil war in Syria and Yemen has forced Europe to spit blood, and this is just the beginning. “Islamic state” is not held back by anyone – it can easily spread to Egypt and Turkey, and Jordan… And then absolute “fun” will start. It is still not too late for Europe to reach out to Russia: so as by joining forces in Syria, together pounce on militants of ISIS. Otherwise Apocalypse will become a reality. Being in Rёske, you realize this with specially clarity.

Bird’s Eye Perspective on the Russian Federation

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I get a feeling that many people, with whom I talk about Russia, have a perception about it as a large monolithic blob of unknown somewhere in the East. And as we know, everything that is unknown, becomes feared and distrusted. This perception is formed by the Western MSM, which seldom mentions Russia, and when it does, only the negative angle is allowed to reach the audience. This is very well put in Lada Ray’s article Desperate for Up-To-Date Truth About Ukraine and Novorossia?.
In this regard, it is an interesting exercise just to fire up Google Earth and take a bird’s eye view of the Russian Federation:

Russian Federation

And the first thing one notices is that, yes, it is a Federation. Notice all the territories, the Federal Subjects, that comprise the Russian Federation. They all have a large degree of autonomy, with their own regional laws, that take into account the specifics of the nationalities that populate them, most of them have one or more national languages, besides Russian – like Crimean Republic, which has Ukrainian and Tatar as official languages. And they all have a common desire for peaceful existence and prosperity. And Russia, just like about any other country, only as strong as it stands united

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Russia Means Peace

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When leaving Norway from Oslo airport Gardermoen, one could see sayings in various languages, embedded into the floor of the airport departure hall. After several modernisations and upgrades, only a few remain. One of them is in Russian. It reads: “И в чужих странах тот же мир”.

mir
Photo by the author.

I’ll translate it a bit later, please bear with me. First let us look at the last word: “мир”. The Russian word “Mir” is well-known in the Western world thanks to the second Soviet space station, which carried this name. What few of the Westerners realise, is that this word carries two meanings, depending on the context.

It means both “World” and “Peace”.

Coming back to the saying above, it can be translated as both “And in the foreign countries there is the same peace” and “And in the foreign countries there is the same world”. As there is no context here, both meanings apply.

World and Peace. Peace and World. Without peace, there is not world, and world is incomplete without being in the state of peace. That’s Russian philosophy in a nutshell, embedded into the Russian language itself.

Any literate and educated person, would have at least heard, if not read, the monumental work by the great Russian author Leo Tolsoy: “War and Peace”. The English translation of the title does not convey all the depth that Tolstoy put into it. The title in Russian is “Vojna i mir” (“Война и мир”). With the knowledge of the double meaning of the word “mir”, which I described above, my reader will quickly notice that “War and Peace” is only one side of the meaning of the epic work about the First Great Patriotic War of 1812. The other side is: “War and the World”, which is the profound intention of Leo Tolstoy – conveying how war affects people and relations in the world.

Incidentally, there is another Russian world that carries the meaning of “World”: “Свет” (Svet). And it too has two context-defined meanings. It’s other, more frequent, meaning is “Light”…

And Russia is busy trying to build conditions that would bring peace to the world, despite all the spanners that certain Western “partners” throw into the works, trying hard to coax a war. One such peace building work was the recent visit of President Putin to Vatican, meeting with the most powerful (in the quite way) man in the world, the Pope. Lada Ray expertly analysed this meeting in her article Putin’s New Ally: Pope Francis.

And as a postscript: I intentionally chose an English word with two contextual meanings for the title of this article. For even though “Russia” does not mean “Peace”, nevertheless, Russia definitely means peace.

Berlin and the War of the Kiev-Junta

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A few days ago a well-renowned German economist, industrialist and a former owner of a multinational company Vorstandschef der Thyssen AG, Dieter Spethmann, published an open letter addressing the German politicians to open their eyes on the events in Ukraine. He first tried to publish his open letter in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, but was declined. He published his letter then in Geolitico:

UPDATE May 2023:
WebArchived article in German (original link, no longer working)

Below is an automatic translation using Yandex translate:

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Two Ukraines – with a Statistical and Historical View at Novorossia

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The original article “Two Ukraines” appeared as blog by colonelcassad in Decmber 2013 in Russian.

I present here a translation of the article into English, with the infographics legend explained whenever feasible; but first I want to give some historical backdrop to where Novorossia comes from.

In his article Cold War Renewed With A Vengeance While Washington Again Lies Paul Craig Roberts very astutely writes:

The EU, ordered by Washington, told Russia to suppress the opposition in southern and eastern Ukraine to Washington’s stooge government in Kiev. But, as every educated person knows, including the White House, 10 Downing Street, Merkel, and Holland, Russia is not responsible for the separatist unrest in eastern and southern Ukraine. These territories are former constituent parts of Russia that were added to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet Communist Party leaders when Ukraine and Russia were two parts of the same country.

The county of Novorossia was established by the Highest Decree of the Russian Empress Ekaterina II in 1764 and existed until 1802, when it was divided into three smaller counties: Nikolaevskaja, Ekaretinoslavskaja and Tavricheskaja counties. The reason for creation of Novorossia countie on the former territories of Slavjano-Serbia was to create a buffer zone against Osmano-Tatar aggression

Below is the maps of the Novorossia:
1800_Novoros_gov

And here is the Ekaterinoslavskaja county shown against the borders of Ukraine:
Gubernia_de_Ekaterinoslav_-_Imperio_ruso

Here is what Ukraine consited of until February (Crimea made a lucky escape and re-joined Russia):
Ukraina1653
Legend:
Light yellow – Zaprozhje – Ukraine before 1654
Orange – Presents of Russian monarchs between 1654 and 1917
Light-green – Novorossia – Lenin’s present in 1922
Medium-green (5+6) – Eastern Galicia – Stalin’s present of 1939-1940 (given to USSR according to Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement)
Dark-green – Crimea – Khrushjov’s present in 1954
Transcarpathia (9) – taken from Czechoslovakia in 1945
Northern Bukovina and Southern Southern (7+8) – captured by USSR in 1940

So bearing in mind that Ukraine is a collection of disparate lands, and remembering the Russian roots of the Cossacks living on the lands of Novorossia, the move performed by Lenin after the coup d’etat of 1917, in creating Ukraine and assigning to it the territories of Novorossia was a direct recipe for creating a problem for future generations.

The people of the East differ to much from their Polish-rooted Western cousins.

And now it’s time to introduce the translation of the blog post Two Ukraines.


(Legend: “Yukraina” to the left; “Yakraina” to the right, with percentage of people who voted for Yushenko or Yanukovich during the last legitimate presidential elections)

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The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine

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This is a translation from Russian of an article by Evgenij Pozhidaev, originally found here. The article gives a good overview of the history in Ukrainian-Russain gas relations. It was published on the 25th of April 2014. The article is speed-translated using Google translate and then extensively edited, making it human-readable.

An in-depth analysis of the latest events in this gas war can be read in superb blog post by Lada Ray – Gas Wars: Why Is Ukraine Refusing to Pay for Russian Gas?, “Ukraine wants communism, not capitalism, when it comes to gas” and Lada Ray: Urgent! Gas Wars: Why Is Ukraine Refusing to Pay for Russian Gas? June 14, 2014.

As I was translating this, the Supreme Court of Ukraine stated that Timoshenko is innocent of all gas-related charges against her, effectively legitimizing the gas theft schemes she was involved in.

After the translation of the article, I jotted a few highlights from the latest development.

The Third Gas War: EU and US must pay for their “successes” in Ukraine

So, Russia and Ukraine are on the brink of the next (third) gas war. The gas conflict receded into the background, against the backdrop of the “hot” fighting and repression in the South East, however, it may leave a long-lasting and even larger impact on the Ukrainian political landscape. We begin with a retrospective – especially as gas wars long since became part of the Ukrainian political mythology, the main character of which is a sinister totalitarian neighbour strangling young democracy and not allowing it to achieve great success and genuine European prosperity.

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